[CF-Devel] big world - big problems

[crossfire-devel at archives.real-time.com]

  As a developer, let me make some comments.

  The developers make no money on crossfire.  IF I was getting paid for the 
work, and probably true of other developers, we'd tend to be more responsive - 
simply on the basis that to get paid, we'd have to sell the project.  But as 
part of that, it'd probalby mean we'd have to do things that we don't want to do 
(stupid idea, boring to do, etc).  And as part of that, development model of 
crossfire does not match commercial development very much (we'd have a paid QA 
department we could send the code to, dedicated playtesters, etc).  Since we 
don't have those, it is much easier to make something a test server,and let the 
players find the bugs.

  Unfair to players?  Perhaps.  But no one is forcing you to play on a 
particular server.  I'll note that those people that run servers are really 
spending some amount of money in the process - power, bandwidth, hardware, etc

  So that said, pretty much all features added to crossfire are features the 
developers think are good.  Most undergo discussion on the mailing list 
(including the change to bigworld) and if they do not gain popular support, are 
not added.  Most undergo some level of testing.

  What that means is that if someone says 'XYZ is really stupid', you are pretty 
much insulting the feature that some developer added.  And the natural reaction 
from the developer will be 'XYZ is not stupid, and here's why'.

  That said, there are certainly areas for improvement.  What I'd say is to 
include some positive ideas of what to change.  If a message (as I perceive it) 
seems to be 'XYZ is broken, why did you ever do it, change it back', there isn't 
much a response I can make.

  If you instead say 'XYZ has some issues.  Here are some ideas to make it 
better/fix it', you're much more likely to get some positive responses, and 
likewise some action (those ideas may be instituted)


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