Something I think that should be thought of before beta finishes and perhaps implemented is a good security system.
I have seen many games including Fierce Harmony, Diaspora, to name a few that have all gone bad and no longer exist because although the creators produced a great game, the networking security was very poor and thus ordinary people exploited bugs and more advanced hackers were able to customize their items and the game to the way they liked it.
Now it may be thought that you can just simply make the game server based instead of client based so that all stats are saved onto the server and therefor nobody can cheat because they can\'t alter their files to effect their character, this is sadly not the case.
You don\'t have to actually hack into the main server in order to change settings in the game, when you are running the game doing various techniques on a low security server, any loops or bugs are easily compramised (and im not talking about junior networking kiddie techniques).
It all comes down to if your prepared from the start to stop cheating, because I have seen many games who say that they will deal with it when it comes, but the problem is, is that it will come and you will always get people attempting to cheat and if you get someone who knows what he is doing it, unless your networking is correctly configured and secure then the very best game can be ruined by a single person.
I really enjoyed the Tech Demo of Planeshift and I want to see it flourish as one of the greatest MMORPG\'s so I think its important that forms of hacking the game can be stopped before it is released and it\'s too late. Bugs ofcourse cannot be stopped and sure, people will probabbly take advantage of them when they come across them but hacking can be stopped if its done right.
After all, who wants to have a game reset a year after the full version is released because someone scored 10 milllion hexas illegally? I certainly don\'t and im sure no one else would.
I\'m probabbly wrong and the Planeshift team has taken this into measures but if it hasn\'t just perhaps a \"wish list\" thing I would like to see in it to keep the game fair and fun.
