🚀 go-pugleaf

On 21 Apr 1998 15:53:31 GMT,  in message
<6hifdr$19km$1...@nntp1.u.washington.edu>, ae...@u.washington.edu (Micheal
Keane) wrote:

>Maybe if the games had been properly balanced in the first place, tank
>rushing wouldn't be a problem. 

Ding-ding-ding-ding! We have a winner!

If a strategy that is legal in terms of the way the game is programmed, and
it gets the job done, but it's hideously boring, then I'd say you have a
flaw in the game's design. 

How do you fix it? Fix the game's design. I would suspect, however, that
you're always going to get these kinds of problems in a game designed by a
big time software studio. They can't hope to try all the possible
strategies within the testing time of the game. Besides, this is a design
problem. If it's built into the design of the game from day one, it's not
going to be fixedif it isn't uncovered until 2 weeks before it goes gold.

If this is were a board game that allowed a deviant strategy to easily win
the game, people would decry the game as flawed (at the very least). It's a
computer game, though, so people blame those who use the deviant strategy.
Sorry, I don't buy that. The game's flawed. 

I'm not sure you can get around these flaws. If a game is complex enough
that it requires a computer to resolve all of the game's aspects, I'm not
sure you can test the design before it's coded. These flaws may just be
endemic to the design. 


Allan Goodall        agoo...@sympatico.ca

"Once again, the half time score. 
 Alien Overlords: 142,000. Scotland: zip."
   - This Hour Has 22 Minutes