Re: Power Gamers
Hahahaha. That's funny.
Botting seems to be one of those universal no-nos. Are there any major games that allow botting? I know I sure wouldn't be interested in that. I don't want the skill/challenge focus to be on writing the best bot.
But getting back to Mina's original topic:
As a game designer, I think it is really easy to get sucked into obsessing over the results your powergamers generate. Their advancement speed, their ability to make money, etc. can look really gross to a developer, and entice them to implement nerfs to clamp down on it. The problem is, this tends to have only a minor effect on the powergamer (they find a new way to succeeed), while it can have a huge negative effect on normal players.
After a few cycles of this, your game can become extremely difficult on average players, or even worse, tedious.
I think this is a very hard temptation to resist, and you see new developers make this mistake repeatedly. MMOs made by a new developer almost always have this problem, because their devs don't bother to play other MMOs, and thus their lack of experience as player AND developer gets exposed.
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