[freeflight]

> Until you've built something people want to play, addressing lag (and similar tertiary problems) is solving a hypothetical problem for a hypothetical player.

Sadly those are not always hypothetical players. Gamers can be very demanding when it comes to such things as performance and especially network performance in anything related to PvP.

Tho, I agree with your premise: Have something that's fun first, then deal with everything around it. I just don't think it's that easy in practice when a lot of the player feedback boils down to "I couldn't tell you if the game is fun or not because your crappy netcode keeps getting me killed, that's not fun at all!".

In that regard, Steam forums for EA titles are sometimes their very own circle of hell.

[chii]

> Have something that's fun first, then deal with everything around it.

but what if the fun is only apparent if the lag is gone, and the camera movement/framerate is smooth, etc? These are sometimes considered polish, and yet, you can't tell if the game is good or not based on a jittery, laggy version!