Hey look something controversial! Time to post a disclaimer because people don’t know how to deal with stuff!:
What I am going to talk about is in no way shape or form targeted or directed to be harmful to an individual or group. This topic is meant to be a critique of what in my opinion is wrong with the purgatory update, and my disappointment that these opinions haven’t been changed even after the official release of the update.
Now. Before I criticise everything about this update, let’s look at what munchymc got right with this update.
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The ideas themselves
The ideas of the update as a concept is absolutely phenomenal, I commend everyone who came up with this update, and not just doing the planned December 2021 update of just adding more trolls. What difference time and effort makes. -
The schematics of the update.
The sheer development and layout of the update is once again top notch. How the developers coded such a magnificent update in such a small time span especially considering the other commitments they have to do, as well as the other planned and in motion updates. Also, @Quorafied did a pretty damn good job on the spawn, so definitely credit where credit is due.
Now, time to look at the bad stuff.
- Allowing hacked clients may have been a cool concept, but it’s a terrible idea in practice.
Firstly, I’d like to go over how this was announced. It’s like they wanted to say “hacking is allowed” without directly saying it, so instead they introduced a double negative into the sentence. Instead of encouraging munchy’s values, it just makes the announcement seem weak. Not a good start.
Secondly, let’s go over the usual hacked client shenanigans. If someone says “Oh I accidentally logged onto another game mode with my hacks on now I’m banned please it was a mistake!” There is no discernible way to determine someone who was malicious or non-malicious, and this wouldn’t be a problem if say people wanted to go on purgatory once, test out their hacked client and then log off. But the more you log onto purgatory, the more you risk not paying attention and accidentally joining another gamemode and getting banned. And don’t you dare tell me for a second that the stupid warning you get while your playing purgatory is enough to deter people. Unless people have the impossible mindset to always be conscious of using a hacked client, which is quite frankly impossible for everyone, especially people at a young age and people with mental disorders.
Thirdly, if you wish to play adventure mode, you are deliberately being put at a disadvantage if you do not possess or wish to get a hacked client. This is the problem with allowing hacked clients in the first place. They are called “unfair advantages” even by munchy for a reason. If you possess the base game or a non-cheating client such as lunar, how on earth do you plan to defeat someone with a fully functional hacked client at their disposal. This issue has been solved with other gamemodes, but unfortunately not purgatory. Everyone is NOT on an equal playing field when playing purgatory. I hear you ask, “What’s the problem? It’s meant to be unfair!” Well, let me introduce you to issue number 4.
Fourthly, By incentivising hacked clients, munchymc is DIRECTLY risking player’s computers being susceptible to computer viruses, data leaks, ect. Seriously how is this not the first issue brought up when this idea was even being drafted LET ALONE FINALISED? I’ll get into the staff team’s response to these obvious faults with enabling hacked clients later in this post, but let’s move onto the final reason enabling hacked clients is a bad idea.
Finally, how on earth do you plan to enforce people doing quests on purgatory to get unbanned whilst not hacking? Like the staff team’s response, I’ll get into something to fix this, because there’s no use in me complaining without giving solutions to fix these issues. But right now, let’s move onto the second major point of why this update sucks doo doo.
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The bugs
Here’s a 2nd disclaimer: I love every single person in the bug and idea team. Warlock could not have chosen more amazing and wonderful community members to be apart of the exclusive BIT club…
But come on guys, this in business is known as a minimum viable product (MVP/Prototype) not a polished and refined update. Does it need to be perfect? Absolutely not! You can have some bugs, it’s bound to happen at some point. But if the bugs are deliberately taking away from the game play experience you know you shouldn’t have a complete update or game. I’m going to reference Cyberfunk here, as it’s a great analogy for what I’m going to talk about. Cyberpunk just like the purgatory update, had little time to finish the game. So, the game was left as a monstrosity, released to the public as a fully finished and polished game worth its money, and forever tarnishing its image. This is the same vibes I’m getting from the purg update. -
The staff team’s response.
In response to these issues, the staff team have effectively gone “Ok, but we don’t care.”. In my response to the response, YOU SHOULD CARE!!! What I do NOT want to see as a takeaway from this topic is just one of mediocrity, and moving on with your day. Fix the update. I asked 2 staff members about some of these issues (mostly with the hacking.). Their responses? Well one of them just left me on read which is always nice, the other one said: “It isn’t our responsibility for player’s actions … valid concern tho because most clients are ratted” … What? As “The official BadBoyHalo Minecraft Server” munchymc exposes a lot of its audience to young kids, and munchy leans into this with the only place sort of warned not for kids is prison, but they’d have to go deeper to find that. So munchymc, let me say that it is YOUR responsibility to take care of YOUR playerbase. You can’t just let kids not even old enough for digital consent roam freely downloading shady clients, otherwise it could be very possible that invoices and lawsuits will start piling in for damaging property that you are directly implicated in. This is also why I’m against bbh streaming prison map 9, because kids can get hurt!!!
Ok, well, if you’re so smart how do you solve this?
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Give a public list of safe to download hacked clients.
I simply do not care if this goes against munchy’s values, this is the direct result of allowing hacked clients, so do me a favour and deal with it to avoid those law suits. -
Give a more secure system to not get players banned.
Do not just give a broadcast every 5 or so minutes, that is not enough. -
Close the current update, and fix the bugs, rather than releasing the equivalent of day 1 cyberpunk.
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Give the staff team a way to give more visible criticism.
I’m sure someone’s thought of these before, but seems like no one outside of relatively unknown community members have said anything. I also find it hilarious how the former staff members are the ones more critical and more cynical of the server than anyone else. Be more like them.
In short, I’m going to end on a bit of a sour note, but the main takeaway I’m trying to give everyone here is that munchy needs to do better, and be more effective than ever before. I may have spiraled a little bit during this post, and I may have been a bit too cynical, but we need to ask questions if we want to get answers, not just nudge people in the right direction and then not taking any notice.
There is a way
