Ok, first off I'm going to try very hard not to start a childish flamewar but I feel that a recent review about our mud deserves a response. The review was by a former player who went by the name of "Catta" on The Dragon's Den. If you like you can see the review itself by pasting this link:
Anyhow it is my intention to simply rebuke Catta's review on the merits alone and not involve personal thoughts or feelings about Catta.
1) This is a smaller mud with about 5k rooms.
Yes the size is approximately right. We do not open 200+ room areas. We open 10 - 50 room areas. We do this because we believe in making our areas dense, complex, and very in depth.
2) The (sic) are constantly changing the key elements of play.
I don't know exactly what her contention is or if it is a sweeping statement, but I will address a few things about changes. We do from time to time make changes to how the game is played. This is done for a few reasons. Balance, to correct obvious and large flaws, and sometimes just to throw a curve at the players. I'm certain that it is a difficult pill to swallow for a player when something like how quests are calaculated gets changed and you suddenly need more quest
points than you had before. Then is when we get the feedback about "this sucks", or "this is so unfair." But when we changed things and made experience much much easier to get there was nary a word said. Whatever she, or anyone has a problem with us having changed it should be addressed
with the wizards and gods of the mud that is the only way an issue like that gets taken under consideration.
3) The code is sloppy and some things do not work at all.
Well first off I'll assume that Catta refers to bugs since she had no access to the code itself. Any mud out there has bugs, more than we'd all like to admit to being there. Dragon's Den is certainly no exception. Now we could go through in a matter of a few hours and fix virtually every bug we have infecting our code, but it would be a patch and not a true fix to the problems. So rather than fixing every bug that gets reported up with a quick band-aid we make an attempt to
actually fully investigate and correct all levels of the code on some of the bugs, while other bugs we do apply "band-aids" to. It's a selective process and yes more often we should address bugs that we don't but we do address the ones that are most relevant, and not always relevant from a players point of view either.
3) The 4 guilds are highly flawed, and the promise for new ones has yet to be met.
Yes the guilds need work, or rather the mud is in dire need of new guilds. Those are being coded and tested. There has never been a promise of new ones delivered by any certain time, or even any timeframe. Where Catta got the idea that there was I have no idea. Also to address the four current guilds they are not highly flawed, but they are unbalanced. Over the years the rest of the mud has progressed, but the guilds have often been left behind. Rather than putting any
discernable effort into the current guilds we have choosen to focus on new ones, and new areas.
4) The realm is haphazardly placed together with no real geography.It is more a collection of free floating mini-areas.There are many dead ends on this mud.
Yes and no... this statement is partially true. Currently the muds realms, and domains are lacking cohesion, but as new areas are phased in to overtake the old a concerted effort is being made to "tighten" things up. This takes time, especially when you consider our areas sometimes take 3+ months to be approved for inclusion into the game. I am at a loss for what is meant by "There are many dead ends on this mud" so as much as I'd like to I can't begin to address that.
5) The admin. is distant and out of touch for the most part.
Being part of the staff I will only briefly address this issue and allow our players to engage it more fully if they see fit. Yes the admin and staff is probably more out of touch than we should be, but we are not distant or unfriendly. In fact we make every effort to engage the players on one level or another, but we do try our best to seperate our friendliness with players from their gameplay. This no doubt gives us an appearance of disregard for what happens and the way our
players feel about how things are done. Nothing could be further from the truth but we do not have a majority rules system in place. So just because 99% of the players complain about something does not mean we will change it to suit their tastes.
6) Dragon's Den can be a guessing game when it comes to finding the correct syntax for the command.
Yes it can be. This is by design. We've stripped out the all to common 'search' command (in fact we have totally banned its usage) that can be found on so many different muds. And we most certainly do go out of our way to make syntax difficult. This to is by design. Why? Because if you can stick with our syntax and do well then you are likely fairly intelligent. We openly seek this kind of player out.
7) The help files are out of date and not very well written.
The help files are being rewritten but it takes time. Keep in mind like other muds Dragon's Den has a volunteer staff and while we have built and maintain the mud for the players they do not take precidence in our lives.
8) Many users consider this a chat room with monsters.
Yes, many do. And if you are a hardcore roleplaying type I would suggest you look elsewhere for your mudding fix.
9) Unfortunatly this game falls flat and lifeless in the end.
I would be interested to hear exactly what Catta means by this statement. If she means that eventually you max out and have very few options left then yes she is correct in that assertion. That exact issue is being addressed by the new guilds. It is addressed by the constant influx of new areas and ideas. Dragon's Den has players that have been around and playing actively for 10+ years. They do not find it to be "lifeless and flat", though I'm sure there are those who do.
10) The best thing about this mud has been the players.
Seeing as that a mud is all about the players then this is quite a compliment. I realize the intention of this statement was to in effect say "The staff sucks, but the players are pretty cool" and if that is Catta's feeling on the issue then so be it. However I would say that she should take into consideration the role she played in her own self inflicted demise. I won't go
into the details but she often broke rules, abused newbies, and was just generally not a pleasant player to have on the game in many instances. She was well known for insulting fellow players and staff and for a long time getting away with it. When the issue was addressed she held out for a short time then suicided.
I apologize to anyone who saw this as a senseless rebuttal or anyone who might have been offended by it even being here, but it was something that had to be done. Of course Catta is more than welcome to reply but I do ask she keep it civil.
~cayn~ aka chaos@dden
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