Defense nerf explained?

[Salt Merchant]

I've been trying to grasp the effects of the "defense nerf" on the game.

It seems to me that all the effects people have described could be summed up as "weapon skills simply bypass defense".

It explains why agility no longer seems to matter that much (except that it does when fighting bare hands vs bare hands).
It explains why new warriors can land so many hits on old, experienced non-warrior characters and kick their asses.
Its lack explains those characters in clans with regular training sessions that never, ever seem to win at sparring, no matter how much time they've been in.

If true, this apparently constitutes a real bug in the game. I don't think defense (and offense for that matter) were meant to be nullified. Therefore, I'm posting about it.

[Solifugid]

Defense 'nerf' is pretty misleading. Far as I remember, the bug was in the combat code failing to take the defense skill into account at all. Upshot was that every character in the game had exceptional defense. When the bug was fixed, everybody in the game suddenly had absolutely awful defense, because they'd never really used it before.

The only 'problem' now, is that present day characters that aren't warriors can't defend as well as they used to. Considering they were never supposed to be that good in the first place, this is hardly a bad thing.

[jcljules]

Alright, I haven't played many combat based characters and I don't really pay attention to code heavy discussion here on the GDB. What is the defense nerf?

[Nyr]

The combat code is not bugged.  It is working in the way that Armageddon's staff expects it to and wants it to.  This includes defense.

[SMuz]

I've only played a few times last month, so forgive me if I missed a nerf recently. But it seems to be fine. Agility matters, yes, more than others for some fighting styles. Veteran warriors seem to be able to block just fine, unless you're a HG or dwarf, where your dense skull might need some time to learn basic defense. If they're not learning anything, maybe you should teach them a few tricks? A basic lesson in shield use or parry can help those fellas out a lot.

Whatever it is, defense seems fine to me. I agree with what Nyr said.. if you act like a real character and not bother with maxing out defense as you'd expect the code to, it would work as it should. Not that you'd twink out of course, but some of the things some clan mates was quite annoying, especially since it actually hindered them. Just enjoy it, it should work as it would. I find Armageddon's combat code surprisingly accurate for a lot of things and admire it for that.

[Eloran]

Elves were hit hard with the nerf, though a lot of time put into training weapon skills and natural defense goes a long way towards augmenting that natural agility.

I don't like the nerf, but I think it was a good effort in helping separate long lived warriors from long lived rangers. Then again, I never thought it was a big problem to begin with. Kick, bash and disarm are all the great equalizers. That, and rangers get shit for shield use.

[X-D]

It is funny that it is called "the defense nerf". In reality it was a parry nerf.

There was a bug, but it was to parry. Everybody could parry and did....ALOT.

Now, that did mean that PCs that really should not have been able to stand against some things...could.

And PCs with parry, Such as warriors, could spar or even be in a real fight with each other for entire game DAYS.

I had a PC get in a dual to the death with another PC that he was better then and that was almost decided by bracers and gloves alone after more then 15RL minutes of combat...with real weapons, and neither PC was new or untrained.

If anything, agility matters more now in combat then it used to.

(edit to add)
I do think that the fix went a bit to far the other way, simply because no other class has any defense at all unless they branch it, Shield skill on other classes, specialy ranger is laughable to the point of not being worth losing the second attack or ETWO bonuses. And it does make the warrior only skills FAR more powerful.

[Eloran]

Bu-bu-bu-bu-but X-D I MISS being able to snatch an arrow out of the air with my bare hands!!! 

[Synthesis]

Here are a few things I've observed:

1. It takes much, much longer for a warrior to become nigh untouchable, because now you have to actually increase your base defense to be defensively capable, and this seems to proceed quite slowly.  However, it is possible to achieve such a high base defense that you can box dangerous critters to death completely unarmed, and not be injured.

2. It takes much, much longer for weapon skills to increase by sparring your peers (e.g. runner vs. runner), because now hardly anyone ever dodges anything, until they've increased their base defense, which takes quite a bit of time (or some serious powergaming).

3. Once you start hitting the upper ranges in weapon skills or base offense, you have to resort to some fairly ridiculous training methods, because your clanmates typically will have such weak defense that reasonable sparring is no longer even marginally useful.  Note that you tend to reach this point long before the weapon skill in question is "maxed" or even branched from.

4. Because it is so difficult to become defensively untouchable, strength is the big winner in combat now, at least over the short and medium term: since even very experienced warriors can be hit, it means they will be hit.  The only question is: how hard?  That's where strength factors in.  (Not to mention the recent changes to encumbrance penalties.)  I suspect this may hold true even over the long term, given the compensation effects I'll discuss below.

5. Having low agility is actually sort of helpful in this regard:  since you initially gain no agility bonus to defense,  you are hit harder and more often, which allows your base defense to improve more rapidly.  Due to this compensating effect, agility is useful primarily in offense, as it regulates attack speed. (Note that agility also affects to-hit, but the same compensation effect applies to its modifier here. Also note that I'm not taking into account anything other than melee combat, here.)

6. Because the compensating effects have a lag period, if you have a character with high agility, over the short-term, you will seem to be quite the badass, as long as you have decent strength to go along with it.  However, as your peers increase their base offense and defense to compensate for their lack of agility, you will slowly but surely lose any advantage you had when you and they were newbies.  Additionally, you will improve your relevant combat skills slower than your peers, because you are the "hard target" to hit, while they are typically easy targets for you.  The only way to avoid this is to spar exclusively with more experienced PCs or to resort early on to the previously-mentioned somewhat absurd training methods.

7. Over the medium term, classes that do not start with parry actually have a relatively large advantage in the base defense game:  since they don't have parry to compensate for their lack of defense, they get hit harder and more frequently, and their base defense goes up much more rapidly.  Then, once they branch parry, they have a very strong base on which to improve.  Of course, this means that they actually have to survive to branch, heh.

8. There is no compensating effect for lack of strength, which again, makes strength the #1 deciding factor in melee combat over the long term.

9. I suspect that, given two equally skilled warriors with entirely maxed offense and entirely maxed defense, that the one with higher agility would win.  However, given the nature of the compensation effect, it is much more likely that the warrior with lower agility will actually be more skilled.

My verdict so far is: Agility is useful over the short-term and for some non-melee related issues.  Also, defense is nerfed over the short-term, but every class can become just as defensively badass as pre-defense nerf, it just takes much, much longer.  This makes the game tough on newbies, and it makes it rather difficult to improve beyond mediocrity for folks who aren't extensively analytical about skills .

[Good Gortok]

The defense fix hit parry the hardest, like X-D said. Before, skilled combatants could stand and fight for ages and the fight would often have to be won with such things as kick and spiked bracers. You would just parry hundreds of blows in a row, and I suspect it was possible to get your parry/defense/block skills to a point where it was physically impossible to get hit by other player characters in conventional combat. After the code adjustment, a lot of players complained that it was now way too easy to hit people in combat and that stats were now a much bigger factor in the outcome of a fight, namely strength. New characters with exceptional strength were joining clans and beating relatively long-lived characters with worse rolls, and since this happened approximately around the time of the stat prioritization system, it all had a huge impact on combat in the game. You could now make a character of the correct age and build and with strength prioritized first could pretty much expect an extremely good or higher.

What it also seemed to do was lessen the defensive bonuses from high agility. Whether this was an indirect effect of the parry fix or a separate adjustment, going for high agility at the cost of strength and endurance was no longer really a viable "build". You would simply lose against PCs who went for strength and heavy armor instead unless you were vastly more skilled, and even then they might be lucky and land two vicious blows to the head while you whittled them with a dozen nicks and lightly hits. This hit elves pretty hard, especially city elves who unlike their desert cousins do not have endurance that matches humans and thus were even more in trouble now that they could not reliably avoid getting hit. If you have ever played a character with 90 health and insufficient strength to wear decent armor, you know what I mean.

Another thing it did was make life extremely hard for new rangers and assassins. The old code had it so that if you were a combat class with high agility, you could parry and defend yourself pretty much as if you had a low parry skill even if you hadn't branched it yet. Rangers were able to fight many types of wildlife right out of the box - maybe you wouldn't kill that scrab easily, but it wouldn't just promply land three consecutive grievous wounds. Assassins didn't have to worry so much about backstabbing a target and dying before the skill delay wore off. When the defense fix first went in, characters without the parry skill were unable to parry where they had previously (and again later) had a passable chance from agility, dual wield and defense skill alone.

It drastically changed combat, and I remember one well-known 100+ day d-elf warrior remarking that after the nerf he was hit by a durrit for the first time in over a year. I guess people got used to it and it certainly did away with the problem of long-lived warriors and rangers being virtually immortal in ordinary combat, but I still strongly dislike how it affected certain races and stats, and how it turned one fighting style into the undisputedly best and almost universally used despite the documentation.

[Eloran]

Agreed with Synthesis 100%.

I came to the exact same conclusion as you did in your fifth and seventh points. Stats are all important, but in some cases they can actually hinder the progress of characters. That's why you see elves experience the plateau effect much faster than other races.

Why should you have to get hit in order to receive a bump to defense? If there are other ways, forgive me.

[Good Gortok]

Here are a few things I've observed:

1. It takes much, much longer for a warrior to become nigh untouchable, because now you have to actually increase your base defense to be defensively capable, and this seems to proceed quite slowly.  However, it is possible to achieve such a high base defense that you can box dangerous critters to death completely unarmed, and not be injured.

2. It takes much, much longer for weapon skills to increase by sparring your peers (e.g. runner vs. runner), because now hardly anyone ever dodges anything, until they've increased their base defense, which takes quite a bit of time (or some serious powergaming).

3. Once you start hitting the upper ranges in weapon skills or base offense, you have to resort to some fairly ridiculous training methods, because your clanmates typically will have such weak defense that reasonable sparring is no longer even marginally useful.  Note that you tend to reach this point long before the weapon skill in question is "maxed" or even branched from.

4. Because it is so difficult to become defensively untouchable, strength is the big winner in combat now, at least over the short and medium term: since even very experienced warriors can be hit, it means they will be hit.  The only question is: how hard?  That's where strength factors in.  (Not to mention the recent changes to encumbrance penalties.)  I suspect this may hold true even over the long term, given the compensation effects I'll discuss below.

5. Having low agility is actually sort of helpful in this regard:  since you initially gain no agility bonus to defense,  you are hit harder and more often, which allows your base defense to improve more rapidly.  Due to this compensating effect, agility is useful primarily in offense, as it regulates attack speed. (Note that agility also affects to-hit, but the same compensation effect applies to its modifier here. Also note that I'm not taking into account anything other than melee combat, here.)

6. Because the compensating effects have a lag period, if you have a character with high agility, over the short-term, you will seem to be quite the badass, as long as you have decent strength to go along with it.  However, as your peers increase their base offense and defense to compensate for their lack of agility, you will slowly but surely lose any advantage you had when you and they were newbies.  Additionally, you will improve your relevant combat skills slower than your peers, because you are the "hard target" to hit, while they are typically easy targets for you.  The only way to avoid this is to spar exclusively with more experienced PCs or to resort early on to the previously-mentioned somewhat absurd training methods.

7. Over the medium term, classes that do not start with parry actually have a relatively large advantage in the base defense game:  since they don't have parry to compensate for their lack of defense, they get hit harder and more frequently, and their base defense goes up much more rapidly.  Then, once they branch parry, they have a very strong base on which to improve.  Of course, this means that they actually have to survive to branch, heh.

8. There is no compensating effect for lack of strength, which again, makes strength the #1 deciding factor in melee combat over the long term.

9. I suspect that, given two equally skilled warriors with entirely maxed offense and entirely maxed defense, that the one with higher agility would win.  However, given the nature of the compensation effect, it is much more likely that the warrior with lower agility will actually be more skilled.

My verdict so far is: Agility is useful over the short-term and for some non-melee related issues.  Also, defense is nerfed over the short-term, but every class can become just as defensively badass as pre-defense nerf, it just takes much, much longer.  This makes the game tough on newbies, and it makes it rather difficult to improve beyond mediocrity for folks who aren't extensively analytical about skills .

All true.

[Simple]

What's a nerf?

[Eloran]

It drastically changed combat, and I remember one well-known 100+ day d-elf warrior remarking that after the nerf he was hit by a durrit for the first time in over a year.

lulz, continuity FTL

[Synthesis]

What's a nerf?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerf_(computer_gaming)

[Kryos]

Sythesis's 9 points seem spot on.  My experience has taught me that when fighting str > all.  Dramatic skill separation and 'luck' can of course change things up too.

[BlackMagic0]

What's a nerf?

Its this fuzzy thing. That people in Star Wars herd for stuff needed in life..

This is what one looks like..


Or what Syn said... 

[jhunter]

I think it brought things too far in the opposite direction in comparison to what it was. Overall, I don't like the current incarnation of the combat system for several reasons.
And, as someone else stated, in the early to mid game strength now rules all when it comes to combat. Pit two opponents against each other with equal skills and stats, except that their strengths and agilities will be reversed between the two and the one with the higher strength should win almost every time.

I'd still like to go back to before this fix, before the addition of reel, and before the addition of stam drain for special combat abilities.

Frankly, the current combat system sucks.

[Eloran]

Frankly, the current combat system sucks.

To be fair, a bit of reason, logic and common sense goes a long way in a fight.

[titansfan]

I like it. But then again I'm more on the idea of roleplay then skills and shit. Sure it's awesome to rock suckers like no other, but I like building that kinda thing up. If it takes some work then so be it, more fun for me.

[Hot_Dancer]

You know, to be honest.. I enjoy no longer being able to callously hunt two braxat at a time and
drink a cup of coffee while my character fought off a dujat or some other monstrously sized creature.

Or to idly skill up against rantarri.

I'd always found it particularly twinky. Fierce creatures earn their reputation properly now.

I don't know the finer points of combat though.

Cheers,
HD

[Eloran]

Even before the nerf I never, ever left the keyboard when fighting such a critter. Big creatures were always capable of one shotting you. Now, it's just a bit more likely they do it, reel you, and finish you off.

[elvenchipmunk]

I do like that the warriors can always win against any other guild in a fight, that's not in question I don't think. What annoys me is simply the fact that if an assassin/ranger wants to simply engage in combat against a warrior, even a well-trained assassin/ranger against a new/sort of new warrior, the assassin/ranger always holds the risk just being wrecked in a few rounds of combat.

Backstab lag doesn't help, but that's another topic, heh.

I don't think a 30-day assassin should have to worry about being killed in a couple rounds against a brand new warrior. They should know for a fact that there's a good chance they will lose, but there should be a little space between the initiating strike and the final death/flee/disengage/whatever. I think this is a reason that assassins/rangers feel the need to max out their other skills (backstab/archery/other specialties) before bothering to engage in a real fight, because they will more than likely die. Very quickly.

(This is of course assuming the 30-day assassin/ranger has not branched parry yet).

[Eloran]

I don't think a 30-day assassin should have to worry about being killed in a couple rounds against a brand new warrior.

This is a bit of a reach, eh? I mean, if you're fighting a newbie half-giant warrior with clubs out the box you should be worried, sure, but have you actually seen older rangers/assassins beaten by warriors fresh out of chargen?

I haven't seen anything that bad.

[X-D]

I have....Well, not 30day verses 0, but 20 day verses 0.

I don't mind the parry nerf myself. I do hate reel and combat skill stam drain. Specialy stam drain on archery and throw. Shoot critter east. Blam, 4+ stam...Wait, it is just as tiring to pull a string back for 1-20 seconds as it is to walk a mile through rough terrain? Huh? And I do not think reel should be in game at all, but at the very least it should be reduced to head and neck only and only on truly massive strikes....but then, they have every chance to get the PC dead anyway. But you get tired of seeing "you reel from the blow" When you got hit to the body for 20 of your 130 total stun and 3hp damage. I don't think you should reel unless you are below 50% stun to begin with. At least that makes some kind of sense.

[Delstro]

I agree with X-D.

[elvenchipmunk]

Sorry, 30 day meaning relatively long lived. Maybe 20-25 days. Relatively long lived.

And I have seen assassins/rangers that long lived get hit for a large portion of their hp/stun within a few rounds of combat against a new warrior.

[Jenred]

I sense this thread getting locked or moved.
Last time damage, damage percents and other things deemed "intricacies of code" were discussed it was closed.

[Eloran]

Totally different discussion. On a slight derail, I don't see what the big fucking deal is about discussing modifiers and their place in the damage scale, but hey, that's just me.

[Riev]

I have enjoyed the work it takes to build up this "defense" skill. Get hit hard, learn how to NOT get hit that hard again. Fail-based etc etc.

I do -not- agree with the fact that a 20+ warrior can sit there for 5 minutes against a relatively new assassin, and almost never get hit, and then initiate his attack and end the fight in two prompts.




End all be all. I'm glad that EVERY guild doesn't have access to parry. It is an advanced technique to begin with, and while "anyone" can sneak around, it likely will never work. Parry should have not worked as often as it did. I'm for the change, but against some of the other changes that have gone in. (Combat Skill Reversal taking stam? Nothing like engaging three characters and being unable to flee due to disarm spam.)

[Is Friday]

I do -not- agree with the fact that a 20+ warrior can sit there for 5 minutes against a relatively new assassin, and almost never get hit, and then initiate his attack and end the fight in two prompts.

So you're for the "hard work" of building up defense but don't want it to have any reward?

[Vessol]

meh, the discussion of the metagame or mentioning it always serves to kill the magic of Armageddon a bit more for me every time, reminding me that it is just another online game :\.

[Veges]

Reading is optional.

[Jenred]

Reading is optional.

Not everyone expects a topic to degrade into code explanations when they are reading through it.

[Eloran]

Not everyone expects a topic to degrade into code explanations when they are reading through it.

Reading the title of a thread can impart useful knowledge. In this case "defense nerf explained" is, I think, pretty self explanatory that code might be an issue. 

[Reiloth]

Not everyone expects a topic to degrade into code explanations when they are reading through it.

Reading the title of a thread can impart useful knowledge. In this case "defense nerf explained" is, I think, pretty self explanatory that code might be an issue.  

After this change -- I have noticed that characters i've played with exceptional stats just -take longer-. While I am not one to obsess over code, when something unrealistic happens due to a code change, I fail to see how that is 'business as usual'. A warrior with Below Average wisdom and exceptional everything else learning another language before branching anything at all related to combat. What? How does that make any sense at all? The language code is nearly impossible to overcome as it is -- But for a Warrior that should by all means be a god amongst men to learn something academic before learning how to beat ass harder?

Quite confusing.

[Agent_137]

well, I didn't know rangers have shitty shield skill. That's kind of disappointing, but I guess I'd have figured it out eventually. Better now, because I don't really see that as some 'neat secret' that i'll be so excited to learn. Instead it leaves me feeling hollow and sad. Is shield/spear not the most logical choice for fighting much larger creatures/beasts? Why is that not represented? Especially now that defense skills actually -matter.-

[Riev]

well, I didn't know rangers have shitty shield skill. That's kind of disappointing, but I guess I'd have figured it out eventually. Better now, because I don't really see that as some 'neat secret' that i'll be so excited to learn. Instead it leaves me feeling hollow and sad. Is shield/spear not the most logical choice for fighting much larger creatures/beasts? Why is that not represented? Especially now that defense skills actually -matter.-

Shield is still one of my favorite defensive things to take in this game. If you thought, somehow, that a ranger's shield use was on par with a warriors, you were already jaded from the start. This should not be news to make you hollow or sad.

We should get a listing of how people feel about the change itself, and not so much combat in general. Combat is WAI, so saying that combat sucks doesn't help.

[Jingo]

Yeah. I'm just going to say that I trust the staff have things worked out the way they want.

I have some reserves about newbies with heavy strength. But that's about it.

My one wish is that stats would somehow factor less in combat.

[SMuz]

meh, the discussion of the metagame or mentioning it always serves to kill the magic of Armageddon a bit more for me every time, reminding me that it is just another online game :\.

Hah, I sort of like the metagame. Being an engineer, knowing the mechanics of something actually helps me get deeper into it.

Shield works great, IMO. Rangers with shield/spear would do about as well as you'd expect a hunter with shield and a spear to. He's not going to face down a lot of other warrior/hunters, but he should be able to take down some nasty critters. Even with the 'nerf', I really like it for a lot of non-warriors.

[Fathi]

My biggest problem with this change to combat is how it ended up effecting combat emoting.

Before the parry fix, combat was a lot slower-paced. A lot more blows weren't going through, which meant sparring matches and 'real' combat alike were stretched out more, leaving both parties waiting for someone to finally break past the other's defenses and land the blow(s) that would end the match.

Because combat was slower, the likelihood of combat emoting was greater. I was playing a warrior during this code change and before the change, I don't recall any situations she got into where she was attacked by an opponent that didn't emote through the fight, even during assassination attempts.

After the parry nerf, it seems to me like a lot more people--especially non-warriors--drop an initiating-the-attack emote but otherwise keep their fingers hovering over the flee keys. Which makes sense--I'd rather not lose a character to not being able to flee 'cause I was in the middle of typing up an emote.

At the same time, though, I miss how it was. Combat has sorta become the "engage, anxiously wait, then flee" dance.

[RogueGunslinger]

[derail]

I, personally, find it disturbing how easy it is to roll up V. good+ strength if you want to. With strength being such a deciding factor, it certainly colors how I go about the application process.


[/derail]

[Northlander]

For me, I like Arm with deadly combat, but I would rather we weren't entirely as easy to hit as we are now. I envision a golden middle path between 10-second and 10-minute sparring rounds, but with an emphasis towards the former. That would allow more room for combat emoting and also give warriors a reason to use their delaying skills even at low levels, another implication of the change.

[SMuz]

Combat is pretty damn tough to balance. Compared to other games, it seems OK. Except for that early 2 days where you can get torn to bits by a "harmless" animal.

[Solifugid]

Combat is pretty damn tough to balance. Compared to other games, it seems OK. Except for that early 2 days where you can get torn to bits by a "harmless" animal.

I'm not certain any animal on Zalanthas counts as 'harmless.'

[Eloran]

Lord knows them damn tregil would be ruling Zalanthas otherwise.

[Olgaris]

Here are a few things I've observed:

1. It takes much, much longer for a warrior to become nigh untouchable, because now you have to actually increase your base defense to be defensively capable, and this seems to proceed quite slowly.  However, it is possible to achieve such a high base defense that you can box dangerous critters to death completely unarmed, and not be injured.

2. It takes much, much longer for weapon skills to increase by sparring your peers (e.g. runner vs. runner), because now hardly anyone ever dodges anything, until they've increased their base defense, which takes quite a bit of time (or some serious powergaming).

3. Once you start hitting the upper ranges in weapon skills or base offense, you have to resort to some fairly ridiculous training methods, because your clanmates typically will have such weak defense that reasonable sparring is no longer even marginally useful.  Note that you tend to reach this point long before the weapon skill in question is "maxed" or even branched from.

4. Because it is so difficult to become defensively untouchable, strength is the big winner in combat now, at least over the short and medium term: since even very experienced warriors can be hit, it means they will be hit.  The only question is: how hard?  That's where strength factors in.  (Not to mention the recent changes to encumbrance penalties.)  I suspect this may hold true even over the long term, given the compensation effects I'll discuss below.

5. Having low agility is actually sort of helpful in this regard:  since you initially gain no agility bonus to defense,  you are hit harder and more often, which allows your base defense to improve more rapidly.  Due to this compensating effect, agility is useful primarily in offense, as it regulates attack speed. (Note that agility also affects to-hit, but the same compensation effect applies to its modifier here. Also note that I'm not taking into account anything other than melee combat, here.)

6. Because the compensating effects have a lag period, if you have a character with high agility, over the short-term, you will seem to be quite the badass, as long as you have decent strength to go along with it.  However, as your peers increase their base offense and defense to compensate for their lack of agility, you will slowly but surely lose any advantage you had when you and they were newbies.  Additionally, you will improve your relevant combat skills slower than your peers, because you are the "hard target" to hit, while they are typically easy targets for you.  The only way to avoid this is to spar exclusively with more experienced PCs or to resort early on to the previously-mentioned somewhat absurd training methods.

7. Over the medium term, classes that do not start with parry actually have a relatively large advantage in the base defense game:  since they don't have parry to compensate for their lack of defense, they get hit harder and more frequently, and their base defense goes up much more rapidly.  Then, once they branch parry, they have a very strong base on which to improve.  Of course, this means that they actually have to survive to branch, heh.

8. There is no compensating effect for lack of strength, which again, makes strength the #1 deciding factor in melee combat over the long term.

9. I suspect that, given two equally skilled warriors with entirely maxed offense and entirely maxed defense, that the one with higher agility would win.  However, given the nature of the compensation effect, it is much more likely that the warrior with lower agility will actually be more skilled.

My verdict so far is: Agility is useful over the short-term and for some non-melee related issues.  Also, defense is nerfed over the short-term, but every class can become just as defensively badass as pre-defense nerf, it just takes much, much longer.  This makes the game tough on newbies, and it makes it rather difficult to improve beyond mediocrity for folks who aren't extensively analytical about skills .

All true.

Actually, not by a long shot. But since we prefer to leave you guys in the dark as to how it actually works, can't blame a guy for trying.