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.

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Link Rollup: Standing in the Stupid

Lots of good stuff floating around the blogosphere today, I may just make this a true web log post and just briefly comment on links.

Stubborn and Psychochild are both trying to figure out how to increase the social factor in MMOs. Stubborn discusses how a good guild can make a great MMORPG, while a poor guilding experience might just ruin it for an individual player. Psychochild focuses more on the grouping experience, and how a "pip" system might help folks find each other again, even through a random LFG tool. I am a player who has (1) sworn off PUGs after the toxicity of WoW LFG and (2) managed to become part of a meta-guild of game bloggers that fulfills my social gaming needs. I totally agree that social ties will increase player retention rates, and I think fewer, stronger bonds is the way to go. Devs tend to approach MMO players as if they were a homogenous group even as they cater to widely varying playstyles in an effort to appeal to different types of players. I've touched on the idea that MMOs are like cities far more than they are like small towns before. I feel devs should focus on the players' monkeysphere (while avoiding factionalism) instead of trying to make us all be friends.

Meanwhile, Zubon is talking about the danger of thinking that, because a game (or even a specific scenario) caters to your own playstyle, you are in some way a superior player. He even touches on the long tails of the RNG gods, and they can skew the individual player experience severely, even while maintaining the appearance of even-handedness in the aggregate. I have fallen victim to the playstyle aspect in various games, and seen it happen to others. The Secret World seems to have a particular knack for reminding me that I'm not so hot, simply by changing up which mobs are resistant to what ability procs. Luckily (or frustratingly), the ability system is designed to be flexible enough that I can (and must) adapt. So just remember, (like in real life) if you have a buddy seemingly incapable of accomplishing a task you skated through, it may have nothing to with your respective skill, and everything to do with how well (or poorly) the task matches up to the stats (talents) and tools you have been given.

And lastly, my new phrase of the day from my buddy Belghast: "Standing in the Stupid." Of course, we've all stood in the fire or the filth or the poison. The Stupid encompasses them all, and is a perfect generic term. It has the added bonus of integrating well with another old friend's favorite retort. When someone cannot seem to get out of the fire/filth/poison, I can just say, "You, sir, are stuck on Stupid."

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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.

Secret Monday and the Alliance of Awesome

I thought I was going to be the first out of the gate with this. But when you actually have to put on pants to go to work, you sometimes miss the scoop. Both Syp and Tententacles have already posted about the exploits (or lack thereof) of the Knights of Mercy on last night's Secret Monday session. In fact, I'll be damned if Tenten didn't take my intended tack and introduce some new players on the team. Syp is in full-on tourist mode, with some excellent shots of various details in Manhattan.

Our little group looks quite impressive in the harsh headlights of an abandoned car. And honestly, we do pretty well against the trash and mini bosses of the NYC raid. Of course, we are no match for Mega-Cthulhu with only eight undergeared characters. But we look good, and as Fernando would tell you, that is of utmost importance.

Speaking of looking good, let's interrupt this regularly scheduled post with another regularly scheduled post: Monde la mode. With the black turtlenecks now dropping from Flappy's bladder sac (wth?), there is finally something that looks good under the ritual coat. (I've heard that the black items used to be available for purchase with 3rd-Age currency, but are now only available from gutting the Flapmeister.) Dortmunder started out the evening in an all-black mixed ensemble, but later switched to match Dex-y's coolness. (Yes, as mentioned before, Scooter and I are THAT couple.) Thanks to the Secret Store selection introduced for Valentine's Day, you'll notice the wedding bands we now sport on our left hands in the left-hand pic.

A couple weeks ago, at the suggestion of Scarybooster, several different intersecting communities formed a more formal relationship that has become known as the Alliance of Awesome. I am technically part of at least three of these guilds, though I am only active in the Knights of Mercy. There are several benefits to this alliance; for instance, increased communication and coordination between these communities. Also, as folks migrate from one game to another, they will find ready groups of friends, even if their own guild is not active in the game. And the guilds that are active get an influx of interested players. KoM has migrated our TS activity to that of Multiplaying, and in the process "acquired" some new blood, in the persons of Zelibeli and Winin. Zeli just started a new character last night, and Winin is in Blue Mountain.

After our tourism raid—and a Flappy run wherein Dortmunder the healer got separated from everyone else—a few veteran KoMies joined Winin in a run through Hell Raised, the dungeon instance anchored in Savage Coast. He picked up quite a few nice pieces, including the awesome "Soul Crusher" hammer. Anyway, welcome to Winin and Zelibeli, and thank you for graciously hosting the Knights on TeamSpeak.

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Landmark Roof

Whereas Saturday was devoted to The Secret World, I spent a chunk of Sunday doing stuff in EverQuest Next Landmark. Structurally, the house is finished, but I am already thinking about expansion as I work on details. I kinda like pics posts. So much is conveyed visually that I feel like I don't need to provide much explanation. On the other hand . . .

The pic below, from last week, shows an issue I had with the Template system. For some reason, the templates would mirror themselves as I placed them, leading to the above pic. After posting about it on the forums, I ended up doing the final work "by hand." That's OK, there is something very relaxing about laying bricks.

The next pic is from just inside the front wall, not far from where I took the pic above, in fact. After looking at various thatched roofs online, I decided to slope the back, while leaving the front gabled. I think I need some chain to hang the chandelier lower.

Here is the current front of the cottage. It looks rather plain from here, now that I think about it. I am also considering moving the staircase further to the left. I've built the house so close to the edge of my claim that I can't have the stairs coming straight out. I think when I first laid the cornerstones, I intended to have the main entrance on the uphill side of the house. I may yet do that and get rid of the stairs on this side.

However, as you can see from the pic below, the stairs do lead to the workshop area, currently open to the elements. Most of my time in Norrath yesterday was gathering materials for a new pick and the Smoothing Tool. This involved an expedition to Serenity Pingo (Tier 3), though I suppose I could have gone to Liberation to visit Belghast's humble abode.

Late in my session, I started smoothing out the roof, which turned out to be quite a bit of work. I wonder, is there a "de-smoothing" tool to restore the original blocky-ness of a built thing? I smoothed the edges of the chimney, too—ever so slightly. That turned out a lot nicer than the smoothing I tried on the stairs. I'll do the same to the house itself later.

I'll have to see where else I want to go with this claim, or if I just want to stick with refining the house I have. In the back of my head, I am constantly thinking that this is all a very temporary alpha, and I'm not sure how to most effectively spend my time with Landmark.

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Secret Friends

Besides a trip to see The Lego Movie last night with Scooter, I spend a huge chunk of yesterday playing The Secret World with friends from Beyond the Veil. One thing that is actually pretty cool about running the Flappy raid is that I frequently see folks from the Twitterverse RP community running around. My latest sighting was of Raven Corvalis (I think that was actually Wednesday or Friday.)

On Saturday, Galactrix (a.k.a. Exceeder) promptly invited me to a small group along with AsianSpice. (Unfortunately, no pics. But you get the idea.) After the Flappy fight, Galactrix offered to help me with some XP getting / achievement finishing, so we headed off to the Shadowy Forest to complete some missions. The first one we did was "Last Dance of the Pădurii," one of the very few open world missions that seem to require a group. Having done this in the past with a group of five (Knights of Mercy), I can say that it's actually easier with two. Of course, Exceeder's and Samantha's 10+ gear may have helped.

We then decided to do a few others I needed, like "Six Feet Under" and then "Crossroads," where we picked up another friend, Penelope "Sugartruck" Croft.

Sugartruck then suggested we run "Knight of the Drăculești." It was a quick job with the three of us, and we finished just in time for another Flappy run.

By then, several other members of Beyond the Veil had logged in, and we did a quick run of Hell Eternal—partly because I had picked up "Paradise Now" at the same as "Crossroads." We made short work of the Elite dungeon, not running the Nightmare because of lockouts and scheduling conflicts of some members of the group.

As an aside, I want to comment again on the the art of TSW. There were those at launch who bemoaned the "ugly" character models we had to work with. I think that may have been a failing of the lighting, etc., on the character creation screen. But I didn't have a problem creating characters (male and female) that I think are attractive. Isn't Samantha gorgeous?

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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.