It's Not Just a Game |------[ http://www.retromud.org ]------| It's an ATTITUDE

6 Planets. 60 Races. 1,000 Skills & Spells. Infinite Possibilities.

1. Sermon MUD seeks playtesters!	rate thread hide Raw Rating: 3.33 3 rating votes to-date You have not rated this thread Useless Poor Average Good Useful	Mon Jul 21, 2008 [11:47 PM]
slackjaw Email not supplied member since: Jun 10, 2008		Reply
Sermon MUD is now seeking playtesters to make run throughs as player-characters in the MUD, and give creative criticism. Sermon MUD itself is based in ROT code. We do not boast too much as of yet, and levels seem to top out between 10 and 13 depending on your race and class. Sermon -does- have all non-stock races, which need testing as well. The newbie zone can take a character between levels 4 and 6, and there are two shops, for armor and weapons and I will also have an 'accessories parlor' coming soon to buy cool and expensive trinkets such as wands, staves and tattoos. (Yeah, tattoos!) If your interested, please visit our site which contains a bit of info about the MUD itself, and our telnet address (its on the first page. Thanks! Hope to see you there! (Comment added by slackjaw on Tue Jul 22 16:10:50 2008) Whhops, EDIT! www.freewebs.com/sermonmud The addy is on the first page on the site.

2. RE: Sermon MUD seeks playtesters!	rate thread hide Raw Rating: 3.33 3 rating votes to-date You have not rated this thread Useless Poor Average Good Useful	Tue Jul 22, 2008 [7:44 AM]
synorel Email not supplied member since: Mar 13, 2002		In Reply To Reply
It might help to include either the address or the website in this thread, as you havent. That being said a few comments on your game. First of all, custom races are fine and all but having no description or help file for them is really annoying. I had no idea what any of your races actually were, or what kind of benefit if any there were to being a particular one. Second, add some definition to your alignments please, I'm not exactly sure what they mean and there was no description to fill in the blank at all. Third, your newbie area really didn't help acclimate me at all to your game, it's story, or what I was doing. The first few enemies in the beginning were easily beating me and you left the stock maps and things at load for a character which is confusing. Fourth, again, theres really no information inside the game about whats going on, where to go, what to do, or why. I am guessing this is your biggest problem for getting people to come back as your failing to really hook them into the game at all. Its very difficult to get into a game, or want to come back when you have no idea what your race is, what the story is, or what to do in the newbie area. Fifth, The formatting and color selection leave something to be desired and came off as garish. More description in rooms, and more information on start. -Syn
-Crash the silence for the sake of memory Intrinsic Realities, Owner, Coder

3. RE: Sermon MUD seeks playtesters!	rate thread hide Raw Rating: 3.33 3 rating votes to-date You have not rated this thread Useless Poor Average Good Useful	Tue Jul 22, 2008 [4:12 PM]
slackjaw Email not supplied member since: Jun 10, 2008		In Reply To Reply
How long did you play?

4. RE: Sermon MUD seeks playtesters!	rate thread hide Raw Rating: 3.33 3 rating votes to-date You have not rated this thread Useless Poor Average Good Useful	Tue Jul 22, 2008 [8:11 PM]
synorel Email not supplied member since: Mar 13, 2002		In Reply To Reply
About 10 minutes. It wasn't interesting enough to want to play more. See my above post for why. -Syn
-Crash the silence for the sake of memory Intrinsic Realities, Owner, Coder

5. RE: Sermon MUD seeks playtesters!	rate thread hide Raw Rating: 3.33 3 rating votes to-date You have not rated this thread Useless Poor Average Good Useful	Tue Jul 22, 2008 [10:11 PM]
The_Fury Email not supplied member since: Jun 1, 2008		In Reply To Reply
I will also add some further constructive criticism in regards to your game picking up on some points that Syn missed. In your newbie zone, the formatting of desc's is pretty bad, there seems to be carriage returns after each sentence. One sentence paragraphs is poor form and awfully hard to read. There seems to be no logical flow through the newbie zone and no standardized use of colour, for instance going north from the start room takes you into some help type rooms then east and west of those are totally random elements that dont seem to make sense, the use of colour in the help rooms is distracting as is the explanation commands that dont exist like chatting and newbie. The name SERMON has religious overtones, but the game theme seems to have nothing to do with religion. I wanted to throw rocks at mormons, punch JW's in the face and be able to kick budists in the balls, all the while being indoctrinated by various religious themes, and not have to swim through mountains of Juice Boxes that seem to liter the ground. Starting areas lay the foundation for what is to come, they should introduce you to basic elements of the game and start you on a journey into the story. Anything that does not belong, should be thrown out. I noticed that there are 100's of zones your not using, delete them, all of them and only present content from your story. Also, re-configuring an existing stock area is poor form and not the best way to present your original content, starting in a game called Sermon with sub-issue gear made by merc industries is bad. If merc industries are not part of your story and world, delete them, also that same applies to Thoth and any of the other ROT gods, if they do not belong in your story, remove them. In another thread you have asked about the meanings of Alpha and Beta releases, on the scale of things your about pre pre alpha, forget about players right now and for a good time time to come, concentrate on getting rid of all existing content that has no bearing on your game, and then start to present your content in a cohesive and logical fashion. Design is where you either sink or fail, the more time you spend working out how your going to present game content to players the better off you will be in the long run. Adding 30 races is possibly not a good option either, as this in itself creates many headaches with how to incorporate enough content to make their existence worth while. The same can be said for classes, it does not take long before every class and race becomes just a copy of some other one you have. 8 to 10 classes and races IMO should the the upper limit you should have initially, later on as the game matures you can added others, but supporting more than that initially is going to be a huge undertaking. One last thing, as you add something to the game, add in the help files for those straight away, this will save you a lot of work doing something that is totally boring and will help to those who stop by and play a little from time to time to understand what is going on with the game and how things fit into the story. The Fury.
EldhaMUD Game Developments The_Fury: Lead Developer, Head Coder http://fury.eldhamud2.org

6. RE: Sermon MUD seeks playtesters!	rate thread hide Raw Rating: 3.33 3 rating votes to-date You have not rated this thread Useless Poor Average Good Useful	Wed Jul 23, 2008 [3:16 AM]
slackjaw Email not supplied member since: Jun 10, 2008		In Reply To Reply
I appreciate everyones 10 minute guesstimation and subsequent constructive criticism and I look forward to more people coming in! haha. Thanks!

It's Not Just a Game |------[ http://www.retromud.org ]------| It's an ATTITUDE

6 Planets. 60 Races. 1,000 Skills & Spells. Infinite Possibilities.

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