MMO Development Lesson #35
Players are the x factor of MMOs. If a player can do it, they will do it. They will behave badly if you let them, they will exploit if you let them, they will ruin the experiences of others if you let them. It’s best to mitigate undesirable behavior through reward/punishment or by altering a system’s design to prevent it. But, while heavy-handed artificial restrictions should generally be a last resort, sometimes they are unavoidable.
[...] Ryan Shwayder points out: Players are the x factor of MMOs. If a player can do it, they will do [...]
It’s all those other players that are x factors. I’m a z. Keep that in mind when Copernicus goes into beta
One must always remember, you might have 15 brilliantly creative people working on game design….there are at least 1000 times that playing the game. No matter what you do, someone will come up with something you didn’t think of, so be ready for it, and don’t nerf/restrict impulsively. (If it is game breaking, stop it, but don’t consider the stop to be the final answer, you can come up with a better solution most likely if you try.)
I can’t say I disagree. It used to break my heart to watch guilds exploit in EQ2 and get away with it. I know SOE got a lot of flack for banning in Everquest but honestly I’d rather have a “ban first and apologize later” policy.
If something is obviously abuse I’d prefer that those players not stay in the game and on the same server I’m on.
[...] a good idea went bad in some cases when players acted like… well… players. That whole X Factor thing. Primarily driven by Lume the Mad’s post on the [...]
GOOD!THANK YOU.