Whether you believe it or not Deloria had (and will most likely have another) good run as (perhaps) will Aria and all those other games, including mine. But if or when they fail you cannot say that the games sucked. Maybe, in your current oppinion they sucked. But at some point in your time playing them you thought otherwise, you maybe even had fun! If you really thought they sucked then you wouldn't have played them at all.
There is one reason that games like these fail. That reason is attitude. Whether it's the attitude of players towards mods, players to players or mods to mods, or the admin of them game her/himself(<-Most important). Unfortunately, and I'm not directing this specifically at anyone here, the fault is usually in the hands of the moderators/admins. There is a very big difference between being a player, being a mod and being the game's "owner" or admin.
Players are to follow the rules that are enforced by the moderators that are set down by the game's admin. If this chain breaks down, so will the game.
If there is an argument between players, the moderators are there to fix that problem.
If there is an argument betwen the players and a moderator the admin steps in and has final say.
If there is an argument betwen the moderators, the admin also must step in.
A good admin must be objective and fair and most importantly have the right/a good ATTITUDE! Otherwise who would want to play the game? I wouldn't want to play a game where the admin didn't give two flying farks who did what. That's how people like kenman are allowed to ruin games.
Now, even though the admin is assumed to pick sides with the moderators they must still keep in mind that the mod's could be wrong, after all we're all only human! Essentially, the admin is what ties a game together and without a good one, the game will be doomed from the start.
One of the problems with slip's Deloria (no offense slip, just my oppinion
) is that there were too many mods and mappers who didn't do anything. Quite a few just abused their powers or made useless maps and unfortunately slip didn't want/bother to do anything about it. Although slip couldn't really do much about the kenman incident, there is still more he could have done. Now on the other side of the argument, kenman and his crooked logic (AKA "I'm just trying to find bugs and not exploit them." Which then turned into him exploiting a bug to make himself admin and creating maps that despite what he thinks did affect gameplay. [@ken- There is a reason that the rockmen are in Darnoth and not in Collingwood]) Kenman had a poor attitude about this (whether he will admit it or not) and had he actually not let his new found mod powers go to his head we might still be able to play the game. But again this may have been averted by the staff not giving kenman a chance to find and exploit bugs. Even if while he was looking for them, he was able to find any it's not like we could have fixed them since no-one had the source. The problem I forsee with Aria (again no offense Zel, just my oppinion) is also one of the attitude of the admin. [Note: Aria has since fallen through. ] Unfortunately as can be seen in these forums as well as in the elysium forums, Zelimos acts immaturely and unnecessarily mean. His thoughts, as he has stated are along the lines of: who cares about these two forums, for they are just two of hundreds of other forums. This is a very poor attitude for an admin to have. Especially for smaller games that need all the players they can get. An admin should show the qualities I mentioned before in every aspect of what they do that could be related back to their game, whether it be on forums, in chat rooms or on other games. Maybe you think you can afford to lose some players here and there, but you should think what you would GAIN if they came to your game. Personally I'd rather have a steady stream of players than have only a select few.
This post was meant to express some thoughts that have being going through my head with what has happened recently and was meant in no way to insult or offend anyone. It was only to provide constructive critism to anyone mentioned. If you don't like what I said then by all means formulate your own thoughts about it. We're all entitled to make our own oppinions!
Have a good day everyone,
~Drack
