Armageddon General Discussion Board

I was looking at the weekly report on the main site, and last week there were 8 leader reports.  On a game that averages 20-30 people playing it.

I think we have too many chiefs and not enough Indians.  Might need consolidate some shit.

That average reflects people playing the game at one time, not the total population playing Armageddon. For instance, we need leaders especially for eurozone players, not just primetime NA. Some leader reports are for people who work to fund other groups within a city that don't have their own leadership characters but still have a player count.

Of course, all that is academic. Tuluk currently has a posting for two noble roles, which is a clear enough sign that the staff disagrees with you.

Yeah, I get there are people who play other time zones but my experience on this long weekend is that at like 5am which is afternoon for the other side of the pond there is 5 players logged in.

I feel like they need to get more than just a noble and hope people make characters to join them.  They should be doing staffing calls for whole houses or whole gmhs.

"We need an Oash Noble, two gemmed and an aide, please send your role applications".

That way it's not just the noble dicking around solo rping with their npc guard.

Quote from: Pariah on November 25, 2023, 05:29:02 PMYeah, I get there are people who play other time zones but my experience on this long weekend is that at like 5am which is afternoon for the other side of the pond there is 5 players logged in.

I feel like they need to get more than just a noble and hope people make characters to join them.  They should be doing staffing calls for whole houses or whole gmhs.

"We need an Oash Noble, two gemmed and an aide, please send your role applications".

That way it's not just the noble dicking around solo rping with their npc guard.

Sure. And then the noble fires the aide because they don't get along, and now he's just ruined a sponsored role concept instead of simply - not hired them in the first place.

Same reason I'm against auto-clanning Bynners.

Quote from: Lizzie on November 25, 2023, 06:35:48 PMSame reason I'm against auto-clanning Bynners.

Slight derail, but my experience with Bynners has almost always been either hardcore sparring day in day out (IC time) or wandering around empty training halls and then dicking off into the wilderness since nobody is on.

Having them autopopulate seems like a good solution to the leader having a life and not being able to be on 24/7.

Why not try it out at least? Seems like a half-decent idea, they do it with these bad-guy rolecalls all the time. If it doesn't work out it doesn't work out but it's worth trying.

And autopopping Bynners wouldn't be an issue to begin with if every Runner/Trooper/Sergeant was petrified of spending any free time outside of the compound, at least in Allanak.

I was in a tavern in [redacted] with 10 pcs last night (about two hours forward from this time, so 8ish server time).

I've also been roaming around with people hiding away with one or two pcs on a super sekrit plot whose primary goal is to keep a third of fourth pc from finding out about said plot.

The latter tends to happen more often, but when you stumble upon a huge group its fun.

Related: Mass combat is clunky clunky clunky and challenging to manage. Beware of those large groups as well!

I'm not really ANTI any clan, but just struggle to see why he have so many little straggler leaders.

For example:

You've got GMH's that are pretty much needed in the game, I would say that most people accept that as fact, you NEED some of the stuff they provide.

Then you have nobles, who are "nice to have, but unnecessary."

Now lets look at it purely by a numbers game.  Let's say that 8 number is actually 8 leaders, three GMH, Five Rando nobles/crimsonwind etc.

If you have a Saturday evening like now:

Quotewho
Immortals
---------

There are 0 visible Immortals currently in the world.

There are 26 players currently in the world, other than yourself.

Take 26 - 8 = 18 "rando folks."  But in that 18 you probably have at least one psionicist and one sorcerer, so let's call it 16 really.

Now we know the Byn is the biggest group "normally" So let's assume of that group there is 5 which I feel is a conservative number of Bynners both north and south.

So that takes us down to 11 player.  So essentially all these leaders (Using the 8 number from the last weeks result) are all probably looking for an aide, more buddies, minions, raiders etc etc.  So you're looking at BEST CASE, two people in a clan/noblehouse/gmh, but mostly going to be looking at one leader one minion.  While low teacher/student ratios are good in the classroom, that's not good in a RP game where these "leaders" are supposed to be creating their own plots and all that jazz.

Let's not forget Templars, there is two per city, so our 11 number now potentially goes down to 7.

Then you've got serial indies (Like me) who will probably never join those clans.

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,59299.0.html

At a quick count, that's six roles staff is currently seeking regular ass folks to play, THEN there are two nobles open in Tuluk.

The math ain't mathin people.

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60080.0.html (My post about opening up OOC coordination for roles that aren't staff directed as a way to encourage more players to play the game)

You didn't factor in the probability that people sometimes, and actually do sent in Character Reports, instead of Character Reports - Leader. Its just numbers.

Pariah, you keep fixating on "x amount of people on at one time" as opposed to how many people log on daily, spread out over the day. That's where your argument keeps getting tripped up and falling on its face. If staff didn't think we needed these roles, they'd not open them. I don't see an issue with a lack of people for particular roles. Besides, you are /very/ subjective on what roles are worthwhile and are not.

Quote from: whengravityfails on November 25, 2023, 07:08:45 PMPariah, you keep fixating on "x amount of people on at one time" as opposed to how many people log on daily, spread out over the day. That's where your argument keeps getting tripped up and falling on its face. If staff didn't think we needed these roles, they'd not open them. I don't see an issue with a lack of people for particular roles. Besides, you are /very/ subjective on what roles are worthwhile and are not.

100%, but even if I take out my dislike for nobility, it still isn't looking great.

Also yes I realize that there are people who log in for an hour and go do RL shit, and can't play the game for hours at a time.  I get it, but those people also really aren't the core of the game, the movers and shakers, they are more like slightly better programmed NPCs that don't randomly clone themselves on a reboot.

Quote from: Pariah on November 25, 2023, 04:49:26 PMI was looking at the weekly report on the main site, and last week there were 8 leader reports.  On a game that averages 20-30 people playing it.

I think we have too many chiefs and not enough Indians.  Might need consolidate some shit.

This will never be done again, because of the horrible response of the players the last time this happened, as stated by the administrators and producers of the game over the last 7 years.

I can't think of anything worse you can do to an RP game than mass closure of clans or closure of an entire play area.

When I played Shadows of Isildur, the staff closed the northern sphere which led to about half of the game's players simply leaving and many of them making their own game. Then I played Armageddon until a few months after the closure of Tuluk. I tried my best to stick around, but the combination of having less play areas to choose from and seeing community members at the time gloat about Tuluk's closure like it was a competition between it and Allanak, made me (and many other people) decide to leave.

Now that I'm back, the last thing I want to see is this game shoot itself in the foot again. And I think we shouldn't use faulty data like comparing total reports to average player count to justify extremely short-sighted change.

We had 150 unique logins that same week. 187 requests.

It's right there in the same report.

It's not my area, but I don't see chatter about leaders not being able to fill minion slots.  Remember nobles can  be keeping other orgs and independents busy as a "leader" even if they don't have a single employee.

While I don't know what the answer is, I do know there's some truth in that the playerbase is too scattered for the size of the world, the number of play options we do have, and further, for the endless numbers of divides we're supposed to play out between them.

There are so many hurdles to interaction that even many if not most of the players you run into ingame are people you finger wag aren't allowed to associate with, or you're supposed to hate, or whatever. Allanak in particular right now, through most hours, is an absolute ghost town.

Also, community problems like these are so ugh:

Quote from: CirclelessBard on November 26, 2023, 08:44:37 AMseeing community members at the time gloat about Tuluk's closure like it was a competition between it and Allanak, made me (and many other people) decide to leave.

On the whole, I agree with the playerbase needing to be condensed and for them to have an easier time interacting with each other without absolutely demanding hate in every direction. The playerbase numbers simply don't support the infrastructure and there are a lot of times where I feel the game is trying to run, in this way, in the opposite direction of its own survivability.

Quote from: Kaathe on November 26, 2023, 09:38:14 AMWe had 150 unique logins that same week. 187 requests.

It's right there in the same report.

It's not my area, but I don't see chatter about leaders not being able to fill minion slots.  Remember nobles can  be keeping other orgs and independents busy as a "leader" even if they don't have a single employee.

My leaders get minions fine. It might not be as deep of a web as I used to be able to get on my stealthy chars. But I can still pull 1-2 loyal Amos' to do my bidding.

I think things are more or less fine, though some minor fine tuning could probably be done, as I don't know any numbers beyond what's posted on the website each week. But I notice a fair amount of good guys and bad guys.

People just rotate in cycles like they always did. city players bounce between Allanak and Tuluk, with an occasional stormer here and there. Indies filter through the various tribes and luirs, before rotating to storm or a city for a change of pace. The game has something for every play style and keeping that going is key to the game's life.

Leaders need to recognize they are COMPETING for minions in this game.

Start being more fun. More empowering. More better.

Usually when I see someone who can't get minions, there's a REASON. It's never due to a shortage of people wanting to be minions. It's due to nobody wanting to be THAT ONE's minion.

Quote from: Miradus on November 26, 2023, 11:29:25 AMLeaders need to recognize they are COMPETING for minions in this game.

Start being more fun. More empowering. More better.

Usually when I see someone who can't get minions, there's a REASON. It's never due to a shortage of people wanting to be minions. It's due to nobody wanting to be THAT ONE's minion.

There's also the leader who has minions - but not employees. A leader can find plenty of people to help them get things done, without needing to codedly clan them with the exception of clan-specific crafts, and soldiers needing to be clanned AND promoted in order to arrest criminals.

Quote from: Miradus on November 26, 2023, 11:29:25 AMLeaders need to recognize they are COMPETING for minions in this game.

Start being more fun. More empowering. More better.

Usually when I see someone who can't get minions, there's a REASON. It's never due to a shortage of people wanting to be minions. It's due to nobody wanting to be THAT ONE's minion.

Honestly, I feel like a lot of this is on the structure of leadership on Armageddon.

In very few roles - outside of tribes that is? - is leadership a position that is earned IC. Instead, it's applied for and selected by staff and I'd argue that far more often than not, it doesn't work out.

If I could, I'd move it to a far opposite model.

In a game that should be fostering story, I do think more leaders should come from people who have played up the role and worked their way to the top. Always they should be selected from within the ranks, if at all possible.

Quote from: Miradus on November 26, 2023, 11:57:55 AMIn a game that should be fostering story, I do think more leaders should come from people who have played up the role and worked their way to the top. Always they should be selected from within the ranks, if at all possible.

They sometimes are, when it makes sense. The two reasons I kept rejecting being promoted to Sergeant was because I was also a staffer, and not -allowed- to promote into a leadership position, AND because I didn't want the responsibility of roleplaying a clan leader responsible for a crew of clannies, hiring and training, fighting, scheduling, organizing, herding them, discipline, etc. etc.  And so, someone had to be sponsored with an open role call for the role.  I outlived five Sergeants in that role, some of whom were promoted from within, and some from staff-sponsored role calls.

The Byn used to promote from within all the time. Got a dead Sergeant? Great. The next in line is now Sergeant.  That doesn't work when the dead Sergeant had no Troopers, because it makes zero sense to promote a recruit to a Sergeant.

Crafters and aides of Agents being groomed for leadership have often resulted in promotion to leadership positions from within, in the GMHs.

But you can't promote to a noble position. Your character either IS a noble, or they're NOT.  And templars are brought into "templar training" at an age younger than the coded ability of the game allows, so PCs can't promote to be templars either.

A Sun Runner leader can't be a gavram and if the gavram is the only PC in the clan at the moment, then - you just have to accept a sponsored leader.

Meanwhile, the leader's PLAYER has to be willing to take on the additional responsibility, and have time to play that extra responsibility. Not all players are willing to do that, or have time to do it.

So what do you do when you have a clan with players who don't want to play leadership roles, who enjoy being minions, or who aren't even qualified to play leaders in the clan they're in (a half-giant in the Byn -cannot- be promoted to Sergeant, and an elven hunter for Kurac -cannot- become an Agent?

So all these things - some more common than others, all combine to result in the need for sponsored leadership roles.

Again ... "if at all possible."

Quote from: Miradus on November 26, 2023, 01:00:33 PMAgain ... "if at all possible."

I agree, but - I think it's already happening "if at all possible." 

I disagree.

It's fairly clear at least to me that an unwillingness and fear of meaningful change in the world to accomodate a lower playerbase and facilitate more (and better) interaction is a roadblock that Arm's failed to address and backed down from at every turn, probably since before I even got here.

In addition I think we're viewing the results of that, imo short-sighted, decisionmaking - maybe in truth, lack of decisionmaking.

Storytime!

I logged off last night because my play area was dead. I logged into somewhere else that shares part of our playerbase with us and 76 unique accounts were logged in. That's half of our weekly total. It's a place where you can just message the highest staffers and have a conversation. It's a place that's closing soon to make broad, sweeping improvements, because what was good enough when they made it isn't currently good enough for their vision.

I think Arm could take some lessons from them, honestly.

Quote from: Windstorm on November 26, 2023, 01:36:12 PMI disagree.

It's fairly clear at least to me that an unwillingness and fear of meaningful change in the world to accomodate a lower playerbase and facilitate more (and better) interaction is a roadblock that Arm's failed to address and backed down from at every turn, probably since before I even got here.

In addition I think we're viewing the results of that, imo short-sighted, decisionmaking - maybe in truth, lack of decisionmaking.

Storytime!

I logged off last night because my play area was dead. I logged into somewhere else that shares part of our playerbase with us and 76 unique accounts were logged in. That's half of our weekly total. It's a place where you can just message the highest staffers and have a conversation. It's a place that's closing soon to make broad, sweeping improvements, because what was good enough when they made it isn't currently good enough for their vision.

I think Arm could take some lessons from them, honestly.

You've talked about better places and things that need closed down a lot, but provide no concrete examples of where and what that should be.

Who's first on the chopping block if you get your way?

Look I knew this wouldn't be a popular take when I posted it, and while I do enjoy being a bit of a shit stir'er.  I do think, honestly and without snark that what Windstorm here said is right on point.

I also think the "way" Tuluk was shutdown is what lead to our mass exodus of players at that time.

But I don't understand the takes of people like Lizzie who say, "It's fine, it's working, nothing wrong here." essentially either.

Maybe it's because I started playing back in the day when you could sometimes have five people in just Salarr as hunters alone and there were still fifty other people doing their shit.  Maybe I'm yearning for the old days a bit.

However, to look at unique player logins is deceptive.  If a dude logs in for two minutes it's a unique log in, but he did shit all to improve the world.  They should really make a metric that somehow pulls unique logins greater than an hour played, because what are you really gonna do in under an hour on arm?  Besides if you just log in, go fail foraging, go fail hiding, go fail sneaking, go lose concentration on a spell, go fail all your crafts and log off to let your timers run while you're off in the real world and rinse and repeat?

I'm not -against- casual players or people with lives, hell I just left for like three months cause work got crazy.  But to look at the current tree of roles, sponsored or otherwise, and all the available play spaces, all the available open clans/tribes, it's literally a huge tree, with a bunch of struggling branches with one or two leaves clinging on for all their worth.

I think it's folly to just be like, "It's fine!"
(https://media1.giphy.com/media/7xGyzBskuz945CjB1T/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e47i9kpx2ls1h10sgqa7hr92u1qefutb89zv0ydgmyr&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)

Quote from: Patuk on November 26, 2023, 02:11:57 PMWho's first on the chopping block if you get your way?

I would limit nobles to one open at a time per city state and make sure it was ones that actually had a point and could hire a variety of different roles or had niche needs like Oash and Jal.

Desert Elves would be smashed into one tribe, maybe with different sects of it, hunters/gatherers, crafters, mages.

Human Tribals same.

One Templar per city state, because the playerbase doesn't support two right now.

One sorcerer running around at a time, one psionicist running around at a time.

Just the cutdown in the nobles and templars, plus consolidation of human and elf tribals would make the game world more condensed and easier to manage.

@Patuk

Actually, I think my signature illustrates my views and the direction I'd like to see best, and I think that's actually the most concrete way I'd put it.

I don't think I'd target any individuals, but rather the bad idea and stance that Armageddon cannot/should not ever be changed. Despite what some may think given how strong my voice is when I write, I feel that most individuals on Arm are well intended and enjoy interaction above code spam, by an absolutely overwhelming margin. I just don't think Armageddon in its current state facilitates that and any time you bring it up you run into the other Armageddon thing: "Nothing should ever be changed ever because it worked in 1995 and you're just playing wrong!"

The world - and particularly sometimes, the heavy-handed enforcement of it - is, full stop, just badly outdated in terms of player structure and doesn't facilitate a roleplay-centric vision that everyone here, over a long term, would actually like a lot better.

The types of vast, sweeping world changes I would endorse:

* Templars become an earned IC position, where their power and authority increase over time following good leadership. When they are first made templars, they are trainees, roughly equivalent to a militia sergeant that happened to be a noble or bastard noble. They could become what we know of blue-robes over time, but military power and influence are things they will have to earn, IC, through play - not handed to them after a good special app write-in.

* PC militia presence would be reduced or possibly fully eliminated. In their place, Noble Houses would have standing militaries restored and then, templars would have to earn and maintain the favor of nobles or independent population in order to have that sort of power to project their will outside of the city. Nobles would have meaningful power and templars would have less PCs they have to do everything for. In addition, lifesworn Noble House employees would be immune to basic law. Example: currently, a senior aide being attacked by an elf in the street would not be treated the same under the law, like they currently are. This is, in my view, a glaring oversight of the current social structure. Note this is basic law - Oashi Gemmed could not go casting fireballs in the streets.

* Elven Pah tribes would effectively be grouped into one clan. Want to make a Sun Runner anytime you like? Go for it, you're in the Pah clan and you can still play out your tribal-ness, but you're in the Pah Clan and will have lots of interaction/unity with other Elf players, reducing isolationist play. The unity (under Blackwing) would also give them potential for a more complex political scene. Maybe there's even a human or dwarf tribe or two in the Pah Clan, also.

* An idea once voiced by Halaster: Gemmed would be declared full citizens of Allanak. They can now interact and participate. They will still be hunted and hated and unable to travel or do anything outside the city, but at least in the city, they can participate. If necessary to avoid over-representation, the number of Gemmed roles ingame would be limited as a result. Let's say 5-7. Again, templars would have less people they had to do everything for.

I don't think it's really fair to say that we are in denial or have a fear of change. We're very much aware of the situation, and we are very open to change, there are lots of ideas and discussions floating around, but we do need time and manpower to make a lot of changes happen. We can't just click our fingers and make things so. I would absolutely overhaul the stealth system and the crim-code if I could, but those are vast jobs and I could sit and ideate how to make them perfect, but that doesn't mean any of it would ever actually get coded.

As for closing stuff? Sure, we probably should. But what? Everyone loves their corner of the game. If we close something people love because we want to consolidate the playerbase, do you think those players will just come and play in the place where you love to play? That we didn't close? It's not that easy. And yes, we are resistant to changing core documentation and watering down parts of the culture and history that makes Arm unique. There are plenty of role and concept options that don't require antagonistic or exclusionary play.. why not just pick those instead?

As for Hal's comment about the Gemmed.. it's something that we discussed, very loosely, after watching Shadow and Bone, where they have a similar vibe for magick (honestly, it made me wonder if the author had played Arm) but the world has progressed a little and a well known magicker has helped turn the tide of war and earned magickers a slightly more respected social state. When we discussed it, we agreed that we would be open to something similar to that as a story arc that could shift the culture in Allanak via player action if it happened. But then there is still the question of how to balance them (and yes, they do need to be balanced, and no, simply limiting how many people can play them is not the answer to that).

It's hard to put effort into an honest reply because so much that is asked for has been done, so much change takes place, and so much is planned. But I'll try because I share the same high level concerns.

QuoteDesert Elves would be smashed into one tribe, maybe with different sects of it, hunters/gatherers, crafters, mages.

I'd consider it but zero elves are crying for lack of interaction with other elves. I've considered going from 3 to 2, but then we'd probably never rotate and there would be a permanent gap somewhere. As far as going down to one... do you reallly want 12 elves all in one -staff enforced- cuddle puddle?

QuoteHuman Tribals same.

We closed the twin tribes when VR opened. Prior to that it was just twin tribes which had been empty awhile. The mystery tribe isn't active right now. So you already have 1 tribe open essentially and it's pretty empty.

QuoteOne Templar per city state, because the playerbase doesn't support two right now.

Frequently we've left one templar in a city state, but once you add a second and they live awhile what do you do? Store them? What if they have minions and interaction and plots and are happy? Still store them? Also consider how useful it is to play templars off each other. That's not an option if there is one. Regardless, we've let cities run with one templar and even no templar at times as needed.

QuoteOne sorcerer running around at a time, one psionicist running around at a time.

For sorcs this also happens off and on, and are often designed to compete with one another. For psionicsts, they generally aren't just in  hole somewhere mindworming everyone. They blend in with the populace. So limiting them won't help like you think it would help.[/quote]

QuoteJust the cutdown in the nobles and templars, plus consolidation of human and elf tribals would make the game world more condensed and easier to manage.

We generally cap at 2 templars and 2 nobles per city state. I already explained human tribes are empty and elves (capped at 12 in spite of there being 3 tribes) aren't crying about lack of interaction. So what do you think storing 1 noble and 1 templar per city state is going to achieve? I know what it would cost. It would cut the player-led plot that's backed by virtual coin and virtual status in half.

QuoteThere are so many hurdles to interaction that even many if not most of the players you run into ingame are people you finger wag aren't allowed to associate with, or you're supposed to hate, or whatever. - Windstorm

I agree that this is a problem: "I'm supposed to hate them so I'll just go elsewhere or ignore them." It's compounded by that being the easiest way to follow the docs. But the expectation is antagonistic interaction! Hate them, use them. Despise them, undermine their success. Pretend to like them, betray them.  I'm very interested in upping non-lethal antagonistic interactions, but that's a whole separate thread really.

I mean, it's all just guessing and perception when you're a player and not an omnipotent staff that can fly and watch things invisibly.

But I'd say most of my longer lived characters tend to be pretty far reaching, run around the world type for various reasons, be it hunting, bored and looking for interaction, networking etc etc.

My "perception" with that in mind is that most GMH folks are just hidden in their compounds with one or two crafters.  Most nobles aren't in the public eye all that much or if they are they are just sitting there doing nothing (Maybe waying).

I have only seen two desert elves I believe in like three months, so maybe they are all just desert ninjas and I'm missing them.

I play mostly in Allanak, but visit RS, LUIRS and Tuluk with regularity and if their taverns are any clue in the middle of the night, they ain't much going on.

The Byn seems to be always busy, because murderhobo training of course.

I dunno the world just feels super fucking empty, once you get past being scared of creatures outdoors, you can go explore and not run into a single person for weeks at a time.

I'm just wondering where the "active" spots are minus the Byn cause it sucks.

Quote from: Usiku on November 26, 2023, 03:10:54 PMThere are plenty of role and concept options that don't require antagonistic or exclusionary play.. why not just pick those instead?

This is what we'd call a reductionist attitude and attempts to minimize a problem into one example, or one person. In short, it's missing the point. Why aren't you staffing on Harshlands, Usiku? Because that's not what you like and it's not that simple.

Having a bunch of roles in your gameworld that are isolated, whether they're Gemmed, whether they're tribes that never go anywhere or see anyone else, or are forbidden from it, or whatever, isn't good for your low-population interaction-based roleplaying-intensive game. There are few enough players in parts of your world that (see Pariah's post) badly need more interaction but are being actively, in some cases ruthlessly restricted from it to the benefit of absolutely no one's play. If a role isn't something that can be interacted with, even in secret, the way it's written is part of the problem and should be changed.

Interaction is the point. Roleplay is the point. When you're protecting decades-old documentation that's crushing roleplay at the expense of your players' enjoyment of the game, you're very simply doing it wrong. Players are the point. Enjoyment is the point. Documentation that gets in the way of those things isn't enhancing Armageddon, it's holding it back.

See: population decreases, dead play areas
See: scattered playerbase that is discouraged from interaction
See: denialism/fear of change

Plus Usiku, say I want to one day play a full blown crafter again (Highly doubtful) but let's play make believe.

They /NEED/ hunters to help them, or they /NEED/ to spend a year in the Byn to get capable of even taking out things that give them bones and hides etc.

There is an interconnectivity built between us.  We need those other roles we don't wanna play to play OUR roles.

I personally can't stand playing a GMH family member (unless the rules change) because it's boring as dogshit.  However, they are VERY important to the game world.  How is my hunter gonna get their GOOD weapon or GOOD armor without them?  So they are a required role.

I feel like we need to set priorities on what keeps the world going.  What generates the coins, what keeps the economy going.  We already know that Nobles don't make enough money to just wholesale fund all indies, we already know that GMH doesn't get free coin (thought they can become disgusting rich fast) and all that to just hand out.

But then it comes the hard decisions right?  Who do we want to prop up, is it cities we want filled out?  Is it tribes?  Is it indy/mage/sorcerers?

I feel like we are trying to do too much, and while that's noble in itself, it's causing us to have shitty experiences on the ground level of regular every day commoners.

Wow. That comment about antagonism and the docs and antagonism versus leaving really drilled down into something for me.

I tend to avoid playing with people in game who aren't the love interest of whatever character I'm currently playing or something similar like a specific friend, or someone who they hit it off like mad with, etc. And it's because I just plain don't enjoy antagonizing people. If you make it so that the only reasonable way I can interact with a pc is to antagonize or be at odds, my pc is literally just gonna bounce and thanks for all the fish. It's stressful and not enjoyable for me.

There should absolutely be room for anyone to decide to be an antagonistic prick. But I hate being forced into it via documentation. I would literally rather avoid a character entirely. My real life day is stressful enough. I wish there were more excuses for people to work together than there is. It seems like everyone is at everyone's throats, and if you aren't you're violating something here or there.

I want to play a druid (yes I said druid, they aren't in arm but elementalists are the second best you can get to it) out in nature raising flowers and shit who is completely removed from other humanoids. Being around other humanoids is stressful, in game and in real life. I will typically try to do what makes sense for a character, but all of my characters are kind of marked by my dislike of confrontation and conflict.

Armageddon closed Tuluk for play and half the player base quit - along with many staffers.

When Tuluk re-opened, that half that left, didn't return. So it's clear to me that it wasn't the closure itself that caused the players to leave. It was the fact that the game drastically changed - that caused them to leave. They didn't WANT these kinds of changes, and they were made anyway. They felt victimized, and they chose not to participate in a game in which they felt this way.

Whenever the game shuts down options (such as making just one templar and noble role) we lose players. We lose them because we don't WANT staff to make these kinds of changes, and they make them anyway.  If it was the closures themselves that was the problem, those players would return when the options are re-opened. That isn't happening in the numbers we need to sustain the game.

Having just one noble in a city is ridiculous because that means the ONLY time you'll find a noble to interact with, is when that one singular noble is logged in. This game runs 24/7. If you know 100% that you will NEVER run into a noble - and you're hoping to play a social character who maybe aspires to become someone's aide - what are the odds that you'll keep playing this game, if that singular noble is still playing and alive 6 months after they're created?

Having more than one allows for a greater chance of actually running into one of these kinds of roles. Armageddon thrives most when players are able to interact with the variety of role types. Imagine how un-fun it'd be to play a Guild boss, when you know for a fact the Oash noble will NEVER contract you to rob the Borsail's aide's apartment - because there's no Oash, and the Borsail noble is doing well and showing no signs of quitting, and his expected nemesis is a role that isn't allowed to be played, as long as he exists?

@Lizzie I think you're responding to the wrong person.

I didn't suggest closing anything, or limiting the number of nobles.

That said, I mostly agree with what you wrote, even if it was a little confusing in that way.

What they suggested was quite earnestly, a radical departure from the current state, but likely a better organization too it all.

Without closing anything. Just shunting things around.

I was just about to say the same thing.  However, again, I'm just tossing out hail mary's here.  Someone from staff would actually have to do fuck all about it if they wanted.  I just noticed two more nobles in Tuluk were opened when I play a pretty good chunk of hours and can't find fuck all for interaction most of the time.

I don't think you should close anything because players have their favorite class/race and you wouldn't want to take that option away.

But, you could render all those old animosities moot by oh..say..bringing in something far worse.
Something tough enough to bring down all of civilization.

Don't purposely troll threads.

This thread will be unlocked in the future.
::edit:: unlocked

Quote from: Windstorm on November 26, 2023, 05:01:04 PMHaving a bunch of roles in your gameworld that are isolated, whether they're Gemmed, whether they're tribes that never go anywhere or see anyone else, or are forbidden from it, or whatever, isn't good for your low-population interaction-based roleplaying-intensive game.

We don't have a bunch of roles in the game world that are isolated and designed to never go anywhere or interact with other people or are forbidden from it. Thryzn are a bit of an aside, I'm not really sure where they stand right now, but their whole path was player driven. But even most of the tribal clans have different levels of interaction and reasons for interaction built into their docs, most of them are supposed to be going out and meeting people and trading with people of other cultures and races etc. Each of the 'groups' in Arm is basically designed to have, to simplify it somewhat, 'likes and dislikes' when it comes to other races, cultures, 'types' of people etc, this adds variance, flavour, things for your character to bond with other characters over, things to for you to hook into to explore different sides of your PC and their emotional range and so on.

I can't think of any concept that is essentially forbidden from interaction. Even sorcerers and psis can choose to live their lives amongst people, keeping their true selves secret. All of the races can co-mingle and be friendly to a degree, with half-elves being more challenging in that respect, it's only romantic interaction that is shunned there. Magickers bear the brunt of the social cost as a balancing to their power, but they also can operate in secret and benefit from the full range of social interaction, unless they are caught, then they pay the price for their power - be that through death in most parts of the world, or the restrictions that come with the gem in Allanak. Even Gemmed are not prohibited from interaction, they have employment opportunities with the Templarate, Oash & Jal. They can have peer-like relationships with other Gemmed (and potentially secret magickers). They can usually leverage pretty decent neutral relationships with most folks in Allanak who might need them or need to deal with them. They can risk secret positive relationships and friendships with non-magickers. Even rinthers can try to pass themselves off as non-rinth and attempt to elevate their status.

The point is that depending on which races, classes, starting location and background you choose to play, the game will provide different benefits, advantages, challenges, hurdles, potential story arcs and role play cues for you to leverage. If you want a game with less antagonism, then there are options for that. For players who want a game with more social challenge and probably more antagonism.. then those options are there too. There is not an expectation that everyone in the game can and will and should be able to interact with every other person in game on an even level.

This seems like quite a bit divergence from the original topic though.

My own view is that the game doesn't really support both Allanak and Tuluk as two major population centres with noble houses, GMHs, etc. I thought this back in 2012 before I took a long hiatus and after coming back recently I don't think my view has changed. It's a difficult problem to resolve as different groups of players feel an affinity with one place or the other. So closing one leads to a swathe of disgruntled players not playing. The only way I see the problem being resolved is both of them going and being replaced by a single population centre. Then when doing this it maybe opens up some opportunities to do a general rehaul on some things to address some longstanding issues, lessen some roadblocks to players interacting, etc. As a quick completely not through at all scenario I'd see something like:

• Bad stuff happens. Allanak and Tuluk are somehow essentially destroyed. Tek and Muk are gone
• The remnants from both cities migrate to Luirs and decide to band together to increase their odds of survival
• Luirs gets a total makeover + expansion but the rest of the world doesn't really need to be touched much
• Have say 2 noble houses survive from both Allanak & Tuluk - there's a huge amount of history in both places as well as conflict between them so despite them agreeing to band together all that history & conflict isn't going to go away and provides some tension, latent grudges, etc. They're now in reduced circumstances despite maintaining some of their wealth so interactions with commoners can be made a bit easier
• Get rid of the current GMHs completely or retool them somehow - the current monopolies don't really help drive player competition. Have new/retooled GMHs take their place but they are in competition with each other over resources, goods, etc.
• Have New Luirs led by some higher power - mostly just to keep Templars & Militia as they provide that single point of law enforcement that is ultimately regulated by the Staff and they also provide plenty of opportunities for power games, conflict, corruption, etc.
• Keep gemmed elementalists but have the general population's attitudes change towards them somewhat for whatever reason. Sure people should always have a healthy fear of magick but they're also not idiots so can see the benefit of somebody who can literally make unlimited quantities of the most important liquid in the world
• Have one frontier trade post settlement somewhere else in the world. Basically just a place for those who don't like city / clan heavy play to have somewhere else to play out of. Maybe the GMHs run this place. Have goods run between here and New Luirs. Keep this place deliberately fairly small though as we can't have 2 major population centres
• Have a 'rinth type place in New Luirs - need that Guild type criminal element play for all that it can bring when added to the mix above
• Have a bardic circle or something similar for those who want that sort of thing

It'd be a big change and a lot of work - potentially quite risky as we'd be more or less jettisoning a huge amount of history. Also, it's easy to write something like the above and the devil is usually in the detail. But I could see a number of benefits:

• Neither the Allanak or Tuluk camp wins or loses. They both get to start sort of fresh but also keeping some of their history alive - instant potential for conflict as we get a culture clash all happening in the one location as opposed to now where there effectively isn't any real conflict between them apart from the very occasional big blow-up
• The GMHs now have something to compete over - instant potential for conflict & interplay with the various powers. Perhaps they could be granted resource fiefdoms by the powers-that-be which could be won or lost depending on how things go IC
• More people are in the same location - just naturally leads to more interesting play, cooperation, tension & conflict
• Militia/Houses/GMHs all have a bigger pool of players to draw from - more potential for intra-clan play/conflict as well as all the good stuff that happens when organisations start sticking their noses into each others business
• Potential to take the levels in the game down a notch or two - having a few less layers beween the leader PCs and the top of the organisation they're a part of would probably be a good thing and would maybe allow for more changes to realistically occur through player agency over time
• Potential to re-focus the game a bit more on the mundane side of things (though I appreciate that steps are being taken in this direction anyway)

Older MUDs like Armageddon were built for the 90s, when the MUD player base was at its highest and no one could possibly see a decline in the future. This is why a lot of older MUDs have a ton of different zones. The old non-RP MUDs tend to be theme park-ish, where you have your city, another zone that's a living chess board, a zone next to that that's a haunted house, another that's an amusement park, etc.

Then games like Armageddon came along and understood the need for thematic consistency, but at the same time, made a large world because all the other big games had large worlds too. The end result is an older version of the world we currently have. If you went back in time 25 years and logged into the game, the game setting would still be fairly recognizable, even if you might be sitting next to a halfling at the bar.

As the MUD player base declined, the RP games that got created in the 2010s forward were tailored to those changing winds. A lot of newer RP games narrow the scope of their setting down. Now instead of taking place in entire worlds like Armageddon, they take place in towns, in spaceships, in haunted houses etc. Every player is in the same place, and finding interaction is a breeze. There is still collaborative storytelling, even if not every character is cooperating with one another.

What I like about @Boggis's idea is that it would transform Armageddon into what has been tried and tested over the years for new games. It would work. At the same time, I think Armageddon would lose a lot of its richness in the process. One of the things that makes Armageddon unique is that it is still an "entire world" RP MUD. Those are increasingly hard to find nowadays.

If you make the game small, nothing is stopping you from making it big again later.

If you don't have a big amount of players, stretching that small amount over a big world just lessens the interactivity for everyone.

I woke up for work and have to say great last few posts, I think we have some amazing ideas here.  Maybe someone with some juice will act on them.

I mean, it's kind of an impossible situation.

The game is very clearly too big for the number of players, so much so that the majority of clans and character concepts are essentially non-functional. The wheels just aren't turning. It's a wagon stuck in the muck, and playing anywhere outside of the last handful of decently-populated clans means spending nearly all your time alone, without anything to do besides menial stuff like hunting and crafting with no real purpose behind it.

But at the same time, any talk of trimming the game down leads to handwringing about the players who will allegedly quit if that happens. Any given sliver of Armageddon is somebody's favorite thing and they'll throw in the towel if it goes away. Apparently we can't do anything about it, nor can we really be satisfied with the way it is. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

One thing seems clear, at least: we have something like 20 clans in a game that struggles to break 30 players at peak and sits at 20-25ish for the majority of the EU/US timeslot. Even if we fool ourselves into pretending that most characters are in clans, that's approximately one PC per clan at any given time during the busier hours, and that's to say nothing of off-peak when probably 75% of clans have no online representatives. That simply isn't viable.

There's almost nothing going on in the game. Even when you can get together with people, they mostly just sit around and merely exist, because there's nothing to work with. The few pockets of players who actually seem to get anything done are so stacked with coded power and OOC networking that they can't really be opposed, so you either join and add yourself to the stack or stay the hell away.

What are tribes meant to do? Hunt and gather? Hardly a solid foundation for gameplay. Trade? Trade what and with whom? There's no demand for anything they might offer, and no use for wealth when you live in a camp in the desert. Fight? Against whom, unless you want to just pointlessly throw your PC's life away against the aforementioned powerstack?

What are soldiers meant to do? There are no wars to fight in, so it's just NPC gith, going on six or seven years now. Or dying to the powerstack guys because you're a mundane human. Fight crime? What crime? You can go from recruit to corporal and never encounter a PC criminal.

What are the powerstack guys meant to do? They can't exactly go and hang out at the bar, so even finding other PCs is a struggle when there's approximately one thousand rooms per player online during peak hours; and after a year and a half of curbstomping everyone through unstoppable coded might, it's hard to get anyone to trust you enough to have any other type of interaction even if you have the best intentions.

What should indies be doing? Technically they can do anything they want within reason, but it's like being shoved into an empty room with a stick and a bucket and the promise that you can do anything you want, have fun! You better really enjoy sticks and buckets. You could compose the best drum solo anyone's ever heard, but that's kind of a tall order when you have a stick and a bucket to work with.

Most of the things that are meant to be the meat on the bones of this game don't work when it's difficult to even find other players, let alone a reason to interact with them beyond banal pleasantries or mindless fighting. You might be lucky enough (or sufficiently connected OOCly) to find your way into a rare pocket of activity, but that's the exception, not the norm. There's probably a handful of seasoned players with their fingers in all kinds of pies, but if most players never get a whiff of pie-scent, the average Armageddon experience is a pieless one.

One thing is for sure: the things in this game's history that are lauded as the pillars of Armageddon's story - your occupation and liberation of Tuluk, your great copper war, your mantis invasion of Luir's, your legendary Guild bosses, etc. - are in the distant past. These things don't happen anymore, and it's hard to see how they even could when the game is so stuck. I don't think there are too few players for these kinds of things to happen at all, but where the game may once have resembled a bangin' party spread across a few festive banquet halls, it's now more like a hotel where everyone's in their own room and only meet if they invite their two neighbors in for coffee or come across another guest in the hallway on the way to breakfast. There's still enough guests to have a bangin' party, but if the hotel doesn't have a party venue and nobody has anything to celebrate, there won't be one.

Quote from: Triskelion on November 27, 2023, 07:41:08 AMOne thing is for sure: the things this game's history that are lauded as the pillars of Armageddon's story - your occupation and liberation of Tuluk, your Copper War, your mantis invasion of Luir's, your legendary Guild bosses, etc. - are in the distant past.

I don't think this is quite true. Stuff went on early this year that was on that scale that pulled 63+ players online after a long-developed storyline that, from my view, was awesome from start to  finish! Though, you might've missed it, or even missed all of the interesting things that followed.

I often wish the depth of these stories were more accessible, which is sort of what I mean to advocate for all in this: accessibility, involvement, and quality of interaction for more players. Letting them be in the room! The divides in and slices of playerbase being so sharply and heavy-handedly at times restricted from one another is unfortunately such a constant obstacle that a lot of amazing stuff can and has gone on even recently, or was at least planned, but not a lot of players got to know how or what or that the roots of these things were long building ingame. They are even today.

My suggestions above were kind of trying to consolidate and urge interaction between various parts of the playerbase without removing them. Templars that need support to function. Unity and a social/political scene in the Pah, of a sort. Gemmed who get to be in the room. Nobles who have power of their own to use.

I also see the wisdom in what @Boggis suggested, but that would be a major project indeed and Armageddon is an older game that tends to move much more slowly than that - look at the obstacles we run into asking for something so small as keeping the gates of Allanak open just for playability's sake.

That said, I agree with a lot of the rest that you wrote. Arm would very likely benefit from some playerbase consolidation. It's just going to be impossible to come up with something that doesn't upset some section of players or another.

I was happy to see 40+ish players on last night though, and some activity ingame! I never mean to doomsay and I love when people turn up to show support. However, that doesn't mean problems don't exist. I will continue to do my best to advocate for positive change.

Also, not all players are OOCly networked, if even some likely are. Many happily play without ever engaging in that. Be careful believing everything you hear, and do try to have some faith that most people are playing fairly. I choose to believe they are if even like-minded players do also sort of wind up in the same areas at times. The best we can do is have discipline enough individually to turn away from things like Discord channel invites - which in my experience in roleplay are always, always bad - and protect the legitimacy of roleplay through not talking about current stuff.

Quote from: Windstorm on November 27, 2023, 08:13:47 AMI don't think this is quite true. Stuff went on early this year that was on that scale that pulled 63+ players online after a long-developed storyline that, from my view, was awesome from start to  finish! Though, you might've missed it, or even missed all of the interesting things that followed.

You mean the war that was called off before any two soldiers had ever crossed blades? I played while it happened, and what I remember was a build-up to war and then one day I heard that it just wasn't happening anyway and both sides had withdrawn. Never heard a word of it again since.

I'm trying to be vague enough not to break any rules, but I meant a lot of the stuff that happened after that.

Fair enough. Never heard of it. It didn't enter my radar. Even so, it was what, 8+ months ago? That's a long time.

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I love that people are actually articulating why the game is too big and that staff should compress it.

I'm not in favor of consolidation by destroying playable areas.  I'm fine with having limited clans in different clan types being open at any given moment, on a rotation. 2-3 nobles in Allanak, 2-3 in Tuluk, 2-3 templars total in each, and all of them requiring at least /some/ overlap in login time. Even if it's just 2 hours every Thursday that they're all logged in at the same time, and the rest of the week they never get to interact at all.

Any 3-4 tribes total open, whether desert elf, human, or combination of the two, at any given moment.

And when one dies out due to lack of interest, that tribe becomes close to play - and perhaps a couple weeks later, another one opens with a roll call.

The idea of destroying both cities is intriguing. But the entire thing would be done by staff, which everyone HATES because they call it pointless light shows, or it'd have to wait til there's enough of a player base in both cities logged in at the same time for a long-term HRPT. Neither is preferable given the current state of the game.

In addition, gemmed mages would cease to be gemmed mages if Tektolnes is gone.  So you can just remove that paragraph entirely.

Quote from: Lizzie on November 27, 2023, 08:52:46 AMI'm not in favor of consolidation by destroying playable areas.  I'm fine with having limited clans in different clan types being open at any given moment, on a rotation. 2-3 nobles in Allanak, 2-3 in Tuluk, 2-3 templars total in each, and all of them requiring at least /some/ overlap in login time. Even if it's just 2 hours every Thursday that they're all logged in at the same time, and the rest of the week they never get to interact at all.

Any 3-4 tribes total open, whether desert elf, human, or combination of the two, at any given moment.

So using your numbers here, "worst case".  3+3+3=9 just in Templars and Nobles. (That's a whole lot of tavern sitting IMO)

Let's assume that tribes have 2 players minimum, so 9+8(4 tribes open)= 17 players.

Most non-rpt primetimes 2-5pm EST (Euros) is about 20ish people, most nights are 20-30.

So you're saying that anywhere from half to most of the players should be in these positions and the few stragglers as indies in the current setup?  You don't see a problem in that?

Plus you're missing the GMH folks, so lets add +3 to your number cause there should always be a Kuraci, Salarri and Kadius player.

At least with some of the ideas present, you won't have to take an across the world trek to run into someone like you would in this scenario.

Quote from: Lizzie on November 27, 2023, 08:52:46 AMI'm not in favor of consolidation by destroying playable areas.  I'm fine with having limited clans in different clan types being open at any given moment, on a rotation. 2-3 nobles in Allanak, 2-3 in Tuluk, 2-3 templars total in each, [snip] Any 3-4 tribes total open, whether desert elf, human, or combination of the two, at any given moment.

That's what we already have, isn't it? It isn't a goal, it's a descripton of the current situation. As I understand it, the current quota is 2 nobles and 2 templars in each city, 3 d-elf tribes, and then I have no idea about human tribes because apparently nobody plays in them at all.

I believe destroying both cities is kind of a pipe dream, but Tuluk could go. The problem with its closure was that it happened prematurely and abruptly at the whims of Nyr, whose motives were questionable at best. It wasn't necessary to shut it down at that point in time. There was a promise of increased story material in Allanak that never materialized, and when that became clear, people started to quit. Others asked for Tuluk to be opened back up after a while, but it didn't happen for years. Then, once the playerbase had shrunk to such a point where it could no longer sustain two cities, Tuluk was then reopened and left adrift with no real staff presence, and while I haven't played there since the first six months of its return, I can't say that there are signs of a strong resurgence for the city lately.

There's a lot of talk about how the loss of Tuluk cost the game a lot of players who didn't return when the city opened back up, but it's not as black and white as that. It was shut down at an unnecessary time and in an inconsiderate way, and it didn't lead to better storytelling elsewhere. That's what cost the game some number of players. Then the calls for Tuluk's return were ignored for years, only to finally be answered when it was too late. Any players who might have quit Arm because Tuluk closed down were unlikely to leap back in like six years later, and the diminished playerbase could no longer support two cities.

This does not automatically equate to "less content = bad." It's more like "don't cull content when it isn't necessary, and don't add more when it isn't sustainable." There's a time and a place for everything, but it was both the wrong time to close Tuluk and the wrong time to bring it back again.

I do think that we can definitely consolidate some of the pocket-spheres that basically serve the same purpose. Do we need the Crimson Wind and the Masterless? We don't need three d-elf tribes, either--I know at least one of them had zero players in it as recently as last month. Next time that happens, close it for a while. Do we need two branches of the Byn? Do we even need more than one noble house per city? While they might in theory have interesting political friction, I can't say I've seen the faintest trace of that in recent years. Instead, we could just have one open at a time and rotate whenever the last one invariably stores.

Or - *ducks rotten fruit* - try a few months without PC nobles, but assign a storyteller to the job of representing that aspect of the game. If that turns out to be better (which I admittedly suspect it will), keep it that way. If people miss PC nobles, bring them back.

You don't need to consolidate anything in Arm, the metaplot needs to advance. The game has for the most part had the same metaplot since the 2000s. If your goal is to keep it static so new players can experience a single player type metaplot over and over, that's fine. But your current/past players typically won't be interested in just replaying the same stuff over and over. I could be wrong though.

I also agree the "WAY" Tuluk was closed before was fucking horrible.  That is why I think we lost so many people because they were just shit on by staff at the time.

Then to make the problem worse, they gave us Tuluk-lite which was Morin's and you'd get a few people off in the far flung north and it would still create that separation of the whole world between players in Luirs and Allanak.  So you closed a city to consolidate the playerbase, but then opened a new area right next door.  WHAT?

But again, I know this is a major change we are discussing here and I know it would have growing pains and be needed to be handled with care and compassion for the players OOCly who love whatever areas get nuked.  I get it, change is hard.

But to keep going, "Because change is hard and people won't like it, the game is fine." is just putting on blinders.
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Quote from: Lizzie on November 27, 2023, 08:52:46 AMThe idea of destroying both cities is intriguing. But the entire thing would be done by staff, which everyone HATES because they call it pointless light shows, or it'd have to wait til there's enough of a player base in both cities logged in at the same time for a long-term HRPT. Neither is preferable given the current state of the game.

If we went that route I wouldn't even do it as a HRPT precisely for that reason. I'd let the current world roll for as long it takes to get the new thing ready, get all the docs out there so people can prep and then flip the switch and we all fast forward a 100 years or whatever and start playing the aftermath. The current problem is that even if we have a setup like you propose they're still split right down the middle with basically zero interaction between them. Why not find try to find a way to bring them together and have all those numbers in the same place? It'll get far more interesting play going on.

Quote from: Lizzie on November 27, 2023, 08:52:46 AMIn addition, gemmed mages would cease to be gemmed mages if Tektolnes is gone.  So you can just remove that paragraph entirely.

I'm quite sure we can easily come up with a concept to keep them around if we wanted to. It's not exactly a tricky problem. The idea of leashed elementalists is a good one and if we wanted peoples' attitudes towards magickers to change it's easier to implement that if people can see they're leashed in some manner.

Quote from: Boggis on November 27, 2023, 09:30:41 AMand then flip the switch and we all fast forward a 100 years or whatever and start playing the aftermath.

You know, plenty of MUDs have had good results from periodic player wipes. It used to be standard practice back in the nineties. I think many of the hangups over consolidation stem from the issue of "but what about the players who are already there?" and a p-wipe would be a clean answer to that. The only question is how loud the backlash might be. Personally, I think it would be worth trying, so long as the preparation and plan was good enough, not just sprung upon us Reborn-style.

Arx, the biggest success story of the RPI-esque genre in recent years, is doing just this sometime soon. Maybe it's a bit modern for Armageddon's ancient bones, but I do think that it's an idea worth talking about, at least--even if I know deep down that everyone'll be like, "fuck no!!"

Quote from: Triskelion on November 27, 2023, 09:49:28 AM

Quote from: Boggis on November 27, 2023, 09:30:41 AMand then flip the switch and we all fast forward a 100 years or whatever and start playing the aftermath.

You know, plenty of MUDs have had good results from periodic player wipes. It used to be standard practice back in the nineties. I think many of the hangups over consolidation stem from the issue of "but what about the players who are already there?" and a p-wipe would be a clean answer to that. The only question is how loud the backlash might be. Personally, I think it would be worth trying, so long as the preparation and plan was good enough.

Don't even need to get so crazy, if we go forward 100 years, make it some world altering magick that drags all the PCs with it, hand waving the whole thing.

I think wiping the playerbase would be more jarring to people than destroying Allanak and Tuluk, because some players have had people alive for decades.

Maybe like three PCs alive today are more than two RL years old. If that alone was the thing holding it back, I would prepare to say that they can go the way of the kank. There are, of course, many more considerations that have to be made, but it's worth discussing.

Quote from: Pariah on November 27, 2023, 09:01:28 AM

Quote from: Lizzie on November 27, 2023, 08:52:46 AMI'm not in favor of consolidation by destroying playable areas.  I'm fine with having limited clans in different clan types being open at any given moment, on a rotation. 2-3 nobles in Allanak, 2-3 in Tuluk, 2-3 templars total in each, and all of them requiring at least /some/ overlap in login time. Even if it's just 2 hours every Thursday that they're all logged in at the same time, and the rest of the week they never get to interact at all.

Any 3-4 tribes total open, whether desert elf, human, or combination of the two, at any given moment.

So using your numbers here, "worst case".  3+3+3=9 just in Templars and Nobles. (That's a whole lot of tavern sitting IMO)

Let's assume that tribes have 2 players minimum, so 9+8(4 tribes open)= 17 players.

Most non-rpt primetimes 2-5pm EST (Euros) is about 20ish people, most nights are 20-30.

So you're saying that anywhere from half to most of the players should be in these positions and the few stragglers as indies in the current setup?  You don't see a problem in that?

Plus you're missing the GMH folks, so lets add +3 to your number cause there should always be a Kuraci, Salarri and Kadius player.

At least with some of the ideas present, you won't have to take an across the world trek to run into someone like you would in this scenario.

Where are you getting half the players? There are typically well over 100 unique logins every week. A maximum of 17-20 players taking up sponsored roles in scattered playtimes is less than 20% of the playerbase. The other 80% of the playerbase would be - the people all those sponsored folks interact with, hire, conspire to kill, befriend, take as concubines, manipulate, fall victim to, or don't interact with at all.

You've been told by multiple members of this community and forum that - the people who show up on your who list when you type "who" does NOT equal the entirety of the playerbase.  Comparing "number of sponsored roles in the game" with "number of people on your hourly WHO check" is a bad-faith comparison. Please stop doing that.

Unique logins means nothing if there isn't a metric of time spent on game to go with it.

5000 people could log into the game for one minute and not make a difference in the game.

If I log in for ten minutes, walk around check the bars in Allanak and log off, what -good- am I doing?  Nothing but adding 1 to the unique logins.

Now if unique logins takes into effect logging on for say an hour or more and then ticks that number, great and good that argument works.

If a business has 500 people visit it a week but they don't buy anything, they still go bankrupt.

And that's why the Unique Logins comment always seems to fall on deaf ears, it's not a good metric to show anything of value.
(https://media1.giphy.com/media/82CDfFlGepU7ITVApo/giphy.gif?cid=ecf05e4706mtjynulinr12qvi56fh5309xyeepka3twchfrz&ep=v1_gifs_search&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g)

You could have a billion logins per day but it doesn't make a speck of different if I never see a single Templar or spend an entire day in a portion of the game that's completely empty. Unique logins have always been such a cope when we get peak of 30 players online. I've bashed the drum of players being split between too many areas of play since I started playing, but staff don't care or seem to desire to fix it, no matter how dead portions of the game are and how bad it is for the experience in general.

https://iberia.jdai.pt/mudstats/mud/armageddon_mud

This site collects MSSP statistics and tells us, among other things, the average player count. I could be wrong but I'm 90% sure MSSP counts people who are logged in invisibly (aka staff accounts).

If you want to use averages, feel free to use averages, but at least consider that "what it seems like the average is when I'm logged in" is not an average. The data is there, so we may as well use it! :)

If the average number of logged in players over the past 30 days is indeed 22 players, then you'd have to consider how many of these players are leaders on average. Using the total leader count and comparing it to the average is a faulty comparison. Unfortunately, this is not something MSSP data can tell us. We have to rely on staff to tell us how many leaders are logged in on average. This is not a cope - this is just asking for the use of statistical accuracy, rather than vibes, to justify massive game changes. If the game is going to radically change, it should be done based on actual empirical data. And I think whether staff are concerned or not about the playerbase being too top-heavy in leadership roles, it's still good info to have since it can help inform the need for future role calls as well as general changes to the game.

In any event, the best idea I have read so far is Boggis's just because it would be a breath of fresh air for the game while preserving the lore that makes Armageddon's world interesting. I'm deeply opposed to just closing play areas willy nilly because in any game I've played that does that, it always feels like a botched amputation - done as a last resort to try to save the body, only to end up making things worse. But I think an organized shift to a new paradigm for the game would actually give us something different to play with. Whether that comes from a complete restructuring of the accessible game world, or a renewed focus on the game's metaplot, doesn't really make a difference as long as it makes the game more efficient at telling stories collaboratively.

Quote from: MeTekillot on November 27, 2023, 05:40:20 AMIf you make the game small, nothing is stopping you from making it big again later.

If you close Tuluk, nothing is stopping you from opening it again.
1 month later: 15 players quit game.

To be fair, I don't know of closing Tuluk is the solve either.

Maybe it's more of a management thing or allocation thing.

Maybe we put Tuluk or Allanak on autopilot (Staff enforcing realism when they need to, say I run around throwing fireballs at people in the streets cause RAWR and the Templars blow me up.)

Maybe we make nobles staff controlled?  Maybe we make GMHs more automated to not -need- that merchant as much?

Maybe make being a citizen of Allanak or Tuluk have some coded benefits ala handstamp barricades (But better) in Tuluk.

Open Roles (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,59299.0.html)
There are open roles that aren't being filled already.

Now we have them trying to put more nobles into play in Tuluk and beyond with yet another new band of misfits being created.
Tuluk Noobles (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60097.0.html)
Oash Nooble (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60121.0.html)
Brokkr's Murderhobo Role Call (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60084.0.html)

I mean, I -think- maybe the justification is "If we make more leader roles, players will get excited and want to work with said new Leaders?"

But only staff could tell you, it just feels like we are going about it backwards is my feeling.

I think creating leaders should be based on interest of players.  If you get a shitload of gemmed who wanna play in House Oash, open up House Oash, but that's because you got a handful of Gemmed that are begging for it.  Not open House Oash and then beg for gemmers.

Be the change you want to see in the world! Kill those nobles!

Okay, but seriously, this could be solved with just more 'meta involving' rather than 'keeping those secret plots' because a lot of what is going on seems to be behind doors.

Another would be be a pullback of the veil and OOC. Such as: Yes, there were 10 players in [redacted bar] last week around 8pm, but the area is a little dead at 7am....at 7am [redacted] are gathering [here].

I think it might be reasonable to have player announcements of "There is a player looking for other players in this area at this time for [accepted category]" accepted category could be 'a hunting buddy' or 'a drinking buddy' or a 'mining buddy'  ...we could even set up a pseudo ooc/ic npc or pc whose job it is to get those grebbers and hunters to stick together so they stop dying off and actually bring in some materials for said entity.

If I'm going to interact with one person from a clan, I'd way rather meet the 'leader', even if they're a leader of one.

To me, leader means trusted representation of the clan more than it does having lackies.

Anecdote:

I recently played in a GMH. It did a thing to bring hunters and grebbers together with people who might need their services.

I think in total, 4 hunters showed up and one of them "got a job" out of it. Something small, insignificant. There were even door prizes and kits for people who wanted to TRY their hand at all this.

We even set up one for peak-ish, and one for european.

Sometimes its just not in the cards, consolidation doesn't matter. Its timing and interest.

Quote from: Riev on November 27, 2023, 03:00:59 PMAnecdote:

...

Sometimes its just not in the cards, consolidation doesn't matter. Its timing and interest.

This is probably the most important statement on the forums.



Every single time a "recommended playing time" was posted in the Staff Announcements, we would have large influx of players log into the game.   If you want more things to happen in game, you need to tell others that something is happening, and when it is happening, and where it is happening.

Quote from: mansa on November 27, 2023, 04:13:09 PMThis is probably the most important statement on the forums.

Every single time a "recommended playing time" was posted in the Staff Announcements, we would have large influx of players log into the game.   If you want more things to happen in game, you need to tell others that something is happening, and when it is happening, and where it is happening.

Already a post about it. (https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,60080.0.html)

The game can't run on pre-scheduled RPTs. Those are all well and good, but it's not right to say that if you want anything to happen in the game, the onus is on you to launch an RPT, and otherwise you don't deserve for anything to be happening. The game has failed if that becomes the minimum standard. Not everyone is playing a character who has any real way to run an RPT, not everyone is playing in an area where that's realistically possible, and not everyone lives in a timezone where it's an option. It cannot be a requisite for worthwhile roleplay. It's an occasional bonus.

Quote from: Triskelion on November 27, 2023, 05:24:15 PMThe game can't run on pre-scheduled RPTs. Those are all well and good, but it's not right to say that if you want anything to happen in the game, the onus is on you to launch an RPT, and otherwise you don't deserve for anything to be happening. The game has failed if that becomes the minimum standard. Not everyone is playing a character who has any real way to run an RPT, not everyone is playing in an area where that's realistically possible, and not everyone lives in a timezone where it's an option. It cannot be a requisite for worthwhile roleplay. It's an occasional bonus.

This.

Jab:

Arm used to be about skilling up and doing crafts and stuff in between big RPTs and world events. You wanted to stay alive so you could see what happened after the RPT, so you did your Byn grinds and your twinky maneuvers. With so few staff-run RPTs, and every one of them seeming to require 20 unknown diversions and secret quests, its become up to players to do things that don't require staff to give their time. Players can only accomplish so much.

Riposte:

Storytellers are not storytellers, they are customer service reps that require minimum 6 months before staff even -deign- to let them do more than be a roadblock in the request tool. Hire Storytellers who want to tell a story. Help them build and run the story. Don't make it so only HL+ can do anything.

Quote from: Riev on November 27, 2023, 07:48:32 PMJab:

Arm used to be about skilling up and doing crafts and stuff in between big RPTs and world events. You wanted to stay alive so you could see what happened after the RPT, so you did your Byn grinds and your twinky maneuvers. With so few staff-run RPTs, and every one of them seeming to require 20 unknown diversions and secret quests, its become up to players to do things that don't require staff to give their time. Players can only accomplish so much.

Riposte:

Storytellers are not storytellers, they are customer service reps that require minimum 6 months before staff even -deign- to let them do more than be a roadblock in the request tool. Hire Storytellers who want to tell a story. Help them build and run the story. Don't make it so only HL+ can do anything.

Storytellers can "be" storytellers. One of the very first things you learn while a brand-new storyteller is how to animate Vennant at the Gaj.  It's like - your very first animation exercise and it's thrown at you usually within your first week as a storyteller.  You're encouraged to do random animations, even if you don't yet have a clan assigned to you yet.  Animate a street urchin for some Bynners hanging out in the commoner quarter of Allanak. Animate a gurth in the scrublands outside Tuluk.  Create your own generic unaffiliated NPC, get it approved, and animate it.  You can do all this without being assigned to any clan, in your very first month of being a staffer.

Telling a story doesn't have to be a Plot Line[tm].  One of my most memorable moments in Arm was over 10 years ago when my Kurac PC was out riding on the North Road, and someone animated a tregil that shit on my PC's boot.

That sounds like an awful story, and I'm glad you're an easy to please octogenarian. Some of us would like to see a little more.

Earthquake just uncovered an old secret Tuluki outpost.
The recent rains washed out an area in the northern Chasm revealing relics from when the Thirteen Tribes first marched.
A tregil pooped on my shoe.

Oh, the joys of Armageddon.

Quote from: Riev on November 27, 2023, 09:17:39 PMThat sounds like an awful story, and I'm glad you're an easy to please octogenarian. Some of us would like to see a little more.

Earthquake just uncovered an old secret Tuluki outpost.
The recent rains washed out an area in the northern Chasm revealing relics from when the Thirteen Tribes first marched.
A tregil pooped on my shoe.

Oh, the joys of Armageddon.

1. I'm only 62.
2. The tregil-pooping event was just a small moment in the midst of the "end of the world" plotlines. But sometimes it's the mundane, unimportant moments that make the greatest impact.

I dunno Lizzie....Based on the definition:

Storyteller:
A storyteller is someone who tells or writes stories.

And

Story:
A story is a description of imaginary people and events, which is written or told in order to entertain.

I'd want to hear what the producers (staff) expectations of storytellers are in comparison to the definition. Not us players opinions.

People like different things. This game offers a lot of different things. I see some hot takes that act like this isn't the case. 

I see a lot of different problems getting thrown around too. It's a lot to keep up with. It's stealth it's apartments it's not enough hrpts it's too many bars it's too many role calls for hrpts it's bad leaders it's too many leaders it's not enough leaders it's elves it's magickers it's bad rp it's cities it's too many cities... I dunno. Much I agree with but at the same time I just putter around on my sunback happily. There's a ton left to still explore for me.

I think staff usually are enjoying the game, but also see some gaps they could fill. And that's all we do is try to incrementally improve things. So maybe there's a natural disconnect between staff and the really unhappy players who used to love it.  That's another nuance to navigate.

I'm on the side of incremental change informed by data and by listening to players, and I think our current staff are doing that.

In the mean time I suggest players do what I do: try to have fun, don't be afraid to toss out ideas and rpts, take care of newbies, and take breaks when not having fun.


PS
story tellers can run world plots if they want and get approval, but they also have duty to the players in their clans first. And there's much to learn. The new staff wiki helps.

Quote from: Lizzie on November 27, 2023, 07:58:35 PM

Quote from: Riev on November 27, 2023, 07:48:32 PMJab:

Arm used to be about skilling up and doing crafts and stuff in between big RPTs and world events. You wanted to stay alive so you could see what happened after the RPT, so you did your Byn grinds and your twinky maneuvers. With so few staff-run RPTs, and every one of them seeming to require 20 unknown diversions and secret quests, its become up to players to do things that don't require staff to give their time. Players can only accomplish so much.

Riposte:

Storytellers are not storytellers, they are customer service reps that require minimum 6 months before staff even -deign- to let them do more than be a roadblock in the request tool. Hire Storytellers who want to tell a story. Help them build and run the story. Don't make it so only HL+ can do anything.

Storytellers can "be" storytellers. One of the very first things you learn while a brand-new storyteller is how to animate Vennant at the Gaj.  It's like - your very first animation exercise and it's thrown at you usually within your first week as a storyteller.  You're encouraged to do random animations, even if you don't yet have a clan assigned to you yet.  Animate a street urchin for some Bynners hanging out in the commoner quarter of Allanak. Animate a gurth in the scrublands outside Tuluk.  Create your own generic unaffiliated NPC, get it approved, and animate it.  You can do all this without being assigned to any clan, in your very first month of being a staffer.

Telling a story doesn't have to be a Plot Line[tm].  One of my most memorable moments in Arm was over 10 years ago when my Kurac PC was out riding on the North Road, and someone animated a tregil that shit on my PC's boot.

That sounds like a great story Lizzie, and you seem to be the kind of player who appreciates the small things and makes the ooc community better through their positivity and not dragging it into something toxic by putting others down :)

Earthquake just uncovered an old secret Tuluki outpost.
The recent rains washed out an area in the northern Chasm revealing relics from when the Thirteen Tribes first marched.
A tregil pooped on my shoe.

All have meaning and a place in the game, and even the small moments and things matter :)

Quote from: Kaathe on November 27, 2023, 11:40:02 PMI'm on the side of incremental change informed by data and by listening to players

Okay, so this sounds very nice and appealing put like this, but if you put it through the right translator, it also reads like this:

Quote from: Marketing reception based Kaathe translationI'm on the side of slow, cautious change I hope everyone will approve of.

This is also appealing to read, to the right audience.


Instead, it's comfortable, foot-dragging, carefully measured change that won't be very exciting. And if new players and increased playercounts are ever the goal, you need some less comfortable, more flashy, more daring and more interesting style of changes than ArmageddonMUD over its (many) years is used to. You've gotta step away from the walker and onto the fucking motorcycle, BRUH!!

I'm going to be honest here in saying, a lot of the noisy, crusty old veteran voices on ArmageddonMUD's GDB in particular, no matter how much they complain about stuff, are not going anywhere. Kaathe, me, you, and Usiku could show up to some of these guys' door, steal their Amazon packages on camera, spraypaint "FUK ELVES" on their front door and steal their dog on the way out and they'd log in just the same the next day (next week at most) because they've been playing it for 30 years and it's what they turn to when they have too much time to kill.

They're going to be unhappy about me pointing it out, but you don't actually have to do much to appeal to those people. Even if they squall about stuff here, they're not going anywhere. This game needs a splash in the broader world, not within.

Again, I point out other places with bigger playerbases and bigger changes going down that not everyone there will like. Changes are good for these games. They bring fresh experiences and fresh perspectives, fresh settings for stories or even fresh means of getting there (combat changes, new spells, guild restructuring) that bring fresh players in or make people who are curious about new horizons looking at ArmageddonMUD when they wouldn't otherwise.

You don't get those people if they look this way and just see "same old ArmageddonMUD" making zero meaningful changes to their gameworld year after year, decade after decade.

Consider embracing the idea that slow, measured, totally popular change that no one will complain about is part of the problem on Armageddon. Being bold is more of what's needed for an old place like this, not more of the same.

Thread seems to have derailed from 'we should close or consolidate some stuff' to other options for engagement.

Can I bring up the idea again of some form of offline messaging. My preference would be messages of the unseen way filtering their way through your dreams, or being thoughts you wake up with. I like to twist everything to be as IC as possible, although even OOC arrangement of playtimes would be great.

Addressing above ideas too...yes, please use the player announcements for vague posting about locations/playtimes!

Use the ingame rumor boards more too!

I sorta agree with the sentiment of Windstorm.

I think staff has made great strides in being transparent since the Shal-Gate and other mishaps.  However, I think one of two things is happening.

1. They just don't give a shit what people say who play the game.  They are still just of the opinion, I made it to staff, I make the calls and we are all good as I see it.  Which honestly, is 100% true, this isn't a democracy and the Producers and down make the calls.

2. They are so worried about losing players that they've taken the opposite tact of, "Holy shit I'm scared to change ANYTHING because we might lose more!"

From my time in the PC and various comments I've seen from Halaster and Usiku (These are my interpretations, not putting words in their mouths but just how I took it.) They understand the world is entirely too big, they get it, but they also know we have some players who as Windstorm said will just play no matter what and we have some players who will be like, OMG I can't play a tribal human who lives in a coded camp? I'm never gonna log in again!

Now on this of course, I'm on the camp of do it rather than don't.  I personally love Allanak as a playspot, not to thrilled with Tuluk, BUT, I wouldn't even be averse to closing Allanak if we went "take a chainsaw to it" type of solution.

I think there is a lot of acceptance and understanding that the game has struggles by staff and players, but ultimately it's the onus of the staff to do something about it.  Popular or not.

Quote from: Dracul on November 28, 2023, 11:02:24 AMThread seems to have derailed from 'we should close or consolidate some stuff' to other options for engagement.

Can I bring up the idea again of some form of offline messaging. My preference would be messages of the unseen way filtering their way through your dreams, or being thoughts you wake up with. I like to twist everything to be as IC as possible, although even OOC arrangement of playtimes would be great.

Addressing above ideas too...yes, please use the player announcements for vague posting about locations/playtimes!

Use the ingame rumor boards more too!

I honestly believe in the days of withering numbers of players that we are in now, we need to be more accepting of coordinating outside the game somehow.  If that's worked into what you're suggesting here, fucking great.

People have been asking for WAY VOICEMAIL for forever.

They could probably even introduce a mudmail into the account system they already have, login pariah password, You've got mail!

I think it's that purist portion of the regime that's like, "If it doesn't happen in the game, it shouldn't happen!" that don't understand that I can log in on a friday night at 9pm EST and only find two people active even in my sphere of play, without having to ride to Tuluk or Red Storm or Luirs.

Quote from: Windstorm on November 26, 2023, 01:36:12 PMIt's fairly clear at least to me that an unwillingness and fear of meaningful change in the world to accomodate a lower playerbase and facilitate more (and better) interaction is a roadblock that Arm's failed to address and backed down from at every turn, probably since before I even got here.

Honestly it's something I've said since I started playing Arm. The staff/playerbase for some reason are in extreme deniable at the viability of the game world. I've heard stories about how the playercount used to be around 100-200 and you honestly have to be delusional, and I mean that without it being intended as an insult- to believe that a world that was designed for 100+ players would also work when the average player count sits around 20.

20 players isn't even a bad amount, it's only a bad amount when you spread that 20 player count across:
2 city states
A military faction for each city state
A byn faction for each city state
The guild
ATV
Two Moons
Dune Stalkers
Secret Tribe™
Vru'Rihali
Thryzn
Misc rinthi criminals
The Mul Outpost
Cenyr
Best Luir's Outpost
Red Storm Village
Nobles
Templars
Gemmed
Antag™ Role-calls

I've unironically invited around 10 of my friends to try out Armageddon, and the majority of them drop the game because they'll play for multiple days without seeing other players at times. I'm sorry but the idea that the current world works fine for the player count is completely delusional. I also don't care about 'unique log ins', as the only thing that matters for a player count is how many people you actually regularly have playing at the same time.

QuoteConsider embracing the idea that slow, measured, totally popular change that no one will complain about is part of the problem on Armageddon. Being bold is more of what's needed for an old place like this, not more of the same.

Isn't that how we got a new iso race, mul outpost being given to an unassailable group of PCs, and elfageddon? I'm rather wary now. 

I like the idea of launching a wizbang sister game that's compact while reusing the bulk of our history and assets. But when I actually start trying to plan it out, it becomes clear that it would just as likely fail and destroy us as bring in new blood.

Quote from: Kaathe on November 28, 2023, 11:23:13 AMIsn't that how we got a new iso race, mul outpost being given to an unassailable group of PCs, and elfageddon? I'm rather wary now. 

That's not change, it's kind of the opposite: expansion. More content instead of changing existing content, let alone consolidating it.

(I don't know what elfageddon was)

@Kavrick by your definition of 'player count', the world was designed for 60-70 at the top end, not in any way over 100. Because you are insisting of using the metric of how many people are logged in at once, not how many accounts log in during a week. Even during its highest heyday, you'd see about 250-260 a week unique logins, and typically 60ish people logged in at peak. So you really need to adjust your math there. And that was probably around 2013? I will grant for long term hyped HRPTs, you might crack 100 people on. But that was about as rare as rpts/hrpts are now.

And 2013 was inflated numbers. Typically around the time it would be 50ish to 60ish+, and closer to 200 logins, around 2012 and 2014. If you look at the stats for logins and players 2013 stands out as notably higher than the rest of the high tide.

I've been playing since around 2005 and I don't think I ever saw hundreds, maybe during one or two HRPTs, normally in the "Golden Days" it was like 60-70 at peak.

Unique player logins is deceptive.  If I go pay 500 people to log in and give them a dollar, they all create characters, login for a few minutes and bounce, the unique player count is now +500, but nothing was actually gained.

While I get there are people who play a few minutes a day or sporadically here and there because life, after all RL is more important than bone swords and fireballs, but when it comes to roleplaying, fleshing out characters, keeping plots moving, doing interesting shit whether that's bullshitting with me at a bar during a night or simply going out to dig rocks and emote with me.  Those are the interactions that matter and are visible to players as a whole.

If 143 Unique Log Ins (https://armageddon.org/updates/index.php?week=47&year=2023), log in and don't actually put forth the story or interact with folks outside their clan crafting hall, or their solo RP, or whatever, that's a deceptive number to hitch your wagon to.

It's about quality not quantity.

Even if we're not talking hundreds I'd like to think my point still stands if we're sitting at around 30-40% of the prior player count.

Quote from: Kavrick on November 28, 2023, 11:49:53 AMEven if we're not talking hundreds I'd like to think my point still stands if we're sitting at around 30-40% of the prior player count.

Oh yeah, I get what you mean, your point is still valid.  The pool is too diluted.  You don't gotta convince me of that.

Quote from: Kavrick on November 28, 2023, 11:49:53 AMEven if we're not talking hundreds I'd like to think my point still stands if we're sitting at around 30-40% of the prior player count.

More like 50-60%. Not that it's not trending. It's trending, and has been trending, in the same direction since 2014. I wonder if an assessment of game changes between 2014 and now and their impacts on play, versus changes between 2008-2014 and /their/ impacts on play could be done to analyze the differences and how some things very notably got us players and others have slowly peeled them off like the layers of an onion.

Quote from: Kaathe on November 28, 2023, 11:23:13 AM

QuoteConsider embracing the idea that slow, measured, totally popular change that no one will complain about is part of the problem on Armageddon. Being bold is more of what's needed for an old place like this, not more of the same.

Isn't that how we got a new iso race, mul outpost being given to an unassailable group of PCs, and elfageddon? I'm rather wary now. 

I like the idea of launching a wizbang sister game that's compact while reusing the bulk of our history and assets. But when I actually start trying to plan it out, it becomes clear that it would just as likely fail and destroy us as bring in new blood.

This still hasn't been publicly discussed. It's chapter is over though, and through staff decisions with (redated), (redacted), and (redacted) have shut it down and are shaping the story there (as storytellers, after all). It was also predictable, and show right off the bat when multiple pcs declared their interest in it, but their complete inability to compete with an established, codedly powerful pc who also was interested. The complaints were valid, but were meta. I honestly hoped that was taking something that was being done for a player that was playing with staff, and offering it to the rest of the playerbase. It drew (CONSOLIDATED) a ton of pcs to the area...too many! It failed because it was too interesting and engaging. It was almost destroyed by the pcs too when presented with a virtual threat. My belief is that we should see these groups pop up again and again and again only to be crushed by the big bad threats.

I'll say that the iso race isn't completely isolated and that they do go into [redacted] areas and engage with other groups. They've also not had a lot of players for a period, but if more join you'll be more likely to see them as well.

I don't know about elfageddon, but I just wish they would use shout with archery or that there was a better way to have a descriptive and engaging scene with the way stealth works. (not bashing anyone as that is a hard scene to play beyond code)

A lot of the flaws with the above could be eased with more communication between staff and players as while everyone wants to 'win'. If everyone joined the same allied clans and all the pcs got on the same side it would be Group PVE...and it's IC to want to survive.

On a related note, but something more established/accepted...this summer I saw FOUR half giants in the same clan! ...but how do you say ICly "No, I don't want another supermutant soldier as a guard" ...you start to say goofy things like 'this npc here, he just can't remember that many names or faces!"

(please excuse the repost/edit, messed up the quote syntax)

Disregard, he caught it.

The players that want to play together can. The issue is a culture problem. It's how you all interact with and play the game. You want interaction but only when it's convenient, and manageable. And you know exactly how to manufacture that convenient, manageable experience because most of you have played for so long.

Nothing is stopping yall from making a bunch of Byn characters and generating enough excitement to draw staff attention and have some real fun. Not all conflict needs to be global or huge or world changing. It doesn't all need to be some deeply intricate noble plot two pit two merchant houses against eachother.

I think a lot of us look back and maybe add more depth and narrative to the game we played than was truly there. And then we strive for that depth in ways that limit us from interacting and having fun with others. There's lots of depth to be found in a Mul Sorcerer Psychic. But you probably wont be able to play with many people while exploring that.

Edit: But I haven't played in a while so, that's probably more a reflection on the past playerbase.

Speaking of playing together: it's not against the rules to talk about what you want to play in the future. Players could run periodic polls and discussions to try and declare an area of focused play for their next PCs.  No forced staff closures necessary.

As a community you could decide on different seasons.  Southern spring. Summer in the north.  No noble November.

Au revoir

While all discussion is valid, it's also valid to point out that the current playerbase seems to -prefer- having privacy, space, and chosen solitude a great deal.  That is not directly posited, but rather something to see in observed trends of what's said between the lines in various topics.

Forced interaction that can be anything other than great and fantastic draws knee-jerk negative reactions, and to give constant interaction via consolidation generally pushes things in that direction.

More clans did pretty well with less players than you have.  WHICH clans is kind of a big deal, which is where all of this discussion becomes more valid.

Quote from: Armaddict on November 29, 2023, 03:48:21 AMit's also valid to point out that the current playerbase seems to -prefer- having privacy, space, and chosen solitude a great deal.

I completely disagree, it's not even slightly valid to make a claim you can't really prove. 'The majority thinks this' 'The playerbase prefers that' 'Most people I know want this'. Like, feel free to express your own opinions, but I don't think it's healthy to talk for the 'playerbase'.

I don't see how closing things will help. People don't react well when things are taken away from them.
Try a carrot not a stick.

Give them a reason to want to be in a place with a bigger population.

As for new players, I agree with a post a few back. You want to get younger people involved. Figure out what stories they like to be a part of. Arm started out as one of the most progressive games on the net. But, it was mostly by/for college students and we were the young ones then. Some of the ideas in the game might be a hard sell these days.

Quote from: Kavrick on November 29, 2023, 05:06:28 AM

Quote from: Armaddict on November 29, 2023, 03:48:21 AMit's also valid to point out that the current playerbase seems to -prefer- having privacy, space, and chosen solitude a great deal.

I completely disagree, it's not even slightly valid to make a claim you can't really prove. 'The majority thinks this' 'The playerbase prefers that' 'Most people I know want this'. Like, feel free to express your own opinions, but I don't think it's healthy to talk for the 'playerbase'.

SEEMS TO PREFER is not equal to "thinks this."

And it does appear as though many people seem to prefer not being in clan situations where they interact as a cohesive group. It seems as though most players enjoy doing their own thing, interacting when they want, not interacting when they're not in the mood, being independent of any group so they can hang out in their apartment, hunt alone, greb alone, spam-cast alone, etc. etc.

Maybe they don't actually enjoy it. But it sure seems as though they prefer it.