Monday, May 25, 2009

There's a 100% chance that something might happen.

Rewards should never be left completely up to chance.  Even if there is a 0.0001% that someone might not get the unspecified reward within a timely manner, it will happen to one person, and he will use the Internet to complain as loud as he can.

Designers, listen: If you want a positive experience for your players with randomised content, create failsafes so they are always rewarded, even if their luck really sucks.

It surely can't be that hard to create a diminishing non-success marker that hits 0% after n tries.

In other aviatory news, I saw a flying go-cart this weekend.  He circled above me a few times while I took the puppies for a walk before flying off to whatever fate befell him*.

-Anthony

* In my head I imagined he had a dozen moneybags of loot, twirling his luxurious moustache and cackling wildly.  He would then land his kart-plane on a secret runway where his crab-walking sidekick would greet him and be left to haul the moneybags away into their secret base, waiting to be liberated by some derring do-gooder with an ironed suit and fancy watch.


such is my ambassador