Re: Introducing new stuff into the game

Rich Skrenta (skrenta@blekko.rt.com)
Fri, 24 Jul 92 10:50:40 EDT

Frits writes:
> Whatever we(I mean Rich) add to the game we should do it as if
> it is added to a new game.

Yes. Many testers let their design judgement become clouded by parochial
interests. While I sympathize with ruined turns and the like, and my
method of new feature introduction could be .. ah .. "softer", the amount
of gold that Prenola has or the fact that Foobaz has level 10 in every
skill already can have absolutely no bearing on design decisions.

> NOT that I LIKE the idea of restarting the game. In the weeks that I have
> played I put a considerable amount of effort in starting my faction.

I've thought about what to do about this problem for quite a while.
Here's my idea: The current game will continue to run until the latest
additions and changes become stable, and the holes are plugged, and the
economy tuned. It would be silly to start a new game before this, as
we'd just have the same problems in the new game.

At that point I will probably start a new game, but continue to run the
old one, or transfer it to someone else to run. The old game will be
"unsupported" -- it won't get new features, except perhaps minor bug fixes.
The new one may have some additions which are too stressful to add to the
current game. If we decide to add faction trees, for instance, they would
go into the new game, and not the old one.

Players will be free to play in either the old game, the new game, or both.

This is just the plan -- I don't promise that this will happen. But it
seems like the fairest way to deal with the problem of old players with big
positions that they've invested lots of time into.

(For T'Nyc veterans: this sounds ominously like the T'Nyc "PBM II" plan :-).

--
Rich Skrenta <skrenta@rt.com>  N2QAV


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