MMO Development Lesson #29
Play your game. It sounds natural, but it isn’t always easy. Play your game like a player does, not just on your GM account, because the lack of power makes it a whole different ballgame. You need to at least understand the perspective that players have, which is hard to achieve when you know all the numbers — all the intricacies of the game — but lack the insight about how players really play. I know it’s hard to play your game that way when you made it (and to find the time to do so), but it’s a skill that you have to nurture. And, your employer better let you play while you’re at work, or they don’t know what’s good for them.
Wow, so true. If your employer doesn’t let you play your game… you probably need to start looking for something else.
Heh. Ran in to this trouble with the VG beta. I had one of the better-geared disciples in the beta, but nothing remotely close to the gear that the class lead could (and did) summon to himself. So the whole time he’s going “everything’s fine, in fact, I think this class is overpowered” and everyone else is going “huh?” He kept asking for nerfs. Finally got him and the class developer to meet me and had the class lead equip himself in identical gear to mine.
He suddenly couldn’t even do half of what he’d been able to do before. The class dev then went out and started looking at other dsc’s and contacted me a few days later to tell me I had the best gear he’d seen on any dsc, and that he agreeed we needed bumping. The class lead was also removed as lead since he was so clueless about the class itself — just knew how powerful his ubergear made him, not the class itself.
And when you do play the game, do it with a standard client character, not a GM/dev account one. Otherwise you run into things like:
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=0&topic_id=410254�