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Yesterday, while I was admining, I heard someone complaining. It was a
justifiable complaint, one that I have often made before, and he even used
some of the exact phrases that I did when I complained. The problem was,
it sounded so negative coming from someone else. It made me see that even
if bungie and Myth have problems, they are minor and trivial problems, and
we shouldn't focus on them. They become even more unimportant when they
are compared to all the things that were done right, and that are being
improved. So I decided that it was time to be positive, to write a rant
spelling out exactly what was right with Myth, what improvements have been
made, and what wonderful things we can expect in the future.
First of all, there is Myth itself. A revolutionary new game that
replaces building lists and mindless, ravaging hoard tactics with precise
formations, careful battle plans, and inspirational victories. It
provides the user with complete freedom of movement in an emersive
environment. No detail has been overlooked, from singing-birds to
scorched earth, from the chaos of battle to the peaceful silence of a
blood-stained field...Myth is an experience as much as a game.
Myth runs on PCs and Macs, and I almost _never_ see platform wars
on-line. Take a moment and think about how amazing that is. Normally,
PC-users and Mac-addicts can't even share the same lane of a highway, let
alone play games together, but I have seen a senior-editor for MacAddict,
an Apple QT programmer, a contributor to FamilyPC and a guy that works for
Microsoft all playing a massive game of random team terries. If that
isn't an example of Myth breaking down the platform barrier, nothing is.
Myth runs over any connection on any computer! When I look back on my
Quake days, I am astonished by this fact more than any other aspect of
Myth. In Quake, the worst player on a T1 could beat the best of the
modemites, because latency was _so_ important. And if your machine was
powerful enough to run at a super-high resolution, you had an even greater
advantage. Myth is completely different. I'm on a T1, and I regularly
get beaten by people with 10 sec lag pockets playing from the other side
of the planet! This is an engineering marvel and a gameplay triumph...
Myth has an incredible variety of games and maps. Face it, for most
games, BC on Trow would be the only option, and if that was all there was,
it would be enough. But bungie has provided us with a plethora of maps
and an incredible variety of games to play, so we have the luxery of not
liking BC Trow. On a related note, despite posts to the contrary, there
are very few people that whole-heartedly hate BC, especially now. People
that claim to like variety have realized that BC isn't so bad every once
in a while, and people that were afraid to play anything but BC are
starting to branch out. Sure, they are almost all branching out to Last
man, but that is to be expected. The traditional pattern proceeds from BC
through Last Man to Bacon and finally to weird games like FFA Terries and
Rally, so we can expect this trend to continue and for most people to
eventually play most games.
bungie.net is a remarkably clean place to play. Sure, there are
occassional potty mouths, but they are usually too concerned with rank to
chat for long and they rarely play in any of the games I frequent. Most
players and hosts are civil and honest, and it is pretty easy to avoid
them if they aren't. Bungie has thoughtfully provided us with a "Mute"
button, so some buffoon leaning on his keyboard can't flood us with
annoying messages. In many ways, b.net is one of the best chatrooms I
have ever used. The rooms are large enough to hold a good-sized group,
but there aren't so many people that it is impossible to keep up with the
posts (unless of course there are two admins and a celestial in a full
room with no games being played...sheesh) Not only that, but with the new
admins, things will only improve.
Bungie has recruited (some might say conscripted) a bunch of new admins.
They were very careful about who they selected, and they should become a
powerful force for keeping b.net clean. We have the power to suspend
accounts for violations of the bungie.net rules, in fact we have already
suspended some players. We have bungie's complete backing, which includes
official written warnings from bungie, access to account information and a
database for tracking offenders. We currently track about 70 evil-doers
and can cross-refrence them with possible second accounts and share
information with other admins. However, there are enough checks on the
admins authority that players will not have to worry about abuses. All
citations are carefully logged and a bungie representative presides over
all suspensions and warnings.
While the admins are trying to get a handle on the social aspects of
bungie.net, programmers are working out the problems with bungie.net's
scoring system. I have seen the scoring logs, and they are fairly good at
reflecting a player's skill, when the games are properly reported. The
main problem with the scoring system at the moment is droppers. As soon
as bungie requires everyone to update to the latest patch (and believe me,
they will soon) droppers will be ranked as if they had just stopped
playing at the point which they dropped, and since they only drop when
they are losing, they will start to accumulate losses and lose points very
quickly. Bungie can't penalize host droppers because sometimes it is
necessary for a host to end a game without penalty, but the admins are
tracking chronic droppers and it will soon become an offense punishable by
suspension. Also, since people choose which game they play in, known
droppers can just be avoided. I haven't gotten mugged in a month, because
I am careful about who I play with. Unless, of course, I collect a group
of crashers and crash a mugger game in order to beat the heck out of them
and make them drop us...heh
To make avoiding poor hosts even easier, the Codex is planning on
implementing an organization of Heavenly Hosts. Although we are still
working out the details, it should work as follows. Hosts with stable
connections and honest practices can register with us, and we will make
them a Heavenly Host. Then, whenever they host a game, they will include
their name in the game title as well as a Heavenly Host symbol. This
symbol will signify that they have agreed to a list of responsibilities
such as not dropping, not jumpstarting...etc. Since the name of the host
is in the game name, people can watch for games with hosts that they can
trust and play in them. As for lamers pretending to be heavenly hosts and
then mugging people, since two of the three people operating the
organization now have the power to suspend accounts, we are not without
recourse, and I, for one, will take it as a personal insult if people use
the system for evil purposes...I can't wait to post the name of the first
lamer that impersonates a heavenly host on the news page, right after we
suspend him from bungie.net...muhahahahhaaaa
However, these systems and precautions and penalties are only attempts to
make a great system even better. Let's face it, even if the admins
completely fail, and no scoring system can stop the cheaters, and no patch
can fix the CL bug, bungie.net will still be the best place to play Myth,
the best game of all time, with Myth players, the best gaming community
ever. No lamer, no cheater and no bug can take the fun out of Myth. So
don't concentrate on the negative, ignore the morons and select your games
carefully. You'll start to rediscover the spirit of Myth that drew you in
in the first place and you'll have a lot more fun.
-Case
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