A post from armageddonmud's boards. Placed here as emphasis and for any and all to read on my thoughts on administrative problems I've observed or heard of on multiple RPI MMOS:
As many have noticed, of late, there has been a fairly massive influx of mages, nilaz, psis, and sorcs in recent days. Poweful PCs that elicit powerful emotions from the PC base. The general consensus is that this has a two-fold cause. Firstly caused by a sudden rush of special apps to allow people to play roles they might not get to play in the new game. And secondly caused by a general new lax attitude toward the normal documented prejudices of PC’s toward one another. Depending on who ask of course.
While I believe both areas are likely at fault, the problem is of course a valid one. I have played this game for a long time, and it is only in the last 6mo or so that I have felt, learned, been touched by every hidden supernatural force arm has to offer. This leaves me with a feeling of “dear me, what is happening?”. This isn’t the point of my post. I’m less interested in the cause as I am the effect.
The effect is one I’ve witnessed on Arm before. It’s a fairly common part our social glue. I’ve seen a player base and (likely some staff) begin to take a stance of finger pointing at other players and ridiculous levels prejudice applied to anything that seems slightly “out of the norm”. It’s a common pattern here, as I’ll evidence in a moment.
It has specific feel: Were you nice to the half-elf? OMG you’re a twink. Got a mage buddy? OMG you’re a twink. Didn’t emote before you stole from me? OMG you’re a twink. Halfling left the gray forest? OMG you’re a twink. Killed a prominent PC? OMG you’re a twink. Stray from the norm? OMG you’re a twink.
The recent rash of it can be attributed to the increased level of occurrence. I am sure at least some of these “fringe relationships” are completely IC and kosher. A good deal of them likely are not. However, all of us will suffer accordingly. Our reactions are both inline and out of line. And likely, the issue is not special apps, or ooc canoodling, but rather something else that I will (again) get to in a moment.
But first lets take a short stroll to armageddonmud’s not so distance past. I have observed this sort of outcry and “static” build up in the staff and player base before. It was in the days prior “the great Morgenes code spree” and it had to do with sneaky characters, who would steal and hide.
Before the days of watch, hemote and semote, everyone who stole or was stolen from labeled a twink for the way they behaved, depending on which side of the action you were on.
If you didn’t emote when you stole you were a twink. If you did emote when you stole and the person you were stealing from automatically blamed you for stealing they were twink. If you hid in a tavern, you were a twink. If you scanned in a tavern, to someone, somewhere, you were a twink. Everyone involved with subterfuge was twink. It was fairly ridiculous to read the boards back then. And to be fair, some of it was twinky, but which aspect was very subjective, and there was little agreement on the subject to be found.
It was about as ridiculous as things are now with our “I hate mages” threads. Anyone who has a friend or a comrade that is mildly out of the arm norm being labeled as a twink and ooc powergamer friends with mages and benders for their OOC benefits. Lots of finger pointing with little observation outside a cursory glance of the actual players involved before judgement is placed. It reminds of a time when I recall huge page long debates on the GDB about whether or not the “city hide” skill was blending into the crowd or hiding under a tavern table.
In retrospect that sort of debate seems ridiculous. We have semote and hemote to convey hidden or subtle actions, so you cannot reasonably expect a steal emote. Hide has a message attached to it that *clearly* indicates that you are blending into the crowd, not hiding under a half-giant’s skirt. And other echos that further delineate city hide from outdoor hide. Mature code at the hands of skilled and creative implementers with foresight and drive was our redeemer. (As is the case in the real world as well : ) )
So now we have a different debate? We again have often times fuzzily documented standards that are being broken and no one really knows what the standards are. We have a vague feeling that we should all fear and hate magickers, that magickers should fear and hate nilazis that everyone should fear and hate defilers and psionists but we have no idea where the grey area lies. When is it cool? It is ever cool?
Before the coders handle it, Armageddon’s general solution to any of these issues is that the staff’s needs to “get involved” and provided guidance to players in their roleplay or to punish behavior that is viewed as wrong.
My general feelings is that is this the fundamental flaw of Armageddonmud as a game. Many of you will disagree with this, likely many of you will flame me for having the “audacity” to post this, but I believe that staff involvement as a correcting element to the role play of players is flawed approach to the problem. It not only invites bitterness from players who feel ICly justified in their actions, it also misses the *real* problem characters who are usually less visible to the staff. Rather leadership PCs are punished for creating strong organizations and then implementing plot lines that they feel are IC, exciting and interesting.
In addition on a more micro level it puts the kabosh on creative character concepts, invites a culture of “Us vs Them” between player and staff, and probably most importantly, it generally doesn’t scale to facilitate a larger player base at all, and will never. We will never have enough staff to solve the problem, and it will always be a subjective problem that to some doesn’t need solving.
Here is statement for you to consider as players and staff:
Armageddon’s mud fundamental flaw that keeps it from reaching any sort of true potential as an MMO is that we attempt to enforce role-play standards through the practice of thought-policing and player brain eating, rather then through creative coded measures that highlight and enforce correct rp.
Boom. I said it. Wow that was a lot of lead up.
I will again site the great “steal dilemma” of our past as evidence of such. And please, know that this isn’t a “blame” it is merely an observation. It is infinitely easier to add documentation outlining how to RP a specific situation, then it is to code creative and physical rules enforcing it. In some cases the later is impossible. (well, probably not impossible.).
All this being said, allow me to color my statement with a few example.
* Elementalists should hate Nilaz
* Elves should not ride mounts.
Both of these are well-known documented facts of Arm. And we as an RP community, (I’d go as far as to say a society of sorts) have accepted and embraced one fully, whereas the other is a bit fuzzy and given room for interpretation. Yet, you will find the staff is quick to enforce either via animating the world in reaction, and the player base is quick to condemn any and all infringers.
But I say this? Why not learn a lesson from Morg’s fix of hide and sneak and add coded penalties to these things? Rather the require players to read the documentation, what if the game told me what I was doing is wrong?
For example an elf riding a kank:
Code:
> hitch kank
You feel a forceful tear at your pride as you step closer to ~kank.
> mount kank
Frowning with disgust you climb onto ~kank.
> e
You attempt to go east, but ~kank doesn’t move.
In this case the idea that elves do not ride kanks is enforced by two coded items. 1) The elf’s ride skill (if it exists) is set to -50000 : ). 2) The player is given code echos letting him know how his elf should feel about this kank.
Another instance would be the juxtaposition of nilaz against other elements. I would say very little of it understood by the player base and that the documentation for this is severely lacking. You will find like our hide issue of yore, player opinions flare on the matter, yet staff position is resolute.
So why is there so much confusion? Well, simply because there’s no way for PCs to know what happening unless a staff member intervenes, which will unfortunately not happen quite so often enough to control a karmaless society.
So? What if we again got creative? What if when a elemental was in the same room for a Nilaz for too long, the infection of nilaz began to make their magick impotent? Or perhaps it could drain the mana of non-nilaz, granting the nilaz with vampire like ability? I’m suggesting this as code, but imagine how many people would have trouble understanding the relationship of nilaz and other elements if there was simple coded phenomena such as:
Code:
100/100 100/100 100/100> l pete
Pete has brown hair, and wears a gem.
100/100 100/100 100/100> tell pete Hey bud, whats up. You’re my nilazi buddy.
You say to pete: “Hey bud, whats up. You’re my nilazi buddy.”
100/100 100/100 100/100>
Pete says to you: “ You know it. You’re my whiran buddy!”
100/100 100/100 100/100>
You feel a stab of sudden pain. Your head swirls with dizziness as a drowning feeling of nothingness over comes you!
(Pete is inadvertently draining his whiran buddies mana just by being near him!)
100/100 100/100 90/100> say What the?
You say: “What the?”
You feel a stab of sudden pain. Your head swirls with dizziness as a drowning feeling of nothingness over comes you!
Pete says to you “What’s wrong?!?!”
Pete touches your arm.
You feel an incredible stab of sudden pain! Your head swirls with dizziness as a drowning feeling of nothingness over comes you!
100/100 100/100 70/100> tell pete Get away from me!!!
So on and so forth.
These examples are just two instances, and this post is not really about code. In fact I’d go as far as to say this post is not about code ideas at all. It is about our fundamental philosophies and approach to administration of our world. It is a call to change our thinking about how we administer the idea of a roleplay enforced world and mature it to a level that allows it to continue to grow.
But those are the last lingering thoughts on Arm from a player who has seen a great deal of it from a multitude of angles and has many times seem the same debates over, and over and over again. I’ve watched players feel bullied by imms, and watched imms feel rejected and betrayed by players. I don’t blame either or take sides, I think both are equally at fault and not at fault. I think our general problem here is our approach.
One might say there are not enough coders to enforce all of our rules. To which I will agree and reply “open the source” and there will be. I hope if you do take some time to flame me you’ll take a moment to digest this for a bit first.
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