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Poll Question and Results: Why do you not log in anymore?
I do, just not as much because RP sucks 4 votes, 17%
I do, just not as much because the admin/other players suck and don't fix certain things/play the game how I think they should 1 votes, 4%
I do, just not as much because the game is broken 1 votes, 4%
Because the game is broke, RP sucks, and/or I don't like the admin/other players much 10 votes, 43%
I do log in, man, I'm there all the time! 7 votes, 30%
Total Votes : 23
Amatsuka
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Post Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 6:11 am      Reply with quote

wirsindallein wrote:
malfunction wrote:
Armageddon for one. I think the main problem with parallel is that the setting encourages cooperation instead of conflict and no one plays a game so they cooperate.


This is really funny, given one staff member's apparent dislike of Arm, which they felt the need to share regularly during the first few weeks.


Arm is bad and should feel bad and I'm going to go ahead and disagree because I actually do play a lot of games to cooperate. Even when it looks like competition superficially, it's really just a form of cooperation. True and through conflict only leads to bitterness.

As to the actual topic, I quit playing because I didn't feel connected or integrated or engaged sufficiently. People sometimes don't believe me because of how outspoken I can be, but I'm actually incredibly shy and have a hard time breaking into RP. So I have a tendency to skirt it and nudge myself into short scenes and sneak up on solo characters to engage That takes a long time usually and when I was playing here regularly, it wasn't working very well.

It is true that I'm wildly suspicious of the playerbase since it was inherited from ARPI, but it never seemed to be much of a problem here. I was mostly oblivious to who anyone was playing or the groups involved. It still didn't seem to matter in the end. I didn't feel engaged even when I began to make friends. In some ways, I didn't feel like the setting that was being created by players through their actions was one which offered a lot of potential. There was a sense of rigidity about what was expected and how people were supposed to act and I felt the consequences for stepping out of line with that were harsh and abrupt. I personally wasn't ever involved, but I felt that it was very limiting from a storytelling point of view.

Personally, the code on Parallel / in RPIs in general is something I've never cared for. I find even the portions I do like (such as crafting) to be relatively janky. I think it's mostly a lot of unrealized potential. Still, I don't think that Parallel ever needed a lot of code. There's a substantial amount of promise in just the lore even if we were doing like, freeform paragraph RP. Were I to decide what to focus on, it would be the survival experience and crafting related to that endless endeavor moreover than anything else.

I think the biggest problem with Parallel is the clans and the discrepancies between have and have nots. In part, I think this is because they're artificial. That is to say that the players composing the clans haven't earned the bulk of their comfort and have come by it too easily. Society didn't form organically as a means of survival or one group trying to get an edge over another, but because it was written. I think that has caused a lot of strife.

I think it's especially true when the type of conflict is such that it feels as if the clans themselves feel as if they are the guardians of that written background and have an obligation to enforce it. I think players by and large are poor at enforcing someone else's ideals and have a tendency to be heavy handed or inconsistent. I also think it puts players in a frame of mind in which they begin judging the validity of other players actions instead of playing off those actions to the enjoyment of all.

So I think it's better that discrepancies of societal status are achieved organically and that players are concerned primarily with their character's behavior and reactions. There was also some mob mentality and group think that seemed to be going on when I was playing that I think is unhealthy and everyone should try to be more cognizant of to resolve.

When I created my character, I chose an Indie for much of the rationale I've stated above (like that I prefer things to be organic, including my relationships). I thought it could be fun to be bullied or bribed into joining one of the groups or just exploited on the side, but I felt this never really happened for me. Instead I felt the clans were mostly interested in asserting their position and suppressing Indies instead of exploiting them which really seems to bad. They did seem interested in stealing all your stuff though or preventing you from playing with a new toy that might keep you logging in until you could find that something that engages and compels you to want to lay beyond the code. I think it was brought up a few times here, but the sentiment was sort of beaten down by people insisting that's how an indie's life was supposed to be. Anyhow, I think it's a shame and like, in a practical sense, is a death of potential.

Anyhow, even though some of these issues deal with design, I think the playerbase, had it been proactive and passionate enough, could have overcome them. I hope those still playing continue to have fun and play, but since I was given the opportunity to express why I have given up playing, I felt compelled to do so. Maybe it'll be of some help to someone.

In the end, if my dreams are destroyed, I'll lose the will to carry on.


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crayon
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Post Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 9:44 am      Reply with quote

imany wrote:
My #1 problem and reason behind my lack of interest in PRPI is because it lacks a metaplot.


This is a legitimate concern, but one that could probably have been overcome with proper sandbox design.

I'll gloss over this later, but most of the problems with PRPI ultimately come down to inconsistencies early in the design, in my opinion. Specifically with regards to the sandbox vs. metaplot design debate.

imany wrote:
When I quit PRPI several months ago, I'd burnt out on small time drama. I recall someone putting it something like this: I didn't sign up to play PRPI to play in the moon version of 90210 with large group stat grinding. After awhile, I lost interest. And I held out longer than any of the people who signed up to play with me. It just wasn't fun to play.


Pretty much.

imany wrote:
A certain amount of that is the administration's responsibility. Running a storyline like that is hard work. It's hard and time consuming and extremely draining. So I get why people might not want to do it. But at the same time, it's necessary for an RP-centric game like what PRPI was supposed to be. Otherwise, it just doesn't feel like there's a point in logging in.


Right, but there's also issue in that most of the people that have been working on the game in the past few months are inheritors rather than progenitors of game design flaws, and some things would require vast and sweeping changes to properly correct.

Amatsuka wrote:
Arm is bad and should feel bad and I'm going to go ahead and disagree because I actually do play a lot of games to cooperate. Even when it looks like competition superficially, it's really just a form of cooperation. True and through conflict only leads to bitterness.


Hahahaha.

Haha. Ha.

I'm sorry, we've had a handful of interactions as players, elsewhere, and this made me laugh.

Uh. I would take this with a few forty pound bags of salt. Kumbaya MUD where everybody has equal stakes in cooperating to defeat the evil staff-played big bad is not my thing. Conflict works, it just has to be organic. PRPI's problem is that there is no organic conflict. Game design lends favor to cooperation. Lore design arbitrarily encourages conflict. Both are real tenuous.

Amatsuka wrote:
It is true that I'm wildly suspicious of the playerbase since it was inherited from ARPI, but it never seemed to be much of a problem here. I was mostly oblivious to who anyone was playing or the groups involved. It still didn't seem to matter in the end. I didn't feel engaged even when I began to make friends. In some ways, I didn't feel like the setting that was being created by players through their actions was one which offered a lot of potential. There was a sense of rigidity about what was expected and how people were supposed to act and I felt the consequences for stepping out of line with that were harsh and abrupt. I personally wasn't ever involved, but I felt that it was very limiting from a storytelling point of view.


These are perfectly legitimate concerns. And more or less constitute a summation of many of the myriad ways in which PRPI failed at trying to be a sandbox, from the get-go, in game design.

Amatsuka wrote:
Personally, the code on Parallel / in RPIs in general is something I've never cared for. I find even the portions I do like (such as crafting) to be relatively janky. I think it's mostly a lot of unrealized potential. Still, I don't think that Parallel ever needed a lot of code. There's a substantial amount of promise in just the lore even if we were doing like, freeform paragraph RP. Were I to decide what to focus on, it would be the survival experience and crafting related to that endless endeavor moreover than anything else.


I honestly think the code is, overall, really fucking swanky.

It's also really janky and inconsistent and very few people understand how it works and how to make the most out of it.

I worry (despite doing a lot of work on crafting) that the depth of the crafting suites is a toxic element in the game. Crafting encourages people to do things like babysit timers, grind out crafts solo, et cetera, and the crafting suites are easily the most invested aspect of the game.

Things like, say, wilderness and scavving and survival however have been deemphasized repeatedly, despite being group activities.

Let's be real for a second; for all the bitching about how much scav runs suck, people sure did give up on playing fast once it became impossible to get the people together to do them. Let's be realer; some of the worst RP'd scav runs I've seen entailed more actual RP than ANY crafting I've seen.

Amatsuka wrote:
I think the biggest problem with Parallel is the clans and the discrepancies between have and have nots. In part, I think this is because they're artificial. That is to say that the players composing the clans haven't earned the bulk of their comfort and have come by it too easily. Society didn't form organically as a means of survival or one group trying to get an edge over another, but because it was written. I think that has caused a lot of strife.


Absofuckinglutely.

I'm not your biggest fan historically, but you hit the nail on the head here. A lot of things in the game just feel rather forced and inorganic.

In a game design sense, if PRPI was going to be a sandbox, we should've skipped lore and just started at the beginning (founding of Rust). This would've left players free to build their own organic social structures etc. in an entirely organic way, rather than having this artificially created mish-mash of lore and code that highlight and emphasize disparate gameplay mechanisms and create this sort of arbitrary and unsatisfactory feeling to motive.

Amatsuka wrote:
I think it's especially true when the type of conflict is such that it feels as if the clans themselves feel as if they are the guardians of that written background and have an obligation to enforce it. I think players by and large are poor at enforcing someone else's ideals and have a tendency to be heavy handed or inconsistent. I also think it puts players in a frame of mind in which they begin judging the validity of other players actions instead of playing off those actions to the enjoyment of all.


This was certainly a problem at one point.

--

Anyhow: key issues.

Rust. Can we all admit that Rust, conceptually, is a horribly weak setting, yet? Or at the VERY least, that it's poor choice for a game that was intended to function as a sandbox? Rust is the reason conflict's broken. Rust's the reason the clans are broken and lacking in actionable motive. Rust's the reason societal dynamics are broken. Et cetera. I think most people have decided by now that barring majorly changing, retconning, or moving the setting, PRPI is just going to keep dying. Rust does a horrible job at giving people things their characters would be willing to die for. The rewards for putting one's life in jeopardy are not worth the risk, except in such situations where players have such control over it that survival is near a surety. There is a near complete lack of MORAL CAUSE between the clans, et cetera. It's just. Ugh.

Proactivity versus reactivity. I think a fair portion of the playerbase seems to have been trained through experiences on other MUDs or ARPI, to sit back and wait to be spoonfed story, rather than story-telling themselves. This is problematic and troubling in that it puts a lot of strain and weight on staff and clanleads to force things to happen to keep people entertained, when in reality, everybody should be telling their own story, and making efforts to interest other people in their own stories as they go. Back to game design, there's also nothing intrinsically present to make sure that players have the tools they require to do so, nor that they are rewarded for bringing story to the game.

I'll probably edit more things in as I go, I'm altogether too tired to be thinking entirely clearly right now.


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Flincher14
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Post Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 10:40 am      Reply with quote

Amatsuka said it right. The families focused on surpressing indies rather than exploiting them. There should've been a strong drive to make indies work on family turf, to the benefit of the families but also the families should have been competitive in luring these indies to their turf. The market got in the way of that and the clan leads shut down indies hard.

I believe that indies were suppressed because in atonement indies ended up forming some of the strongest and best naturally made clans in the game. That makes indies a threat to the existing families so indie life was made hard by the families.

No matter what Rust in its current form does not provide a good platform for a sandbox game. Them families prevent new clans from forming, the market prevents families from reaching their potiential. Govenment is none existant. Families should be encouraging people to live on their turf, building shops and homes that players can pay to live in without being in a family.

Unfortunately the market provides all the lodgings our indie population ever needed even at its highest.


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wirsindallein
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(ノ◕ヮ◕)ノ*:・゚✧

Post Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 7:45 pm      Reply with quote

Amatsuka wrote:

Arm is bad and should feel bad and I'm going to go ahead and disagree because I actually do play a lot of games to cooperate. Even when it looks like competition superficially, it's really just a form of cooperation. True and through conflict only leads to bitterness.

I don't enjoy playing Arm. I was just sardonically pointing out something which I found to be rather amusing.
Conflict != Cooperation. You can be a decent person to someone out of character while still hating their characters guts. I'd surmise that one of my issues with the game has been that people identify too much with their characters.
You aren't your character. I am not my character. We can cooperate out-of-character to make a fun and interesting experience, even without ever conversing out-of-character, without cooperating in-character.

Amatsuka wrote:

As to the actual topic, I quit playing because I didn't feel connected or integrated or engaged sufficiently. People sometimes don't believe me because of how outspoken I can be, but I'm actually incredibly shy and have a hard time breaking into RP. So I have a tendency to skirt it and nudge myself into short scenes and sneak up on solo characters to engage That takes a long time usually and when I was playing here regularly, it wasn't working very well.

I can't agree with you more on this. If I could add something, though, I would like to point out that I think the playerbase has always felt rather cliqueish. Other's mileage may vary, there.

Amatsuka wrote:

It is true that I'm wildly suspicious of the playerbase since it was inherited from ARPI, but it never seemed to be much of a problem here. I was mostly oblivious to who anyone was playing or the groups involved. It still didn't seem to matter in the end. I didn't feel engaged even when I began to make friends. In some ways, I didn't feel like the setting that was being created by players through their actions was one which offered a lot of potential. There was a sense of rigidity about what was expected and how people were supposed to act and I felt the consequences for stepping out of line with that were harsh and abrupt. I personally wasn't ever involved, but I felt that it was very limiting from a storytelling point of view.

I don't want to reiterate what Crayon just said in their very well-written post, but I agree with this as well. Rust is the major problem.

Amatsuka wrote:

Personally, the code on Parallel / in RPIs in general is something I've never cared for. I find even the portions I do like (such as crafting) to be relatively janky. I think it's mostly a lot of unrealized potential. Still, I don't think that Parallel ever needed a lot of code. There's a substantial amount of promise in just the lore even if we were doing like, freeform paragraph RP. Were I to decide what to focus on, it would be the survival experience and crafting related to that endless endeavor moreover than anything else.

I would agree with you here, if I didn't feel like the push for a survival experience is what led to 3-hour scav runs turning up useless pieces of junk at every turn. I've never really been a fan of crafting-- Anything which emotes for me is, in my opinion, kind of lame. I also feel like the abundance of crafting in parallel thus far is what has led to the incredibly metagamey/code-based feel the game has.
To each their own, though.

Amatsuka wrote:

I think the biggest problem with Parallel is the clans and the discrepancies between have and have nots. In part, I think this is because they're artificial. That is to say that the players composing the clans haven't earned the bulk of their comfort and have come by it too easily. Society didn't form organically as a means of survival or one group trying to get an edge over another, but because it was written. I think that has caused a lot of strife.

This is why Parallel will never work as a sandbox game. It wasn't one when it started, and it won't be one if it's still standing come December 2014.

Amatsuka wrote:

I think it's especially true when the type of conflict is such that it feels as if the clans themselves feel as if they are the guardians of that written background and have an obligation to enforce it. I think players by and large are poor at enforcing someone else's ideals and have a tendency to be heavy handed or inconsistent. I also think it puts players in a frame of mind in which they begin judging the validity of other players actions instead of playing off those actions to the enjoyment of all.

I see nothing wrong with maintaining lore. The issue here was not that we had lore, but that the gameworld itself did not in any way reflect that lore outside of player actions. If people were trying too hard to uphold the setting, it was because player-action and an inability to actually change the world were the only things keeping it going.

Amatsuka wrote:

So I think it's better that discrepancies of societal status are achieved organically and that players are concerned primarily with their character's behavior and reactions. There was also some mob mentality and group think that seemed to be going on when I was playing that I think is unhealthy and everyone should try to be more cognizant of to resolve.

I agree with the first part here. If anything, I think it would have been much better had the game begun without clanleads. Of course, that would have prevented the three or four people who even knew that applications for the roles existed from starting out in a position of power.
Roleplaying communities, MUDs included, I have found, have always been riddled with cliques. More-so, I think, than other online communities. I don't think there's much you can do about that.


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slyviolin
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Sometimes I struggle with my demons. Other times we just fuck and have cheesecake.

Post Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 8:51 pm      Reply with quote

I will be stepping back from Parallel. Sorry guys.

Huge chunks of my character's life have been lopped away one by one.
- Scavving as an exciting risky outlet for her thrill-seeking personality. Gone.
- Metro runs for the same thing. Gone.
- Her family which she would do anything for? The clanhall hasn't had water for days and the power is about to cut off because being the only player I know that can fix things things aren't on at the same time I am.
- Everyone she developed any sort of meaningful relationship with? Gone.

I have tried to be proactive but it's hard when you only have maybe one or two people to work with. I would like to also point out that Wirs, Flincher and Crayon all have good points, but how many months has it been since they actually played the game? (I mean play, not code on BP) It's all well and good asking players to be proactive and trying but it's a bit hypocritical when you lounge about on the forums pointing fingers instead of getting IG and trying to make the same changes you call out for.

Crayon, I respect all the work you are doing revive and making crafts interesting, but it's all going to be for naught if Prpi dies. And to throw in a bitchy blow, IG you've pretty much done exactly the same as your predecessor did and share some of the responsibilty of killing off the clan.

Personal opinion : Prpi has turned into a glorified chatroom for the 4-6 people that still actively 'play' with a handful of sidegames attached like the sewers and crafting. I came here for an RPI, not a chatroom.


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wirsindallein
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Post Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 10:36 pm      Reply with quote

slyviolin wrote:

It's all well and good asking players to be proactive and trying but it's a bit hypocritical when you lounge about on the forums pointing fingers instead of getting IG and trying to make the same changes you call out for.

Please don't lump me in as one of the people saying players need to do something. I've been pretty firm in my stance that staff are the only people who can save this, from the moment these problems started.


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Roadhawk
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We lurk inside your brain, we hide inside your mind.

Post Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 12:07 am      Reply with quote

wirsindallein wrote:
slyviolin wrote:

It's all well and good asking players to be proactive and trying but it's a bit hypocritical when you lounge about on the forums pointing fingers instead of getting IG and trying to make the same changes you call out for.

Please don't lump me in as one of the people saying players need to do something. I've been pretty firm in my stance that staff are the only people who can save this, from the moment these problems started.


It is this attitude that now does more damage to the game. Fact is, everything but the Dome can be changed by tbe playerbase. If we want a family gone we can do it, the truth of the matter is, we wanted a game, we got one, we broke it and now we want a different one.

The only thing we can not change on our own is scavving. The onoy thing we can not advance is the metaplot.


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Flincher14
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Post Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 12:30 am      Reply with quote

Roadhawk wrote:
wirsindallein wrote:
slyviolin wrote:

It's all well and good asking players to be proactive and trying but it's a bit hypocritical when you lounge about on the forums pointing fingers instead of getting IG and trying to make the same changes you call out for.

Please don't lump me in as one of the people saying players need to do something. I've been pretty firm in my stance that staff are the only people who can save this, from the moment these problems started.


It is this attitude that now does more damage to the game. Fact is, everything but the Dome can be changed by tbe playerbase. If we want a family gone we can do it, the truth of the matter is, we wanted a game, we got one, we broke it and now we want a different one.

The only thing we can not change on our own is scavving. The onoy thing we can not advance is the metaplot.


I've been talking about changing the family system as players for a week now. Theres a couple people in chat who constantly HATE the idea that players would form a group in game for the purpose of wiping out the familys in any way and threaten that they would quit if the families dissolved.


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crayon
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Post Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 8:15 am      Reply with quote

slyviolin wrote:
I will be stepping back from Parallel. Sorry guys.

Huge chunks of my character's life have been lopped away one by one.
- Scavving as an exciting risky outlet for her thrill-seeking personality. Gone.
- Metro runs for the same thing. Gone.
- Her family which she would do anything for? The clanhall hasn't had water for days and the power is about to cut off because being the only player I know that can fix things things aren't on at the same time I am.
- Everyone she developed any sort of meaningful relationship with? Gone.

I have tried to be proactive but it's hard when you only have maybe one or two people to work with. I would like to also point out that Wirs, Flincher and Crayon all have good points, but how many months has it been since they actually played the game? (I mean play, not code on BP) It's all well and good asking players to be proactive and trying but it's a bit hypocritical when you lounge about on the forums pointing fingers instead of getting IG and trying to make the same changes you call out for.

Crayon, I respect all the work you are doing revive and making crafts interesting, but it's all going to be for naught if Prpi dies. And to throw in a bitchy blow, IG you've pretty much done exactly the same as your predecessor did and share some of the responsibilty of killing off the clan.

Personal opinion : Prpi has turned into a glorified chatroom for the 4-6 people that still actively 'play' with a handful of sidegames attached like the sewers and crafting. I came here for an RPI, not a chatroom.


The game is far and long past the point where players can do anything significant to turn the tide.

As far as clan-killing and predecessors, let's take a second to actually look at what I had to work with and WHEN it was thrown at me to work with. No shit, Sherlock, there's nothing I can do to save a four man clan on a dying MUD that's in desperate need of staff intervention. I at least TRIED.

Of course, by the time I was a clanlead, there weren't enough people left to even go out and scav, let alone gather up the kind of resources needed to effect any relevant change IG. You can't change a game IG when the game field makes a point of doing as little as physically possible to empower players to change the game.


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Flincher14
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Post Posted: Sun Dec 29, 2013 4:15 pm      Reply with quote

crayon wrote:
slyviolin wrote:
I will be stepping back from Parallel. Sorry guys.

Huge chunks of my character's life have been lopped away one by one.
- Scavving as an exciting risky outlet for her thrill-seeking personality. Gone.
- Metro runs for the same thing. Gone.
- Her family which she would do anything for? The clanhall hasn't had water for days and the power is about to cut off because being the only player I know that can fix things things aren't on at the same time I am.
- Everyone she developed any sort of meaningful relationship with? Gone.

I have tried to be proactive but it's hard when you only have maybe one or two people to work with. I would like to also point out that Wirs, Flincher and Crayon all have good points, but how many months has it been since they actually played the game? (I mean play, not code on BP) It's all well and good asking players to be proactive and trying but it's a bit hypocritical when you lounge about on the forums pointing fingers instead of getting IG and trying to make the same changes you call out for.

Crayon, I respect all the work you are doing revive and making crafts interesting, but it's all going to be for naught if Prpi dies. And to throw in a bitchy blow, IG you've pretty much done exactly the same as your predecessor did and share some of the responsibilty of killing off the clan.

Personal opinion : Prpi has turned into a glorified chatroom for the 4-6 people that still actively 'play' with a handful of sidegames attached like the sewers and crafting. I came here for an RPI, not a chatroom.


The game is far and long past the point where players can do anything significant to turn the tide.

As far as clan-killing and predecessors, let's take a second to actually look at what I had to work with and WHEN it was thrown at me to work with. No shit, Sherlock, there's nothing I can do to save a four man clan on a dying MUD that's in desperate need of staff intervention. I at least TRIED.

Of course, by the time I was a clanlead, there weren't enough people left to even go out and scav, let alone gather up the kind of resources needed to effect any relevant change IG. You can't change a game IG when the game field makes a point of doing as little as physically possible to empower players to change the game.


Your wrong. As a clanlead your one of like 3 players who can actually still make some waves. You could try to organize prpts within the clan, you could try to destroy the other clans, you could try to drastically change Rust so that its fresh, you might only have 5 people left in your clan but thats 5 players out of maybe 10-15 that still play this game, thats a huge percentage and you could make waves.

Instead every clan lead has done nothing. The most they have done is basic maintenance to make sure the lights are on and make sure someone else has the empowerments to get into the clans storage in case new members need to get handed equipment.


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Featured artwork used on Parallel RPI given permission for use by original artists macrebisz and merl1ncz.