nu.kanga.list.mud-dev

13153: Re: [MUD-Dev] Sony to ban sale ... point of view of an eq veteran

On Wed, 12 Apr 2000 10:55:05 -0700 
Brian Green <brian@psychochild.org> wrote:

> 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.

The product sucks.  The customers know it.  The customers tell us it
sucks, bitch about it, __and__ philosophically depend on the ways it
sucks (if only thru familiarity).  Actually, to there's another
principle in there:

  Players MUST have something to complain about, both in the game,
its operation, and in any updates.  If you don't provide them
anything to complain about, they will just invent something instead.
It doesn't matter if you do a perfect game with perfect updates and
perfect administration -- players are going to complain about it.

--
J C Lawrence                                 Home: claw@kanga.nu
----------(*)                              Other: coder@kanga.nu
--=| A man is as sane as he is dangerous to his environment |=--


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