gallahad

@Irem You can't make assumptions about how easy implementing something can be without knowing about the requirements and stresses it puts on the underlying architecture, not to mention about what is even capable.

Take, for example, your manor thing. About having the capabilities in the system to support dynamic objects, it can not be stressed how not simple this can be. Everything that is dynamic and replicated to all clients has to live on the server, which eats up database storage, CPU, and RAM. It also requires update packets to be sent to and from the server. Dynamic objects may also have to be treated differently on the client, depending on certain rendering tricks. All of that overhead might be small for a single object, but multiply that by the thousands of objects that you would need for it to be more than just a novelty, and then multiply that for each shard you have it on.

And where do you put the object? Is it out in the open where everyone can use it (and thus opening you up to griefing issues), or do you instance it for groups and raids (and thus adding the even more server overhead for instances)?

@Irem

"...how little work it would take to add some support for people to do their own thing."

That's the programming equivalent of "Hey, guys, watch this!"

From EVE, the Megathron and Tristan are my favorites.

@Fullmetal Salchemist I think Telltale's track record so far gives reason not to fully suppress excitement, as long as you're into their type of games.

You have to remember to look at all that from the dev's perspective. Getting comments from a forum is at best a tricky proposition, and more likely just to be bad. The reason: you don't know who's doing the commenting. A lot of people out there on forums complaining about stuff are doing it for selfish reasons: make my character better, and nerf everyone else. Many more people aren't being selfish, but they're making bad ideas. And very few people might have legitimate complaints. The problem, though, is that you don't necessarily know who is what.

Even someone who is well intentioned with a legitimate thought most likely doesn't have the whole perspective needed to really make an idea. It's easy to say "it'd be easy to chance X so that it does Y since they're not very different", but due to the mysterious ways of coding (speaking as a programmer), even slight changes can require large investments in time: you've gotta write the change, and then you've got to test it. Then you've got to test it more to make sure it doesn't break anything else. Then you've got to test it even more to make sure one change at level 10 doesn't massively screw things up at level 50. Then you've got to beta test it with large amounts of people to see how it affects the masses. And you've got to do that while stuff like bugs and other features are also clamoring for time.

And that doesn't even factor in the issue of "does the idea fit in to the vision of the project".

This doesn't excuse devs from making blatantly bad decisions. But when you're down in the trenches and taking fire, you don't always have the luxury of perfect information.

I'd rather continue programming in the industry than programming in a cube farm at a bank, even though the bank would probably pay me more money. With that said, though, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. To the people getting ready to make the jump into the industry: be prepared to have your hopes and dreams (and perhaps soul) crushed.

Why I don't play MMOs:

1) Grinding: the difference between progressing as you naturally go about the game, versus "I have to be x to do y." The quickest way a game can lose my interest (single or multi) is forcing me into a situation to grind.

2) Time investment: I loved EVE. Still do. Fantastic idea. Takes way too much time to actually play. Which seems to be common with all of the MMOs I've heard about: to get to the truly fun nugget of the game you have to dump a crapload of time into it; and if the truly fun nugget requires needing to be in a guild? Welcome to your second job. Not for me. I either want a game to be 15-20 hours of solid gameplay, or allow me to put in 1-2 hours at a time and actually accomplish something.

One of the things I loved back when I was playing Eve, even though it bit me more times than I care to admit, is that death and destruction could seriously screw you up, so there's a big incentive to play smart. I think that a game where both sides are thinking of survival -- not just beating the other guy -- is ultimately a much deeper system.