Hi. Ichike here, founder, owner and coder of World of Naruto MUD, here to update you on a few things that have been going on.
The latest major update
The latest major update was finished in December, that being the completion of the 2 kekkei genkai - Hyoton and Sharingan. Usually when there is a group of code that is completed, I wait to hear feedback about balancing it. Obviously, I want to have Hyoton and Sharingan being equal in power. That doesn't appear to be the case right now, as, by all reports, Sharingan is significantly stronger than Hyoton. However, there don't seem to be any ideas as to how to fix this imbalance. I really would prefer to have this balanced correctly before moving into the next thing.
What I'd like to have in order for it to be balanced
I think that, in order to get to the next stage of World of Naruto MUD balancing is for us to have all 4 major options, i.e. kekkei genkai, surgery, tailed beasts and ultimate weapons. There is no preference for which order to do these, other than which are easier to do, as the MUD won't be balanced until we have all of them in. Based on my current planning, it is easier to do ultimate weapons next. The problem is that it is quite complicated to have the MUD figure out if you have kekkei genkai or not, especially if we have surgery. There is, basically, a hell of a lot of setting up required before we can get anything out there that any players will notice. There was a lot of setup for kekkei genkai, but this will be at least 3 times as much setting up before any players notice anything. As for a time period, I have no idea quite frankly. It depends on how much spare time I have, and how well we can plan it all out. Players can definitely help, if they give tips for how to balance out Sharingan vs Hyoton.
We still need updated directions!
A lot of new players don't realise that this is a player-run MUD, and one of the major parts of that is for PLAYERS to figure out the directions. It makes no logical sense for immortals to figure that out. Players had placed accurate directions as at 3 years ago, but, since immortals changed some of the way that the world looks, some of the directions are now out of date. Quite frankly, it'd take a player about 10 minutes to figure out all of the directions. Considering you get 5 mission points per correct direction you give, it is quite frankly incredible that, to date, nobody has bothered to figure it out. Even more incredible is the fact that some players have complained that they aren't accurate. They certainly are accurate from one area to the next, it is just that from the starting period they are wrong, because the starting point was changed.
Most importantly, we need more honest players
At some point, perhaps 6 months ago, there seems to have been this changed mentality amongst players whereby they think that the game is all about cheating, including abusing immortal accounts, boosting, crashing the MUD and even deleting other player's equipment permanently. This is just simply disgraceful and anyone who is doing that should not be coming on at all. Anyone who does anything like that is not welcome at all. By all means you are welcome to play evil characters and do nasty things like kill players while they are doing missions. But hacking and outright cheating is not good enough. If you want a permanent ban, then go for it. And quite frankly if most players are doing it, then most players should be banned.
The MUD is free to play - remember that!
If you play a game that you pay for, by all means you have a right to call up to complain about how it works. But this MUD is free to play. Not only that, but I have to pay about US $150 per year to keep it going. Now, if some players decide to give me US $50 to help towards keeping the MUD going, by all means you have the right to beg. If not, then it is not appreciated. While occasionally I don't mind polite requests, what we've seen recently is far beyond that. It is just ridiculous. While I don't want to ban people for whinging, it certainly is not appreciated. You play this at your own risk. If you like it, great. If you don't, then that's a pity. If you bug me too much, I will be annoyed at you and will probably ignore you permanently. I won't rule out punishing players for being too annoying though but at present I am holding back on that. I did leave the Facebook group because of it though.
