Sometimes I can distinctly FEEL it. I can sink my teeth into it. It’s meaty.

It happened in the case of the quote from Jpoku (here below, and I repeat it’s a wonderfully “pure” design lesson) and it happened again in a discussion on Oscuro’s mod.

You can read all of it here, or just this quote:

Let me say this bluntly. The concept of “rarity” in a single player game is STUPID. Because rarity can be perceived only if you play through a number of times to appreciate the differences. It works on games like Diablo because these games are relatively empty of content and the fun is to rinse and repeat. But in a game like Oblivion what truly matters is the “one time through”. And the design goal is to make this one time through as the very BEST possible. So you don’t allow random dice rolls to fuck the game. You don’t allow the “best of the worlds possible” to be generated in one between millions of cases. Instead you take that best case and make absolutely sure that it happens in the exact same way on everyone else’s computer.