Yes, it comes back to a couple things:
a) designers who dont really play the game and thus dont really know how
things are going to work out
b) desgin goals that sounded great conceptually but when it came time to
implement them got left out
I guess it is sort of "the chicken and the egg - which came first" to play a
game that you are designing but they did have an extended series of beta
tests. Even today, their goals are lofty but their ideas on how to
implement them are clueless. Ie: over crowding is a problem but "play nice"
is not a workable solution. Forget about the debate whether sharing spawns
is correct or not. Adding something as labor intensive resolving all these
player disputes to the guide/gm work load when they are currently
understaffed is the joke. Why have a policy that cant be enforced equally?
And why make your already scare rescources even more burdened?
Look at all the stat items: str, sta, agi, dex, cha, wis, int. I would
guess that they intended that al lof these would be factors in the equation
but when they tried to put them all in, things either got way too complex
for them to control or the program did not run well so they took some out.
Why would you have meaningless stats? Same with quests. Good idea. But
what do we see? A bunch of low level ones that newbies try once or twice
then learn from their experience that quests are not worth doing. What
quests are actually worth doing? Soulfire, Fiery Avenger - class specific.
Jboots - wtg verant you moved campers from one zone to another. The cleric
shield - class specific. The replacement rubi armors? These were good but
where is the special bardic weapon?
Hopefully, the success of EQ will let them properly fund the dev team for
the Star Wars thing and hopefully they will learn from their experiences.
Sylly
> From: jhenders@...
>
> On Mon, Mar 20/00, "Kimes, Dean W." <dean_kimes@...> wrote:
> > From: "Kimes, Dean W." <dean_kimes@...>
> >
> > So basically Chains is like bards in general? An afterthought that's
nice
> > to have when the real spells fail.
>
> I get a strong idea that GZ's well ran dry on song ideas somewhere just
> after L20.