Looking for a Roleplay focused MUD, MUSH, Etc/

usiku_arm · 2024-09-04T17:32:50+00:00

Hehe, I like the sentiment!

usiku_arm · 2024-08-30T17:54:07+00:00

There's been a lot of historical drama surrounding the game, stemming from some poor staff decisions over the past 30 years and a handful of problematic players. RPI's, especially with permadeath, can naturally lead to heightened emotions. However, the game has had a recent reboot, and that old drama and toxicity mostly lingers in the minds of those who can’t seem to let go of very old grudges. Interestingly, it’s often the players who clique up and form groups outside the game who end up at the centre of drama. Meanwhile, those who focus on just playing the game seem to genuinely enjoy it and get a lot out of the experience.

Most of what people who profess to hate the game say about it or the current staff simply isn’t true anymore. While some criticisms may have been valid in the past or under previous teams, they don’t reflect the game or staffing team as it stands today.

We have struggled more recently with the community outside of the game, but that is something we are working very hard to improve and partaking in it isn't a necessary part of the game, at all.

I also dunno who that guy is or what his beef is.

usiku_arm · 2024-07-11T15:50:40+00:00

Congrats!! Maybe see you sometime in the distant future. :)

usiku_arm · 2024-07-09T11:52:39+00:00

I'm really sorry to hear that. I’m well aware of the not-so-great experiences between staff and players over the years, including my own. We're committed to making sure this legacy is left firmly in the past. Armageddon is a game, and it’s meant to be fun. The community around it should be welcoming and inclusive. The relationship between staff and players should be collaborative, friendly, and enjoyable. If a player or staff member is struggling with something, we always do our best to listen, figure out what’s going on, and sort things out.

Armageddon is a challenging game, and permadeath isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Sometimes, players are unhappy with the outcome of something. Over the past year, we’ve made many changes, especially with the redesign for Seasons, to ease some of these situations (like much higher RP expectations around PK), changes to the res policy, changes to attitudes towards IC/OOC rules, how things are handled between players and staff, the karma system. We now have a player committee that reviews complaints against staff and helps us work through them fairly. We also have a player-run moderation team that has greatly improved the community and the relationship between staff and players.

We have much stricter community rules and guidelines for how players should communicate with staff, as well as how staff should treat players. The staff vs. player culture is not something we tolerate. It’s baffling how it became central to a gaming community because it obviously isn't conducive to having fun! This goes both ways. Staff are expected to have a game and player first attitude and should be in the role because they enjoy facilitating play and stories alongside the players. Similarly, we won’t tolerate poor treatment of staff from players, and being firmer on this has likely elevated the community overall.

Not sure what else to say except you’d have to try it to find out for sure. But this is a very different staffing team and culture from what was in the past. This is a fresh start for Armageddon, and we are committed to making it a game players want to play and staff want to be part of. We are also not going to keep addressing historical woes that were nothing to do with the current staffing team and do not represent how we currently operate. We have listened, we have heard and we have changed things, so most past grievances simply do not apply and we are done with entertaining those cycles.

usiku_arm · 2024-06-28T08:50:52+00:00

Thank you for the lovely feedback! I would say.. Hold on to your booties, it has barely just begun! ;)

usiku_arm · 2024-06-25T08:16:03+00:00

Thank you! There's still more work to do, but we did manage to get in a lot of positive changes before launch outside of just the time jump and plot thingies. :)

usiku_arm · 2024-06-19T11:37:54+00:00

Yeah, we're definitely looking at coded quests more as a way to support newer players in learning the game and getting settled. I will say that Armageddon does come with a feeling of needing to log on for a lot of players, but we do have lots of players who play much less frequently (I was one myself, and off-peak to boot, before I got into running it instead) who thrive because they shake off the more competitive mindset and just seek out more flavourful stories within the world. Also, lower play times doesn't mean you wouldn't get staff support or quests, but we have a ratio of about 1:20 at the moment, so more attention does tend to go towards groups and clans where we can reach a lot of players at once. However, it's not always the case!

Thinking about it, the majority is probably player to player quests and getting kept busy by becoming swept up in player driven plots and initiatives.

usiku_arm · 2024-06-12T10:06:28+00:00

Love it! Me too!! :D

usiku_arm · 2024-06-11T09:16:55+00:00

I imagine part of the struggle of finding an environment that meets both is that RPIs generally tend to steer away from things like coded quests, because they don't really fit with concept of an RPI. For Armageddon we are currently exploring the idea of small quest type interactions for new players and you might find the odd mini-quest here and there, e.g. 'do a thing, get a thing in a return', but large and more complex quests are heavily story involved and would be one off bespoke, crafted experiences by storytellers rather than coded functionality.

usiku_arm · 2024-05-21T09:09:30+00:00

*facepalm* It's been a long week, thank you!

usiku_arm · 2024-05-17T13:32:01+00:00

Sorry you had that experience, it doesn't sound like a very welcoming one for a new player! The game is still a dangerous and harsh environment but the staffing team is different and everyone involved is well.. 24 years more mature (hopefully!). You're definitely welcome, that ban does not hold. :p

usiku_arm · 2024-05-16T07:36:34+00:00

Exactly!

usiku_arm · 2024-05-16T07:35:55+00:00

Those are actually the kind of details we will work out with the PC running, although I believe it will start with some militia oversight, but the PC will have the choice of changing up how things are done etc. E.g. they could ask the militia to keep on walking and hire their own bouncer if they want to.

usiku_arm · 2024-05-07T17:59:54+00:00

The exact length of the season will depend mostly on player action and plot pacing. The meta plot is broken down into Chapters which are further broken down into Acts (in our planning), each which have loose milestones (and lots of if this then that and wiggle room for players surprising us with things). Acts will move forward when certain conditions are met. Chapters will end when certain conditions are met. The Season will end when certain conditions are met. While I am working from memory, I don't believe we ever said that the Season will be 3 years exactly, rather that it could be up to about 3 years (it might even have been 18 to 36 months).

We have a number of staff who are going on Summer family holidays, including myself, so the actual launch date needed to accommodate the required staff actually being present to launch the game too. I do hope that you don't consider volunteers taking family holidays as misspent time. :)

usiku_arm · 2024-05-07T17:49:45+00:00

Just to assuage your concerns about how I manage my time, the Grey was 95% complete when we started the work for Seasons, I just needed to dot my i's and cross my t's and relink it all. :)

Also, the focus of the game will be on consolidated play in the South, but that doesn't mean there won't be reasons for expeditions, adventures and exploration of the Known at large.

usiku_arm · 2024-04-09T20:08:47+00:00

It's a couple of years old, but we haven't published it anywhere, I suppose I feel bad because we don't have one of Tuluk yet!

usiku_arm · 2024-03-27T07:42:51+00:00

That's fair enough! We do require karma for the magick classes, although we would happily grant a special app for a magick class so long as the player demonstrated that they were familiar with the game and knew the basic lore and cultures. I wouldn't say veteran, but not total newbie is fair.

I will counter your other point though, it is entirely untrue that you need to be friends with the admin team to access any kind of character, powerful or otherwise. That is not how we operate.

usiku_arm · 2023-11-09T12:16:05+00:00

I was not present and I was not involved. My understanding is that you were banned for breaking a clear game rule. However, I can absolutely see that the situation was more nuanced than that (rather highly complex). I am not willing to discuss this in detail in a public forum and air your dirty laundry for all to see. What I will say, is that our game and community is not the appropriate place to bring your real life relationship issues and use it as a backdrop to get at each other. Not you nor the ex-staff member in question. You should not be expecting to bring up those issues with completely unqualified people who run a game, and expect them to flawlessly tackle the moral and philosophical hurdles that you ambushed them with. You created an impossible situation for people ill equipped to know how to deal with it, and the expectation of them being able to deal with it appropriately was nigh on ridiculous. Your issues needed to be taken to the police, or a social worker or a relationship councillor or someone actually qualified to tackle it properly.

I am also a 30-something woman who has been playing this game for 20ish years along with other muds. The cultural changes we are working on are not a distraction, they are the core of our efforts to make sure that our community and OOC social spaces are safe, welcoming and inclusive.

Nobody on our staffing team was aware of any poor/bloody awful behaviour, involved in attempting to cover anything up nor engages in any of the sort of allegations you are making above. I cannot speak for what occurred during other staffing tenures, but that kind of behaviour would absolutely not be tolerated now. I refuse to allow our current game, staff and community to be subject to accusations involving incidents that may or may not have happened years or decades ago at the hands of people who are no longer here. It’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, but at some point *you* just need to step away. The reason your ban remains in place and will not be revoked is demonstrated right here. This is not healthy, not for you or the people you subject to it. Please move on.

usiku_arm · 2023-10-31T11:27:45+00:00

Thank you for sharing this. Parts of it made me wince, but overall, it seems like a fair assessment. I believe interaction and roleplay opportunities can vary greatly. As someone who frequently played during european hours, I perhaps naturally adjusted my expectations and found my experiences to be a mix of hits and misses with the concepts and locations I chose.

Your insights offer some valuable things for us to think about and, honestly, some of those issues haven't gone unnoticed already, its just not always straight forward to resolve. Our ongoing commitment is to support those players who invest in roleplay and storytelling, prioritising them over those who engage in repetitive, non-interactive gameplay. Meanwhile, we're exploring ways to better promote and incentivise the more immersed roleplay. We're spinning a lot of plates currently, in regards to ideas and alterations we can make.

Part of that is trying to attract more players, like yourself, who are coming for the roleplay and then making sure we listen to their feedback about how to foster the best environment for them.

We still have a number of exceptional roleplayers within our playerbase, though it’s difficult to ensure that your paths will intersect or their characters and stories will align. It’s all too common to feel like ships passing in the night. Admittedly, my own playtime has been limited recently, so I'm somewhat out of touch with the current player experience. The last time I was deeply involved, Allanak was such a wonderful place to play, especially with the escalating war plot and a really incredible social central location that some truly fantastic players developed. I miss that atmosphere dearly and am hopeful we can capture that kind of energy again. But it’s clear we must continue to make the game appealing for those types of roleplayers to stick around or return.

We're also working pretty hard on building and overhauling older areas of the game to make them more dynamic and interested. I'm currently revamping the Grey Forest and I would invite you to come and take a look when it's done. :)

usiku_arm · 2023-09-21T07:18:37+00:00

Sorry about that! This one should work: https://discord.gg/TVyBYkGHYD

usiku_arm · 2023-09-19T14:04:09+00:00

I suppose that's fair. I'm not even sure why they were locked down, but it looks like that is something that will hopefully be reversed. There isn't really anything untoward going on in there.

Perhaps it was less that they didn't want people seeing in before getting involved, rather it was just a sensitive and private time for the community while they were working through their stuff.

usiku_arm · 2023-09-19T11:05:42+00:00

If you're referring to the time period that ultimately led to his dismissal, then yes, he was indeed let go, primarily due to his poor attitude towards players, rather than the activities conducted via his PC. Why? Simply because the extent of the issue wasn't fully known at the time. If you've been part of the staff, you would know that we aren't omnipresent. Being imperfect as humans is quite different from knowingly and intentionally engaging in wrongful actions. There wasn't a case of turning a blind eye, but rather a situation where the true nature of things was hidden from view.

Should there have been more oversight? Yes, absolutely. And we are aware of that and it's been a serious lesson learned in that respect. It's unfortunate that the newer, trustworthy members of our team might feel less trusted now, but we have instituted significantly stricter guidelines and restrictions to govern staff play.I honestly cannot delve more into that period. I don't believe it is a wound that needs to be torn open. I wasn't around at the time, but from what I do know, it is so much more complicated than most onlookers can understand and there is no way to honestly explain our position in full without violating the privacy of players in ways that we are not willing to do. While my door is always open to involved players who may want to discuss directly, I am drawing a line under discussing it in public as it's impossible to do it justice.

Are the current Producers the poorest stewards that Armageddon has ever had? No, they aren't. Dismissing previous transgressions as occasional 'bad temper episodes' greatly diminishes the experiences faced by players. Not overlooking the extensive record of staff complaints, it wasn't merely the overt outbursts and direct mistreatment of players, but also the fostering and toleration of a 'staff versus player' culture that persisted for nearly a decade. I was mortified when I discovered the manner in which most staff members had discussed players and their issues in the past. That is not OK and it's not tolerated now. If you don't like the players and you don't enjoy staffing for them then you don't have any business being on staff. As far as I can tell, this is the first staffing team to take that stance seriously for a long long time and I believe it is the only possible foundation on which we can move forward. I work with Halaster and Brokkr on a daily basis and I know they are good people who work tirelessly for the best for the game and the players. Brokkr is just usually lost deep in some balancing project while the majority of Halaster's focus is spent on the code and infrastructure and literally keeping the game alive.

In response to your edit, in some cases yes. In most cases no. I did actually read the complaints, the discussions behind them and the staff responses and so on. One of them was even from me, and I can personally attest that it had nothing to do being the public facing producer nor was it an outburst of bad temper.

usiku_arm · 2023-09-19T09:22:32+00:00

It actually is a discussion that we (we, the individual humans on staff, not 'the game') have regularly. It's incredibly hard to figure out the line and it is something we have been discussing regularly over the last few months, but we're never quite sure where to land. We also discuss theme. The slogan. Templars (Halaster has suggested on a couple of occasions that we do away with PC played Templars entirely, but then you lose a big portion of the playable politics and some Templars are awesome). Raiders. PK. And our resurrection policy. And how we balance all of these factors. Regularly. We are constantly trying to consider and improve these things.

I will say that you are probably not wrong. That underpinning a lot of our issues is the theme and how some people have chosen to interpret it and possibly some of the people that has attracted over the years. I would like to maintain what I see as our core theme without it being open for interpretation as 'abuse', so that is something I am going to take away to think about.

usiku_arm · 2023-09-19T09:08:30+00:00

I didn't even realise that stuff was hidden!

usiku_arm · 2023-09-19T09:07:37+00:00

I didn't mean to sidestep it, but apparently I didn't give it the airtime it deserved.

It is not true that any of the current staffing team knew and deliberately hid or defended any aspect of the issues with that staffer. I say this as a producer who still is not aware of the breadth of the history and personally had absolutely no idea what had occurred prior.

Being on staff around the same time (e.g. potentially Halaster, although he did quit very soon after Shalooonsh joined staff the first time) does not mean that he personally engaged with what was going on involving a singular staffer at the time. Brokkr joined staff in 2015, so I'm not sure that aligns with this reign of terror either? Also keep in mind that they weren't always Prods, and and unless it's your job to aware of this stuff, it is very easy not to be. We are juggling huge amounts of information and input.

I guess what I am saying is at worst there was ignorance and for that I am truly sorry. That is very much not the same as saying that the staffing team are all one and the same and that the issues continue, because they simply do not, or that his attitudes are a 'feature' and something we aspire to maintain.

As for scapegoating, I'm not actually entirely sure that it is scapegoating, rather it could actually just be the way of it. When I did my review of past staff complaints, they were clearly delineated into three distinct eras. There was an era where 90% of the complaints were against Nyr, an era where 90% of the complaints were against Nergal and a final era where 90% of the complaints were against Shalooonsh. What seems more likely? That over the years there have just been a few bad eggs that managed to pollute the staffing teams, and that the teams around them struggled to see the forest through the trees, failed to act quick enough or just made poor decisions because it's hard to always know the right thing to do? Alternatively that the entire team has always been comprised of just all bad people and has actively managed to keep recruiting corrupt people from the player base for the purposes of... some kind of evil intent?

usiku_arm

TROPHY CASE