Warning: Monsters can enter town

[Sirian]

--designers didn't test or think through hardcore much.

Speaking as a game developer, this is most often the reason for shortcomings in games. Not as much goes on in development as fans would like to believe. Teams include a lot of artists, as well. More artists than any other type of position. Designers and programmers tend to be just a handful. Blizzard might be able to fund more, but they have limits too.

This is not to say that developers do not try. They do, and they care a lot about their work. Many of them are extremely good at what they do, and nearly all are competent.

The problem is that the nuances of the game overlap in to so many permutations, there is far too much to track. Budgets and limited development resources dictate that only so many man hours will be applied to a game, and it takes more hours than you think to write code. Again, Blizzard might have the funding to stretch this a bit, but they still have a finite pool from which to draw.

Testing can only turn up so many issues. The work of a handful or (in the best cases) dozens of testers is never going to hold a candle to tens or hundreds of thousands of rabid fans, many of whom network their results, playing the game when the game has shipped.

Not all of the features can be thoroughly tested and iterated. A game is lucky if even its core gameplay on default settings gets that kind of treatment -- and if outlying options and settings are refined at all, after their initial design and implementation.

I don't consider Diablo online Hardcore to be all that well designed. It's just that Blizzard's competition tends to do even worse, so a lot of players pool here, feeling that it's the best available gaming option. It is not easy to make a good game. There are countless ways to screw up.


- Sirian