willgamer -> RE: Criticism: Is it improving or killing our games? (1/21/2011 4:11:34 PM)
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ORIGINAL: Anthropoid Small technical errors or faulty abstractions that do not disturb the illusion of belief or immersion are one thing. I'd call abstracting the speed of aircraft in a way that someone might quibble over the details that sort of "problem." Bad UI, boring tedious game dynamics, bugs, CTDs that sort of thing, poor balance, cheesy story elements, egregious gaps in content, game dynamics that the AI simply cannot accomplish much less 'master;' these are all examples of things that warrant criticism, and where constructively expressed criticism may actually promote the game. IMO, nitpicking the details is only really worthwhile to the extent that those details, either singularly or in the aggregate take away from overall game play. I suggest it would be helpful to always have a seperate section in each game's forum for UI problems/improvements. It wouldn't hurt to put historical issues into its own seperate section as well. The UI is nearly always undervalued, under developed, and under prioritized by developers. Plus it's not helpful that suggestions to improve it, are buried under an avalanche of historical issue posts and so these UI suggestions are usually put on the back burner for fixing. Another subject that could argueably use its own section is for options that were missed by the developer. A powerful example of this is the bruhaha in WitE over weather. If options for other than simulation weather (that is what is hard coded now) were provided, such as averaged historical weather, most of the objections would disappear. In this particular case, the developer is between a rock and a hard place having chosen (incorrectly, imho) simulation weather as the key play balance mechanism. Perhaps Erik could gather feedback on the best configuration of these forums to optimise feedback for issues like UI that tend to be lost in the background noise of historical quibbles.
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