[MUD-Dev] Sony to ban sale ... point of view of an eq veteran

[Brian Green]

John Bertoglio wrote:
> Sony should not ban the practice, they should make it impossible through an
> ingame redesign.

As a developer who spent the last few years fixing someone else's broken
code (Hi, Damion!), I can say with authority that an "ingame redesign"
is a HUGE undertaking.  Some of the last things I did on Meridian was to
redesign and rewrite two major systems, combat and advancement.  (I'm
sure the former M59 developers on the list cringed when I said that. ;)

Beyond the technical nightmare re-writing code (some that's not terribly
modular, in my case), there's the psychological impact on the players. 
Re-writing the code to run faster and be easier to maintain may make
things better on the backend, but in reality it impacts few players in
ways they notice.  Most players have been conditioned to expect new and
better things with each update, so an update that is thin on flash is
going to get lots of complaints.  Yeah, people are whining now about
broken systems, but that's a mere whisper compared to an update that
does little but make what appears to be a lateral change to the world
because time was spent on fixing stuff instead of adding stuff.

In addition, players have come to expect the game to work a certain
way.  Sure, a system might be poorly-designed, buggy, ugly, imbalanced,
and downright unfair, but people have come to expect that.  They've
altered their playing style to accomodate these shortcomings.  Changing
it might be for the better, but you'll get a lot of whining. 
Admittedly, the whining might be viewed as a short-term problem, but if
enough whining and tantrums make the game unpleasant, it might force
away current customers which have a more long-term impact on the game. 
And, one should not claim the redesign will draw back more people than
it scares away.  We have the cliche "A bird in the hand is worth two in
the bush" for a reason.

You have to consider that changing something as fundamental as spawn
points in EQ affects a lot more people than something like "nerfing" a
particular class's power.  People have developed a de facto playing
style that revolves around this setup.  To disturb that could have a
greater negative impact on the game than fixed spawn points (and by
extention, camping) does currently.

This is the number one reason why I am an advocate of well thought-out,
flexible design before the game is developed.  Every time I see a game
without a central vision or one that's rushed out before it's ready, I
cringe.  Such lack of forethought haste is what causes a majority of
these problems, IMHO.  Commercial multiplayer online RPGs aren't
something you can slap a patch for up on the 'net and expect all the
players to be happy.

--
"And I now wait / to shake the hand of fate...."  -"Defender", Manowar
     Brian Green, brian at psychochild.org  aka  Psychochild
       |\      _,,,---,,_      *=* Morpheus, my kitten, says "Hi!" *=*
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_  
      |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'  "Ritalin Cures Next Picasso" 
     '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)               -The_Onion_, August 4th, 1999



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