got experienced the problem of those fixes fixing fixes which should have fixed other ones.

the problem is generelly, not only in game dev, that if you build a software, which is quite complex, and you didn't managed to design it perfectly from the beginning, then at some stage, it runs quite smooth, but not perfect. And with every step you make to fix a small thing, to make it more perfect, the risk is higher to make something else not working anymore or working less good than before. The problem lies in the structure of the programming i think. To fix a very special problem, you can make a special case detection, and apply a special handling for that case, without to affect any other cases. But with time, often you see that that one special case also applies for some other cases, and you extend it, but the more cases a special case applies to, the more general it becomes, the more it affects other areas and suddenly, your special case become a quite general alternative case to the basic one. And this disasters often happens everywhere where quick fix of problems are required.

i am working myself in a software company, providing service for about 100k of business clients of some sort of data in realtime, and many clients have special requirements. And about 60% of our work times are put into bug fixes and special case handling. The other 40% of the developers have started to build the whole software from the scratch with everything necessary to keep the current case not happen again, even if it takes a lot of more time to produce even the first running version.

therefore, its better to design everything through on paper or whatever before even start to code it, and simple is often better then complex.

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Original post by James Dee Finical I see this type of problem solving a lot, and disagree with it 90% of the time. Your in the business of solving problems, dont make more. Your problem is players killing you in one hit. Lower the damage, dont rewrite a system that works.

Except that's exactly a way to *make* more problems, since a fix like this breaks in turn all other sub-systems which are balanced to the original damage value -- if the damage dealt becomes lowered, the heals receive a relative boost in effectivity even if you didn't actually change anything about them. (since now a heal counters more hits, for the same total amount of damage, but quite different amount of _time_ it takes to attack more times) Also, killing monsters with their still the same amount of hitpoints now takes more time, and due to this there's increased probability of the player dying in the process. (and also because monsters still do their 'old' damage) Meaning, monsters pretty much become 'harder' overnight even if you didn't change anything about them either. With the monsters taking longer to kill, the players' progress rate becomes slower, and amount of money they 'earn' from the kills in given amount of time gets lowered. And so on. Now if you try to 'fix' all these new problems with some quick hack, like setting separate damage systems for PvP and PvE, it in turn distorts all sub-systems where the difference is fuzzy (like player pets, charmed NPCs etc.) Now you have even more problems to fix.

This kind of 'fix' applied to single area can be much like trying to make a huge pile of rocks look 'better' by pulling out one of rocks from the very bottom of it because it sticks out. Rarely, you'll get lucky and the rest of the pile stays intact. More likely it'll all come down right on your head, and then you can only wonder if maybe taking the pile apart and putting it all together in new shape piece by piece wouldn't be a better approach.

(edit: and if you choose to deal with the problem by scaling down/up everything to fit the new, lowered damage... well, then you're pretty much flattening the whole level system to the point where it could be practically removed. Which is not a bad thing at all, just vastly different from the originally advised single fix which was supposed to _save_ the trouble of changing nature of the whole game ;s

You have to fix it if it's not working. It's not just the designers time to document a new system, programmers have to make it. Sometimes players dont want to wait for this new system, or there is not enough time to go back and remake things before launch. An MMORPG does not stop when it has a problem, (a lot of times)you need to fix it, and you need to fix it now.

Like I said my previous two posts this is not how every problem should be solved. I just dont think it's wise to scrap an entire system "if" there is only one problem with it.

(Off Topic: I play WoW and do not agree with the problem the OP stated)

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Original post by James Dee Finical You have to fix it if it's not working.

Yes. Except breaking a dozen of sub-systems when you attempt to patch one and throwing the game even more out of balance than it already was, is not a fix...

there is always more than the problem which just lies in front of you. As the problem is produced by the whole system, there may be a lot of more problems hiding behind the current visible problem, and with a quick fix, the actual visible one may be not appearing any more, but its possible that 10 others pops up front the background.

that's why a big project, especially where a lot of developers and parts are involved, should have a clear design, and should always kept with all effort. In a clear design, you can always see what other parts would get affected by changing one part. Sometimes a indirect solution (by change some other components) is a better solution than the one which lays in your hand (like reducing the damage, maybe its a better way to keep the damage, but increase the life points, just for example).

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Original post by Run_The_Shadows Is this your first MMO? [...]

No, I've been playing a couple of others as well, DaoC, Tibia etc.. Sure they are no better, but I did expect a bit more from blizzard :) And someone really should come up with something new, they don't have to make thousands of quests, they could have made some larger quests instead where some puzzling/thinking is required. As it is now you just have to kill more and more enemies. I haven't done those beacon quests, but considering their quest system I can imagine it's something like "run from point A to B, then to point C, back to point A, over to point D and use item 1, then go to point B again and finally back to point A"

The dungeons are quite fun, even though they feel a bit like "walk throug tunnel and grind", I haven't been to that many yet though, so I can't really say :)

I would really like to se a MMORPG with a fun quest system and some exciting politics, I'm really tired of the "RPG's of eternal grinding".

Case by case basis :)