QOTD: The Curse of Knowledge

The longer you know about a topic, the harder and harder it is to explain it to newcomers. . . Work to avoid The Curse of Knowledge in all aspects of your life.  You have no idea how important it will be to the people around you.
~Stubborn, "The Curse of Knowledge"

Stubborn is batting a thousand this week. I love when a writer can succinctly illustrate a concept I have struggled to convey well. I believe educators have an edge here, for some of the reasons that Stubborn outlines in his post. Beyond having knowledge in a given subject, educators are (usually) trained on how to share their knowledge effectively.

I will boast of having a certain knack for teaching, not to mention experience. But as a technical trainer, I also become frustrated with rigid insistence from certain quarters that we should cover what I consider basic GUI functionality, partly because I think students in my class should already have that knowledge as a prerequisite, and partly because it prevents me from covering more advanced topics thoroughly in the limited time we have available to train. I sometimes go to the other extreme, as Scooter will confirm, explaining something to someone that they are already perfectly capable of accomplishing without my instructions.

I am sure I fall victim to the Curse of Knowledge on occasion (probably more often than I think), and it is something I wrestle with every time I post. How much should I digress to explain a game-related term, and how much should I rely on you, Dear Reader, to already know about the topic at hand?

Stubborn cautions against falling into the trap of "Priesthood" as Raph Koster put it. As we try to form stronger, inclusive communities in the games we play, we need to be prepared to properly educate newcomers; by which I mean sharing our knowledge in away they can absorb it, without belittling their intelligence.

~~~

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. If you are reading this post through RSS or Atom feed—especially more than a couple hours after publication—I encourage you to visit the actual page, as I often make refinements after the fact. The mobile version also loses some of the original character of the piece due to simplified formatting.

Swapping Gear in TSW

This is a response to an issue my friend +Mario Delgado (aka @tententacles) was having with swapping gear sets in TSW. He would get an error saying he can only have one elite ability on the bar at a time.

I did a little messing around and found nature of the bug. I'm guessing the different builds have the elite abilities in different slots, like this:

Elite ability "Slow the Advance" in Slot 7, but . . .

. . . elite ability "Go for the Throat" in Slot 5.

Gear manager swaps ability slots from left to right, not all at once, so swapping from that first bar to the second will lead to the error. Swapping the other way is error free.

Solution: Keep your elite abilities in the same slot for different gear sets. I don't know how much that would affect your rotation, but with the different elites in the same slot, I had no errors swapping gear sets, either through the GM interface or using the chat commands. Since the elite is usually on a long cooldown, I have it in slot 7 where it won't be in the way when I'm using hotkeys.

Also, I feel a little behind the times here, but apparently TSW is modable. There are a bunch of addons available through Curse.

TSW Protip: Gear Manager Is Your Friend

I'm cheating here and reposting a section of a longer post for fellow guildie and Twitterite @tententacles. More protips available in these posts.

Gear Manager Is Your Friend . . .
. . . but I think it's a slight misnomer. I've tried to explain this before, but I don't think it was effective. You don't need multiple sets of gear for Gear Manager to be effective. Yes, you can carry around enough gear to effectively fill any role in a group, but chances are—at least early in the game—you'll want to simply upgrade gear you've got rather than accumulate different sets. On the other hand, you're quickly obtaining so many abilities that you'll soon have far more abilities than you have currently equipped. Some abilities are clearly useful for fighting single opponents, while others are far more suited to mowing down groups of mobs. Gear Manager comes in very handy for quickly flipping between sets of abilities even if you only have one real set of effective talismans. If you like macros, you can also set buttons to "/gearmanager use name" where "name" is the name of the saved gear/ability settings.

If you're making macros to assign to buttons, it helps to name your sets the same between alts (I've switched to the simple "AoE" from "Mass Mobs," for instance.)

I've gone over skills and abilities in the past. I don't plan to write any guide showing any überl33t Flavor of the Month Deck that I think you should follow. I can only say that I am having little trouble so far with my chosen decks, and I only want to point you in the right direction. I linked this Deck Builder the other day, as well. It's awesome for seeing at a glance which active and passive abilities produce/exploit which states (Afflict, Weaken, Hinder, Impair) and what weapons may create synergies when used together. And it's accessible from inside the game, through the web interface (though this may not be ideal). You can also use whatever passive abilities you may have learned, regardless of whether you're currently using the weapon associated with them. So that Blade HoT passive can be used even if you're currently using Blood and Fists.

TSW Pro-tips: Never Re-role Your Characters!

Read the comments! Great contributions from other readers!

Kadomi was contemplating re-roling her character in The Secret World a day or two ago, because she wasn't sure she liked the weapons she'd chosen. Feliz and I admonished her not to do that.

In my mind there are only three reasons to re-role:

1. You don't like your name.
2. You don't like your looks.
3. You don't like your faction.

And as Ardua pointed out on Twitter, "One of [those] reasons can be dumped soon enough with the cosmetic options coming in soon." Jabberant also chimed in, "I read somewhere where a Funcom person said it was actually slower to get new abilities by re-rolling." Anywhere you currently are is a faster XP gain than starting over.

Now, you may decide to go back to Kingsmouth to run some easy quests again and make some quick AP/SP. This is OK, but if you're not doing too badly in your current area, stick with it, because you're getting more XP per kill and per quest in the more advanced areas.

Never sacrifice your AP/SP! Keep your current abilities while you gain new ones. If you're putting SP into your talisman skills (which you should be!) you won't lose them by switching to a new weapon. But you will if you re-role. Remember, you can spend points on weapons before actually wielding them. No need to gimp your current deck while building the next. No need to equip new weapons until you can use them effectively.

Gear Manager Is Your Friend . . .

. . . but I think it's a slight misnomer. I've tried to explain this before, but I don't think it was effective. You don't need multiple sets of gear for Gear Manager to be effective. Yes, you can carry around enough gear to effectively fill any role in a group, but chances are—at least early in the game—you'll want to simply upgrade gear you've got rather than accumulate different sets. On the other hand, you're quickly obtaining so many abilities that you'll soon have far more abilities than you have currently equipped. Some abilities are clearly useful for fighting single opponents, while others are far more suited to mowing down groups of mobs. Gear Manager comes in very handy for quickly flipping between sets of abilities even if you only have one real set of effective talismans. If you like macros, you can also set buttons to "/gearmanager use name" where "name" is the name of the saved gear/ability settings.

If you're making macros to assign to buttons, it helps to name your sets the same between alts (I've switched to the simple "AoE" from "Mass Mobs," for instance.)

I've gone over skills and abilities in the past. I don't plan to write any guide showing any überl33t Flavor of the Month Deck that I think you should follow. I can only say that I am having little trouble so far with my chosen decks, and I only want to point you in the right direction. I linked this Deck Builder the other day, as well. It's awesome for seeing at a glance which active and passive abilities produce/exploit which states (Afflict, Weaken, Hinder, Impair) and what weapons may create synergies when used together. And it's accessible from inside the game, through the web interface (though this may not be ideal). You can also use whatever passive abilities you may have learned, regardless of whether you're currently using the weapon associated with them. So that Blade HoT passive can be used even if you're currently using Blood and Fists.

To the Ability Wheel!

Have you ever used the Ability Search on the right side of the Ability Wheel interface? If not, doooo eeet! If you have, have you used the check box filters (at the the top) to narrow down the search to only abilities you have already purchased?

How about looking only at abilities one weapon or the other:

Or only actives or passives:

I do this often to help me decide which abilities to equip for my Single Target deck, and which to use for my AoE deck. On one character, I also have a deck emphasizing healing. I can't tell you which abilities you should use because I haven't played with all the abilities. Study the abilities you have, sorting them in different ways might help. This is exploratory learning. I can tell you some are more situationally useful than others. I'd venture to say that every ability is effective in some combat situation in the game. Deciding which ones to equip and use is up to you.

Tactics vs. Strategy

Many have been less than impressed with the combat in The Secret World, but I think TSW is more about strategy and less about tactics. While choosing a deck seems more complex initially (and it is), you have time to look at what's available and prepare from the safety of the Sheriff's Office or The Horned God bar. You don't have to worry in the heat of battle where that obscure stun is among your 48 buttons. The downside is that it may not be available and you'll die. You'd probably die anyway, because you're hunting through all those buttons for that one ability you never use. The upside is that when you do load out properly, you will "crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!"

Developing Character Appearance

Syp, the proprietor of Bio Break, is hosting guest posts this week because he is off doing good in the real world somewhere. This was my contribution, refined:

I once wrote a guest post for Multiplaying about character backstories, developing them as motivation for in-game actions. Having a good idea of where your character comes from goes a long way toward "fleshing them out" in your mind, and even the minds of other people with whom you may share those stories. There are two other aspects of character customization. One is how you combine your character's skills, or talents and abilities, as you progress through the game. The system for this varies for each game that I have played, from the classes and talent trees of World of Warcraft, to the Soul System of Rift and the Ability Wheel of The Secret World. Usually, however, it is a slow progress that occurs throughout the game. The other aspect of character customization takes place within seconds of logging in to the game for the first time, and—depending on the game—is more or less permanent for the "life" of the character. This is character creation.

I am not talking here about choosing a class or even necessarily a faction, though that can impact what I am talking about. To me, the major part of character creation is deciding on the physical appearance of my avatar. Some games have lots of races (species really) to choose from. A fantasy setting will likely have variations on the Tolkien arch-races: crafty dwarves, brutish orcs, stately elves, and, of course, humans. A sci-fi game will probably have aliens of some sort. Choosing a racial appearance may lock in certain racial benefits like extra hit points or expertise with certain weapons, but I find that these tend to be trivial, and moreso the higher the level of your character (assuming there are levels).

A face that could launch a thousand quests.

Some character creation systems, like WoW, are fairly simple, a few hairstyles and colors, a few faces, skin-tones, maybe facial hair or tusks, and jewelry. The clothes are already set based on your race or class. Despite upgrades in graphics, the most recent games I've played are pretty much the same system. Both Star Wars: the Old Republic and TSW really have only a few options for faces, and SWTOR's costumes are fixed at the beginning based on class. Other games have more elaborate facial customization, like the facial shape triangles of Rift and Age of Conan, which seem to have tons of minute variations, so you can make the perfect face.

In addition to the facial customization, which is frankly only a slight improvement on WoW's, and then mostly in the graphic style, TSW has customizable outfits right from the character creation screen. While the choices are limited, especially compared to what can be purchased later in the game, the mere fact that, regardless of class, you can choose your avatar's clothing is a huge leap forward, in my opinion, though not quite revolutionary, as we shall see. TSW's wardrobe has enough variety that you can decide if your character is businesslike, a working stiff, or funky-punky. The clothes make the man (or woman), so to speak. And since clothes are not tied to player attributes like health and strength, you may become quite the clothes horse before you're through, without worrying about how it affects your gear progression.

The most extensive character creation system I have experienced is Star Trek Online, hands down; though I have heard Champions Online, also by Cryptic, is at least as elaborate. There are reasonable limits to established Star Trek races; but if you choose an "alien," the possibilities are almost endless. I have seen Na'vi from Avatar and Yoda from Star Wars running around in Earth Star Base. While there are a set number of uniforms, all the colors are customizable, plus there are uniform styles available from every canon era of the franchise. And again, none of it is tied to gear progression, so you can change out your outfits whenever you like. Re-customization does come with a fee.

It's all up to you.

Sometimes how your character looks can make or break your enjoyment of the game. Things like scars can give your avatar's face character, and be the launching point of a backstory. (Where did the scar come from?) Hair up, or down, can show a difference in personality. While I liked my priest and paladin characters in WoW (they were twin sisters), as soon as it was possible, I changed their hairstyles at the in-game barbershop to be more businesslike, reflecting their serious outlooks on their jobs/classes. In STO, for the first time, I made a character that actually resembled me, or at least an idealized version of me. In contrast, I couldn't get into Lord of the Rings Online partly because I couldn't get my avatars to look the way I thought they ought to.

I think you can tell a lot about a character by their appearance. Their personality, some of their background. A fat Sith is more about indulgence and study than a well-muscled one, who is probably more action-oriented, or even vain. A scowling character is not likely to be a carebear type. Much like the backstory, appearance can help flesh out your character, make him or her or it more real for you and increase your enjoyment of the game.

Are you the sort of person that takes an hour to get your character's face just right? Or do you just hit the random character generator and go with whatever pops out?

Strafe-Turning in Combat: TSW

I'm also practicing my strafe-turning: using "E" or "Q", while using my mouse to keep my avatar facing the hostile. Since I can cast (this includes guns and melee) while moving, all I need to do is keep my target within my range fan to do damage while avoiding incoming damage as best I can. It takes some doing, at least for me. But I am able to defeat mobs that were troublesome before (on alts the same "level").

[EDIT 2012-0718] Just so people know what I'm normally using to navigate in games, here is a picture of my mouse:

Fairly simple, only two extra buttons, and the forward of those two doesn't work because I dropped it one too many times. I've used this style mouse for almost seven years. The only time I've really used those extra buttons was for the Healbot interface while raiding in WoW.[/EDIT]

[EDIT 2012-07-19] And a pic of the built-in keyboard of my Asus G73 courtesy of Republic of Gaming:

[/EDIT]

PvPers are probably laughing at me right about now.

Quick ProTip: TSW Abilities

I just wanted to get this out quick before I forget: I strongly recommend filling out both weapons ability sets as early as is feasible. My original thought was to fill out the abilities for one weapon completely, with only minimal AP spent on the other until later. But then playing my Dragon, I decided to try it the other way, to get more variety. I managed to get a very strong single-target "deck" as well as a very strong multi-target/AoE "deck" relatively early, and am mowing down mobs. The trick is knowing which load-out I'll need for the next fight.

Also, you get an achievement and a cool jacket for each school of combat you complete on the inner wheel.

Be All You Can Be: Protips for The Secret World

In my main post yesterday, I described some things that make The Secret World different from other MMOs. My fellow bloggers continue to elaborate their views on the subject, as well. It's not all sunshine and roses for TSW, but it seems people are enjoying themselves. (Seriously, follow those links. I'll wait here.)

I don't want to sound superior here, and I am certainly no expert on TSW. But I wanted to clear up some confusion I have heard people discussing about various aspects of the game. I guess I "get" the playstyle of TSW more than some people I've spoken with. Others have no problem with the game, but may benefit. I promised a guide, it's more of a set of protips, I suppose. There will certainly be more thorough guides out there.

NOTE: When referring to weapons, I include magic abilities, because they require a "focus" which occupies a weapon slot in your gear.

The Ability Wheel:

I had a friend concerned about the number of choices available on the ability wheel. He was concerned that too much choice would lead to vaporlock as to what abilities he should use in practice. This was based partly on the notion that all the abilities would be conceivably available if you have enough Ability Points (AP) to spend. This is not the case, as you should have gathered if you've tried spending AP at all. The various Abilities build on each other. For example, Dancing Blade, a 3AP ability, will require you to have purchased (with AP) one 2AP ability and three 1AP abilities. Furthermore, the abilities seem to alternate between active abilities and passive abilities. You learn an active ability and the next ability to learn will likely be some sort of passive improvement on its predecessor. The passive abilities also affect the damage/healing/survivability of abilities in other schools of combat. That is, magic passives are likely to affect gun/melee actives as well as spells.

Decks:

Borrowing from card games like Magic: The Gathering and computer games like the original Guild Wars, The Secret World only allows you to have up to seven active abilities and seven passive abilities in play at any given time. As you're learning new abilities, those slots fill up. So once you have more than seven abilities of either type, you have to start making decisions.

To help you, the developers in Oslo have come up with some ability combos they think are effective to fill a role in the Unholy Trinity. One of the tabs on the Ability Wheel interface is Decks, on the far left of the screen. I'll go with the devs' advice, since completing a deck will give me extra buffs, and apparently a cool outfit to boot. Having pointed that out, the decks will take quite a bit of time to complete, since every deck has at least one 50AP ability. This translates into several hundred AP. (The Ninja deck that I am working for Poppyshock, pictured, is 856 AP.) So in the early game, the decks are more a goal to work for rather than an instant win scenario.

Character Skills:

Skills are all passive as far as I can tell. Each skill level costs a corresponding amount of Skill Points (SP) beyond what you have already spent on previous levels (i.e., Skill Level 3 costs 3 AP, and a cumulative 6 AP). Each weapon has two Skills, a personal DPS buff and a support buff (survivability, healing, DPS of another player). But don't forget the Talisman Skills at the bottom. To equip a higher quality item, you must have a skill level to match the item. My understanding is that you only need to build up one of the two weapon skills (DPS or support) to qualify for a given quality level (QL).

My advice is one of balance, with the Talisman Skills built up first, just so you don't forget them. Spend one point each in the Talisman Skills, then one point in each Skill for the Weapon(s) that you are currently using. Then build the second tier of skills.

NOTE: AP and SP cannot be refunded. Stop asking. The choices you make, make you. If you want to change to a different school of combat, start spending points in that school. I've put points in the wrong school myself. You can slowly but surely built up your new abilities and skills, integrating them into your combat rotation as they become powerful enough to fit the area you're in. You only have to repeat missions if you want to. Your choices matter in the short run, but given enough time you'll be able to master all 525 abilities.

"Dual Wielding" Weapons:

Yes, yes, YES! you can carry two weapons and use them! Do it! Do it NAO! There are no two-handed weapons in the traditional sense, only in the animation of your avatar. The assault rifle, for example, only occupies one slot on your gear, as do the pistols (which you appear to dual wield). So you could conceivably have a slot each of a rifle and pistols, or pistols and a sword, or a sword and a chaos focus, etc. As Syp pointed out, having two weapons means you can have two "finishing" moves where you can do big damage or healing. I've decided the best strategy is to settle on two weapons before I train during the tutorial, based on the deck I chose, then pick my secondary weapon in the training chamber, and get my primary weapon from the first QL1 green weapon mission reward. This will require spending at least 1 SP in the primary weapon right off the bat.

A couple of points to consider regarding weapons abilities:

• Some abilities build power, others spend it.
• Abilities that build power do it for both weapons.
• Guns build "combo points" power on the target.
• Melee power starts full, then drops.
• Magic power starts empty, then builds.

So other than pulling mobs to you, if you have an ability that spends all your melee power, use it as soon as possible. Then lay enough power-building abilities to pop off a major magic or gun ability. Then pop the melee "finisher" again. If you don't have a melee weapon, I would prioritize building the combo points, then spending the gun finishers before the magic, since the magic finishers can be used on new targets, where the gun finishers cannot. These are general guidelines and I could be totally mistaken.

Missions:

You can only have one Main Mission (the red, green, or yellow ones) at a time. If you accept a new main mission when already on one, the first will pause at the current tier of the mission (i.e., 3/5). You'll have to return to the original mission giver (e.g., Sheriff Bannerman) to pick it back up, but you'll be at the same tier.

Research may be required on your mission, there is a built-in internet browser for a reason. You can search Google. Also, there are sites (set up by Funcom) representing many of the organizations found in the game that may be of information value. While there are plenty of kill-ten-rats type quests, this is not a mindless hack-and-slash. You will need your thinking cap. It's one reason I really like this game.

Yokai and Sarcan have an incredibly thorough set of guides that I am only beginning to scratch the surface of. If you are interested in indepth theory-crafting, I recommend you check in with them. If anyone has any more protips to share or wants to clear up confusions they've heard, feel free to leave a comment or question.

Developing Character Backstories in MMORPGs

Thank you to Steve "Slurms" Lichtsinn over at Multiplaying for letting me guest post on their blog. Here is the article I wrote, with minor modifications:

So, you just started your new character in World of Warcraft (or one of those other, lesser, MMORPGs ;) ). You immediately get a quest or mission or whatever they call it in this game, go kill/collect/deliver whatever or whoever and report back. So off you go, continuing through quests and increasing in experience/level/skill. How exciting! But you may come to the point where you ask yourself, "Why am I doing this?" I don't mean playing the game, hopefully you're doing that because it's fun. More like, "Why would my character agree to accomplish this task for someone?" As actors of the Method school might say, "What is my motivation?"

A Motivational Speech

This is when the "Role-Playing" in MMORPG becomes important. I am not talking about sitting around Cantrips and Crows in Dalaran or The Prancing Pony in Bree and saying "thee, thou, and forsooth." Though if that's your thing, more power to you; I am glad you enjoy it. I don't generally do much of that in my own game play. What I am talking about is increasing the depth of your character. In real life, we make decisions every day based on our values--how we were brought up--and current circumstances and necessities. You may work because you need the money, and that is an excellent motivation in-game and in RL. But I bet you chose how you earn your RL money based on a completely different set of not-primarily-financial reasons. By the same token, your character may take a quest for the money, but why is your character a rogue, or a barbarian, or a science officer? You have a background, does your avatar?

Most of the characters I create for the MMORPGs that I play have some sort of backstory, even if it is only in my own imagination. I think of them as having come from somewhere. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about what to name them. In World of Warcraft, this is complicated by the need to have a unique name. Having a good name, and not just some random Elvish or Caldari sounding mix of letters, is vital to the background of your avatar. Of course, that random jumble may be a good jumping off point. My first Bridge Officer, Tarah,  in Star Trek Online still has her original random name as a "short name," though I did a little research and developed a full (though non-canon) Andorian name for her as part of her background. Her captain, Rowan Starblanket, has a middle name culled from an online Vulcan dictionary.

You'll probably want to know where your character is from in the game world. This can lead to other motivations based on the history of their homeland or homeworld. My twins in WoW, Rowanblaze and Hollyhammer, lost their home and family to an Orc incursion in the Redridge Mountains, and their upbringing in the shadow of the Cathedral of Light as orphans plays into their classes (priest and paladin) and their talent specializations. In EVE online, to have an Amarrian character means a natural inclination toward a certain set of religious values, perhaps even fanaticism. Or your character may rebel against that background and be a heretic. Gallentes would be perhaps more mercenary or at least mercantile in their outlook on life.

As your characters progress through the game, the tasks they complete and places they go become part of the background of the character. Different locales and situations have a greater or lesser impact on their motivations. These things don't even have to occur in-game. My aforementioned paladin, Hollyhammer, spent time with the the Scarlet Crusade before recognizing the fanatic cult for what it was, and escaping. Of course, in-game it is not really possible to join the Scarlet Crusade. But Holly's mildly fanatical attitude made that a logical thing to include in her story.

Your character doesn't have to have your own personality. You may be Mother Teresa in real life, but your avatar is a nefarious assassin, or a brutal warrior. The opposite may also be true. I would not surprised, however, if your toons are a reflection of you to some degree. Now you may want to to write down an elaborate summary of your character's life so far. You may even end up writing stories about your character's adventures. Or you may want to just have it in the back of your mind as you play. Either way, I would guess your avatar will become more of a living, breathing character instead of just pixels on the screen.

Oh, and READ the mission/quest/task before accepting it. Otherwise killing those Kobolds or Tusken Raiders serves no real purpose, and you might as well be playing Street Fighter.