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Complaints are one thing, flaming is another.


Solomon


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<<Then why was it moved here from the complaints folder? I honestly want to know. It's a fairly new complaint, something that hasn't been beaten to death. In fact the Staff won't even talk to us about it. >>

It's not a new complaint, actually. Plus it was explained in the MM folders that this wasn't something that is really up for discussion at this point.

We do not obscure every title. Not by a long shot.

We also do not obscure every requirement, or even every portion of every requirement, for those titles that are obscured to any degree.

We do, however, obscure bits and pieces of some high level titles, requirements for some very high or very special titles, and even some titles completely. There are some titles that are in the game that weren't divulged by us at all, although someone may have achieved them and posted that they exist.

When the titles are posted on the website (and they will be as soon as the new mechanics are in place to allow this to be done much easier than in the past) they are not posted in a haphazard or random way. They are posted in groups, by "order of difficulty" and in a way that should give you a fairly good idea of what you need. You can already see on the list of the posted titles that there's a pretty natural and generally steady level of progression from one to the other.

There will always be "secrets" and things to discover in DragonRealms. There will always be things we want you to figure out on your own or, even better, things we want you to work with other players to figure out. Just as we're not going to post (or allow to be posted) the details of Favor Puzzles, the details of how to get out of the Close, or the details of any other thing we consider a puzzle, there will be some titles that we want to remain as either partial or complete mysteries. This does not prevent anyone from discerning the requirements for the titles and posting them, either here, or on Elanthipedia, just as it doesn't prevent anyone from posting a list of Favor Puzzle solutions, a walkthrough of the Close, or anything else on Elanthipedia (although appropriate use of Spoiler Tags are appreciated). No one is saying you can't post them when you figure them out. We're just saying that we're not going to post them ALL ourselves.

Just as in the real world, there are some awards and titles and honors that have requirements that are obvious. You know what you have to do to get them. There are also honors and distinctions that you only have a general idea of what you need to do, but there is no set "list" of things that you can do to be guaranteed to earn that award. I consider this very similar (no, not identical, but similar) to the situation here. There are some honors that from a purely RP sense, the guild is going to make you work toward without telling you a laundry list of ranks and qualifications you need to achieve them. Since the concept of ranks is somewhat OOC from a totally purist standpoint, it is my take that the guild isn't going to necessarily be able to look on a sheet of paper and check your ranks and rubber stamp a new set of words floating over your head. Yes, they'll do that when you need to advance and tell you that you need "more ranks in X" or whatever, but I see that as the difference between "required knowledge to progress in the game" and "additional knowledge that you need to do something "fluffy" like activate a title."

Of course, this is the dilemma and the catch 22, since ranks are a vital part of the game and one that you have to be able to discuss and calculate and get info from NPCs about to effectively play the game, even though they're "technically" OOC. Now, no one is going to jump on you for talking about how many ranks you have, but on the flip-side, I consider this a situation where I'd like to maintain at least a tiny portion of the RP mystique. Of course, you also have the catch 22 that even though no one really has a name or title floating over their head, they're still important (and sometimes integral) parts of the game and need to be there, too.

Some people don't understand and don't agree with me on topic, and I totally understand that, but this will hopefully explain the situation a little better.

As an aside, if I had my druthers, I'd love for us to have more titles that have to be earned, not by cold, hard ranks, but through actions and deeds that distinguish your devotion and capabilities and set you apart from others. There's an amazing "system" in Joe Abercrombie's "The Blade Itself" trilogy where the Barbarians don't have a last name until they earn one, and then it's bestowed upon them by the chief of their tribe. I really wish we could do something like that, but if we ever did, we'd not list the requirements for that either.


Solomon


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Thanks for the lengthy reasoning of why all title reqs aren't posted. It makes no sense but I appreciate you at least taking the time to post.

>>There will always be "secrets" and things to discover in DragonRealms. There will always be things we want you to figure out on your own or, even better, things we want you to work with other players to figure out. Just as we're not going to post (or allow to be posted) the details of Favor Puzzles, the details of how to get out of the Close, or the details of any other thing we consider a puzzle, there will be some titles that we want to remain as either partial or complete mysteries. This does not prevent anyone from discerning the requirements for the titles and posting them, either here, or on Elanthipedia, just as it doesn't prevent anyone from posting a list of Favor Puzzle solutions, a walkthrough of the Close, or anything else (although appropriate use of Spoiler Tags are appreciated). No one is saying you can't post them when you figure them out. We're just saying that we're not going to post them ALL ourselves.

I agree there are things that need to remain hidden in DR. I just don't see Titles as one of them, and from all the people that have posted in this thread there has been 1 who has disagreed with that.

>>Just as in the real world, there are some awards and titles and honors that have requirements that are obvious. You know what you have to do to get them. There are also honors and distinctions that you only have a general idea of what you need to do, but there is no set "list" of things that you can do to be guaranteed to earn that award.

Please name me one RL award or honor that I can't go to the website or awarding organization and find out the exact requirements to get that award or honor. Unless you're talking about something generic like the nobel prize where the requirements are subjective. The title system isn't set up like that though, that's more like what you mention you want to have happen. The title system as it is DOES have a set list of requirements you have to get, you just don't want to give us that information.

>>additional knowledge that you need to do something "fluffy" like activate a title."

If you consider titles so "fluffy" then what's the problem with releasing the reqs. To me I find it highly annoying. As I said in my OP, I'm 150th circle, I don't have anything left I really want to do but get titles. Your unwillingness to post high level title reqs makes me not want to play anymore because I don't want to randomly flail about for titles. That is not fun and I'm sure a majority of the people would agree with me on it.

What it all comes down to is Titles are an achievement system, the only one that DR has. It's nice to be able to have goals but working towards ???? Ranks in ??? skill ?? points in ???? stat and ??? spell isn't a goal. You might get there eventually but when you do you're not likely to have any idea how you did. Also going back to your RL example do you think that the people who recieved those awards and honors don't have any idea, or only a vague idea, of how they got it?

<<It makes no sense >>

Sorry you feel that way, although I think it does make sense, you just don't agree with what I said. Big difference.

<<I agree there are things that need to remain hidden in DR. I just don't see Titles as one of them>>

We'll just have to agree to disagree, then.

<<Unless you're talking about something generic like the nobel prize where the requirements are subjective.>>

Well, the Nobel prize isn't really "generic", but that's a good example.

<<The title system isn't set up like that though, that's more like what you mention you want to have happen.>>

Exactly. That's why I said what I was talking about it was similar to, but not exactly, how the Title System is set up.

<<What it all comes down to is Titles are an achievement system, the only one that DR has. It's nice to be able to have goals but working towards ???? Ranks in ??? skill ?? points in ???? stat and ??? spell isn't a goal. You might get there eventually but when you do you're not likely to have any idea how you did.>>

As I said, I understand your position, but as I also said, there are very few titles that are entirely obscured and the ones that have hidden details are listed in a way that should give you a pretty good idea of what's required.


Solomon


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>>As I said, I understand your position, but as I also said, there are very few titles that are entirely obscured and the ones that have hidden details are listed in a way that should give you a pretty good idea of what's required.

Every single high level title is obscured. This is the most frustrating thing because they take the longest to achieve. I need goals. They don't give me any idea of what i need to achieve though or how close I am to them. Grejuva was nice enough to give us some hints to some of the titles but saying that a title is based on highest weapon doesn't tell me if I need 100 more ranks or 1000.

>>Exactly. That's why I said what I was talking about it was similar to, but not exactly, how the Title System is set up.

You gave that as a reason as to why you're keeping it PAFO though which doesn't make any sense. The title system has EXACT requirements, if this were RL I could go look up the EXACT requirements. A better example of the current title system to real life is a Doctorate. I can go look up exactly how many hours in which classes I need to earn my Doctorate and get my Dr. title.

Even the titles that we are given hidden details are next to impossible to figure out without 50+ data points. If I suddenly pop up with the title after ranking something I don't know any of the other requirements and it's impossible for me to figure out some of them since I can't back track my ranks. I figured out some of the Stats for the Cleric titles but I had to use the Test server and Respec.

Speaking of all that you never addressed my comment of how it makes sense to you that you yourself don't know how you "achieved" a title.

>>Exactly. That's why I said what I was talking about it was similar to, but not exactly, how the Title System is set up.

Even the prestigious Medal of Honor...We know all we need to do is go jump on a grenade to save someone's life.

If titles were to remain PAFO, you'd need to create the system where we were notified the moment we rank and receive one, or the moment we raise a skill point, choose a spell, or roll over the prediction counter. You know, the system we've been told is too resource intensive because you'd have to continuously calculate our available titles.

Lets take a step back and talk just about achievement and video games.

Video games like DragonRealms, and World of Warcraft are successful because they give and provide feelings of accomplishment. Every time you complete a quest in World of Warcraft, you get a pleasant little ring, some flashy lights, and an award. Things that help reinforce that feeling of accomplishment. In DragonRealms, you get that next spell, the sometimes awesome guild leveling speech, that next ability... Things that add to your sense of accomplishment, rewards.

Rewards thrust upon you without you knowing you were going to receive them, or without you working toward them, mean very little at the end of the day. Four years in the Marine Corps, and I received 4 different Navy-Marine Corps Achievement medals... Yes, a new one every year. For just performing my job in IT. To sum up the ridiculousness of it, I was given one for creating a website while in Iraq for Christmas videos.

These Navy-Marine Corps Achievement medals didn't create a sense of achievement, I didn't know what the requirements were for them(Apparently low if creating a website gets one while my friends get blown up by roadside bombs doesn't net them anything). They sure in the heck didn't convince me to stay in the Marine Corps for another 4 years of service. And they sure weren't worthy of setting as a goal to reach.

Going back to World of Warcraft analogy, when you get to the highest level, your goals shift to end game content, those raids, associated gear, and the new achievement system. You still know exactly what you need to accomplish to attain said equipment or achievements. What happens to those that reach everything World of Warcraft has to offer? They start up another character in a new race/class.... Or they quit the game until new content is released.

World of Warcraft was able to create a huge following over this over-arching sense play on your heartstrings. They created an environment that you could complete goals, feel like you've achieved something, and have a sense of pride about it. My mother, at 65 years young never touched a computer in her life with the intent of playing games on it now plays World of Warcraft several hours of day. Blizzard recently released an achievement system inside World of Warcraft, and my mother with multiple level 80s(She is barely getting good enough to raid), has started running around and performing as many as she can because she feels like she's accomplishing something, even if its virtual.

With players pushing the envelope within DragonRealms, and not all players being driven by circle, it believe it shows a lack of foresight to not post the title requirements. Anything you provide to the players with clear defined goals about them will give them something to work towards, eventually knowingly attain, and come back to ask, "What's next can I achieve with my text?" This is a good thing.

Solomon,
Any chance of a notification system being put in place? So when a new title is unlocked, it either tells you or highlights said title next time you check?

-Shadow Bane Alaxndr Durnovaria, Advocate of Therengia

"A knight is sworn to valor
His heart knows only virtue
His blade defends the helpless
His words speak only truth
His wrath undoes the wicked."

>>Yes, that would indeed be horribly ridiculous. It seems like you're so intent on finding something to complain and/or argue about that you're not even paying attention to what was said. No wonder it didn't make any sense.

So why is it PAFO if we can freely post the requirements here? That seems like a double standard to me. What's the difference between some players "ruining my fun" by posting reqs and GMs "ruining my fun" by posting them?

You're so intent on keeping it PAFO that you won't address my logical arguments on why your arguments are illogical. The only reason I can see for this is you know that it doesn't make any sense and don't want to backpedal.

The only reason that I'm so intense on this subject is because I want a reason to keep playing this game. Your stubborn need to make something PAFO that doesn't logically make sense to be PAFO doesn't give me any reason to keep playing.

>>Any chance of a notification system being put in place? So when a new title is unlocked, it either tells you or highlights said title next time you check?

We've asked before and been told it'd be too resource intensive to track everything.

The fact that people are interested enough to voice their opinion is a positive sign regardless. Can you imagine releasing something and not having one player post a response to it?

Thank you for your detailed response, Solomon. I wouldn't say I was frustrated by not knowing title requirements. It was more of an annoyance and not wanting to spend the time trying to figure them out. I opted to share my titles available and skills instead to people who had more motivation to do number crunching.

>>I disagree with this for the most part. I play games on Xbox and quite frequently, I see awards pop up, Gamerpoints earned, achievements rewarded. I do not play these games to unlocked these rewards. I play them to have fun. I welcome the points and the recognition that's "thrust upon me without a clue as to why," and it does make a difference at the end of the day. Sometimes I'll play to the end of a game and see that I'm missing points. A good number of the Gamerscore Achievements on Xbox are obscured completely and those are usually the ones I'm missing. At most, you're given the name and perhaps a general idea of what to do. If I get totally stumped on how to unlock one of those, I have two options. I can try to figure it out myself, based on the other achievements (assuming it's one in a progression of achievements), I can try to deduce what makes sense to try, based on the name of the achievement, or I can go to a third party website and just look it up.


But you're comparing games with probably a maximum of 100 hours of play time to an unlimted game. With around 1000 ranks in TM a 100 hours of play time will grant me about 5 ranks in TM. If I need 1000 ranks of TM for my next achievement that's approximately 20,000 hours of game time. You can't compare the two. WoW on the other hand is more comparable in time played since it's more or less an open ended game. Every single Achievement has it's requirements listed. Having requirements listed doesn't lessen the holy cow that guy did a lot of work factor or wow that's a cool title factor. Plus the way I mentioned Implemeting them, which you still seem to be ignoring, will still allow people who don't want to know to not know.

<<The fact that people are interested enough to voice their opinion is a positive sign regardless. Can you imagine releasing something and not having one player post a response to it?>>

Agreed completely! We've actually released things before which have been met with the sounds of crickets, which makes us worried something is very, very broken. Likewise, we've released systems where absolutely no one has a negative thing to say about it, which makes us think we've missed a very important glitch or left in a major bug.

<<It was more of an annoyance and not wanting to spend the time trying to figure them out. I opted to share my titles available and skills instead to people who had more motivation to do number crunching. >>

Totally Understand this, too. You sound like you fit into the Diamond category of gamers, at least when it comes to this, while the people who enjoy PAFO are in the Spade category. Naturally, the Spades aren't going to be posting about it because they like digging into things and trying to figure out the details, while the Diamonds are more than a little frustrated by the whole process.


Solomon


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>>We do, however, obscure bits and pieces of some high level titles, requirements for some very high or very special titles, and even some titles completely.

I was really hoping there was some hidden weaponmaster title(s) once I hit 300 in all weapons....very disappointing. :( I was sort of thinking that maybe you guys snuck some hidden titles in there since a number of people asked over several years for more weapon master titles (even for 100 ranks in all weapons) and the answer had always been, "Ok, sure".


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<<I was really hoping there was some hidden weaponmaster title(s) once I hit 300 in all weapons....very disappointing>>

Well, the great thing about the system is that we can always add more. I'd love lots more titles that highlight and reward landmark achievements like that. In fact, the thing that got me really wanting to implement this system at all was that I wanted there to be a way for people who'd gotten 100 ranks in all their weapons to get some sort of perk. Once I found out we didn't have a way to do that at the time, I asked someone to port the Title System from Modus.

I think there's a general "Title" discussion topic somewhere. If you'd like to suggest more titles, feel free to do it. Obseden has created a VERY neat new system that makes adding new titles infinitely more easy than it was, along with the possibility to update the website dynamically any time one or more titles are added, so the end result should be more titles more quickly and on-the-fly updates to the website to show them in real-time (as soon as we can get that worked out).


Solomon


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<<How is players posting the reqs any different than GMs posting it? >>

Because in one case, the information was sussed out by the players. In the other case, it was simply handed out.



Solomon


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>I disagree with this for the most part. I play games on Xbox and quite frequently, I see awards pop up, Gamerpoints earned, achievements rewarded. I do not play these games to unlocked these rewards. I play them to have fun. I welcome the points and the recognition that's "thrust upon me without a clue as to why," and it does make a difference at the end of the day. Sometimes I'll play to the end of a game and see that I'm missing points. A good number of the Gamerscore Achievements on Xbox are obscured completely and those are usually the ones I'm missing. At most, you're given the name and perhaps a general idea of what to do. If I get totally stumped on how to unlock one of those, I have two options. I can try to figure it out myself, based on the other achievements (assuming it's one in a progression of achievements), I can try to deduce what makes sense to try, based on the name of the achievement, or I can go to a third party website and just look it up.

That's for the most part just you that doesn't care then. Massive studies have been conducted and games entirely built around this part of the human brain and been very successful. Take Call of Duty where 90% of the people only play longer than 2 months just to get that next rank, weapon or achievement unlocked for killing 10 people with a single grenade 13 times in a row while being stabbed in the face by 6 other players who are at the same time being blown up by an air strike. Sure they enjoyed the ride getting there, but without a goal listed out they wouldn't have tried and untimately would have put the game down long ago.

This is the reason PS3, XboX, WoW etc all raced to get something setup, just as DR did with titles. Because games are made to draw people in while achievement systems are to keep them coming back for more. Difference being at any time in COD I can check exactly how many more headshots I need to get rainbow tiger stripped purple polka dotted sniper rifle.

How many peole would have kept playing over circle 20 in the old days if circle requirements were random and PAFO, "4 ranks in primary weapon for circle 21 but you need 20 for circle 22 but we aren't telling you that". It's been the curse of being 150th, you have no more circles to chase. Mostly, you either start grinding for titles, show up very seldom, sell or in Rishlu's case, cancel the account.

You can't let people push the "Game Over I Win Button".

Damn The Man! Free The Title Req's!

>>One we've said isn't acceptable to post. The other we've said is.

But why? Why is one acceptable to ruin my fun but not the other?

>>Because we said so.

Once again amazed that you're the voice of this company

>>I'm sorry, we're not going to go in circles on this any more.

Great, you be as inconsistent with your policies as you want. What a ridiculous way to run a game. You could at least rewrite your policies so you're not actively breaking them every time someone posts a title requirement.

Also, Solomon, you are doing a fine job of being the 'voice of the company'. Don't let some people who know how to complain better than they know how to offer suggestions get to you!

-Shadow Bane Alaxndr Durnovaria, Advocate of Therengia

"A knight is sworn to valor
His heart knows only virtue
His blade defends the helpless
His words speak only truth
His wrath undoes the wicked."

>>Also, Solomon, you are doing a fine job of being the 'voice of the company'. Don't let some people who know how to complain better than they know how to offer suggestions get to you!

Sorry, but "because I've said so." Isn't as persuasive as "PAFO Titles are not considered IG secrets like puzzle favors, the Close, and similar IG quests. PAFO Titles are designed to be discovered and shared by the playing community." One is tact, one is giving up and just using authority to end an argument. While the original comment wasn't necessarily constructive criticism, I don't believe it wasn't entirely out of place.

The problem is Solomon and the GM Team haven't found the happy medium between what to list as PAFO Titles, and what to just provide the requirements for. Until the a policy is written on the backend about how to handle this, the debate will still rage on.

The next issue is designing a system to inform players of new titles they receive. The suggestion posted about displaying the number(##) of titles available in a category is nice, until you take in the fact that the reason why titles were split into categories is to split the amount of system resources require to check what titles a character is entitled to. In other words, that number would need to be generated when you types "title pre list", which would be the same as running all the categories at once, which is the resource hog.

Something more plausible would be setting up a system that would track one and only one category, but without knowing the back end... It's hard to say if this is possible.

Lastly, there is the time vs reward equation. I firmly believe SIMU would be better served writing a policy in such that 90% of all titles created have their requirements shared at the same time. In addition, they could at that time provide the puzzle pieces to titles that they think of as "OMG, everyone must have this one!" and hide the reqs of the title, or hide the title and reqs and just say, PAFO for this particular title.

Either way, leaving all the super high titles as PAFO removes an aspect of DragonRealms essential IG, as players no longer have clear defined goals to work toward and give up to go play Starcraft 2, instead.