Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Good software knows when to stop

ogirardot.writizzy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 304 posts

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#71

Post by bigstrat2003 »

lemagedurage wrote: post #62
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…

We shouldn't discount nostalgia. Sometimes an otherwise objectively worse product is better because it reminds people of the past.

But there are people who didn't play WoW back in the day who still love classic, so it can't just be nostalgia. Vanilla WoW really did have a different design ethos than the later expansions did, and some people prefer that experience.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#73

Post by InitialBP »

lemagedurage wrote: post #62
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…

We shouldn't discount nostalgia. Sometimes an otherwise objectively worse product is better because it reminds people of the past.

Another example is Old School Runescape, who reverted back to an earlier save and has now diverged as an entirely separate game running with older systems as they lost a ton of players with their "Evolution of Combat" update. While nostalgia is definitely a powerful tool, I agree with the previous commenter that the original WoW was a very different game than the modern version and it seems like that is one of the core aspects of what people desired.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#74

Post by kube-system »

theorchid wrote: post #2

Oracle Database has now been renamed Oracle AI Database. But I think that in time, they will rename it back to Oracle Database. The hype will pass, but the AI will remain, and the name will no longer need to include the AI prefix. AI will just become the norm.

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.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#75

Post by bigstrat2003 »

john_strinlai wrote: post #46
treetalker wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a WoW player, so perhaps speaking out of turn — but doesn't that example show that users know what extra features they don't want, not extra features they do?

that distinction sort of misses the point i was trying to make. sometimes users want something . that something might be a feature request, or it might be a feature removal. it doesnt really matter for the sake of my point(s): a) ignoring your users requests can sometimes be a bad choice. b) you might not necessarily understand every underlying problem that every user has. worse, you might think you understand the pr…

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't do is insist that the design is for the best while players are telling you "no, really, this isn't fun".

Unfortunately Blizzard has had a problem for a long time where they are too stubborn to listen to player feedback about WoW. They will put systems into the game that people hate, and for years they will insist that the system is fine and meets the team's design goals, despite all the people telling them that it sucks and isn't fun. Then, finally, in some future expansion they will go "yeah guys that really did kind of suck" and remove or overhaul the system. They really don't have a culture of listening to player feedback, and it drags their games down.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#76

Post by IncandescentGas »

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…

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 meaningless in a world only occupied by PKers.

The release of Arc Raiders captured that original UO social dynamic perfectly. Players flooded forums with requests to make PVP optional. In that case, the devs knew better than to listen.

Re: Good software knows when to stop

#78

Post by paxys »

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…

You are basically describing all software ever shipped before webapps and online updates became a thing.

Companies wrote software and sold them in boxes. You paid once and it was yours forever. You got exactly what was in the box, no more and no less.

The company then shipped a new verson in a different box 1-3 years later. If you liked it enough, and wanted the new features, you bought the new box.

Post reply on HN