TMC Player Reviews: Buffy Mud

Review Submitted By: Jay
Author Status: Player
Started on Buffy Mud: 29th August 2007
Submission Date: Sep 13, 2007
TMC Listing: Buffy Mud

The following review is the opinion of the review's author [Jay] and in no way represents the opinions of this website or its staff.

Buffymud is set after the TV show, Sunnydale explodes, then a while
later is mysteriously returned due to magical means to the way it was.
So what the game comes to is good, with the roles of slayers watchers
etc against evil. To be brief, there’s two different sides of the
game, what you see when you’re new under 'newbie protection' and
then the truth of the game once that protection leaves.

The Map
The game is pretty much a single large map. There's about 50
'areas' on this map - such as 'US Army Base,' 'Jordan Cemetery'
and 'The Bronze.' Most areas vary in side, but a significant number
of them are 'boxes' - 40 room areas of nswe exits with ‘aggro’
NPC's wandering around. Despite the game being open for over 3 years,
only a few streets (3 out of maybe 12) and perhaps 20 percent of the
‘areas’ have descriptions, everything else just room names. I feel
this is just shooting itself in the foot, as one of the better things
is the 'motorbike' riding code which unfortunately becomes little
more than a hassle when you’re repeatedly crashing into walls because
the streets suddenly come to an end without any warning. Additionally,
there are also bugs where you just enter a room and are left with
absolutely no exits to leave and are trapped until you’re randomly
attacked and get sent to hospital.

Despite this large(ish) map there is only really a single place
people can ‘hang out’. The Bronze, the bar which is one of the
two areas in the game (the other being your bought home) where you can
heal. Overall I’d say that from my experience that trying to rp
anywhere else except from those two places is essentially a death (or
at least hospitalization) sentence.

Levelling and Skills
There is actual reason to leave the bar however, as your character is
given random tasks to perform - missions. Completing these missions.
(get this item, give it to someone, go somewhere and kill something)
as well as XP for killing NPCs. This XP then goes into a pool which
you can go spend on your skills. Nice, in theory. From what I have
seen, however, the missions don’t really 'scale' up as you increase
in level, in difficulty or in rewards, meaning that relatively early
on (level 30 where the newbie cutoff is around 14-18) you become stuck
with a slog to gain one additional stat point as the XP amounts to
gain new skills increases.

The other major thing about levelling is supposed to be something
called 'nemesis events.' Again, it’s something nice in theory, every
player is assigned an NPC nemesis who about 3-4 times a day does a
plot that you’re supposed to stop. However, again, the implementation
is very poor. The ‘reason’ of going to stop them is supposed to be
‘double exp’ NPCs to kill thereby making it easier to level. In my
experience, the NPC’s give less XP than normal ones. Aside from that,
you’re basically ‘punished’ for not completing these events which
range from having most of your money stolen, to making every npc in
the game attack you, to a super demon attacking you, not only beating
you, but then following to attack you again and again until it
eventually dies. For example, a few days ago this ‘rampaging demon’
kept killing me and bouncing me from hospital ward to ward to ward -
It could be funny, but it was also really quite depressing after 2
hours. To avoid all this you need to complete the event, which is
random when it occurs and only actually gives you less than 30mins to
do them - which includes having to go to the library, find the
location where they are, travel to the area without getting too badly
beat up, then actually having to explore a 40 room (undesc-ed) area
looking for an entrance to the lair. A lot of work, for very little
gain.

A recurring theme is needless complexity - someone mentioned in a
review from near 18 months ago and would appear to have had little
change. I’ll refer you to that review for the martial arts system - it
hasn’t changed. A 2nd example is in ‘techniques’ - think of it as
special moves, where you need to travel to an area to gain a random
technique, travel back home, sell that technique to buy a ‘tech point’
to use that point to buy a technique you want and then level that
technique, which is about 6 or so steps and a huge help file when you
could simply just gain tech points to spend.

Races and Classes
There are a 4 races to choose from (human, vampire, half-demon,
demon) and a number of classes - witch, slayer (girls only), soldier,
watcher etc. The classes appear to be ‘statistically’ balanced
however, the maths have little resemblance to the reality. In game,
true to the show, basic humans are little more than targets to all the
‘cool’ demons and vampires, with the vast majority of full humans (I
think there were 3 full humans in the game that I’ve seen, including
me, who weren’t female slayers), however, ‘true to the show’ or not,
it does not make a particularly fun game. Additionally, in my
experience, anyone who actually IS human, gets ‘sired’ at the drop of
a hat - including the slayers.

Balance and gameplay
The game, being based on Buffy is quite obviously split into two
sides - Good versus Evil. To great misfortune, there is another term
for it, from what I’ve seen, 'newbies Vs everyone else.' The players
in the game ARE helpful - when you first join it - which essentially
lures you into the game. Then, about level 6 the NPC’s who roam the
streets (not even ‘aggro’ areas), all decide to attack you at once,
resulting in hours on end of getting sent to hospital, standing up,
leaving, getting sent to hospital again, standing up, leaving, getting
sent to hospital again. - It was almost enough to make me quit - if I
could live long enough to get to my house to actually quit out. Then,
once newbie protection is over (which stops you from being attacked by
PCs), the players become... less helpful and instead of being attacked
by NPC’s, you get to be a punching bag for them now, all of whom are
Veteran players of the game with such highly thought out reasons like,
'I felt like being randomly violent' and 'I was bored' - what is
worse, is that the game rules actively encourage such things, even
stating in the 'evil characters' rules that if you don’t go around
doing things like that, you aren’t evil enough. Again, accurate to the
show, in theory. Practically... It means that the many new players
plan on quitting - I saw one go the day I posted this, or simply just
‘go evil’ which again compounds the problem on a game who’s max people
online at any time is 14. This has essentially resulted in there being
perhaps... 2 experienced ‘good players’ who basically keep to
themselves, and a horde of newbies who try their best, but are, again,
nothing more than punching bags to the evil ‘more experienced’ players
and if you read one of the main game helpfiles called ‘help merit’ you
will see that that is exactly how the game owner intended it.

'The reason we wanted levelling to be a factor over just like emote
count, is people enjoy RPing, they don't enjoy levelling, so
levelling involves an actual sacrifice of time in order to gain
power.'

So, even though it tricks you into thinking that it's a rp game,
it's all about who's got the best stats and if you don't, you're
all but useless.

Player attitudes and RP
Well, I’ve touched on it above, but it really is a major thing thing
that deserves it’s own section. The definition of proper RP for most
of the player base is new ways to torture people ( the same for the
‘good’ players too). Favoritism was in an earlier review, however, I
didn’t see any of it now - mainly because I don’t think I saw a single
visible staff member in the entire two weeks I have been playing. That
is, assuming - and this actually happened in game - 'Angry pixies
invade they toss Molotov acorns at you, burning you horribly' was a
player run ‘event’ and not a staff member. So, overall, I would not
say that there is ‘favoritism’ as such - mainly because I’ve simply
never seen a staffmember, but there is most certainly elitism. 

The
game has, as another review said, basically done a ‘ban’ on all OOC
communication in the game, but of course, all the longer term players
essentially know who each other is at a glance and then act and react
accordingly thereby not wanting to annoy the people they’ve played
with in the past. There is also things called ‘reroll’ and recreations
which help make older players' lives easier it results in if someone
gains ascendance, they’re going to stay there. And as it’s more
'fun' and less 'boring' and less stressful being evil than good it
again, inevitably means that the ‘balance’ of good vs evil goes all to
heck.

Summary
Despite the games initial appearances of openness it is ultimately
still a Very insular and closed game player-wise, the primary reason
I’m considering continuing to play is the presence of a small number
of other new players who I’ve met that haven’t yet given up the game
in spite of the game veterans.

The game does have some interesting features - the mission code which
rewards exploration, the bike code, but there is also a significant
sense of, well, lazyness in the games construction that can often
threaten to overshadow any enjoyment one might gain from it. There is
very little actual written material for you in game. - There are
actually no helpfiles explaining to you what the symbols on the prompt
meant. The new player ‘academy’ is about I think 4 rooms in size. To
have the vaguest idea how to play the game you need to look at first
the game, then website, then the forums, then ask the players (who as
I said, only help you until the game starts allowing them to beat you
up) and even having to look at photobucket to find your way around the
game.

Overall, I would only really recommend this as a game to someone to
play it in order to appreciate how good other games are.