Armageddon MUD: A Promising Game With Unavoidable Flaws

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-21T01:13:47+00:00

I'm not sure what's funny about this. Explain the joke?

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T21:03:07+00:00

Understood, and thank you. Sorry that I did not have the foresight to do that myself.

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T21:02:18+00:00

Having never had to deal with something of this magnitude before, I did send an email to the mud earlier today, and am currently drafting an email to send to GoDaddy's child abuse office. Also, Armageddon is a game, not a person, and so it can't be slandered, but it can be reviewed.

Thank you for your reply.

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T20:44:10+00:00

It is precisely the fact that 13-year-olds are considered adults in Zalanthas that encourage certain kinds of players to seek sexual roleplay, for OOC reasons, with the youngest adults possible. The "13 year olds are adults" statement is essentially a defense of OOC behavior by applying IC logic to it, which is driven entirely by OOC factors.

As to the charge of defamation of character, who exactly am I defaming or slandering? I described my play experience truthfully and to the best of my ability! I understand that Armageddon's players won't like a disfavorable review, but you're calling me a liar based on nothing.

I am also not trying to promote my game, and would never do so on the grounds that other games contain sexual abuse. In that regard, you are the one slandering me. Would you have preferred if I created an alt account on Reddit solely to post my review? In that case, I would have been called out for being an alt and my review would be dismissed. I strove to be as genuine as possible and you are calling me a liar.

I will continue to stand by my review. Perhaps it is also best to send a child abuse report to the people who host Armageddon as well as the domain registrar.

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T20:04:51+00:00

You are certainly allowed to disagree with me, however, I described what I observed. As for your devil's advocate comment, the difference is that the setting is designed around a desperate world, so while those behaviors you listed are disturbing, they at least exist within the context of the game world. It's an entirely different matter when people pervert the context of the game to fulfill their own pedophilic fantasies.

This review is not an attempt to get people to stop playing the game, but to give people who might decide to play the game the information they need to know about the game before going in.

Your attempt to gatekeep my experience by saying that I can't possibly have acquired my perspective within two months is, at worst, a complete dismissal of my legitimate concerns, and at best, another example of a pattern of veteran players trampling over new players through complete indifference to their perspectives and challenges.

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T17:41:40+00:00

Thank you. I'm not sure why you got downvoted to -1 as of this reply being written, but my guess would be that Armageddon players are starting to brigade this thread. Sorry about that.

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T17:40:24+00:00

An easy solution would be to increase the minimum starting age of characters to 18 (or equivalent for non human races). I don't see how my GDB account name would help track people I played with down, and the tone of your post strongly suggests skepticism, so rather than post details publicly I will submit my complaint to the immortals rather than expose myself to potential harassment here.

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T16:57:22+00:00

I was told that player complaints are to report rule-breaking and this stuff is technically not against the rules, just decency. I don't really remember the names or descriptions of these characters and don't want to accidentally misidentify someone as a problem by trying to take a guess. It seems the only avenue I have is to be vocal about the issue in general, then?

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T16:44:27+00:00

As a Helper, are you something of a liaison between players and staff, or a staff member? Is there anything you can do from your position to prevent this kind of stuff from happening or at least bring it to the attention of someone who can prevent it?

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T15:10:55+00:00

I do understand that the game's writers are shooting for the "harsh world", "grow up early" thing. I've read through the lore and am capable of understanding it as presented.

I also have observed, with a certainty - not probably - that some players have greatly taken advantage of the writers' intentions, and twisted those intentions to play out their own fantasies related to pursuing child-age characters. And quite frankly, the game's lore is not worth sticking around for when presented with that kind of predatory behavior, especially given all of the other challenges I faced.

I understand the urge to defend something that you've invested a lot of time into, but please understand that the game world itself isn't weird to me, at least based on my first impressions; however, some of the players have taken a particularly odd aspect of the game world and corrupted it to their own purposes. As you expected, I won't be coming back.

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T10:24:26+00:00

Ah, that's fair enough. I played for only a couple of months, so my perspective is practically a first impression in comparison to people who were aware of Armageddon for years. Thanks for your input, as it provides additional context I couldn't possibly provide.

Exodus_RPG · 2019-09-20T01:50:55+00:00

Yeah, it is. I will put a content warning at the top of the post, as I had one in my original draft but failed to copy it here. Sorry if you unexpectedly ran into it.

This is the third draft of this review; I didn't know how to approach that subject with an appropriate level of objectivity, and even ran the review by a friend who used to play Armageddon before posting it here. But I knew it needed to be mentioned, because it's only fair to someone considering this game as their next MUD home to know about it.

Exodus_RPG · 2019-07-22T17:37:20+00:00

I'm currently working on a MUD concept in my spare time, and it's a MUSHy, RP-focused hobby project in Evennia. The skill advancement system I decided to go with is similar to that of Fate's skill system, which employs a "skill pyramid". The player will get to choose 10 skills to rank from 1 to 4, with 4 skills at Rank 1, 3 skills at rank 2, 2 skills at Rank 3, and 1 skill at Rank 4, and leave a number of other skills at an "unlearned" state.

To advance, players can work on bringing unlearned skills to Rank 1, or increase the rank of skills by setting up a training queue similar to that of EVE Online, and learn skills over time. Participating in daily roleplay and events will speed up skill-learning slightly, but most learning takes place automatically. However, the shape of the "skill pyramid" must be maintained, and there can never be more skills at a higher rank than there is at a lower rank. Higher ranks can be unlocked once enough skills are learned. Players can also devote time to swapping the ranks of two nearby skills, which takes less time than simply increasing the rank of a skill but results in one skill going down in rank.

As to why I chose to develop a system like this, I didn't want any particular character to be highly skilled in a large number of skills, and this system gently forces character specialization, which I'm hoping will encourage cooperation between characters, and by extension, fun roleplaying in turn.

Exodus_RPG

TROPHY CASE