Just because it's in the Book... Doesn't mean it's right.

[Crissa]

"That sounds all very good; but there must be some reason it's this way..."

I hear this time and again when I try to make an argument to streamline the game. It's in the book, so they must have something that we're not seeing.

And that's a valid premise, actually. The book was printed, at great expense, and someone's name is on the cover. Theoretically they've vetted and even so, their reputation is on the line.

But it's a false premise to think that we cannot look at these rules and say they're crap! Or know why they're crap!

Intelligent, deeply educated people make this false assumption once taken from the setting in which they feel they are competent into this game setting, where they feel less competent.

...Which makes me wonder how we get the corollary - people who think they're qualified to design a game even though they've spent no time actually working on said game design.

-Crissa

Today's rant brought to you by Improved Two-Weapon Fighting®

[tzor]

People make mistakes. But the biggest problem is that everyone has their own set of blinders. This is why it's almost impossible to self edit, self debug, and even self play test, because you need many people with different sets of blinders. Even then not everything will be spotted all of the time.

Even if it is spotted, it may not always be recognized as such by the powers that be. Such is the fate of many a gaming system.

Still people love to argue the rules as written because that's something that they can grab read and bash you on the head with. To some people saying the rules are flawed is akin to Gallelio saying that there are imperfections on the sun and the moon; heresy of the highest sort!

On the other hand, I've also seen the opposite, if it ain't my view of perfect (which actually isn't perfect either) it's crap. I'm sure there's a happy medium between the two, but I'm going to leave her alone because no one wants to be struck.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I had a similar argument in one of the Blade of the Battle Maiden threads.

Me: This effect is badly designed and a copy-paste from a previous edition where the rules were different.

tard: You don't know it's a copy paste. For all you know the designers looked very closely at it and decided it was okay as it was.

Me: If the end result is bad, it doesn't matter if the process involved lots of scrutiny or no scrutiny.

tard: Yes it does! How can you say that?

Actually, I hope the decision was based on no scrutiny. If they actually looked at the bad effect and decided it was okay, that's less excusable than cutting corners and hoping for the best.

[Fwib]

Why is trying and failing less excusable than not bothering to try at all?

Isn't that the wisdom of Homer Simpson?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Lazy yet competent people will turn out at least some good stuff, even if the rest is filler.

Industrious incompetence just churns out more and more crap.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Tzor;
At Wizards, the game designers play test.
At work, the programmers bug-test.
The way I see it, we have had equal success with this system.

As far as "it's in the book, it must be true", to some extent those are the only straws players have to grasp on in a world where the DM controls all of the rules.

For example (this argument is mostly true, unfortunately, 2nd ed)
Players - We shall build a raft to enter the cavern
DM - out of what?
Players - we cut down several trees, cut them up, lash them together with rope we are overstocked on
DM - this takes 2 days *roll roll roll*, where you are unmolested by forest monsters
Players - we jump on the rafts (4 people to a raft, 2 on guard for monsters, 4 rafts total, raft 3 has 2 henchmen clerics and the primary fighter)
DM - okay, you jump on the rafts, which begin floating downstream due to high current
Players - okay, we need to control the rafts... 10' poles!
DM - bottom is too deep
Players - um... we use shields as paddles
DM - If there is strong current, the rafts are moving at the same speed relative to the water and you cannot paddle
Players - WTF?! *brings up the rules book*
DM - that's not the way the real world works (DM clearly has never been on a canoe, kayak, raft, sailboat, or other non-motorized watercraft)

At any rate, we as players had to eventually accept the DM ruling that we could not steer a raft with a shield and got to drift downstream until we threw a thrown (bag of holding) out the back as an anchor and tied all the rafts together to stop from going off a waterfall.

Anywho, the rulebook is sometimes the only weapon to fight with.

[tzor]

1192625708[/unixtime]]Tzor;
At Wizards, the game designers play test.
At work, the programmers bug-test.

And that is the problem. If I were to use the programmer's model, yes it is true that game designer test is equavelent to programmer testing. BUT:

Programmer testing is only one level of testing: Unit testing.
From there it has to go to integration testing.
It needs to be tested by a dedicated test team.
It needs to be tested with all other components.
It needs to be regression tested to see if it doesn't break anything else.

Unit testing will not catch all the bugs; in fact it might not even catch the majority of bugs given a complex system. It will certanly not catch any bugs that are caused because someone thought outside the box of the initial designer/programmer.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Oh heavens no! I meant to imply that it is a spectactular failure.
Here is our development process:
"we need some code yesterday"
*here's some code*
"well, I suppose that I will take this to an international event without ever allotting time time for testing *goes to event* YOUR CODE CRASHED THE EVENT!" (actually happened)
"um, we need 3 things: (1) time for testing, (2) testers, (3) actual people who used the actual product we are attempting to simulate to determine if it's even doing the right thing"

my point was that we had none of the above and have recently released a string of "buggy code" because we have not tested it beyond the "it compiles!" stage, similiar to how wizards has released game-breaking material that was released shortly after the "okay, people can take this feat at level 6, and uses existing mechanics" stage.

[JonSetanta]

Blizzard software is IMHO one of the best examples of good testing and bug-fixing practices, from Warcraft to Starcraft to WoW.

[Falgund]

Blizzard software is IMHO one of the best examples of good testing and bug-fixing practices, from Warcraft to Starcraft to WoW.

Except all the times Onyxia Deep Breathed More (tm) after a patch.

[Voss]

1192692316[/unixtime]]Blizzard software is IMHO one of the best examples of good testing and bug-fixing practices, from Warcraft to Starcraft to WoW.

To a point, yes. But they're pretty much the only computer game company out there that bothers to do a lot of testing.
Most are more than willing to put out a buggy piece of shit and fix some of the issues after the players find them.

And most players put up with it.

[Cielingcat]

Valve's pretty good with bugs as well.

[Crissa]

The only problem with Blizzard's products right now is a lack of consistent design throughout expansions - since expansions are not made by forethought but instead afterthought, plotlines and design decisions are made in a vacuum from the original, which gives a disjointed experience over time.

But that's really a small fault compared to the problems inherent in many roleplaying games, and they do have a system for fixing things which don't do what they're supposed to do.

When Warcraft's MMO first came out, several classes didn't do what they were supposed to. Instead of saying 'things are fine' they took a year and looked at each class and saw what players and designers expected of them, and then changed them to be able to do those things.

When we say 'Two weapon fighting doesn't do what you say it does,' Blizzard doesn't give us the numbers, but looks and sees if it really does what people say it's doing. Wizards, on the other hand, doesn't - it just frobs things if at all, and never interacts with the problem.

So here we are, d20 has been out for nearly a decade - and Warcraft for half that - and which one has had its weapon mechanics fixed in comparison to statistical models?

Argh.

And the irony is, since WoW players don't have to do any math, they can spend more time on the fluff. x-x

-Crissa

[Falgund]

And the irony is, since WoW players don't have to do any math, they can spend more time on the fluff. x-x

Some do spend the time on math:
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t12855-work ... ing_2_1_a/
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t13297-enha ... aft_vol_i/

[Crissa]

1192785523[/unixtime]]

And the irony is, since WoW players don't have to do any math, they can spend more time on the fluff. x-x

Some do spend the time on math:

Did you read any other line from my post? Because your reply is completely nonsequitor.

-Crissa

[tzor]

Debugging a complex game code can be interesting especially when most of the stuff under the covers isn't known to the players in the first place. One of the best examples of this was in the Multi-Player Online Game of Kingdom of Drakkar. Due to a pointer error the code checked the target's spot check to see if it could spot a hiding person (the target). The result was that as you progressed in level it became harder and harder to hide because the monsters were using your improved spot check to spot you.

[Falgund]

Did you read any other line from my post? Because your reply is completely nonsequitor.

I know my links were not that clear, but, at least for an enhancement shaman, DPS can easily be half of what you can achieve if you don't spend time on math, and use non-optimal equipment. One of my link is the 4000+ post thread of math collection for enhancement shaman only for the last 4 months.

So, in order to be competitive at high level you *have* to do math in WoW.

And, to add to the topic, many WoW ability don't work like they are advertised by the tooltips (hidden cooldowns, coefficient malus, etc...). I don't say that Blizzard code is bugged, i agree they are one of the better gaming developer in this regard, i just say that their Gaming Design has greatly been obscured since WoW.

[ckafrica]

One of my link is the 4000+ post thread of math collection for enhancement shaman only for the last 4 months.

Ah War Crack... I think I'll stick to heroine, its effects are less detrimental and leave my skin tone a healthier shade of pasty white plus less people are likely to to move away from me if I start to talk about it at a party

[RandomCasualty]

Yeah I personally hate how they keep the math a secret for MMORPGs, it just makes it more difficult to design effective characters.

[Koumei]

Heroin, WoW... I'll stick with a diet consisting largely of sugar, occasionally laughing at people with lesser "I have to eat healthy" metabolisms and "I have to worry about my future health" lifespans.

Though the stuff those friendly Eversor guys are on, I'd sample that in a second. RIP AND TEAR!

[Judging__Eagle]

1192814111[/unixtime]]Heroin, WoW... I'll stick with a diet consisting largely of sugar, occasionally laughing at people with lesser "I have to eat healthy" metabolisms and "I have to worry about my future health" lifespans.

Though the stuff those friendly Eversor guys are on, I'd sample that in a second. RIP AND TEAR!

You just quoted the worst comic ever.

[ckafrica]

1192814205[/unixtime]]
You just quoted the worst comic ever.

Dude, I'm gonna have to come up with something truly heinous to get back at you for subjecting me to that; I doubt I'll have a regular bowel movement for weeks after see that crap

Though the stuff those friendly Eversor guys are on, I'd sample that in a second. RIP AND TEAR!

I believe you might be looking for crystal meth, drug of choice of those who want to see if their skeleton is designed to lift a pick up truck.

Crystal Meth, yes you can tackle that Mac truck!!!!

[Leress]

1192814205[/unixtime]]

You just quoted the worst comic ever.

Agh...even the people on the site say it's bad. This is the worst comic I have ever read.

[Koumei]

I haven't read the comic, just seen individual panels here and there. Disappointing. The novels were actually decent. And by that I mean "The first two were decent, the next one seemed a bit random and also deviated from what the Doom games were about, and I haven't read the last one but heard that it goes even further".

...that comic sucks more than I can place into words.

At any rate, I heard that crystal meth just makes you feel like utter crap in a way that guarantees you won't get addicted. Although I like the sound of opium for the bad days, I wouldn't touch ice with a ten foot pole.

[Voss]

1192858607[/unixtime]]
At any rate, I heard that crystal meth just makes you feel like utter crap in a way that guarantees you won't get addicted.

That certainly doesn't explain the shambling hordes of meth addicts out there.