A Review from the Owner's Perspective - 2007

[Gatz]

After carefully thinking about the state of the game, I think I can give a decent review from a game’s owner’s perspective. Although some players may disagree, this is time for me to step on my soap box, so I hope everyone else with takes their opinions and voices them in other threads. However, I will use my time here to express my opinions on everything to do with the game, in all aspects, from coding to the playing of the game.

NarutoMUD in design could have been done a lot better. I blame it on my youth and ignorance on the importance of actually creating a document in which I could use as a Bible-like reference in creating NarutoMUD. I’ve kept pieces in my head on what I’ve always wanted and always had a decently consistent vision on what I want NarutoMUD (NM) to become. However, over time this has changed and I’ve come up with newer ideas. A lot of tweaks have happened and it only slows down the process. As well as not having a solid document to refer to and schedule out coding tasks, the project itself has had poor preparation and poor foresight. I won’t absolve myself of guilt, but most MUD projects feature similar poor early-design management.

Implementation of NM has also suffered from old styles of coding I’ve picked up and now replaced. Some bad habits I’ve since banished from my style are rotten in NM’s code. Namely, the skill system which I coded in a style similar to the way I did it in Cowboy Bebop: Space Cowboy and had seen many other MUDs do similarly. It’s done in a slightly tweaked SMAUG format. This whole system makes implementing skills slow and laborious. When I started NM, I never expected to open it to the public, just to use it as a testing ground to further polish my skill. However, it would have been more prudent to consider the bigger picture and refine the system itself, rather than trying to work with an old, worn out system that was annoying in the first place.

Content wise, we suffer from having a difficult theme to capture. Genjutsu is namely a sore spot for me. Most of the official Naruto games either ignore it or make it sort of lame. It is just a really hard area to work on. To come up with a single system to make it work is near impossible, as every Genjutsu is very unique. Hopefully over time this can be remedied but for now, it seems that each Genjutsu will require a lot of time to make work right.

Area wise, we lack. However, Immortal wise we are lacking. On a game that requires volunteer work, we are lucky to pull a builder in long enough to make one area, let alone complete larger sections that we need. Most potential Immortal hires are either power hungry losers or simply don’t get hired or people who didn’t realize how much work is involved to get a good area off the ground. I’ve seen some builders boast about how awesome their skill is but I’ve never seen a builder who boasts that loudly and been able to make an area that wasn't sloppy and boring. It’s depressing to see a potential game suffer because no one is willing to spare their time or energy to help.

Which brings me to my last point, when I started NarutoMUD a good friend of mine said that the greatest bug a MUD can have is players. I’m starting to believe it now. There are many, many awesome people out there but there are also droves of bad ones. From time to time, NarutoMUD seems to get infested with rats’ nests of bad players. As much as it pains me to critique the actual player base of NarutoMUD, I think it should be said.

Whiney and selfish is what I think of the majority of people who grace NarutoMUD. I’ve heard many, many players say they’d gladly do this or that if we only gave them more. For a time, being a young MUD Owner, I believed that. Some nights, I’d get 2 or so hours sleep from working so hard to code in new things. Only to be told that it just wasn’t enough or it was too late, they had gotten bored and moved on. Poor experiences with players leads most Owners to shut down their game, don’t think I haven’t thought of it. It is very, very painful to see players selfishly thrash your game and then leave.

It also demands to be said that most players don’t care if the game they play lives or dies. We would benefit greatly from players simply going to our homepage and voting for us to keep a higher rank on TMC and attract more players and possible Immortal hires. A simply task that shows there is some care there but even that is asking too much. A friend of mine who gave up his MUD, after putting in a lot of care and making it fairly fun told me once, “What’s the point of spending 20 hours coding in something amazing when no one is going to see it?” I truly empathize with him.

My last rant on players is a simple one, don’t bother playing if you can’t stand to wait 2 minutes to see another player. One day, I saw almost 20 different players log in and immediately log out because no one else was on but if they stayed on just a couple more minutes, they would have saw the other person and it would have been a chain reaction. Some players are too impatient and it hurts the state of the game tremendously.

So ends my review. I see a bright future for NarutoMUD but just a lot of bumps along the way. I hope I didn’t offend anyone, as weird as this sounds, I sort of view all the players and Immortals of NarutoMUD as sort of part of a family. I care about you all and really do enjoy giving you a fun experience. I hope we can have more fun times together. Thank you for reading

[Higen]

I enjoyed your review and agreed with much of what you said. And I do agree with you about the player base here. We do have alot of great loyal players, from the time that I have spent here. And also we do have alot of people who whine about things they have no idea about. And I do consider you to be family too, even though I can be a bit of bastard not sticking around.

[Aikou]

Well I don't know how much can be said really but here goes...
After awhile maybe once you've hit 4 or 5 years, and the mud has a huge ammount of rooms and areas (more than now), and there are more permanent things coded in, or a few tweaks made to smooth out playing... (deep breath) ... I'm not complaining about what is done now, but you must always look ahead. Muds grow, the longer its growth, the longer it blooms. I've seen muds just boom, huge pbase, up for 2 days, then, bam, never seen again. I dont think that'll happen to this place, and its why I play here, and offer any help I can. I'll write a review later probably... it might help.

-Aikou

[Kuraudo]

Well to be frank,
Your mud is one of the better muds I've seen the only issue I have is the staff, or lack there of, I'm not saying that I'm ready to become an imm far from it. What the mud is lacking is creativity. The mobprogs I love in this game and you did a wonderful job on setting it up so that the players can interact with the mobs to accomplish great things. But a lot of new players spend alot of time in one area without much reward, myself and abi have been stuck fighting in the hidden forest for over twenty levels now with no new gear to find it's nothing more than leveling up at this point. If there are other areas for new players to level up and get equipmet that we don't know of yet then so be it but we haven't found it yet. I do hate to sound 'Whiney' but one of the big issues I have is the lack of flexibility that I've seen in the staff. There are two ways to take critism, creatively and criticaly. Over all I'd say it's a great mud but still needs a lot of work and I hope that you keep it up. But remember that I find mudding a hoby and I like to have fun while I'm playing. If I'm not having fun then I'll find somewhere else where I can. So far I'm having fun so I'll keep playing.

[Chaos_Advocate]

I must admit, when I first started playing (as Sako), I was pretty damn confused with regards to jutsus and such, but I have to agree with you - if you can't work it out, or at least think to check the forums, actually working out the quests is only going to get more and more difficult... A couple of things annoy me, but there are vastly fewer than the standard amount of things that annoy me on other MUDs that I've tried, and they're only annoying to me personally because of my play style I think = P

So I just wanted to say, all in all, good MUD : )

[Gatz]

Wow...this review is very old from me. I think I'll post a new one up soon, I think. It has been 3 years since I wrote that one. So, it'll be fun to write another.