Perpetr8r the Perpetu8r's BYOND website

Mitadake High is one of those games that sounds great on paper, but fails utterly in execution. Not only does the RP mix with the game's execution like oil mixes with water, but the players themselves are often not willing to contribute, causing the game to suffer from what I call "Space Station 13 Syndrome" and break down into a mess of random killing and insult fights.

So why does this happen? Well simply put, MH carries within it the seeds of its own downfall. The game's creator spent a lot of time making a game where there were many opportunities to RP, and many different scenarios could be formed that would provide enjoyable gameplay to all. He also, unfortunately, undid all of his hard work by creating a bunch of pointless, game-breaking weapons and hiding them in specific locations that you could only find if you knew where they were OOC-ly. This in itself is an open invitation to all would-be griefers (see SS13), and more or less provides the groundwork for a disappointing RP experience to come.

"Space Station 13" syndrome (named after the game where this type of behavior runs rampant), is what usually happens very quickly after the game starts. Instead of bothering to play properly, experienced players with a chip on their shoulder (read: noobs) will go off, seek out all the best items on the map, arm themselves to the teeth with said weapons, and then roam the hallways in gangs or alone, bashing everyone they meet to death. It's affectionately termed "Random Killing" in the world of MH, and understandably, upsets most of the good RPers. What's worse is that due to the miraculous inability of most hosts to actually do their job and ban these people, it creates an artifical power hierarchy, where the killers become idolized for their power and others will flock to their side so as to prevent being killed over and over again. Without a stong system of authority, these players will rule with an iron fist, killing and sparing whoever they please with nobody to stop them. In an ironic twist, it's exactly how MH was meant to be played, minus the complete lack of roleplay.

Now, I could go on for pages about the hosts not doing their jobs, but this is a review about the game, not about the morons who play it. Game-breaking weapon exploitation aside, there are other areas where MH lets itself down into an even greater spiral of incompetence.

First and foremost of these is that the game essentially sets itself up to be a random brawler rather than an RP. Yes, it's a survival game, but when half the students in the school apparently keep knives in their desks and it's a common occurrence to find meat cleavers and syringes in the bins, you know that death and stabbing is just around the corner. It's also important to note that there are only a few items NOT related to combat, and these items are largely useless (such as the flashlight or the ketchup bottle).

Secondly, the game doesn't clearly define the limits of people's knowledge with regards to the RP, and some take this as an excuse to more or less know "everything". Players in "Death Note" mode will demand to search everyone in sight with no valid reason (and of course will freak if they find a death note), or start stabbing or be suspicious of anyone who they catch writing, regardless of the fact that they don't have any reason to worry RP-wise. The truth of the matter is that in DN mode, Kira should have pretty much no trouble killing everyone, since there's no valid RP reason why students would withhold their names from each other. I illustrated that in a comic for this game, as seen below:




Of course, the reality of this is much different. Nobody wants to be a victim, especially when dying means you float around as a ghost for up to an hour, watching the living people have fun while all you can do is chat. It's boring, after all, so people essentially cheat and make up excuses to make Kira's job almost impossible. What this means is that the death note is utterly useless in anyone's hands except for the "shinigami eyes" player, who can see everyone's names. However, that player and Kira rarely meet, because there's no easy way of distinguishing who's who without making everyone suspicious. So in the end, it's only a matter of time before the RP ends and the RK starts.

Thirdly, the entire RP element suffers from enormous plot holes. Let me demonstrate by pointing out the premise here: This is supposedly a normal high school, yet only one teacher exists on campus. One. This teacher is apparently a superhero, because she must somehow teach in like 8 different classrooms simultaneously. When she dies (kryptonite?), the super advanced computerized system of Mitadake High locks the school down and presumably cuts the phone lines too, since checking the phones in the game will always result in the same message ("It's dead."). Clearly, its more imporant to prevent the killer from ordering pizza than it is to prevent him from killing off the rest of the students.

Apparently not satisfied with this level of plot devastation, the plot then goes on to point out that students all carry around high-tech PDAs which have a range of useful functions, but nobody bothered to bring a cellphone to school with which they can call the police. That's ok, at least everyone brought glow sticks, smoke bombs, syringes and knives! Wait, what?

Not only this, but the school's total lockdown can be overridden with a security card (found randomly inside student's desks for no apparent reason), but it won't let you leave unless you take the card with you, meaning only two students in the entire school can leave (until 24 hours have passed, in which case the system changes its mind and lets everyone out, thereby completely ruining the point of locking the school down in the first place). The cards are apparently issued on an honor system basis, where the killer's own guilt will prevent him from using one of those cards to leave the screaming, angsty bloodbath behind him long before "help" can arrive. Oh yeah, and nobody is allowed to use the vending machines after 4PM. So take that, killer!

The only way ANY of that makes sense is if all of the students are secretly part of some top secret scientific experiment and the sophisticated Mitadake High AI is actually the real killer. Since it's highly implausible (despite video 'evidence') that a student would kill the only teacher, get rid of the murder weapon and then teleport back to class before anyone actually notices he was gone, it can only be explained that all of the "students" (test subjects) are brainwashed by neurotoxins fed to them via the vending machines (before 4PM obviously). The only thing missing from this theory is (aside from a portal gun) is a creepy, mechanical female voice that announces random things while students wander the halls. OH WAIT, THERE IS ONE.

As a final slap to the face, the big security doors that lead to "freedom" probably just lead to a firing squad to pick of any survivors who make it out alive so that nobody can ever live to tell of the bloodbath that was Mitadake High.

Of course, Death Note mode totally ruins that theory, so we'll just assume that Kira is in on it and he's given the note to a "student" just for laughs while he secretly watches them all from the AI's master control room.

I could go on, but I think you get the point about the plot by now. Long story short, the plot makes no sense, and the players' unwillingess to get slaughtered for the sake of RP often leads to random dashes for the bat room or people slinking off to find an alondite so they can go wave their phallic symbol around and pretend that slaughtering other players' characters can fill the void in their life where social skills should be.

Getting back the the review here, the last feature that fails the game is the custom map maker. While in the right hands this could be an excellent tool for extending the RP, more often than not it simply leads to arena-based maps where the RP is totally stripped away and all that's left is the killing-each-other part. Either that or maps where people think it's cool to put like 40 alondites and 8 death notes around the place and see how long it takes everyone to kill each other.

So in the end, this game starts up with a great premise but then trips over its own oversized shoes and falls on its face. With proper rules, better maps, and no freaking super weapons, the game CAN provide decent RP grounds, but the list of requirements for this to happen is very strict and the people who can pull that off are few and far between. In the end, Mitadake High is a lukewarm RP experience at best, and a random free-for-all brawl at worst. If you're looking for a good RP, keep looking, 'cause this isn't it. However, if you're looking for a game that undulates wildly between RP and slaughter, then you might just have some fun.



Edit: Cavern has pointed out to me that I didn't really touch on the good points of the game (which there clearly must be since I didn't give everything a 0). It's a valid point, so let me quickly paraphrase what I DID enjoy about Mitadake High.

Firstly, the graphics are very nice and the interface is quite well-designed. This makes picking up the game quite easy, even for newer players, though mastery of those controls is a separate matter. Attacking is a simple matter of equipping an item and clicking on someone next to you, and most of the controls are again a simple click interface. My main complaint is that there's about 3 different tabs which the controls are separated into, making it hard to do more than one specific thing at a time (ie you can't keep an eye on your energy while reading your PDA messages. That sort of thing).

Secondly, RP, while rare, does happen, and it happens more often than on say... SS13. When you get in a good RP, a game can be almost total junk and it's an enjoyable experience simply because of the interaction with other literate players. However, since the game's many imbalances reduce RP opportunity a lot, I didn't want to stress the RP factor very much.

Thirdly, and probably the reason I keep coming back, is the immersion. The custom-made maps often lack the realism of the default one, but the default map itself has a pretty much fully-furnished school, even if most of it is kind of pointless. The upside to this of course is that it provides a rich environment for RP fans to flesh out their own little stories.

And lastly, though broken, sticky, and often frustrating, the combat in the game can occasionally improve the RP experience too, particularly if the good guys win. When you manage to just barely defeat the killer in an axe fight to the death, or narrowly escape the maniacal knife-wielding bozo, you get the added bonus of an adrenaline rush and the ability to limp into the room covered in blood and have fun RPing your injuries.

So yeah. Though not nearly enough to redeem the game from it's frustrating spiral of annoyance, Mitadake High certainly has good points, and if EVERYONE RPed correctly then it would be a fantastic experience. Of course, getting everyone to play along is the tough part...

So, today I discovered that my microwave had a sinister alternate purpose.


It all started innocently enough. First there was the hunger. Innocent hunger. The kind that requires a bag of microwave popcorn to eat. So naturally, being the kind of human being that is capable of feeding himself in times of need, I retrieved the last bag of popcorn and placed it in the microwave.

Right on top of the arcane summoning circle!
Now see, I didn't know that a cult had broken into my house to paint arcane symbols in my microwave late at night, and if I had, it would only have served to confuse the hell out of me. However, that's apparently what heppened, because I have no other explanation for the phenomena which followed.

Still blissfully unaware of my impending doom, I keyed in the microwave time needed: 1:30. Everything started off just fine - the microwave buzzed to life, the little turntable started turning, and I began digging through some drawers to find something to put the popcorn in. Then suddenly, disaster struck!

The soft buzz of the microwave loudened to just short of a deafening roar, and the room was filled with an unearthly light. I spun around and to my surprise it appeared that a gate had opened up to the lower planes INSIDE MY MICROWAVE! Fire spewed forth from the wall as though the plane beyond were bathed in perpetual fire. I could have sworn I heard screams and pained moans faintly in the distance as the flames burst through the seemingly corporal metal.

Near-frozen by fear, it was all I could to do shield my reproductive organs from the microwave's surely-unchecked radiation, using the metal bowl that was originally going to have been for popcorn. Briefly the idea of shutting the thing off at the power source came to mind, but the plug was right next to the microwave, and there was no way I was going to walk any closer to THAT eldritch device! To my horror, a head began to materialize in the flames, speaking tongues that had not been heard in many millenia. It's one baleful eye glared at me with cyclopean malice, as its red skin crackled but did not burn in the searing flames of the microwave.

Eventually one dialect reached my ears that sounded vaguely human, and this seemed to be what it said: "At last, I am freed from my prison in the underworld! Soon, I shall emerge from this portal and destroy everything! All hail Glythnyllygyzzzyxxxthstn!" (Don't look at me, I can't pronounce it either...) Fortunately for me, the demon had only managed to manifest its head, and so there was still time. Desperately, I glanced at the power point, hoping to sever its connection to this plane before it could pull any more of its body through, but thoughts of microwave-based sterilization came to mind and I stayed put.

Yet, I had forgotten one crucial thing, which the demon also was not aware of (Not surprisingly, since he'd probably been trapped down there centuries). The microwave was on a timer, and that timer had barely 5 seconds left. Suddenly, it shut off and his one eye widened in horror as he realized what was about to happen. Sure enough, the dastardly red flame vanished, as did the portal, severing his head from his body. His mouth opened in a soundless scream as it blackened and bubbled, hissing and spitting away until all that remained of it was a shapeless black lump stuck to the microwave's inner frame.

Needless to say, I threw the thing out and silently cursed whatever cultists did this to it. Ironically, the popcorn bag was still unpopped, though I'm pretty sure it would have measured pretty highly on a geiger counter, so I threw that out too.

Maybe I'll stick to cup-o-soups or something...

(P.S. This is based on a true story... my microwave really did go up in flames for some reason, but no demon heads came out, thankfully!)

Warning, this blog post contains the occasional use of profanity.

Ok so recently I had a friend of mine comment on the lack of response to his issues over here. It seems apparently that someone basically created an account to spam up Nova's (and possibly other's) blog, and when it was reported, the BYOND staff responded with a resounding "Meh.". Nova feels that maybe the BYOND staff are lazy, and I thought "Well hey, this is a good target for another of my posts."

Now, I see this from both perspectives here, being the owner and very busy GM of an already quite popular game, and at the same time, an end user of BYOND. From the viewpoint of someone who already has a lot to look after, a simple help post could easily be overlooked in the constant onslaught of morons who feel the desperate need to demand a staff member's attention over trivial matters like "I GAVE OUT MY SRC CODE TO X AND HE STOLE IT AND MADE HIS OWN GAME.", where the casual response of "No shit, sherlock." would pretty much sum up the help they are going to get.

It's annoying, and most staff members of anything are going to overlook badly-worded help posts when they come in the hundreds like these do, and when a real issue, such as Nova's comes up, it may not be treated as seriously due to the actions of all the morons who use BYOND. However, there is always the chance that some staff member looked at it, went "Well go delete his posts (and it's always a guy!) then." and went off to watch TV and eat popcorn balls. In that case, we may have an issue.

As Nova brought up semi-privately to the PRPR community, he's a BYOND member. He pays $15 a year, and one of the benefits of that is that he gets his own blog space where he can speak his mind and pretty much put anything he wants there (bar the usual stuff that people aren't allowed to post anywhere), and this service is provided by BYOND. Do they not have a responsibility to ensure that their paying members aren't being harassed by noobs who
A) Don't pay for anything and
B) Are quite obviously solely there to make everyone's life hard?

I mean, as a GM on my game, I come down hard on players who log in to spam up the game or to insult or be hateful towards other players. I provide that service FREE of charge too, because I feel that it's my responsibility as the moderator of the game to ensure that the good players aren't driven away by a hate-storm. And besides, it's a senseless act of hate, just like racism or sexism or homophobia. What moderator in their right mind would be supportive of that?

Ignorance is one thing. Purposefully choosing inaction in a situation that clearly is unjust - especially when you are one of the few who could actually make a difference - is just wrong.

There are so many reasons why one would step in and support Nova here. Firstly, he's a PAYING member. Thanks to people like him, this place is still running. Why WOULDN'T you help someone who clearly is doing the right thing and is a contributive part of the BYOND community - a key part in YOUR machine? Secondly, it's obviously a case of wrong vs right here. We have someone who was minding their own business and some jerk came in and just spammed Nova's personal space with all manner of profanity and irrelevance. Lastly, if BYOND wants to have any pride as a community, things like this should be a big deal. If you choose to let members (or even worse - NON-members) go around doing stupid shit like that, then you are indeed going to bring the entire community down, because then it sets a precedent of negligence and abuse which will eventually spread.

Mark my words - I was right about the whoring out for rank business and I am right about this. While an isolated incident isn't much of an issue, BYOND can't keep turning a blind eye to this kind of thing. I would like to see the issue resolved in an appropriate way by a responsible staff member who respects their position. Surely there are some left?

I would hope that I've been putting my time and money into a community that will support me just as I support them. Anyway, that's my two cents. What's yours?

XD Whatever you do, don't take this blog post too seriously. It's a synopsis for the first Harry Potter book. (Naturally, I'm bored enough to think this stuff up)

"Harry Potter is a book about a young teenage boy who discovers he can create a magical feeling by playing with his wand. He is joined by friends Ron and Hermione who also have wands to play with (this explains much about Hermione's personality) and together they go on an adventure to a fantastic school to learn how to play with their wands safely without putting someone's eye out.

Harry's first encounter with wands is thanks to a big hairy man named Hagrid, who shows Harry that a short, pink and flabby wand can work just as well as a long, black one. After some misadventures in an old shack with Harry's foster family, Hagrid takes our young hero to a pub and then out the back where Hagrid uses his want to introduce Harry to the land of magic for the first time.

During this encounter, Harry learns that people who play with their wands have formed a secret society and call themselves "wizards" and "witches". In this society, safe from the accusatory glances of the wandless, (or "muggles" as they are known in magic land) witches and wizards can play with their wands in public, and even study and develop the arts of wand use further!

Harry is sent to study at the prestigious Hogwarts Academy, where the headmaster Dumbledore shows Harry that even old wands still work if used right. In fact, Dumbledore is SO good at wand usage that he is widely known as the best "wizard" around. Harry secretly hopes to someday claim that title as his own, but he has a long way to go before his magical feelings mature enough for that.

There is a dark side to the land of "witches" and "wizards" however. The evil "wizard" Voldemort has wand envy of Harry and has been trying to take away Harry's magical feelings ever since Harry was just a defenseless baby! Fortunately for Harry, his mom was an even better "witch" than Voldemort and she turned his own wand against him, causing Voldemort to spray himself with his own terrible essence. Voldemort was weakened for a long time after that, unable to even do so much as lift his wand at Harry, and thus Harry was safe to live his life. UNTIL NOW.

Voldemort has returned, and this time he intends to make sure that Harry can never play with his wand ever again. History repeats itself and Voldemort's wand will once again rise to try and puncture Harry's innocence, and only Harry himself can possibly stop this new menace from bursting the fragile membrane of joy that he holds so dear.

Will he succeed? Only time will tell..."

I promised I'd do one, so here it is: basically just an updated version of my hosted file which details a little of the things I programmed for PRPR. It's not much, but I like to keep a bit of the mystery rather than tell you EVERYTHING that's going to be released when the update is done. Either way, things are looking really good.

If I keep up this pace, good things are possible in the near future. Don't wanna say too much yet ;)