[MUD-Dev] Real Life Consequences

[Jeff Freeman]

From: "John Buehler" <johnbue at msn.com>

> Jeff, give the man a break.  He's saying that fixing a bug before it
> reaches those 100,000 players is a heck of a lot better than
> afterwards.  You're agreeing with him, but giving him a hard time as
> well.

I'm just saying, "I have an idea to deal with bug users: Make bug-free
code!" just doesn't address the issue at all.  100 users and 100 bugs
is better than 10,000 users and 1 bug.  Because with 10,000 users,
someone will put up a 'sploit website.

>>> In my experience, successful, smaller games also respond more
>>> creatively to the desires of players, generating an atmosphere of
>>> goodwill.

>> Ah, another candidate for Laws of Online World Design: "Goodwill"
>> doesn't scale.

> And cynicism does?

And how!

>> You *can't* eliminate all the bugs, and if you have thousands upon
>> thousands of users then you'll have one cubic crapload of
>> bug-exploiters regardless.

> So we should *introduce* bugs so that everyone understands up front
> that the environment is going to be buggy, that players can expect
> bugs at a certain guaranteed rate, and the support system can be
> structured far in advance?

I'm just saying, "I have an idea to deal with bug users: Make bug-free
code!" just doesn't address the issue at all.

> And as for getting rid of all bugs, the day will come when software
> does exactly what the specifications call for.  Then it will just be
> an issue of getting the specifications the way we want them.

I don't think so.  Even if the software does exactly what the specification
call for, sometimes the specifications are wrong.  Or used in ways that the
designer never intended and didn't plan for.

"Don't have any bugs to exploit" is just not in the least way a
reasonable solution for how to deal with exploiters.

Yeah, *try* to have bug-free code, but sometimes the code you've
written which works exactly as you intended it to work can and will be
used in creative ways to produce unintended results.  Then what?
Shrug and say, "Well, the code is bug-free."?


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