Hey’a! I hope everyone’s doing well. I wanted to do this earlier, but I honestly had no time, and I’m off to College in a few days so I just had to do this before I left. First of all, congratulations to all staff members! You’re doing pretty alright. I, frankly, didn’t think PMU would survive this long, but it did, and it’s all thanks to you. That said, I do have a few suggestions or things that I really feel should get some attention.
-
Overworld Detail: As someone who spent hours each day in 2013-2015 detailing the overworld, be it Exbel, Winden, Archford, Tanren, it kind of stings when I see new dungeons with no path or entrance, or signs leading to the dungeon. Maybe it was just the dungeons I visited (if that’s the case, I apologize for generalizing!). Perhaps the newer staff aren’t familiar with these traditional practices, and that’s okay! That’s why I’m here to tell you that. I don’t expect to see beautifully detailed maps, but a path? proper blocks? that, I feel is reasonable of me to expect, given the amount of hard work I put in this game.
-
Code Stuff: I know things often break, and it can be annoying, but I promise you, fixing stuff isn’t all that hard! You don’t need to be a coder or a programmer to fix HT breaking, update glitches, or adding Boss Buffs. All you need is 1) a bit of time on weekends, 2) the ability to understand patterns. PMU is buggy, agreed, but the idea is to minimize bugs over time, which can only happen when both staff and players are concerned! A little effort goes a long way. Avoid solutions like telling the playerbase to update their sprite folders unless you’re absolutely sure it’s just something temporary. Pressure gets stuff fixed.
-
Advertising: PMU’s golden era, around 2012ish had roughly 60ish players online each day. Currently, there’s like 20. I feel advertising can help in this regard, and make the community more diverse, 'cause let’s be honest, PMU is just a glorified chat room. The people, the social context you are positioned in is what makes it so fun. I don’t want 100s of players, but a couple more would be awesome, is also all we need. Many people feel we shouldn’t advertise 'til the game is a bug-free, but I find that a bit paradoxical. Potential staff members or ‘bug fixers’ will come from the community only, and PMU will never truly be in a state that fulfills everyone’s defition of stable.
I can’t think of anything else, but that should be it!
Will edit if I remember something?
Edit: I share this with the community because I realize communication is a huge problem, and I honestly haven’t been playing properly, I just log in and chat a bit to relive nostalgia once a week cause I had summer vacay, but I want to know if I’m straight up delusional, or if these issues are non-issues in contrast to what other people might find problematic in PMU! I did, however, want to make extremely minor suggestions, nothing big, so. //end-rambling