The Reason Trains Went From 75 to 50 and More

[Gatz]

I think I get what you're saying, the only real difference between what you're doing and what I'm doing is that you factor in whether or not they have Genkai or Kagirinai. This might work, I think you might have saved Christmas, Yuuta.

[Yuuta]

I think I get what you're saying, the only real difference between what you're doing and what I'm doing is that you factor in whether or not they have Genkai or Kagirinai. This might work, I think you might have saved Christmas, Yuuta.

It checks in this order :

Do they have 20 trains already put into the stat? (they can't train anyway, if this is true)
If 25-30, do they have Genkai_Kagirinai available / put on that stat? (If they don't, they lose LSC)
If 20-25, do they have Genkai_Ichi available / put on that stat?
If not, do they have Genkai_Ni available / put on that stat? (If they have neither, they lose LSC)

If lower than 20, then it doesn't matter.

And, yay. Christmas. Glad to be of some assistance.

[Gatz]

I'm curious if any of the players currently affected by this have gotten a read on whether or not they feel truly hurt from this or not. I've delegated some of the higher level players to try out using their characters with reduced stats to see how it feels, but I'd love to have a level 60-90 player give me insight.

[Gatz]

If you really don't understand why a player may be unhappy that another player gets 25 more trains... it is clear you have no idea what you're doing here.

I'm sorry. I gave your game a solid shot; I tried to provide at least a little input... but I'm out. Call this the (not so little) straw that broke my back.

Best of luck to you guys. Maybe in 6 more years when you start calling yourselves Beta or something I'll give you another go.

I had been ignoring this comment for awhile, but I figure I might as well take a stab at responding and, hopefully, not causing more of a stir. As a MUD Owner and as a MUD Player, one of the most painful kinds of decisions to make is to remove something. I'm not going to go into any real philosophical debate, but it is my personal experience that shows most people are a lot harder on a MUD than a commercial game, simply because there is a lot less upfront cost to play a MUD.

If I buy an MMO, and it gives me a one month subscription, I'll probably play it for that month even if I hate it and hope things 'turn out alright' in the end. However, on a MUD, I have no monetary investment or real attachment to a game I just started. If I can't see or figure out why it is fun, I leave. That said, I didn't think this change would necessarily be hailed as the greatest thing ever. It doesn't help that an Imm mentioned a pwipe being possibly 'at any time' and that probably only stirred things up.

However, all that said, if I became the kind of MUD Owner too scared to make changes because it might cause the player base to go down, I think the game would suffer for it. I do, however, take in everything players say. I seriously consider everything. I've stopped newbies who've spammed the Newbie channel with things like "This game sux!" and asked if they wouldn't mind talking to me about it. Sometimes, they have a valid point, and most of the time, even in their blind rant, there is something in there that might actually make the game better.

If I ruled with an iron fist, the game wouldn't be fun either. As I see it, we're all in this together, but at the end of the day I'm the one who has to say what goes. It can feel overwhelming and I think my style isn't practiced by a lot of MUD Owners, but I feel it is one I appreciate the most. I run the game for people like you, and without players like you there is no point. When I log in to NarutoMUD and it's empty, it weighs me down, but if I stopped working hard, then NarutoMUD probably doesn't deserve the players in the first place.

So, I think ultimately, I'm sorry this is what did it for you. Your insights were appreciated, and it was a lot of fun having you guys around. However, to me, NarutoMUD isn't about working towards X and then just sitting there. It is about moving forward, figuring out what works and what doesn't, and keep moving forward. While I can imagine some people hearing that might get turned off, I think over the years it has lead us to slowly grow a stable of players that feel like they have left a lasting mark on NarutoMUD and an overall better experience for everyone.

I hope you come back, even if it is in 6 years, and check us out again. We'd love to see you active on the forums, or even building on our builder port. Hopefully by then we've removed all the back breaking straw or at least you can help us pick out the last bits that are left.

[Yuuta]

If you really don't understand why a player may be unhappy that another player gets 25 more trains... it is clear you have no idea what you're doing here.

I'm sorry. I gave your game a solid shot; I tried to provide at least a little input... but I'm out. Call this the (not so little) straw that broke my back.

Best of luck to you guys. Maybe in 6 more years when you start calling yourselves Beta or something I'll give you another go.

I had been ignoring this comment for awhile, but I figure I might as well take a stab at responding and, hopefully, not causing more of a stir.

...

The problem isn't that what you did was horrendously wrong and you should be ostracized from the world for ever conceiving it, but that what you did and *why* you chose to do such, as well as your future goals concerning it, were not properly communicated. The first post in this thread implied that, in order to fix things, you wanted to reduce everybody's stat total to 50 max... unless you happened to be an old-time player. Your reasoning was that the game wasn't PvP and, thus, it's not a high priority, or that you didn't want to ruin their hard work.

The problem is you didn't mention that this was an *undesirable outcome*. Judging from your posts afterward, you never wanted old-time players to *retain* the 25 stat points, but that you currently were unable to find a solution to the problem. Without fully understanding that you intended to, as soon as you were able, reduce the max stats on old-players to correspond to the new-players' cap, it was worded in such a way that you had no intention of doing so at all. Your following statements -- "It's not a PvP game, so it's not of great consequence" -- only seemed to further this point.

The result? The quote you are referring to is his response to the situation as he perceived it. As I perceived it, as well, until further discussion allowed me to understand what was going on.

[Gatz]

The result? The quote you are referring to is his response to the situation as he perceived it. As I perceived it, as well, until further discussion allowed me to understand what was going on.

The main thrust of what I said was more about "in the future" and going a bit deeper about changes roll on NarutoMUD. Obviously, a lot of the older folks are sort of used to things running this way and I wanted to make sure I communicated the 'community development' type approach I like to try and do.

The problem isn't that what you did was horrendously wrong and you should be ostracized from the world for ever conceiving it

If I made it sound like that, it was just my poor writing ability. If I think what I did was horrendously wrong, I would have never done it or would have undone it. My point earlier was that I weigh all my changes heavily before I do them, and that I don't go around and take things away lightly. I don't think I'm losing sleep over this, and I would hate people to just have knee jerk reactions to anything like this.

However, I don't want these posts to drown out my last one:

I'm curious if any of the players currently affected by this have gotten a read on whether or not they feel truly hurt from this or not. I've delegated some of the higher level players to try out using their characters with reduced stats to see how it feels, but I'd love to have a level 60-90 player give me insight.

[Giyoku]

Imagine instead you paid your subscription to the game, only to find out that because you weren't playing a week or two earlier earlier, your character gets to be the first and only nerfed by some change that will only affect you for the time being. Seeing as this started over two weeks ago and there's still been no announcement that everyone else has been equalized, this analogy is much better for our experience.

If you're asking if we felt hurt by it, the answer is still yes - especially because we were all around the levels that cut off these extra trains which left all of us on pretty uneven ground. We're all competitive, and to be honest, the only thing that really kept us playing was each other and our own quest to build a great character. However, it was critical to our development that we each be playing by the same rules, which changed because we were all at different stages of our character, but within this critical span of time that each level meant a lost train.

From what I can tell, the only other player that is actively participating seems to be satisfied with the fact that sometime down the line this will be rectified. No one else is or ever really was affected by this, which is why it was such a big deal to us.

I've really nothing else to add, because I feel at this point all you can do is take this as a lesson on mud administration and use it for the next time. It would have gone a long way for you to have acknowledged this much earlier, and undid the change until -everything- was ready and you were able to communicate the reasons why after the fact.

[Gatz]

Imagine instead you paid your subscription to the game, only to find out that because you weren't playing a week or two earlier earlier, your character gets to be the first and only nerfed by some change that will only affect you for the time being. Seeing as this started over two weeks ago and there's still been no announcement that everyone else has been equalized, this analogy is much better for our experience.

I still see a big difference between a free-to-play game like NarutoMUD and say WoW. One of the biggest differences is that in WoW, you are paying for the server and staff to make sure, before changes go live, they do extensive QA on them. The bugs that creep into the game are minor. However, NarutoMUD is a donation model. The staff is volunteer and the server costs are paid by me and any donations received. Also, WoW has millions of people world-wide while NarutoMUD has only around 100-200 players, and far less than that number actively playing.

However, I don't play WoW, so this will have to be second hand anecdotal evidence, but with WoW I know people still flip out anytime a class is changed or tweaked. I have friends who have left alts because they are now 'worthless'. I realize the whole class gets nerfed at once, however I feel the reason this is important to note is because even with a budget beyond 'free time', the designers of WoW still feel they haven't balanced out certain systems perfectly. Except, for NarutoMUD, I use players to help balance, along with myself and other Immortals. Without players help though, sometimes issues go unnoticed. A good example being an issue with Shoumei, which went months without being reported, players simply put up with it randomly dropping.

While the change hasn't gone into effect for all players, I have asked players in a multitude of ranges to test things out with different stat builds. Stats will be lowered from 75, but I wouldn't do it at cost of players existing stats and LSC work. At this point, things will be fixed up, but it boils down to time to implement. Since I donate time to the game, sometimes I don't have the time to implement things as fast as I'd like.

to be honest, the only thing that really kept us playing was each other and our own quest to build a great character.

I think you can still do that just fine. I believe, amongst the three of you the greatest difference was 8 trains. That isn't that large a number, and I am hard pressed to think this reaction is really worth it. Now, it could be more than 8, but still, I've see plenty of players be competitive in D Rank arena fights. Also, with hard work, no one has an advantage, ever. I think somewhere earlier you said you didn't want to use LSC or haven't used it, but with it you could have already gone way past any stat difference. Same with hunting down rare items or using PSM to make up for it.

This change still follows the mantra of you can never mess up your character and hard work pays off. If you guys were that competitive, you could have beaten all their stats by now and really rubbed it in their faces before I got the fix in to lower people's train amounts that are too high.

I've really nothing else to add, because I feel at this point all you can do is take this as a lesson on mud administration and use it for the next time.

Frankly, NarutoMUD is free to play. I've invested well over 10,000 hours into the game. Collectively, you can add another 10,000 hours in other Immortal's time. I'm sorry you didn't like the change, but I have strong doubts that you have even tried things out to see how strong of a change this would be. Instead, you are focusing on how, for a limited time, you will be slightly weaker than one of your friends, this is ignoring doing any LSC, getting better items or using PSM.

It is impossible to please everyone, and it is a hard pill to swallow to log into an empty MUD. However, sometimes it is unavoidable. I have a collective 10 years of experiencing running different MUDs from a variety of themes. I've seen pretty much everything at this point. I can honestly say that no matter what, if you have a strong passion for a game then you shouldn't give up because of a change you don't like.

Active players lead to active Immortals. Active discussions lead to active developments. Like I said before, NarutoMUD is free for players, not for me. It costs me money to host the server. The joy I, and the staff, get is from enhancing the game and providing more fun for players. Your comments, while I think are mostly valid, highlight how so many MUDs close.

"Why work on a game no one plays?" Was the beginning of the last conversation I had with a buddy of mine before he closed both of his MUDs. One being a DBZ MUD, which was not a DB Saga clone and that actually had some fun things on it and I helped code up some new things, the other a realistic MUD in the style of GTA, which even had drivable cars. Except it is very difficult to work on something you feel will never go anywhere. As I said, I make no money from NarutoMUD. No one will ever log in and go "Wow, this is amazing, I want you to make me an MMO! Here is a 1 million dollar budget!"

I don't mean to turn what you said around on you, but this might be a lesson for you to not just throw your hands up in the air and walk away. I do want to add that I respect that you have kept coming back to post, because it does mean a lot to me. I feel like I had to say that, because I've seen way too many fun MUDs die before they could mature, because players are very hard on free games, simply because the investment in them is purely time based.

Thanks again for your reply.

[Giyoku]

I'd like to start off to say that I'm really not trying to drag this back up, but seeing as you've responded to someone that probably isn't going to be back to give any of the input you ask for, this is why I responded in his absence to re-affirm what is more or less his position

I'm not even sure why an analogy to paying for anything is relevant to the discussion, however it was used as a stepping off stone in one that I felt wasn't correct enough.

I also feel that, and maybe I've missed this but you've never disputed it - Only 4 of us are currently or ever were affected by this, considering the activity of the playerbase. There aren't a million people. This isn't WoW. It was a -very- small number of people. If you would have spent just 1 of your 10,000 hours asking us, who have been around and active every single day with over 100 hours each of our own already put into the game, I think the call would have been a simple one to make. It's the context of who is actually affected. So, the point is, it was only us... so when you ask if it bothers us.. and it clearly has and we've been over it all, I'm sorry if this comes off as contrite, but I don't see how, for this situation, anything else really matters. Do you think we're going to all sit here and cackle that we made an immortal change his decision and gloat? Besides a little justified frustration from the post this is in response too, I feel we've come off as about as reasonable as you can expect.

Throwing our hands in frustration was hardly our response, sir. We posted, articulately. You said if enough players (again, pretty much everyone this affects) spoke up, you would fix it. Your decision, which is indeed the only one that matters at the end of the day, was to not undo what had been done. This is why I said that there isn't anything left to take from -this- discussion besides the lessons that we've all learned. Trust me, if I didn't respect you, I wouldn't even bother posting.

That said, if the intent was to find out if the experience really truly affects things.. for me, leveling alone was pretty stagnant all through that range. I could level in the wolf den almost to 70.. since this takes care of the bulk of the affected levels, all it means is that I dont have as much of whatever stat I would have been training up, but I was always waiting on wolves to pop so worrying about health, chakra, or stamina regen wasn't an issue.

[Gatz]

this is why I responded in his absence to re-affirm what is more or less his position

I figured, but it is strange to phrase it as such.

If you would have spent just 1 of your 10,000 hours asking us

I had supposed that this would be a more open dialog, which I think I mentioned in another post.

Throwing our hands in frustration was hardly our response, sir.

No need to throw around "sir"s here. I just wanted to speak for the extreme and encourage any other players who might have left that they shouldn't feel alienated.

Besides a little justified frustration from the post this is in response too, I feel we've come off as about as reasonable as you can expect.

I praised your passion for the game. The mere fact you keep posting is touching and very appreciated.

We posted, articulately. You said if enough players (again, pretty much everyone this affects) spoke up, you would fix it. Your decision, which is indeed the only one that matters at the end of the day, was to not undo what had been done. This is why I said that there isn't anything left to take from -this- discussion besides the lessons that we've all learned. Trust me, if I didn't respect you, I wouldn't even bother posting.

This is all being considered. I just haven't had the time recently to fix it. However, I think...I mentioned earlier, but it has been awhile, that adding trains to people who missed them is a lot easier than removing them from people who lack them.

That said, if the intent was to find out if the experience really truly affects things.. for me, leveling alone was pretty stagnant all through that range. I could level in the wolf den almost to 70.. since this takes care of the bulk of the affected levels, all it means is that I dont have as much of whatever stat I would have been training up, but I was always waiting on wolves to pop so worrying about health, chakra, or stamina regen wasn't an issue.

Well, how about pop on later and I can work with you a bit.

Thanks again for your posts. I hope to see you online in the game, so we can talk about it more and maybe work together on something that you feel is a good middle ground.