> From: Ryan Honeyman <honeyman@...>
>
>
> There is a well known fact to online games in relationship to
> player advancement. I believe there is, in real life, a fundamental
> law that collectively describes this <g>.
>
> Players will take the path of least resistance (, to maximize
> the realized or potential gain - be it monetary or otherwise)
>
> I coded on an LPmud for 2 years. I wrote a lot of the object
> code and base structures, along with level design and balancing.
>
> Being invisible, I could watch players find sneaky ways around
> certain obstacles. With 20 or 30 coders, and a mesh of so many
> styles and items... no one could realize the potential impact
> of adding X item to the game on areas where X item was not
> designed in mind for. Earning an item that stuns a mob every
> 5 rounds combined with some other item that also stunned a
> monster produced a unwanted effect in the game. Players knew
> that if they had these two items they could essentially beat
> any monster without risk. Neither wizard was to blame for
> the coding of these items, it was the unrealized combined
> effect in an area which the coding wizard had no idea this
> could or would happen. Players will find a way... with
> hundreds of items doing a hundred different effects, you will
> never know the complete outcome when players begin to experiment.
>
> Is it being resourceful? Is it taking advantage of the code?
> Does it really matter? Once I learned of a player 'exploiting'
> a method against a particular mob, I would alter the behavior
> of the monster under those effects to create a more challenging
> confrontation. It wasn't to ruin the player's experience, it
> was to heighten it. I am a player of accomplishment. If I
> play a game that's too easy, I tend to get tired easily. If I
> play a game that offers new challenges each time, I tend to get
> addicted, ie EQ.
>
<Snip>
This is exactly my point. This is what Verant SHOULD be doing. Increase the
monster difficulty, don't take away from the players. A player will work
damn hard to get the best items in the game, and the developers are
basically stealing all that time invested from the player when you
dractically nerf a hard fought for skill/spell/item.
The fact that they make changes to long standing abilities of different
classes is incredibly poor judgement, and penailizes and alienates your
player base.
The fact that they make class altering changes without informing players
ahead of time is just downright reprehensible.
Dank