There are always more ideas than results. The other side of the coin (often seen in the open source world and mmorpgs) is the abundance of experts offering assistance who never follow thru which is probably another version of the same thing. Id rather have the semi-productive ideas than the non-productive help if I had to choose.
Anyway Im not sure that holding back the ideas is a good idea.
Altho it does have a drawback of lost credit. Ive been promised any number of times to be mentioned in the credits (even on this forum) for extensive email conversations fleshing out a project that I recommended and others have finished. Luckily Im not real bothered by that but if I was then I would certainly understand holding back the flow of ideas. You would probably have to even take into account that some of the projects which were completed by the original suggester were more often IMHO spurred on by people saying they want it. Not to mention the projects done out of spite for the original persons refusal to do "such a simple task".
Squelching idea conversations or DIY responses might have had a large impact on this community altho we will never really know. 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. 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?
Then there are any number of popular modded nations, spells, AI improvements, special maps which I think sparked from an idea put forth not by the person who developed the mod. Im probably biased or dont fully understand what the wealth of worthless ideas was.
Gandalf Parker
Re: Some thoughts on improvements to the game
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