I’ll use a distinct instance to reply your query at the moment. There’s a widely known long-running MMORPG known as Star Wars: The Previous Republic that was well-known for its companion characters as a serious recreation function.
ALTThe way in which that the companion system was constructed for launch was designed round each class having an equal variety of companions inside the information. Companions at launch have been mapped by class – each participant class had six totally different companions, every with a set function (melee tank, ranged tank, melee DPS, ranged DPS, healer, ship droid) in a particular numbered slot. In all the code techniques that had something to do with companions, the code wouldn’t ask for a particular companion by ID quantity, however slightly by the participant’s class and companion slot quantity. The system was constructed such that companion lookup couldn’t be sparse (that’s, you couldn’t have empty companion slots for any class), or techniques like companion affection, tools, companion stats and stat scaling, many components of fight, companion UI, sure cinematics, and many others. would fail in a cascade. Each class needed to have the identical variety of companions or every kind of recreation techniques would break. This additionally meant that there wasn’t simply two totally different faction ship droids, there have been eight (a distinct one for every class).
ALTIt was when the sport designers added the primary and second extra companions to the unique roster that they bumped into the wall. They couldn’t add simply one companion – that they had so as to add eight companions – a distinct model of the brand new companion for every class. The prices have been so nice that the management deemed it too costly to construct new companions after the primary two (HK-51 and Treek). It additionally meant that there was no approach that they might reuse current companions for different courses – the Sith Warrior couldn’t ever recruit a companion character that was designed for the Imperial Agent, as a result of it wouldn’t be the identical companion, it’d should be a separate occasion of that outdated companion information. New companion characters have been some of the extremely requested and common options amongst gamers, however truly including them to the sport was a nightmare when it comes to the quantity of labor that wanted to be accomplished and complexity of knowledge (since design quailed on the considered having to maintain monitor of as much as eight totally different variations of each new companion added to the sport). This drawback was a steady thorn within the facet of the management too as a result of they knew this might open up huge new alternatives – faction reward companions, microtransaction companions, momentary companions that might truly die as a part of the story, totally different variations of companions, and many others. – however couldn’t feasibly do something about it as a result of improvement value of getting to rebuild all the system.
ALTFinally, circumstances granted the SWTOR staff extra headcount for a 12 months and the management correctly tasked a strike staff of engineers and designers for practically all the growth cycle to rebuild the companion system from the bottom up with a view to decouple the participant courses from their static companion slots. For the primary time, designers may set an inventory of participant courses that the companion could possibly be recruited by with no need to create a reproduction of that companion’s information for every class. All courses may share the identical companion’s information, which meant that courses may recruit every others’ companions, and that new companions have been a lot, a lot simpler so as to add to the sport. Design would now not must create eight totally different variations of the identical companion anymore.
ALTAs you’ll have surmised, the rationale that it was so costly so as to add unanticipated performance in later is as a result of loads of different essential techniques have been constructed upon the assumptions made throughout that preliminary implementation. Altering the underlying system meant that all the different techniques constructed on high of it will both fail spectacularly, or would additionally must be rebuilt to work with the brand new hotness. These recreation techniques don’t exist in a vacuum – there are sometimes shockwaves that have an effect on different secondary techniques which might set off their very own shockwaves to have an effect on tertiary techniques, and so forth. It isn’t all the time as enormous a difficulty as SWTOR’s companion system, however it’s a actually good instance of unhealthy assumptions made throughout preliminary improvement haunting the staff for years after launch.
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