A Word of Caution

[Katdoral]

So, this new section of the boards was for us to discuss and layout changes to the game system in an attempt to keep things balanced. However, and this is not directed at any specific individual, but to all of us, something to remember is that it is disturbingly easy to enter into what we call "over-reaction mode". I have no doubt that through all of the various MMO's we've all played we've seen developers take an exceedingly strong hand to nerfing an ability, or a class, or some other element of a game. This isn't entirely that they didn't put forethought into their planed changes, in most cases it's because we sometimes perceive an imbalance and attempt to correct it by removing or limiting it's strengths. The thing to keep in mind is context. Context, context, context. I'll say it again, context. Often times those perceived strengths were the result of a different set of variables that were themselves nerfed. I can give an example of myself doing this very thing. I used to run a Neverwinter Nights server, and it was fairly popular, I usually had around 20 people playing at peak hours. I had created a fairly complex form of siege warfare for the game that allowed a person in one area to rain down catapult shots several areas away. Because of the spawn system I'd created for monsters it made it possible for people to use these siege engines and still be awarded the experience without any of the actual danger involved. So, I limited the range of the siege engines to 1 area believing that that would minimize the exploit. However, because the system that controlled the NPC siege and the PC siege engines were two different sets of code, it nullified the ability to use the PC siege engines as they were intended. (The NPC engines simply had more range and people couldn't get close enough to fire back) I did fix this problem shortly after it presented itself, but it's a point of where I didn't take context into consideration.

I'm not saying that anyone is going crazy with this, but this is just a reminder. I've worked for a number of game developers and I've seen this scenario play out many times so this is exactly as the subject lines says, a word of caution. So when you consider changing something within the game try to think of the surrounding elements that will be effected.