Also I have been told by manufacturers that KMC chains have very poor tolerances so are liable to fall off. SRAM or Shimano should apparently be fine.
Eh, KMC make most of Shimano’s chains, to a lower spec than their own. Lots of people using KMC chains on these rings, including me. Think you may have been given duff info there.
Mud gathering’s an interesting one though, I’ve not found mine to be bad but it’s not been through a winter yet so it’s not seen every type of mud. The profile of the ring does have a couple of wee shelves on it, but as far as I can tell they’re not actually functional- they’re just the edge of the machining so they could be scalloped off to prevent mud buildup with a small revision.
All that said, I used to have problems with mud buildup because of the chain device, running without it’s removed that entirely so far. Just need to hit it with some more flavours of mud 😉