Well, I'm not a techie, but I would assume from everyone's disparaging comments about it that the software of the game is old and outdated, which would imply to my simple mind that a redesign would have to take that into account.
And again. You say you don't think Cyan made "a communication thing that was difficult to do, by design." I'm not sure why not--they made a bucket ride that was difficult to do, and a moon room puzzle that was difficult to do. Making things that are difficult to do is what they do. Seriously, yes, I know the KI isn't meant to be a puzzle, but...I think they made something that fitted their backstory, and to which (I believe) their original development plan would have seen improvements, or alternative arrangements, down the line, when it became credible in story terms. Whether that plan, if it existed, would have been feasible, we will now never know.
I certainly don't think it "just happened." That puts Cyan in an even worse light. They're not stupid.
One thing that would immediately have wrecked one of the core concepts of the game was if we'd all been given, right at the start, a whizzy gadget that did email and Web access in Relto and the Cavern and all the Ages, which is what it seems people are crying out for. Rightly or wrongly, Uru starts out from the central idea that informed Myst and Riven and all the other games; that you the player are projected into a different world and cut off from your own. I imagine the idea with Uru was that these strangers, thrown together, would form a community and share their knowledge more actively that way; but what chance of that is there when there's no IC reason why you can't email Auntie Doris from Relto and get her to tell the sheriff to send a helicopter to the Cleft and bring you home? It's bad enough that you can talk to someone else in a different Age--if the KI doesn't do co-ordinates away from its Great Zero, it shouldn't do anything else. That's a fudge for the sake of player convenience. (EDIT: it might be worth bearing in mind that the only person who has been working on inter-Age communication apart from Laxman--who came to it cold--is Atrus, and the last time we saw his crystal viewer it was still somewhat buggy...)
There's a reason barbarian warriors in fantasy RPGs aren't given rocket launchers. Yes, I agree the KI could do with improvement; it's trying to do too many things it wasn't meant to do. I will, however, continue to resist any suggestion that Cyan made it hard to use either by (yes, that word again) malice towards the players, or through incompetence. Maybe they thought we might enjoy the challenge of overcoming its difficulties with our own ingenuity. Everyone makes mistakes.
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