How much does this game cost ?

quote: If not enjoyment, then satisfaction. Why else would you work for free on any project, if you didn't feel that it was returning your investment in some way?

True.
My extremely brief zk contributor carrier ended as soon as I understood that "controlling the playerbase" had higher priority than "ensure compatibilities with 3rd party software". The competition with other mods and the hope of commercial return was later found to be the cause of such control.

Players should realize that not every line of code is beneficial for them, not every move made by #zkdev (whoever is willing to assume responsibility) is for the best reason.

The fact that some people expect return at later date is creating distortions in the openness of the project... and it is the reason IMO why the infra project is so paralyzed and why it has grown so much. Nearly everything is in-house and nobody is really interested in investing time in fixing a huge piece of code that has a single use. That's the perfect vendor lock-in. Except its currently also keeping players out.

Imagine, if someone came with a perfect solution to solve some of zk lingering problems... would the project adopt it? If so, would it change the entitlement to benefits of veteran contributors if it later produced profit through e.g. steam, stuff that the original infra couldn't do?

I'm sure additional explanations will be required, in the meantime, homework:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

quote: The irony

You forgot the #GBConspiracy tag that brings much value to the public debate.

quote: I'm sure additional explanations will be required, in the meantime, homework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

Please stop optimizing your posts for insultingness. (Stockholm? Really?)

quote: the hope of commercial return

This is, at best, a gross distortion of anything that was actually said and/or done.

- If you mean something by "commercial return" other than "generates a net profit after expenses," please supply that definition.

- Else, provide evidence that any of the ZK devs have anything resembling a hope (or desire) for "commercial return." Actual quotes are strongly recommended.
For bonus points, support your contention with reference to (any known + suspected + possible-future profit the team may have received), divided by (the hours (over ~8 or so years) we have already spent on this project + the further hours that will have to be spent to generate the expected future profit).

quote: "controlling the playerbase"

Again, supply a definition of "control" or else provide evidence that any such control has existed in the game's history.
On the list of things we could be meaningfully described as having "control" of, a bunch of random people on the Internet who don't need to pay a dime to be here, who can vanish any time they want, and who are required to provide virtually no personal information beyond their chosen username and password (not even email addresses) is at the bottom.

Just an idea : maybe by estimating the entropy of the codebase (by using various compression algorithms eliminating redundancies?) you can estimate the effort it has taken to create that codebase?
Just like a poem has a lower entropy than a sports article and (generally) takes much more time to write.
Of course you would need to compare it to the entropy of other codebases...

quote: this piece of trash

"Level 40"
That's like slowly losing your liver to Coca Cola and saying it's awful.

*sigh*

have to work -.-

*level 121*

quote: Just like a poem has a lower entropy than a sports article

Source for that? Entropy is (in the usual definition) an extensive property, so a longer text (like a sports article) will mostly have higher entropy.

Entropy of a system is also affected by how "random" its parts are. Now, it depends on whether you're measuring/calculating entropy on letters (there should be no real difference if poem and article are in the same language) or on words (there's even more to this, but I digress).

Finally, entropy and compression are indeed generally related, but you make it sound like low entropy (very ordered), indeed related to good compressibility, would increase the "value" (since you compare it to a poem, which I assume you're considering higher "quality" text).

Maybe you also just got confused with high and low, since your post would make perfect sense by replacing "low entropy" with "high entropy"...