A Newbie's Leave

[Kavrick]

So I originally wansn't going to make a post or anything, I was just going to slink away and play a different mud, but someone told me "Hey you should let people know why a newbie would stop playing the game," so I thought i'd make this post.

I wanna preface this with something simple. I had tons of fun in Armageddon, I met a lot of new friends and had a lot of fun rp, I would say it was certainly worth getting into the game, which I did despite all the bad press the game has, it was even my first choice. I have nothing but best wishes for the game and there's a chance I'll come back in the future, but for now I need at least a break.

The reason I stopped playing basically comes down to two things, the newbie experience and the staff. The latter is something that's been plenty of topic of debate so I'll leave a small note about my own views after I talk about the newbie experience.

So this isn't just my own experience, through my time playing Arm I attempted to get six of my friends into trying Arm, all of them gave up. They logged into the game, walked around Allanak, realized the town was completely empty with no aim on what they could do and where they could go, they even checked the message board and tried to get in contact with names, with no avail. There's also the karma system, which puts new players off to a pretty decent disadvantage. You can say that playing a mundane is fun, and I can agree, but also pretty much everyone who plays a mundane is also going to play an extended subclass, which new players don't play. Also a very good portion of the playerbase play things like desert elves, gicks, muls and half giants, all things that new players dont get to play. I understand the reasoning behind this and sympathise, but when you join a game and you're told "play the game for half a year, and then maybe you can try some of these things." I don't think I should be pandered to for being a new player, but the new player experience is very important if you want new players flowing into the game instead of just old players returning.

Even as a new player, I have around 1,000 hours played, which is a lot. I understand in the perspective of old players being like "yeah that's nothing compared to me." But if you ask the average person if spending 1,000 hours on anything is a lot of time, most people will say yes. I played the game religiously and there's a good chance a lot of people met my character(s). I will say I did constantly have my opinion disregarded due to being new, which is enough to dissuade most people from engaging, I just happen to be particularly stubborn and I played because my friends played (which is really funny because I actually never ended up interacting with them ICly).

Now staff stuff. I kinda hate talking about this, it feels like every time you talk about staff, things just get worse. I can admit, I'm not some perfect snowflake that was always the best in communication, as I said previously, I can be stubborn but I also would like to think that I'm always polite when engaging in discussion and that I'm perfectly open to being wrong, and I have admitted being wrong on multiple occassions. Yet, my experience with staff is something I've managed to zero down to something simple, and not just from my own experience, but by listening to other people's experiences and observing discussions. When you have an issue or a criticism with the game, you do not get "How can we help understand your issue, and how can we fix it?" You instead get "You are wrong and this is why you are wrong," which is far from great. I could give specific examples and drag it out, but honestly it's just a message I want to get through to staff and that is "lots of people want to enjoy arm, they want your help enjoying it, can we please stop this antagonistic player - staff relationship?"

Just related to the last part, I want to note a simple thing, a kudos. If staff want to get angry at me for noting some praise I have for a specific staff member, then I guess they can. Halaster is someone who I thought was great for the community, he was open to criticism, attempted to patch things up and and was very open. He is the only staff member I ever saw join the voice chat and actively listen to players, even me. There were multiple occassions where he joined me and the other rabble in voice chat just shooting the shit, and would actively listen to opinions and engage with us, it was extremely refreshing. But he stepped down, and that makes me thoroughly sad, both for Halaster feeling the need to do so due to whatever, and for the game for losing such a valuable member of staff.

I understand that staff want to patch up faith with the community, but I don't really think it's going well. There's an absolutely draconian amount of censorship, with the full across-the-board bannings of whistle blowers and then yet expecting people to be fine with not talking about things publically and going to the request tool, which was the whole issue of not really working. The issue with doing this is that it does far more harm than good, allowing people to publically talk about things is much better than this, because with this, you'll just get people talking about it privately and on the spooky shadow board, you're not going to stop the conversation, you're simply going to move the conversation and create more Ire.

Now as a final note, I want to thank all the players who helped me out, lots of people reached out to me in pms historically, helping me get into the game and otherwise enjoy the game more. The fact that a repeating advice I got was "play somewhere where you have to interact with staff the least, and avoid interacting with staff otherwise," is sad and telling. If staff want to get mad at me for saying this, then well, I don't have anything else to say on the matter. Staff have the potential to make the game great, the have the power to be wonderful story-tellers and to set the stage for players to have memorable experiences, and it's a shame that it's recommended to avoid this potential.

Thank you to all the players and even the staff who helped me, I had tons of fun playing this game while I did. I do also apologize to anyone who I might have upset by butting heads, even those of you who I may have historically disagreed with, I have the utmost respect for people who have been willing to engage with me on a level playing field. I honestly hope the best for Arm and this isn't really a permanent goodbye, I just wanted to lay out the reasons for me saying I'm going to take a break, I want the game to get to the point where I want to come back, but I'm not going to hold my breath basically. If anyone wants to reach out to me on discord, feel free, my discord is Kavrick#5690.

[Pariah]

...
Just related to the last part, I want to note a simple thing, a kudos. If staff want to get angry at me for noting some praise I have for a specific staff member, then I guess they can. Halaster is someone who I thought was great for the community, he was open to criticism, attempted to patch things up and and was very open. He is the only staff member I ever saw join the voice chat and actively listen to players, even me. There were multiple occassions where he joined me and the other rabble in voice chat just shooting the shit, and would actively listen to opinions and engage with us, it was extremely refreshing. But he stepped down, and that makes me thoroughly sad, both for Halaster feeling the need to do so due to whatever, and for the game for losing such a valuable member of staff.
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Bro I feel you here, I have always played in spurts, get a cool character going, play it crazy hard like you did, then take some time off and come back after a while.

I was playing a long lived stalker a while back and would notice that Scorpions and Jozhal would be in everlasting battles, bumping off each other's skin and put in a bug request and explained that they seemed to be at a stalemate, I'm talking they would be there at 8am fighting, and then be there at 6pm when I got home from work and logged in, fighting one another endless battles.

Halaster was the one who responded and tweaked them up, seeing that having critters fighting each other for weeks was not correct.  Now I'll admit that he initially tweaked them too hard and then my ten day stalker who could kill like everything regular started getting poisoned like crazy by pesky scorpions, so I opened a new request and he tweaked them again, we went back and forth a few times and he finally got them to where they weren't in endless battles with jozhal but also weren't poisoning every experienced guy who rolled through and that was done via cordial communication via requests.

I'm banned from discord so I don't know about that, but I assume he was cool there too.  Losing him feels like a blow for sure.  I have been trying to get up the nerve to play and it just doesn't feel right somehow, so I have logged maybe 5 minutes in the past two weeks.  I feel your pain bro, if you find anything super interesting, let me know.

EliteJarod#8211 on discord

[Tailong]

Adios,

I find that the majority of issues people have with the game are not the game itself, but problems they themselves create. Enjoy whatever else is in your future and hopefully it will meet your expectations.

[Patuk]

Sad to see you take a break. It's unfortunate you were treated this way, and I hope we get to do better soon.

[zealus]

I would just like to say that it's healthy to know when to take a break, and that I am saddened that this happens. I would hope to see you again, some day, because I have enjoyed playing with you. People get emotionally invested in roleplaying, so I don't think sometimes feeling like it's too much, especially if it's the OOC part of the game, is something that anyone should be mocking or talking down on.

Hope you still did enjoy your time here, and I'm hoping to say cya later!

[Riev]

Adios,

I find that the majority of issues people have with the game are not the game itself, but problems they themselves create. Enjoy whatever else is in your future and hopefully it will meet your expectations.

This feels unnecessarily snarky. The second half is fine but the first half is, at best, a thinly veiled attack.
If you don't have something nice or constructive to say, maybe keep it to yourself.

OP - Hopefully either Arm gets to the point you want it to be, or you find an experience that can at least compare to it.

[Gunnerblaster]

Adios,

I find that the majority of issues people have with the game are not the game itself, but problems they themselves create. Enjoy whatever else is in your future and hopefully it will meet your expectations.

If you've only got snarky comments to say to someone's departure, best not to say anything at all.

Be well, Kavrick. You've made an awesome post regarding new player experiences and I hope something can be gleamed from it to increase future new player's experience.

[Ibzie]

My biggest issue with Arm, myself, is just how the game punishes you for daring to try and roleplay. Bars are dangers (recently made less dangerous), but more importantly, if you're idling (and by idling I don't necessarily meant standing in one location, but overall not pursuing a mechanical goal) the game directly punishes you. If you are not actively, near-always doing something while playing, you're dying. This leads to often having difficulty contacting people, as people will only be logged in when active, and overall making the game feel far less alive. An overfocus on mechancis is frowned upon, but not doing so is starving resources.

[geminferno]

It's always sad to see someone leave a great game but I will say this here: The reason why your newbie experience wasn't so great was because you played yourself down to the bone. 1000+ hours in just 3 months? That's extremely excessive! No wonder you were so bored. Not only did you play yourself raw, you complained for those 3 months - straight! About little things and refused any advice given to you that would solve any issues you brought up or refused any conversations on clarity to help you see why things happened the way they did.

You have the potential to be a good player but nitpicking will always make the experience less fun for you and other people. Our conversations have been great but there have been times I wanted to shake you violently and yell in your face, "Chill out and take a damn break!"

There's a lot of things you actually do not get about the game and the workings of it and was evident to me with your issue with the 'mindworm', discrimination that's clearly detailed in helpfiles, and how GMHs functioned. I think patience isn't your strong suit, in the slightest. It mostly seems like you want things to go your way in that instant or it's all moot. By as I said, we have some good conversations and I hope you don't see this as an attack on you because it isn't.

[Kavrick]

It's always sad to see someone leave a great game but I will say this here: The reason why your newbie experience wasn't so great was because you played yourself down to the bone. 1000+ hours in just 3 months? That's extremely excessive! No wonder you were so bored. Not only did you play yourself raw, you complained for those 3 months - straight! About little things and refused any advice given to you that would solve any issues you brought up or refused any conversations on clarity to help you see why things happened the way they did.

You have the potential to be a good player but nitpicking will always make the experience less fun for you and other people. Our conversations have been great but there have been times I wanted to shake you violently and yell in your face, "Chill out and take a damn break!"

There's a lot of things you actually do not get about the game and the workings of it and was evident to me with your issue with the 'mindworm', discrimination that's clearly detailed in helpfiles, and how GMHs functioned. I think patience isn't your strong suit, in the slightest. It mostly seems like you want things to go your way in that instant or it's all moot. By as I said, we have some good conversations and I hope you don't see this as an attack on you because it isn't.

I didn't really want to reply to this thread after I made it but I do have to say I do kinda disagree with the point about me taking no advice. I took pretty much all of the advice that was given to me, even if I disagreed with it. Lots of players didn't realize I was new to  the game because I knew what I was doing, I knew what I was doing because of the advice that I had.

The thing about patience is a thing that I 50/50 agree with. I thoroughly dislike the ooc timers this game has to some things. Waiting a month irl to stop being an apprentice, waiting six months to apply for your first karma, yeah I have a heavy dislike for that. But at the same time, I put a lot of time into my characters, I'd like to think that showed some sort of patience. I got skills to master multiple times on multiple characters, I was pretty patient with the slow progress with that sort of thing but I understand how it might look that way.

I agree with the thing about burning myself out, I often played while doing other things, on my phone and stuff. For sure played religiously to a point that was unhealthy, I suppose I didn't have anything else of interest to do at the time so I only took breaks for work and stuff. The complaints and stuff are a thing that I admit to, I can be frustrating to engage with and that's why I apologized to the folk I might have annoyed with that sort of thing. I guess I'm just passionate to a point where I do need to step back and just let things go along.


To everyone else, I thank you for the kind words. As I said in my original post, I was far from perfect as a player or a part of the community, but I do still hope I added in some way. There's always going to be negativity, both here on the discord I've had plenty of people be dismissive and passive aggressive towards me, it is what it is. I mostly just ignore those and choose to interact with the people who don't do such things. I'll probably keep an eye on the game and talk to my friends who do still play to see how it goes, I do want to come back and I hope it improves, the list of things to be changed by halaster is a good example, although it's getting to the point where it's a little confusing as to what halaster is doing after he stepped down.

[LidlessEye]

Halaster is now the great shaman of Armageddon and provides spiritual advice.

[wizturbo]

Seems like you went into Armageddon overload, and reached a common place that those who overload tend to reach... that the pace of the game for them is too slow because other people aren't putting in as many hours as you.  Unfortunately, there's no cure for this except to lower expectations or play less.  Staff generally have professional careers, wives, husbands, kids...etc...  They put in a lot of work to make the game great, but it's a volunteer gig, not a full time job.  Same with all of our players.

As for the new player experience sucking...  I agree.  I also don't think there's an easy cure.  There's no avoiding the fact that this game has a huge learning curve.  The helper program is the best advice I can offer any new player in terms of onboarding to the game.

Re: Karma...  This is a common complaint I've heard.  My perspective is simple, the system works.  And works from two vectors:

1)  A carrot.  Roleplaying is hard.  It takes practice, and requires typing more, and generally requires you to forgo gaining/pursuing power in the game because it wouldn't make IC sense, even if the power gamer inside most of us wants otherwise.  Karma is a carrot to encourage you to pursue roleplay, because it will unlock more options for you in future characters.   
2)  A stick.  It's very easy for this game to get ruined by bad behavior.  Breaking other people's sandcastles is much less difficult than building them, and the most effective lever available is creates stakes for bad behavior.  My Armageddon account is something I've built up over twenty years now.  I have max Karma, and account notes that would let me play any role in the game without much fuss.  That's something to lose, if I have a bad week and decide to play like an asshole instead of roleplay like the game intends.  Starting players with Karma would enable creating new accounts if your previous account got dinged.  It would short circuit the 'stick' portion of the game.  It also isn't hard to get 1 Karma, just play well and ask for it and you'll almost certainly get it.

[Kaathe]

Breaks are good, hope to see you back sometime!

[Ath]

Enjoy your break man, always good to take them as most of us get really passionate about the game and things don't always go as planned.

Another note I want to bring up, I would like folks to try to be a bit more polite if they can.  I realize emotions can run high in this game, but we're going to be trying hard in the community mod team to be fostering a bit more positive and polite atmosphere.  Not saying you all cannot have constructive arguments, as we all know we're all very passionate, but at the same point we can make sure we're at least being civil to each other.

[Kavrick]

Enjoy your break man, always good to take them as most of us get really passionate about the game and things don't always go as planned.

Another note I want to bring up, I would like folks to try to be a bit more polite if they can.  I realize emotions can run high in this game, but we're going to be trying hard in the community mod team to be fostering a bit more positive and polite atmosphere.  Not saying you all cannot have constructive arguments, as we all know we're all very passionate, but at the same point we can make sure we're at least being civil to each other.

I appreciate the response Ath, and the measured discussion we had in the discord. I would be lying if I said I have found something to scratch the same itch as Arm, but I feel like I should probably stay on break for a little longer. I also appreciate all of the other nice comments I've gotten here and on discord, I do love the community and I have far from any ill wishes for it.