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

[John Bertoglio]

> -----Original Message-----

> Brian Green
> Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2000 10:55 AM
>
> John Bertoglio wrote:
> > Sony should not ban the practice, they should make it
> > impossible through an ingame redesign.
>

<<Reasonable analysis of why it upsets people to change any element of a
game, no matter how stupid or poorly thought out.>>

>
> 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.
>

  "No plan survives contact with the enemy."
       (Helmuth, Graf von Moltke the Elder)

All large software projects make mid-course adjustments. My team at work
is a very clever bunch. We do careful research and try to write well
documented
code with a minimum of errors. But despite that effort our clients and their
customers constantly find mistakes, omissions and stuff that we just missed.
We have a master plan but it evolves on a daily basis. Our core principles
have stayed constant, but ANYTHING in the plan is a candidate for review.

The Koster "ALife" system was one of the coolest set of elements ever put
a computer game (online or not). The original UO manual described a rich,
dynamic environment that defined the concept of "a central vision". It had
a huge amount of "forethought". And it the time it took to create could not
be called "haste".

It was a bunch of great ideas and, now, it is now mostly gone.

If you can kill good ideas in the name of making a better game world,
killing
bad ones should be an even easier decision.

As a technologist I cringe when I hear words like "It wouldn't be a big deal
to make these small changes, would it?". Changing a system, even one like
our online survey system which was designed to be mutable, is a pain in
the butt. But some changes are necessary.

Certainly, some people who are used to the current system in EQ will be
upset
if the detect a change. But people who steal cars are annoyed by alarms.
People who embezzle from their companies don't like auditors. In general,
someone who is beating and/or profiting from a system will be happy to see
the status quo preserved.

A commercial system should make choices which enhances the overall health of
the user environment. The fact that small mud systems run by a few students
have managed to implement variable spawn times and locations suggests it is
not an inherently big deal. How big a deal is it to add a random +/- x
minutes
to a spawn clock?

John A. Bertoglio
  _____
PulsePoll.com <http://www.pulsepoll.com/>
| 503.781.3563
| jb at pulsepoll.com

> --
> "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!" *=*
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>      '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)               -The_Onion_, August 4th, 1999
>
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>
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