Perpetr8r the Perpetu8r's BYOND website

So... I never really post much on here these days. I HAVE been recently active, (see my review for Space Station 13) just not on here. The reason being of course is that I have more than enough going on in my life as is, without needing to pander to the strange creatures that lurk about my blog like bloated flies on a fresh carcass.

Nevertheless, I have decided to update this briefly just so that said flies could have some fresh meat to spit digestive juices onto before sucking them back up again. Yum. God, see this is what happens when I write a blog at 1 AM. I hope you're all happy. I'm going to bed now before it gets worse.

Maybe soon I'll outline some more of my plans for the ever-elusive PRPR update :P

Well lately I've been playing The World R:2, and I decided it was high time to let the gaming community know what I think of it (since my opinion is SOOOOO important ;P).

I have separated my review into two sections: Congrats and Whinges (C&W for short). I'll start with the congrats, firstly because there are less of them and secondly because I still like the game and I want people to look at the good before the bad.

-CONGRATS-
RP. The game is an RPers heaven, because it's overrun by PKs and secrets. The game is expansive, and offers little info on how to play, so there is always something to be discovered or a person to aim to beat. The chaos gate allows you to train in many different locations, and it spreads the player base out a bit, which means you don't always level up in the same places as other people (good for avoiding PKs).

Now being a big secret fan, this game really appeals to me. Anyone who has read the manga or watched the anime will know that The World is supposed to have a lot of secrets. This game emulates that fairly well. I've seen the Twilight Key (in use by a GM), epitaph users and secret weapons floating in the middle of nowhere. And I'm told I haven't discovered everything yet, which keeps my eyes open and my senses keen.

Levelling system is surprisingly easy, provided you aren't PKed or killed whilst levelling up. Some monsters give excellent exp, and are easy to kill, which means if you camp them you're sure to level up nice and fast. Once you get past level 20 you get another levelling spurt, which normally takes you up past level 30 easily. Then you REALLY kick other player's asses when they mess with you.

As for the game interface, HP and SP are easily visible, and once you macro the attack command its as simple as pressing a button to kick butt. The skills are all available through a stat menu (for some reason), but at least it makes them easy to access. Shops appear in a similar tab, and the chaos gates are operated through clicking, which is easy enough. All in all, it doesn't take long to settle into the controls and move on.

Finally, items don't play such a big part in the game, so you don't have to worry about collecting a heap of money to get the awesome weapons or whatever. This is a good thing, since the PKing system pretty much screws you over on the money front. More on that in the whinges section, which is next.

-WHINGES-
Ugh, where do I start? Actually that IS a good start (the beginning). You begin the game in town, and you have no idea about anything. There's no help menu so of course you have to blunder your way through the controls until you work it out. It took me 3 levels to realize I had to equip my weapon (by single clicking it), and a further 20 levels before someone told me the shop appears in the stats bar. Really, how do they expect people to guess that, when there's already like FIVE stat menus?

Ok the first thing that I found, and also my greatest discontent with the game, is the whole PK system. I was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed newbie, and gaining levels fast because I get the hang of things quick when lo and behold, a level like... 20 logs on. And what do they do? Why they procede to spam kill everyone in the vicinity, and anyone who comes back to the only spot that newbies CAN level up. Well great. I wasn't pleased already but I can handle a little PK. After all, player versus player never takes exp or anything since you can't always control it, right?

WRONG! By some pitiful programming mishandling, being PKed not only causes you to lose HALF OF YOUR CURRENT EXP, it also give the PKer HALF OF YOUR GOLD! And of course, newbies are given $1500 to start with and nothing to spend it on, so what do you think happens? Yep, the veteran players log in, "harvest" all the newbies, then buy super power-ups with their ill-gotten gains, making them even more untouchable! This is of course, from ANY decent programmer's point of view, unbalanced and easily exploited and should be fixed, right?

Wrong again... and I bet you saw THAT one coming. No, in fact they hide behind the excuse that it's based on .hack and is supposed to be like that. Well ok, I'll go out on a programming limb and say it's ok for high-level players to TOTALLY CUT OFF ALL LEVELLING FOR NEWBIES, but even on that extreme, adding an exp and gold penalty is just beyond stupid. I mean really, you might as well just give everyone ELSE money when a newbie logs in for all the good the gold does them!

And are there places to store your gold or items so they are safe from PKs? Nope. You have to keep ALL of your items with you, and oh did I forget to mention that when you die the PK ALSO gets to take one of your unequipped items? Bye bye armor you just saved up for and bought. PK gets shiny new breastplate because he just happens to be a higher level. It's beyond retarded and just makes the game creator look like a total noob. His refusal to fix it makes him look even MORE noobish, and it's just... gah!

In order to simply survive in that game I've had to use all of my skills and wit to AVOID the PKers I can do nothing about, while still trying to get strong enough to surpass them and turn the tables. Now that may sound fun but it's really not. It's like playing a game of chasey with your legs tied together. Oh sure, it's a great CHALLENGE, but falling on your face aint fun, especially when it happens OVER and OVER and all you're trying to to is just play the damn game! Out of everything, I suspect this whole PK mishap is most of what's keeping the game from being really popular.

What else? Um... the levelling system, though very easy, can be disrupted big-time, say, by someone camping out the area where the good exp monsters are. Or even better, a PK yoinking HALF of your hard-earned exp and money to use to further their own personal cause -_-. Yeah I'm going to whine about PKs every chance I get from now on, and I've totally earned it, since I've FOUGHT TOOTH AND NAIL to be their level and be able to PK back. Anyway, a PK infested map or just simply overpopulation (like 4 people in one area is very easily too much, yet another shortcoming of the map) can stretch the time it takes to level up from 5 mins to 2 and a half hours. Ouch.

Saving. There's no auto save, so if for some reason the game blows up then you're thoroughly screwed unless you saved recently... and the only place to save is in town for some reason. Or say you get the login bug and suddenly you find yourself staring at a black screen and know that you've just lost that rare item you collected because of a bug. Hooray. Oh the upside is that it saves whenever you are PKed and your item is taken! Isn't that great? Oh wait... NO IT ISN'T.

Training areas are too small. PKs are REWARDED for doing shit-all! SP attacks do pathetic damage much of the time. Some classes are just awesome and others are pitiful. PKs are REWARDED for doing shit-all! Monsters vary wildly, from things that can be killed easily for enormous exp, to things that are damn near invulnerable and kick ass... and give shite exp. Oh, did I mention THAT PKs ARE REWARDED FOR DOING SHIT-ALL?!

"Still", you must be saying, "after all this you continue to play regardless so you must like it." Yeah, I do. The PK thing is just really fucked-up and the game owner refuses to listen to reason, even if it is backed by a successful game and a skilled coder. He also gives all his GMs the epitaphs, so one really cool part of the game is lost to a bunch of people who already have too much power anyway.

There's just so many things NOT to like, and yet I continue to play and enjoy playing The World R:2. I think it's the secrets and ease of gaining levels to be honest... I spend more time mucking around in search of rare items than I do grinding, and I enjoy that immensely. Provided we don't have things like this morning where PKs totally ruled the server and nobody could do anything because they had all the power and blocked off all the training areas, the game can be fun and challenging and causes you to think things out more.

There are no safety restraints, and mistakes hurt bad. You really sharpen up fast on there... that or ragequit like so many players I've seen XD

Also, I refuse to add it to my favourites until Max changes the goddamn PK system! Save the newbs!

Well this is too entertaining NOT to say. BYOND's current ranking system has always been open to what's happened, but nobody was ever game to waste hundreds of dollars on buying memberships to bribe noobs to rank their game before. What we have now is essentially a Paris Hilton situation on BYOND, and it's quite hillarious. I've decided not to name names, though I'm sure it's pretty obvious who I am talking about anyway.

In any case, there's a certain game that's only been up a few weeks and already it's on the front page of the BYOND ranking system. Wow it's a good game, huh? NO! XD What's awesome is this one guy has just bought out like 15 memberships and ranked his own game (not all the memberships were for him of course, but rather for people who he could count on as loyal). And when I make a rant about it he's all "Ooh publicity! *pose*" LMFAO! Ok, at first I was pissed about some guy stealing rank but now it's actually working in my favor. Just like Paris Hilton got famous by doing something stupid and stirring up a frenzy that's exactly what he's doing and what makes it even better is that if he keeps it up, eventually he's going to hit rank 1.

When that happens I'm going to laugh so hard I cry, because it'll make BYOND look like noobland. That alone is pretty funny, but what happens next is the best part. The hard-working members/staff of BYOND aren't going to stand for that crap. Suddenly, we're going to find ourselves in DIRE NEED of a proper review system and SUDDENLY games will be ranked depending on number of hits, time spent playing, votes from players AS WELL AS votes from members. Keys, MAC addresses and IPs will be checked, logged and noted by the system which will, for the most part, make sure that no duplicate votes are being accepted. The games that people honestly enjoy and play will find themselves at the top of the list and all the little noob games will be back down at the bottom where they belong.

Here I was thinking you had to fight the system to get what you want, but Mr Noob has shown me that I don't have to lift a finger against BYOND... all you have to do is abuse the system legally and watch everyone go "Oh shit... we gotta fix this." This is no longer MY problem, it's EVERYONE's problem, and I'm going to sit back and watch the fun.

To all you other game developers out there who made a quality game only to watch it get surpassed byt a rank-whore: I hope you're listening, cause this is headed in your direction... right up your own colon. Kick up a fuss, by all means. After all YOU are the true contributors to BYOND, and YOU matter.

Well since I've been busy yelling at BYOND a lot lately, I thought I'd take the time and make a sort of counter-rant... cause there ARE good things happening on BYOND too. For one thing, my game has made it to rank 30, and also the front page of the BYOND's top-ranked games. That makes me happy XD.

Secondly, the response from BYOND staff and members in response to my previous rant has given me more faith that BYOND is not going to hell... at least not as much :P The odd thing about good stuff is it tends to be less... emphasized than bad stuff, so we don't appreciate it as much I guess. Although I have to say, hitting that top page of BYOND games was goooood (I only wish the rankings were more fair... I can't tell if I really deserve it or not). Still, it's given me more drive to hurry up and finish this update already, so I'm working hard on it.

In fact, I'm taking time off programming to write this rant so I should really get back to it. If my game doesn't deserve its position now, then it certainly will in the update. 'till then!

Well I contacted BYOND the other day with regards to what I believed to be a dangerous file and abuse thereof. Their response was little more than a "brush off" without even taking the time to check the validity of my claim. That pissed me off. I even got a copy of the program to offer to them so that they could further protect themselves from any security loopholes they might have, and they told me: "It's impossible to 'hack' the DM file of a game. Period. More than likely, you've been sent a trojan or virus... We would advise that you scan the file and promptly delete it. Next time, be more skeptical of such claims"

Well ok, I've scanned the file and it's NOT a virus. And since BYOND is telling me to be skeptical of the claim that it is actually capable of exploiting games I'm going to go ahead and host the file on my little member space. After all, BYOND and my virus scanner just verified that it is completely harmless, and so it's perfectly allowed for me to host this file on my site. Btw BYOND, I'm keeping your little email, just in case for some IMPOSSIBLE reason the file IS an illegal file and you DO have users on BYOND abusing it. But since you have assured me that it's safe or at least not capable of harming any BYOND programs, I'm going to go ahead and put it up, and if anyone wants to test it they can just go ahead and do so.

Let's hope you're right, hey?

Oh and airport security was perfectly safe a few years back too. The Titanic was never going to sink. Bill Clinton did NOT have sexual affairs with that woman. Sheesh.

EDIT: Well there you have it... seems it's a hex editor which is capable of spoofing keys and IP addresses (amongst other things) within a game... though apparently mainly only works on host side. Since I now know this I'm taking the file down... on a side note I passworded the rar file so nobody could get in anyway (this was mainly to prove my point, I'm not spreading an exploit all over BYOND). Still, Nova recognised it and well, now we know. Thanks BYOND, I feel so much safer now that you're here. As an added note this only confirms that there WAS an abuse which led to a defamation of a player, though we caught it out and righted things before it got away.

I hope I've at least made a statement here... I was right and I got ignored, had I been of malicious intent I could have screwed BYOND over good. Listen to me next time.