A Call for Issue 9 Related Guides and Information.
By
AkhOsiris,
Posted on: 2007-04-26 11:08 in The Market and Inventions
They should have guides for their employees anyways. Make guides for the players and their employees.
How do they get their information?
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I would really appreciate OFFICIAL guides.
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I have not tested or read a single thread re: Issue #9 until today, and i'm completely lost!!! I tried reading TerraDraconis thread Guide: Introduction to Inventions 0.5, but it's still to complicated. I hate to admit this, despite having 7 years of university and college...I could use a guide with Illustrations, pictures mixed in with clear text. It doesnt have to be a printed version, online will do. Hopefully, there's a quick in game tutorial to get me up to speed.
I'm not suggesting your guide needs work TerraDraconis (and others), I just need something more illustrative. I'm not a huge video gamer, i've only played CoH, CoV, and Civ III, IV in the past 4 years. Maybe others can pickup on changes a bit faster due to more extensive gaming experiences...unfortantly, alot of the terms and descriptions seem foreign.
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I would really appreciate OFFICIAL guides.
[/ QUOTE ]
I have not tested or read a single thread re: Issue #9 until today, and i'm completely lost!!! I tried reading TerraDraconis thread Guide: Introduction to Inventions 0.5, but it's still to complicated. I hate to admit this, despite having 7 years of university and college...I could use a guide with Illustrations, pictures mixed in with clear text. It doesnt have to be a printed version, online will do. Hopefully, there's a quick in game tutorial to get me up to speed.
I'm not suggesting your guide needs work TerraDraconis (and others), I just need something more illustrative. I'm not a huge video gamer, i've only played CoH, CoV, and Civ III, IV in the past 4 years. Maybe others can pickup on changes a bit faster due to more extensive gaming experiences...unfortantly, alot of the terms and descriptions seem like foreign.
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There is an in game tutorial that can be run from the university ion Steel Canyon (hero side) and Cap Au Diable (Villain side) once I9 goes live. It introduces you to the basics of the crafting system. But as you said, it's still complicated 
Wow...
I look through the window of my cubicle at Lighthouse and say, "I'm going to post for a collection for I9 guides since we have so many in the TR boards we might as well pull them together in one location."
He nods his approval. He is a busy man so a nod is good.
So I post... and booooommm doooooommm I break the internets.
The best way that Lighthouse and I can work towards getting specific and exclusive data out to our players is through affiliate fan sites. This way we have some open communication and some accountability to what information gets published and how it is used to benefit the community and IP of COH/COV.
We are working on that program now, and hope to have the finite details in place within the coming month. So anyone interested in registering a website with us for us to review once our foundation for the program is laid out please let me know via PM or better yet email me at exlibris@ncsoft.com.
If you have suggestions or feedback on how we can better organize the player submitted guides, perhaps color coordinate them based on ease of use, I would also be amenable to hearing this information.
As to whether there will ever be an official guide, I don't know, I'm not in that decision making position. I am however part of the official COH/COV boards and would love to help organize any guides that our community has already worked to compile.
Anyone wishing to contribute please let me know.
Regards,
Ex
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We are working on that program now, and hope to have the finite details in place within the coming month.
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Hooray Ex and LH!! 
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Wow...
I look through the window of my cubicle at Lighthouse and say, "I'm going to post for a collection for I9 guides since we have so many in the TR boards we might as well pull them together in one location."
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Wow... your cubicle has a window? I'm so jealous. My cubicle has no window. 
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Wow... your cubicle has a window? I'm so jealous.
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My cubicle has three windows. It's kind of annoying. They don't look outside or anything; they are all facing other cubicles.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
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I suppose the qualifying factor is this!
Resource allocation.
Would the subscribing consumer base prefer NCsoft/Cryptic to allocate resources to publications that are often outdated due to upgrades within a very short time period.
Or would they rather have new content, bug fixes, game features.
That's the deciding factor.
Ex
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I'm sorry but that is an outright fallacy. You are presenting the the issue as an either/or and any liberal arts major knows the fallacy of a strict dichotomy.
All you have to do is look at World of Warcraft to see how they do it. Yes, the competition includes straight out, a talent calculator that provides all the information on a power you need to plan:
link
If Cryptic states that it is too busy to provide decent documentation then they need to release all the underlying numbers and information to Enhancements and Powers. That is the third choice available.
The past arguments made by Statesman and Positron on how they wished to keep CoX casual now has gone out the window with the Pandora's Box of Inventions. Slotting and set bonuses are now so complicated, I can't plan out a build on the fly.
As someone said much earlier, the players should not be reverse engineers. Give us the numbers and we will draft the guides.
It's hypocritical that you discourage PIGG diving but then encourage us to provide documentation on gameplay that can't be done without it.
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Without developer provided numbers, in easy to find places, all we get is a void filled by players taking best guesses or best reverse-analysis. There are some specialists (arcana, for example), who are very good at this. It is noteworthy, however, that she advocates for defense based sets, and I swear she has it in for /regen.
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Even if that were true, I'm not sure it would be especially noteworthy, unless you were of the mind to think I would lie about either the way tohit works, or the defense numbers I measure, in order to alter people's subjective opinions about them.
A word on my testing and "reverse-engineering" process, which I think is relevant to this discussion. Usually, I'll decide to test something or measure something, or reverse engineer the behavior of something, and then I'll ask a red name if they'll let me off the hook and just tell me what it is. There are usually three possibilities:
1. They give me a break and just tell me. Sometimes, its just a point of detail, and nothing especially secretive. In that case, I accept the number, and I virtually always test anyway. I then either post that I've measured the number with dev confirmation, or I reply to the devs that I cannot confirm their number. Sometimes, this actually turns up a real bug that eventually gets resolved, or at least confirmed.
2. They make me go the long way. Sometimes for whatever reason they don't tell me. Sometimes they don't reply at all. There are lots of reasons for this, but when it happens, I then proceed to test, and give them my test results, and ask for confirmation. Two sub-cases:
2a. They confirm, or refute, the answer. Sometimes I get the impression that they don't want to tell me, unless they know I could have gotten the answer without them. Sometimes they think it will take too long to explain to me how it works. Sometimes they aren't sure if its something that should be released to the players. In any case, if I already know, and its clear I can demonstrate that its theoretically possible for players to determine the information for themselves to high order precision, sometimes that causes them to change their minds, and tell me. Then, like the first case, I can post my results with dev-confirmation.
2b. Sometimes, I just never hear back at all. I suppose they have their reasons, but when this happens, I then post my results, and specifically state that I cannot get dev confirmation either way on them. Generally, when this happens, I dump a significant amount of my data onto the forums, as well as the test process, so that others can attempt to replicate (or not) my results, specifically because I have no independent confirmation of my results.
Usually, the red names are fairly open about discussing test results: it doesn't appear to me that they have a specific reason to keep most things secret. I think what they do *not* want to have happen is to get into a situation where the discussion of the game focuses on the numbers, including the enormous amount of time it can take to educate people on the proper way to interpret the numbers, along with the design intent behind them. This makes them reluctant to be seen as openly wanting to discuss the numerical aspects of the game.
The service I provide, if you want to call it that, is that I sometimes give the devs some cover to release numbers: they know I can measure them anyway, so they cannot be kept secret. They know I can describe the technique, so the work could theoretically be replicated. My results are generally accurate, so mine are almost as good as theirs anyway. I'm not going to burden them with a lot of argument or confusion over what the numbers mean. And if I post them, instead of them, then *I* take the heat over explaining them, rather than them, which is an enormous time saver for them.
I'm not specifically trying to justify the devs not releasing numbers or mechanics: I'm actually an advocate for full disclosure in general. But I recognize that there are very serious practical consequences of doing so that they are justifiably wary of. When the I7 critter accuracy scaler change went in, I posted several hundred separate answers to specific questions about it, most of them duplicates. Multiply that by all the game mechanics that players would have questions about if all the game mechanics were in a published rulebook, and that is a huge potential workload the devs would be creating for themselves.
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
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The past arguments made by Statesman and Positron on how they wished to keep CoX casual now has gone out the window with the Pandora's Box of Inventions. Slotting and set bonuses are now so complicated, I can't plan out a build on the fly.
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And I'd have to say that your's is a fallacy based on taking a snapshot. Sure early on you can't plan a build with the new system because it's new and takes time to digest. That doesn't mean the system is too complicated for casual play, it just means you're not totally familiar with it.
The day you started the game you didn't know about all the different enhancers or the slotting options and you couldnt plan a build on the fly either. Doesn't mean the game and it's systems aren't casual friendly or overly complicated. Just means it takes some time to learn.
They've done a good job with the tutorial. They've made it digestible. Even though it's a big system it's still just the bare bones of it and it stands to get much bigger. If they had reams of paperwork done and ready for publish or disbursement along with the release of the Issue, I would have been incredibly worried and upset, because that would have meant so many things were set in stone months ago.
As it is, things have been fluid and flexible and right up until the end things have been going through some pretty fundamental changes that overall make the whole endeavor better. The fact that intimate details of the system haven't been pinned down gave me more faith in the entire testing process. So trying to nail them to the wall for not having it all documented and publishing full guides is pretty weak behavior in my mind.
"Null is as much an argument "for removing the cottage rule" as the moon being round is for buying tennis shoes." -Memphis Bill
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As it is, things have been fluid and flexible and right up until the end things have been going through some pretty fundamental changes that overall make the whole endeavor better. The fact that intimate details of the system haven't been pinned down gave me more faith in the entire testing process. So trying to nail them to the wall for not having it all documented and publishing full guides is pretty weak behavior in my mind.
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And I never stated that Cryptic's fault is that they do not have full guides ready. I fully well understand that details have not been finalized for final release and changes will likely to occur.
I did state that it is wrong to argue that we will not have documentation because it is presented as a Hobbsian dilemma where we as players should choose between documentation or content and that it is implicit for the players to provide such documentation without the underlying data. My criticism stands.
I played around on Test too. There are a ton of issues that need to be explained to the player. To this day, I still have a damage/recharge IO that I can't slot into Nova and there is absolutely no reason given in the management screen. Looking at how many questions have been generated by players going through the tutorial and playing on Test, it is not casual friendly. Looking at all the exceptions that come into play with IO sets, bonuses, exemplaring, etc., none of which are in the in-game documentation and have to be footnoted by a developer post in the forums, casual understanding of Inventions is not there.
When the game first launched, it seemed many of the decisions a player had to make were qualitative. Do I want to go with Tough or Invoke Panic on my Ice Tanker? And adding more slots simply meant the power could do more of whatever the power did. For the most part, people were fine with not having numbers. But then we began discovering some numbers, like the pitiful defense bonus on powers like Hover. At that point, many people had 6-slotted (pre-ED) Hover for defense because, well... it took defense enhancements and people wanted more defense. When people found the truth of the matter, they started caring about numbers.
Now, especially with the introduction of Set IOs, much of the decision making goes from being qualitative to quantitative. It's all about how doing this or that with your character affects the numbers. In fact, in Scrapulous' Fire/Fire Tanker guide, he states "But I think there is another, potentially much more effective way to approach a build: by examining the set bonuses available to it and maximizing the most attractive ones." I'm quite good with numbers and I agree with his assessment. And later, "From this we can see that if we want to stack set bonuses, we'd be best off focusing on PBAoE Damage, Resist Damage, and Melee Damage sets." The system has grown so complex that actually crunching the numbers indicates it's advantageous to build your character around enhancements rather than powers. We've come a long way since launch.
But, I9 aside, I've always been in favor of disclosing the numbers. In CoH Beta, I /bugged and posted my experiences with my /dev blaster soloing large groups of +1 Council wolves and even +2 Freak Tanks in Bricks using nothing but Smoke Grenade and Boxing (a melee attack from the fighting pool). Yet the bug with Smoke Grenade persisted well after launch. Had I been able to title my report something eye-catching like, "Smoke Grenade base 105% to-hit debuff should probably be 10.5%", I bet it would have been quickly fixed.
Today, it's a common thing to have documents that pull information directly from a database. In short order, a contractor could create such a document to include all powers available to players along with enhancements as well as teach someone at Cryptic how to add something new to the document when, for example, a new invention temp power is created. Then, every time the Live servers are updated, the document can be regenerated and a copy published on the website. The same can be done to create an Excel spreadsheet. Writers of guides can incorporate the information, while players who just want to see the authoritative information have it at their fingertips on the CoX website.
Having access to this information is especially important in cases where the results of enhancing are not easily observable (e.g., Thug Enforcer Tactics and Maneuvers).
<QR>
Ex Libris, given that this thread has derailed so much it's jumped tracks and is now heading to Chicago, do you think it would be possible to rename it something else relevant, allow this discussion to continue and to start a new thread that is purely about getting I9 guides organised?
I'd prefer this thread isn't pruned to bring it back on topic, since the discussion has been pretty good thus far.
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I would really appreciate OFFICIAL guides.
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You sure about that? The book that comes with the game and the Prima guide are "official", but there are more errors than the player generated guides.
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QFT
Statesman worked on the last Prima guide, which was obsolete shortly after it was released. I prefer content over the devs wasting time with guides.
If they are going to put out any guide at all I would prefer some general numbers for IO's n such, but no real guides. We have some pretty smart folks here on the boards that can figure everything out and post the needed guides...
Scrapper Slotting Basics
Brute Slotting Basics
I consider myself an avid yet casual player and I want to see the numbers. I say avid because I've been into superhero RP games since Champions and V&V all those years ago. I say casual because for the first two months or so I didn't bother to visit these boards. I wanted to experience the game for myself...to learn things on my own. I still avoid spoiler posts for that reason.
However 10 years in Quality Assurance has made me doubt the abilities of others. This is not any kind of a slam on the Dev's abilities. I'm not a computer programmer or game designer and I'm sure their skills in these area dwarf mine and always will. But the devs are human and make mistakes just like the rest of us.
I originally came to the boards because my very first character, a Blaster, was having trouble leveling in the early teens. It was then that I discovered MANY things that board-goers consider common knowledge.
No, you don't NEED to endure the Hollows. Just visit the Contact there and then head to King's Row.
You didn't run your first 6-8 levels in the Sewers? It took you HOW long to get to lvl 10? You got your Tough Badge (100k of damage sustained) HOW early? Wow...
Yeah, the first few levels can be kind of a drag, until you get a temp movement power that is. What do you mean 'Huh?' You DON'T know about the temp movement Powers? You've been using HOVER to cross the Hollows? Wow...
And my all-time favorite: Why do you Hover all the time in fights? Oh you slotted Hover for Defense! Why? No, the Def bonus is NOT 15%. Yeah I know that the mouse-over says TOs are +5% Def each...oh you slotted 3 of them? Ok...let me explain how this REALLY works...
Before the veterans here begin a bunch of finger-pointing and suggesting that EVERYONE knows that the Def bonus from Hover is actually the bonus to the BASE and not a raw number let me add that I'm a 40 year-old writer with a college degree who reads everything in-game as it comes up. Now no offense but if I didn't figure it out then a bunch of others won't either.
Not long after this last eye-opener I found the link to ShirkSilver's character planner and laid out my Blaster as he was. Now I'd figured out ED (or something like it) by just looking at the values as things were slotted. Ok...third one not as good as the first two...got it. Whoa...fourth one is a big drop...no sense in messing with that. I'll slot End Redux instead and move on. Shirksilver's planner revealed how my build was almost totally borked IMHO and no wonder I was having trouble leveling post-9 in the world of debt.
Oh btw I discovered the wonderful world of DOs not from the game anywhere but from another player. He noticed that I was lvl 11 and cued me in. I believe that the leveling message at 12 mentiones DOs but I'm not sure. Needless to say about ten seconds after I dinged 12 I was off to Cooke's for a set.
I read somewhere that an estimated 10% of the player base comes to boards. Wow...10%...I wonder what the rest of the players do? Well based on personal observation some of them leave in frustration. I teamed with a lvl 17 Blaster and the player was bemoaning how tough everything was on Diff 3 (I always forget the names sorry). I asked him if he had all of his DOs slotted (because several of my alts couldn't afford full sets at 12) and he asked what a DO was.
During the double xp weekend I gathered about a dozen of my friends together on temp accounts to play hoping that we could all form a SG like our Champions days of old. About half made it past lvl 10, those that didn't citing all of the 'stupid running around' and 'lack of in-game information' as their main reasons. I was on for most of the weekend just to answer their questions because I didn't want to send them to the boards on their first day to look for stuff that all of us felt should be available from the game itself somewhere.
So today I hit my 6-month veteran mark and more than ever I want to see the real numbers behind the game. Why? Because of all of the rumor and innuendo flying around about how this works or that works. I saw somewhere that Insps are not actually giving the listed bonuses. Do I believe the source? The OP had a post count in the mid-4 digits and while several others responded no one refuted him. So now who do I believe?
No, as much as I love this game there have been enough mistakes, misunderstandings and (IMHO) downright bits of misinformation to shake my faith in much of the information out there. Now I want to see what the real values are...not some reverse-engineered figure.
Were it not for the flubs and mistakes I would slavishly believe everything the game tells me. Now that I know that I can't I want to see for myself. To those who say that releasing the figures will destroy the immersion got news for you: The Immersive players won't come looking for it. They'll go merrily one enjoying the game as they always have.
But me...I want to see some numbers.
"Comics, you're not a Mastermind...you're an Overlord!"
If you ('you' referring to Cryptic as a whole) can pump out a loot system that seemingly requires massive amounts of information (which you expect players to compile for you), why can't you be bothered to actually place hard numbers in the game? Telling me that enhancement X will increase damage by 36.4% is meaningless without context. If attack Y only does 3 damage to start with the boost is effectively worthless. You managed to give me an annoying "INSPIRATIONS FULL!" message that hopefully can be disabled but no hard numbers on powers.
I personally have no interest in farming loot and I already see it affecting the game (nothing like seeing broadcasts looking for salvage Z)- I just want to know if slotting a power for another enhancement is worthwhile without trying to follow the combat tab (which can't even be done for anything but damage anyway). Why is this apparently so difficult to code?
Ok so how about an in-game guide, maybe at the U on the bookcase we trained at or something? I am sure many people would see it as worthwhile. The data (numbers) are on some devs computer somewhere already. The player guides are good aswell but for something this large in format i'd get more use out of something in-game. And I'm sure many part-time players would get involved more with a guide in-game. The training at the U was a good start.
Not exactly what you asked for, but my I9 specific (and heavy use of IO sets) Fire^3 Blaster Guide is now up.
Peg's I9 Guide to the Fire^3 Blaster
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Ok so how about an in-game guide, maybe at the U on the bookcase we trained at or something? I am sure many people would see it as worthwhile. The data (numbers) are on some devs computer somewhere already. The player guides are good aswell but for something this large in format i'd get more use out of something in-game. And I'm sure many part-time players would get involved more with a guide in-game. The training at the U was a good start.
[/ QUOTE ]This is about the best idea i've ever read. I'm tired of fishing thru guides on the boards. My game slows down every time I alt-tab to the web browser anyway.
A basic overview of the new things in Issue 9 that I worked up for our coalition: IO and U: a basic guide to the new features in Issue 9
I reject your reality and substitue my own!
--Adam Savage from "Mythbusters"
Lallendos said:[ QUOTE ]
PLUS retail game costs($200 in my case, as an early adopter of both games, 2 accts)...
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I bought the DVD edition of CoH when it first came out, because I wanted the prestige travel power (turns it it's the exact same as the regular sprint power, just with a fancy graphic) and the cape. I paid under $30, including tax, as I got a great deal, from Walmart, I think, although it might have been CompUSA, I don't really remember as it was years ago. Anyway, even if you paid full price it would have been under $50 for a single account. The funny thing was, wherever I saw the game being sold, the DVD edition was being sold for the same price as the regular edition, it's just that the DVD edition was advertised as a limited time thing. If you really were an "early adopter" and you really did pay $200 for two accounts, you were seriously ripped off. But you know what they say about a fool and his money.
Lallendos said:[ QUOTE ]
Someone else PLEASE punch me in the face, so I can make it to 38 on my claws/DA, without losing interest.
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Hi, I'll volunteer. I'd be happy to do it, I'm always ready to help a fellow out. Look, I got tired of the game too. You know what I did? I left. For two years. Well, I came back maybe three or four times for a few hours each, during the free holidays. It was kind of fun, but, my scrapper had been gimped and the new character that I was starting, although fun, you know, it's that crappy low level time when you can't do diddely squat. So, things have changed, I'm having fun again -- it's like the game is new. Except, I'm totally lost with this invention system.
Ok, to seque into where the discussion has gone since then...
I don't have a clue how this invention thing works and I really don't want to spend thousands of influence and hours and hours of grinding parts just to be a tester and figure it out. I play these games to have fun. That being said, as a math major, I like crunching numbers. The absence of any numbers is, in my opinion, a bad thing. I came to the forums expecting to find some sort of guide, something like, oh, about any other game has, something that would at least explain how these things work. Sure, I have the Inventor guide. So I can memorize some powers? Which ones? How? What are the recipes that I have to memorize for a badge? Where do they come from? I have a whole stack of questions that the "tutorial" in the university didn't even touch on. And don't get me started on the classes. Each time I had to look up something new in the bookcase or on the computer, it pretty much just parroted back what the person just said. Why make me read it twice when there wasn't really any useful information to begin with? Take a look at how Anarchy Online at least makes a few sticky threads explaining things for its expansions.
Then there are the (in my opinion) crazy people who talk about having to make a choice between an up-to-date guide or an "official" guide. They point to the official Prima guide that Statesman helped put together and how it was out of date when it was published. Why in the world must an official guide be printed on paper? If you want it to be on paper, print the thing out yourself. I'm sure some idiot will whine, "But it's too expensive to print out a whole guide myself." Darn straight, that's why the company isn't printing it out and stockpiling them in a wharehouse. Then the idiot will whine, "But you could print in bulk, etc." And *that's* when you have him make a choice between something up to date and something that he can hold in his hands. Look, all the powers in the game, they have numbers in them, right? The code uses some kind of variables to track things, right? You don't have a human switchboard operating pushing the "5" key every time a "AoE#24" request comes in. So, choose what numbers you want to publish and push them into a database. Start with these new invention thingymabobs. I'm not saying that it's easy, I'm not saying that it would be quick to set up. But this is the computer age, for crying out loud. Whining about how difficult it is to update numbers with a computer is like a company whining about how it needs two weeks after your first two weeks working for them to process a paycheck when you know they have Quickbooks and you know that those things that used to actually take two weeks back in the 40's now take a few mouse clicks.
How about you all shut up and contribute your guides as asked and quit with your longwinded crap about whether an official guide is needed/warranted/necessary etc....holy cow, focus people, focus!
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I consider myself an avid yet casual player and I want to see the numbers. I say avid because I've been into superhero RP games since Champions and V&V all those years ago. I say casual because for the first two months or so I didn't bother to visit these boards. I wanted to experience the game for myself...to learn things on my own. I still avoid spoiler posts for that reason.
However 10 years in Quality Assurance has made me doubt the abilities of others. This is not any kind of a slam on the Dev's abilities. I'm not a computer programmer or game designer and I'm sure their skills in these area dwarf mine and always will. But the devs are human and make mistakes just like the rest of us.
I originally came to the boards because my very first character, a Blaster, was having trouble leveling in the early teens. It was then that I discovered MANY things that board-goers consider common knowledge.
No, you don't NEED to endure the Hollows. Just visit the Contact there and then head to King's Row.
You didn't run your first 6-8 levels in the Sewers? It took you HOW long to get to lvl 10? You got your Tough Badge (100k of damage sustained) HOW early? Wow...
Yeah, the first few levels can be kind of a drag, until you get a temp movement power that is. What do you mean 'Huh?' You DON'T know about the temp movement Powers? You've been using HOVER to cross the Hollows? Wow...
And my all-time favorite: Why do you Hover all the time in fights? Oh you slotted Hover for Defense! Why? No, the Def bonus is NOT 15%. Yeah I know that the mouse-over says TOs are +5% Def each...oh you slotted 3 of them? Ok...let me explain how this REALLY works...
Before the veterans here begin a bunch of finger-pointing and suggesting that EVERYONE knows that the Def bonus from Hover is actually the bonus to the BASE and not a raw number let me add that I'm a 40 year-old writer with a college degree who reads everything in-game as it comes up. Now no offense but if I didn't figure it out then a bunch of others won't either.
Not long after this last eye-opener I found the link to ShirkSilver's character planner and laid out my Blaster as he was. Now I'd figured out ED (or something like it) by just looking at the values as things were slotted. Ok...third one not as good as the first two...got it. Whoa...fourth one is a big drop...no sense in messing with that. I'll slot End Redux instead and move on. Shirksilver's planner revealed how my build was almost totally borked IMHO and no wonder I was having trouble leveling post-9 in the world of debt.
Oh btw I discovered the wonderful world of DOs not from the game anywhere but from another player. He noticed that I was lvl 11 and cued me in. I believe that the leveling message at 12 mentiones DOs but I'm not sure. Needless to say about ten seconds after I dinged 12 I was off to Cooke's for a set.
I read somewhere that an estimated 10% of the player base comes to boards. Wow...10%...I wonder what the rest of the players do? Well based on personal observation some of them leave in frustration. I teamed with a lvl 17 Blaster and the player was bemoaning how tough everything was on Diff 3 (I always forget the names sorry). I asked him if he had all of his DOs slotted (because several of my alts couldn't afford full sets at 12) and he asked what a DO was.
During the double xp weekend I gathered about a dozen of my friends together on temp accounts to play hoping that we could all form a SG like our Champions days of old. About half made it past lvl 10, those that didn't citing all of the 'stupid running around' and 'lack of in-game information' as their main reasons. I was on for most of the weekend just to answer their questions because I didn't want to send them to the boards on their first day to look for stuff that all of us felt should be available from the game itself somewhere.
So today I hit my 6-month veteran mark and more than ever I want to see the real numbers behind the game. Why? Because of all of the rumor and innuendo flying around about how this works or that works. I saw somewhere that Insps are not actually giving the listed bonuses. Do I believe the source? The OP had a post count in the mid-4 digits and while several others responded no one refuted him. So now who do I believe?
No, as much as I love this game there have been enough mistakes, misunderstandings and (IMHO) downright bits of misinformation to shake my faith in much of the information out there. Now I want to see what the real values are...not some reverse-engineered figure.
Were it not for the flubs and mistakes I would slavishly believe everything the game tells me. Now that I know that I can't I want to see for myself. To those who say that releasing the figures will destroy the immersion got news for you: The Immersive players won't come looking for it. They'll go merrily one enjoying the game as they always have.
But me...I want to see some numbers.
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I feel you pain buddy. i almost left and i went through all of those things. this is one of the smartest posts i have read. great writing!
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2 - the Community will make their own guides anyways. The only advantage a Dev guide would have would be from giving us base numbers.
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Only been waiting 3 years for those...
Ya know, now would be as good a time as any to dump those on us. You want some accurate guides for the playerbase?
Give us the necessary tools to write those guides.
Give us... THE SPREADSHEETS OF DOOOOOOOOOM
Be well, people of CoH.