I am sure this post would be better fit for the flames group, but since I have
the faintest hope that someone might do something about these issues, I'll
post it here.

For quite some time, I've been irked by the illogicalities and confusing
nature of certain materials (minerals etc) in BatMUD and other things related
to them. I am not going to list all of my pet peeves, undoubtably I wouldn't
even remember every single one of them.

1) Material attributes. Okay, every material has number of attributes like
value, flammability, reactivity, etc. Nice. Except that the values for many of
those either make no sense or are confusing. Some materials have completely
weird values assigned, for example "magic" for "enchanted air" is "not
magical". Umm .. what? And "ice" is "highly flammable". Concrete is "very
fragile" .. well, I guess I can understand that in some sense. The list goes
on, however.

2) This also brings me to a general question to the wizards: are those values
actually even USED for anything, or are they just useless trivia. At least
some of those fields are either not used or at least seem to state opposite
than what the reality is. Take a look at the "weapon rarity" and "armour
rarity" fields, for example: diamond and dukonium both are supposedly "not
used" for weapons and armour. The data must be for some other plane of
existence, I guess.

3) Some materials are near impossible to get, AND illogically so. Like, say,
"water" for example. BatMUD is full of water, but at least I haven't figured
out a way to get it into raw material form. Except, if you go to certain
"secret" place and mine water from there. Despite this, material data for
water says that it is "very common". Yeah, sure it is.

And then there is hemp. A natural substance, that is NOT found in nature. What
about charcoal? I'm fairly sure one should find deposits of that stuff,
considering the forest fires etc. I could list many such substances, but most
of them can be found from the "organic" list materials.

4) Well .. this isn't a point, but a conclusion: I understand the need for
some materials to be difficult to get, but on the other hand, the other
associated illogicalities remain. I hope some nice wizard will take it upon
themselves to remedy these things, and preferably go through the whole
material list while at it. If not, well, at least I tried to make my point.

--
Ggr "The Grumpy" Pupunen