Some thoughts on improvements to the game

[lch]

It isn't hard to pat each other on the shoulders here and say that we're all big pals and great guys, and everything is wonderful. That's not only quite easy, but also very reassuring and condescending. Lots of room for doing so, too. But I don't really see why that would be needed.

Newbies, yes, those will receive a lot of good will and encouragement. Unless they come here with a bad attitude. But apart from a few examples of know-alls, that started on the wrong foot, most people come here with questions, or they say "I want to do X", or "I have made X, here it is".

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

There are always more ideas than results.

Naturally. For every successful, completed project, there are many failed projects, a lot of canceled projects, an enormous amount of planned projects that never emerged. If we're talking ideas, there are myriads. I'm not a gardener, but I don't want to see the endless forest of possibilities, where it's uncertain if things ever make it. It's confusing, at best.

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Id rather have the semi-productive ideas than the non-productive help if I had to choose.

If I'd have to connect words, I'd always pair up "help" with "semi-productive" and "ideas" as "non-productive". Everybody has ideas. It's not like there was any shortage because anybody is lacking the ability. It's different if somebody would actually be asking for ideas, of course.

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Anyway Im not sure that holding back the ideas is a good idea.
Altho it does have a drawback of lost credit.

If they stay at the idea level, they're debilitating. Especially if others see that those ideas are not getting realized, then something seems wrong. Especially if ideas repeatedly fail to get realized, people get the impression that nobody really bothers about realizing them.

There's lots of obvious applications that come to mind, and I'm not the only one who can come up with "Wouldn't it be nice if..." / "Wouldn't ... be cool?", but as long as there's no indication that it isn't more than a fantasy, claiming credit for those things seem preposterous, even though the achiever in question could honor it out of his good will, of course. If somebody gives even a half-assed attempt at realizing the ideas that he brought forward, this would become a better world. It could entice others to try and make something similar, or do better, to enhance that effort in some areas, or to pick up where that person stopped later. That's what leads to progress.

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Not to mention the projects done out of spite for the original persons refusal to do "such a simple task".

I'm trying to do that, and it practically never, ever works. Maybe it works if you try it often enough, after the 1000th time. I can spite all I want. I can spite, beg, order, ask, compliment people to work on something that I want, and it doesn't work - the only thing that does seem to work well is living by example.

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Im not sure if we would have CBM, or SemiRand, or a pbem server. Or map generators (even the in-game one), or the many map modification utilities.

Those are all things from Dom2 times or maybe even earlier, before I got here. Those have produced spin-offs and successors. I think the in-game Dom3 map editor wouldn't have necessarily come into existence if the Dominions community wouldn't have come up with a similar software in the first place. Not saying that JK borrowed from the code, but I'd assume that he probably was inspired by the effort.

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Are you sure that the utilities for checking status on online games, or score charts, or backups would have just appeared out of the blue without someone requesting it?

Since those are all things that I have been working on: Yes, I am very sure of that. Those things are obvious applications, and since I was hosting multiplayer games I thought "Hey, this would be cool to have for my users, and I know that I can do it." Nobody asked me to do that, and I am unaware of the existence of any such things, server-wise. So I sat down, wasted a week or more of work on those things, and came up with a product. I have heard from others that it was inspirational for them, too, and enticed them to try out and create things from some ideas of their own - the best compliment I can think of.

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

Im probably biased or dont fully understand what the wealth of worthless ideas was.

Often, demands masked as helpful suggestions. I don't have anything against ideas, and I'm encouraging people to realize their ideas, and offer my help to them when I can. Which happened often. I'd just be very wary to continue complimenting people that do no else than cough up ideas and then - nothing. The danger is that they might get too used to that.