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Good software knows when to stop

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Re: Good software knows when to stop

#121

Post by bombcar »

Waterluvian wrote: post #118
john_strinlai wrote: post #12

> Ignore feature requests — don't build what users ask for; understand the underlying problem instead not quite in the same area, but this advice reminds me of blizzard and world of warcraft. for years and years, people requested a "classic" WoW (for non-players, the classic version is an almost bug-for-bug copy of the original 2004-2005 version of the game). for years and years, the reply from blizzard was "you thin…

I think there's possibly more to it. Many, many years passed and the people asking for it changed over time. There's a big difference between, "I wish I could go back 4 years and re-experience it all" and "I wish I could go back 20 years and re-experience it all." I also wonder if maybe they were generally correct. What percentage of people asking for WoW Classic back in the day actually ended up there? It's kind of…

There's a decent video of someone playing WoW Classic for the first time - https://youtu.be/NjQgoaagS-E

And it basically came down to "classic WoW was simpler and for new players provided something that modern WoW doesn't/can't really - especially the spontaneous community.

WoW started out as an MMORP, but it's really a massively single player game until you're top level anymore.

The demand for classic wow got much, much stronger after cataclysm, because then you couldn't even "pretend" anymore.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#123

Post by bombcar »

jasonlotito wrote: post #30
thewebguyd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair on the Blizzard example, I think Blizzard could have also made the player base just as happy by, doing as your quote said, understanding the underlying problem. It wasn't only a "we want WoW classic bug for bug," it was "the modern game has become so unrecognizable that it's basically WoW 2.0, you ruined it with the modern systems" Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back…

> Blizzard could have rolled back LFR/LFG, class homogenization, brought back complicated and unique talent trees, remove heirlooms, re-add group guests and world mini-bosses, remove flying, etc. and players likely would have been happy. 100% nope. Classic is what we wanted. All of what you just said is you saying: "you think you want that, but you dont. trust us, you dont want that."

Classic is what we wanted, not that we wouldn't want "other things added in Classic-style" perhaps, but the problem with that is it becomes a whole new ballgame.

Classic WoW wasn't perfect, but it was amazing, and it's NOT all just nostalgia-glasses.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#124

Post by 0x457 »

motoboi wrote: post #85

In 2020 I became a full time Java developer, coming from a infrastructure role where I kind of dealt with Java code, but always as artifacts I managed in application servers and whatnot. So when I first started dealing with the actual code, it scared me that the standard json library was basically in maintenance mode for some years back then. The standard unit test framework and lot of other key pieces too. I interpr…

I remember we made a switch to redis because java's memcached library was unmaintained. I made I joke that it's just feature-complete and cannot be improved upon, people chuckled, but we still did the switch.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#125

Post by bheadmaster »

j_w wrote: post #99
bheadmaster wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with Old School RuneScape. Jagex thought they knew better than the players what the game should look like, and overhauled the whole game to the point it was unrecognizable. It took a massive loss of paying members to get them to finally release 2007 version of RuneScape back. Even now, OSRS has double the amount of players that RS3 has. Lol

This isn't even true. OSRS was on life support with very few players for years until they started giving it updates. Turns out the 2007 version of the game was ROUGH for a lot of reasons - they picked the time because, IIRC, it was the most complete backup they had. OSRS has now had nearly a decade of consistent updates, a large team, and typically 10x the online player count of the "modern" game. The catch is that O…

That's not quite how I remember it.

But I can't think of a way to verify those numbers, so agree to disagree.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#126

Post by wtallis »

wenbin wrote: post #47

We should normalize "finished" software products that stop feature creep and focus strictly on bug fixes and security updates. It takes real courage for a builder to say, "It’s good enough. It’s complete. It serves the core use cases well." If people want more features? Great, make it a separate product under a new brand. Evernote and Dropbox were perfect in 2012. Adding more features just to chase new user growth of…

Dropbox is a great example. It's now a fundamentally different product than the original, and has re-created exactly the problem the original solved. There's no longer a good cloud-synced folder tool; everybody has gone back to implementing network filesystems that are much more complex and a badly leaky abstraction.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#127

Post by bena »

grim_io wrote: post #83
IncandescentGas wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-example, in classic MMO terms, is Ultima Online adding non-PVP game instances in response to player feedback. Without the dramatic threat of PVP conflict at most times, UO was less emotionally engaging. The non-PVP players were bored without the emotional excitement (stress, danger, whatever) of ad hoc PVP. The PVP-focused players were bored when all the reputational mechanics became more or less meaningl…

Arc Raiders and other involuntary pvp games will miss out on players like me who will not try it until pvp is optional and voluntary. Involuntary pvp is the long term death sentence for a game. It punishes new players by making them easy prey for veteran players. Player numbers will fall hard and fast, like every other involuntary pvp game does.

That's ok. They are also missing out on all the players who won't try it until it's a dating sim. Or a turn-based-rpg. Or a third thing.

Everything doesn't have to be for everyone.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#128

Post by bigstrat2003 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #86
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sid Meier has talked about something similar: he likes to tell designers at Firaxis that "feedback is fact". That is, no matter how strongly you (the designer) believe that something is a good design, if the player says "this isn't fun" then that needs to be taken as the gospel truth. The players might not be able to explain why it isn't fun, and you might be able to tweak the design to make it fun, but what you can'…

Blizzard did the same exact thing with Diablo 4 too, and D3 also famously sucked at release. You'd think they would have learned by now, as they repeat the same exact mistakes over and over again. It's like they hate their playerbase.

The biggest problem I remember from D3 release was that they listened too much to the "this is way too easy, not hard like D2 was" from the beta feedback. Inferno difficulty was absolutely ridiculous. I know people also were unhappy about the AH, alleging that the item drop rates were lowered to drive people to use the AH, but I don't know whether or not that was true.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#129

Post by 0x457 »

layer8 wrote: post #120
kube-system wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That never happened to JavaScript. It still has Java in the name long after the Java hype ended. We never went back to calling it LiveScript.

Well, there was an attempt of sorts with EcmaScript.

Well no, ECMA Script exists, but it's not a language it's a standard that JavaScript runtimes implement. JavaScript today means ECMA Script version + runtime flavor.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#130

Post by socalgal2 »

grim_io wrote: post #83
IncandescentGas wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter-example, in classic MMO terms, is Ultima Online adding non-PVP game instances in response to player feedback. Without the dramatic threat of PVP conflict at most times, UO was less emotionally engaging. The non-PVP players were bored without the emotional excitement (stress, danger, whatever) of ad hoc PVP. The PVP-focused players were bored when all the reputational mechanics became more or less meaningl…

Arc Raiders and other involuntary pvp games will miss out on players like me who will not try it until pvp is optional and voluntary. Involuntary pvp is the long term death sentence for a game. It punishes new players by making them easy prey for veteran players. Player numbers will fall hard and fast, like every other involuntary pvp game does.

Same. I don't play any PVP. I play co-op. I play co-op vs npcs. If PVP is the only option I'm not playing.
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