Hello! srps here to talk about one of the many, many lessons I’ve learned throughout this; Iterative Design Looping.
Simply, that whatever first pass of something comes around, it’s gonna get messed with, added to, used as a platform for something else that then changes the initial thoughts and assumptions about it, or as it gets used a better way from something good or a bad busted part comes up that needs to be fixed.
One example I’ll bring up is Artifacts – it started as magic weapons on the combat layer, but then features added to it, enhanced them, changed them, and there was suddenly this whole extra micro-layer of artifacts as a build resource (which was cool and good). However, that served to distract that Artifacts themselves were a bit boring. That helped spark another iterative design pass on Trinkets – which also needed some love, as they were missing a bit of … panache. The current (and hopefully the end) result was the Trinkets update, which redid how we approached trinkets, which helped shape how we redid Artifacts as standalone items.
It’s easy for me to begrudge the extra work Iterative Design Looping takes; it feels a bit like tearing up a floor to put in newer wood and I always have second thoughts about if it’s really necessary. But I also recognize that some of these insights to make things really awesome simply can’t come any other way – ideas have to be made in a usable, existing form for the 2nd and 3rd stage interactions of them and how they sit with everything and how everything sits with them to become apparent.