Growing pains - Turbine what do you do about editorial disputes?

[Shannong]

Something missing here is process. Let's step back and answer some questions:

• Do we have a good (or at least agreed upon) understanding of weapon mechanics? Do we know how one hand differs from two hand from dual wield?
• Do we understand how weapon speed affects skill shots, vs how it affects auto attacks?
• Do we understand how skill shots affect auto attacks?

If we can't agree on that part, there's no point discussing relative damage, if there? That's be putting the cart way before the horse.

Now, if we do understand the above, the next step should not be to go out and test it, but to use that information to predict what should happen. Build a little variance into the model, just to account for player reaction times, differing play styles, etc.

Now, once we have a working hypothesis, we test. Ideally, we get results from a variety of sources. One player, not matter how many iterations they perform, will fall into a distinct pattern. The data collected won't necessarily reflect how the system works as a whole, but how it works for that player. And we need to collect a reasonable sample size. Two few iterations and random chance looms large.

Then we need to see how well the data fits our model. How good were our predictions? Do we have results that are way out of range? Skewed toward one edge of our predicted range? Did we miscalculate in our model? How do we adjust?

And adjust and repeat until the model reflects the data we're collecting to an acceptable degree.

Lastly, we publish the model. We don't need to publish the whole of the data. We know the data collected will fit the model. We can invite others to test the model for themselves, confident in our results. Not to mention, the model will be a lot easier to read and understand than all the data interpretation.

A lot of work, you say? Yes, it is. What's the price you're willing to pay for publishing correct and robust information? Anyone can publish a, "This, I believe," treatise, and one almost certainly to be challenged by someone with a differing belief. But, if you do it right, then even in the face of so-called, "conventional wisdom," the work will stand.

I don't really expect too many people to go through all this. They ought, but I'm a realist. What I mostly intended to show was the failings we're seeing here are not failings of people, but failings of process. If we had a solid process for doing this kind of work, we can better pull people out of the equation.

The problem with your request is this: it's already been done. Many times over. Since the early MMOs like EQ and AC1. In the PvP environments such as on Darktide server in AC1, anybody could empirically see for themselves with a little experimentation that a Fist weapon (katar, etc.) was the most deadly weapon in the game for precisely the reason described in the section that Hakon is having trouble grokking. Many people in the early stages of AC1 were like "what? why? That's completely out of whack! That makes no sense! Why should a wimpy fist weapon beat all other weapons?"

Number-crunching and statistical analysis arguments ran rampant on the boards. Each new set of people encountering this assertion would argue the point, test it in game for themselves, and finally go "oh! okay I see!"

After a while it got distilled down to the simple type of explanation and example I used in the section that Hakon is having trouble with. When somebody would say "fist weapons are best for PvP" and somebody new would go "say what? You're bonkers, mate!", somebody would trot out some variation of the simple explanation and example that I have used in that section of the article that Hakon is having trouble with. Some people would see it and go "oh. I see. okay." And others would do what Hakon has done and get into wars of statistic analysis.

And they would always eventually get shown how they were just looking at it from the wrong angle. Or focusing on the wrong numbers. Or drawing the wrong conclusions.

So my point here is that what your asking for, Northwoods, is the reinvention of the wheel. Why? That's wasted effort. I *understand* the principle completely, and as a tech writer, I know that the best way to present complex and difficult to understand concepts is with a verbal explanation of the pattern coupled with a VERY artificial and simple example that illustrates the pattern. You don't throw reams of data at people--you find the simplest example possible that illustrates the basic pattern.

There will always be people who have trouble with this type of assertion. It happens in every game I've been in. The only games where this basic assertion is not true is in games where armor mitigation works on an off-the-top absorbtion manner rather than a flat percentage manner, and I clearly spell that out in that section.

My whole contention is that I am positive of the veracity of my information based on years of experience in other MMOs. The veracity of my information is empirically upheld in LOTRO both by my own observations and by the fact that *many* champions prefer DW setups over 2H setups. Every time I encourage my partner (who's main is a champion) to try out a new 2H weapon she got that has really good stats and looks like it should do more DPS than her DW setup, she can't hack it for more than 2 hours before she's begging to go back to her DW setup because the 2H seems so weak to her. (Yes, part of this is her playstyle--she's not as analytical about skill chains as some Champs.) Take a look at this thread link in the next paragraph if you want a good example of this type of argument among champions. Notice how many of the ones defending 2H are saying "only in certain situations" and "only if you use the right types of skill combos", etc. Otherwise, even most of the 2H defenders (implicitly or explicitly) agree that DW setups are easier and usually better--ESPECIALLY FOR SHORT FIGHTS WHEN YOU ARE FARMING MOBS BELOW YOUR LEVEL!!!!!

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?t=71462

So again, why should we be expected to reinvent the wheel? That's wasted effort. I have posted information that I KNOW TO BE ABSOLUTELY ACCURATE and people who have trouble with the (admittedly counter-intuitive) concept are attempting to do their board-warrioring about it on the wiki article itself, instead of in the forums where such arguments and debate belongs.

Here's another angle to consider: Are you familiar with the taper system that was used in the early years of AC1? I was on the team that cracked all 3 mod-12 algorithms behind the taper system. And I was the one who completely documented the taper system, how it worked, and how to use the difficult algorithms to figure out all of your tapers without needing to resort to brute-forcing anything but a few key tapers. I wrote the book on the subject "Red Monika's Guide to the Taper System", and I included detailed excel spreadsheets that had all the nasty formulas and cross-calculations built in.. When Merry created his Split Pea program, it was using my stuff as his design documentation, and my stuff was the "user guide/help" linked to by his program. Point of all this being that I kinda have some street cred in the area of reverse-engineering, understanding, and documenting complex game systems.

[Khafar]

Heh. You're "Red Monika"? I was on that 'team' too (although I went by "Kryloc the Grey" then). We didn't really crack much, to be honest. We were given a number of solid hints by a guy who already had cracked the system in its entirety, and basically seemed to want for it to get out into the public domain. I don't remember his handle at the moment, but he also wrote the "Sixth Sense" plug-in for Decal. He knew that if our group figured it out from his hints, someone would publish the results -- and her name was "Red Monika" .

Khafar

[Northwoods]

The second problem is that the article was already there. I merely read it and knew it was wrong. Should I just leave it there?

Just curious: what was wrong?

I looked back of the revision history and it clearly stated that a 2H weapon could beat DW under certain circumstances. Several factors were cited as to how this could happen, and disclaimers added about personal style having a role to play.

[Shannong]

Heh. You're "Red Monika"? I was on that 'team' too (although I went by "Kryloc the Grey" then). We didn't really crack much, to be honest. We were given a number of solid hints by a guy who already had cracked the system in its entirety, and basically seemed to want for it to get out into the public domain. I don't remember his handle at the moment, but he also wrote the "Sixth Sense" plug-in for Decal. He knew that if our group figured it out from his hints, someone would publish the results -- and her name was "Red Monika" .

Khafar

/me waves to Khafar. =)

My memory is fuzzy at this point (it was what? 9 years ago now?) We knew that several folks had cracked at least the 1st or 2nd algorithm and were keeping the knowledge to themselves so they could entice people to join their hierarchies (what was that mechanic for exp pyramid scheme called?). Even with the hints that got leaked to us, we still had to reverse-engineer the 2nd and 3rd formulas. Sure the hints helped. I can't remember whether we got any hints regarding the 3rd formula itself. I only remember a great collaborative effort where more than a dozen people were giving input, bouncing ideas and discoveries off each other, and divvying-up the testing that needed to be done. While I scribed it all and kept working on the best ways to explain what we discovered. It was one of the most fun collaborative efforts I'd ever been involved, before or since. AC1 really was a great game, until the hacks and bots came along and Turbine wasn't experienced enough to deal with the resulting imbalance.

[Shannong]

The second problem is that the article was already there. I merely read it and knew it was wrong. Should I just leave it there?

You could also have read the prominently posted article Help: Creating Game Mechanics Pages and follow the process outlined in there. A process meant to prevent such ugly rows as this has turned into.

In the end, though, I'm glad you did what you did because it illustrates the need for an arbitration process that everyone can point to, and follow, when future disputes like this occur.

Meanwhile, I'm out of the Lorebook business until I see such a formal arbitration process in place. You're welcome to do whatever you like to that or any other article, but I kinda feel bad for the community if you do.

[Bigtuna00]

EDIT: nevermind, I'm just going to report this.

[Shannong]

I am noting for the record that Hakon has not only performed wholesale deletions of substantive content of mine from the main article in question, but apparently he has now also:

* Deleted substantive content of mine from the Discussion (Talk) page
* Added an unsigned comment of his own at the TOP of the Talk page, instead of at the bottom, thereby muddying up chronological order of comments.

Both are pretty flagrant examples of disregard for common wiki ethics on Talk pages.

Moderators, are you going to do something about this person and his wholesale hacking and slashing of wiki content? Are you going to ban this idiot or not?

[Aylwyne]

I just checked the revision history of the talk page. I did a compare on the last revision that Shannong edited and the current revision. The differences I saw were:

1) Addition of a note about it not being about 'ownership' added by me during the height of the bickering to try and get you two to focus on working together on a shared article and not on who owns what block (obviously I failed in that).

2) All of the stuff that Harkon stormbrow wrote that Shannong moved to the discussion tab was removed by Harkon. I believe that was part of the cleanup and integration of the presentation that he's mentioned earlier in this thread. It looks like in doing so, the comments by Shannong that were directly regarding her disagreement with this content were also removed. I really don't see where that's a problem. It doesn't make much sense to remove a chunk of content and not remove a comment that no longer makes sense without the comment.

Further, it looks as if Harkon stormbrow has removed the large chunk of content from the main article page that's been the source of all of this trouble. At least that should avoid the need for further argument regarding that block of content.

And as the village elder says, "That is all I have to say about that".