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The Tome of Knowledge


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Bump.

 

I would like to let everyone know that starting tomorrow, I will be removing all instances of the Tome of Knowledge off of all sites that I have posted it on, including this one.

 

I thought that it would be a great idea to spread information around but then I realized that,

 

... he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

I mean, how could I have done something so stupid? But don't worry, I will save you all more hurt and will remove this idiocy immediately so we can all be better people and live better lives. Now when you play JKA, you will no longer have to be pained because of me.
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... and the lord spake, "Thou shalt foolest thine comrades on April be that of first, and do speak untrue about their cows or donkeys or crocodilians, and do keep thine comrades from knoweth all commands for Star Wars Jedine Academast, and stoppeth thy mischief on sundown unless thou then proceed to befooble on April the second.

Raz0r likes this
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lol Yeah, April Fools of course. Take the Tome down? Take down a guide that I've put a CRAPLOAD of work into? That I'm sure already at least 30 people have already looked at, benefited from, and downloaded for themselves anyway? lolno

And speaking of which, as an April Fools gift, v0.60 is here. Unfortunately, I couldn't get any information for the Saberology section but the RCON section is now VERY MUCH finished. There's also the usual editing here and there as well. Hope you all enjoy. Once again, any help is appreciated.

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Ok, I'll contribute with some input; mostly critical for now, but the overall goal is to increase the value of the entire thing, so here we go:

 

 

Some of the most popular servers are social FFA's. Duels are the name of the game there when it comes to proper fighting and if you want to pwn and crush fools under your feet, you'll need to get good with that glowstick(s). That's where this section comes in.

You should note that as with anything, only the basics can be taught to any meaningful extent (or advanced basics, or whatever - point is, nobody is going to become a good player by reading a guide or even following a guide to the letter.)

 

 

- All stances are useful or they wouldn't be there. Being only proficient in one stance is ignoring the other capabilities of your weapon.

I would remove this entirely. Just because a stance is in the game doesn't follow that it is useful; the game could be imbalanced (which it is), making certain stances useless - like blue. In fact, the only times blue was ever used in a competitive setting was to humiliate the opponent, since everyone is pretty much aware how much blue sucks; it's akin to beating someone with one hand or blindfolded in a mere show of dominance.

 

 

- When fighting an opponent using red combos, the largest but riskiest gap is usually between the second and third swings.

This needs to be far more specific because it is rather useless as it stands there. There can be two kinds of gaps between swings in a combo: ones that you get by not releasing the attack button and ones that you get by releasing the attack button for a short time after one swing finishes, so that the next swing is still going to be part of the combo (and will therefore have all the characteristics of a swing that is part of a combo, like different and shorter swing animation etc) but will come later than usual. You have to specify which gap and which combo you mean for this tip to be useful. But I'd remove it entirely.

 

 

- Swings can be delayed with jumping.

This is too obvious, but should at least read 'by jumping backwards' to be more correct. This raises the question as to how basic you want your tips to be.

 

 

- Messing with mouse sensitivity in large increments as well as the yaw setting is for pussies and will get you ridiculed, but that doesn't stop people from using it.

It's pretty self-explanatory as to why I would vehemently object to this and recommend its removal. I don't think it needs an argument. If you want to say that people on casual modded ffa servers don't like poke, then you can do that in a separate section on etiquette (which I'll talk about further down).

 

 

- When your opponent is laggy, lead your attacks ahead of where you anticipate them. When the server updates their position, you'll get a hit more often that way.

This again raises the question of how basic you want this to be. Talking about how to deal with playing on servers that give you a high latency is a pretty good idea, but I'm not sure if merely saying you should anticipate them is a good tip, seeing as it should be pretty obvious to anyone who has ever played with a high ping anywhere. You could complement that by saying that one should play a defensive style, reduce risks as much as possible, use sweeping attacks that don't leave you open for long or lay "traps" that can either go your way or leave both players unhurt.

 

 

- Footwork is exceptionally useful and difficult to teach and execute.

This is not a tip and should be removed. It has no value in making someone a better player.

 

 

- Some players like changing the FOV. My recommendation? Don't. Not all servers have that enabled and learning to play with a non-default could leave you screwed on a different server which forces defaults.

You would have to say why changing the fov matters at all for sabering, and I really don't think it does. It might help to use the max fov allowed by pure servers when you're in a TFFA setting, since that makes it easier to see what's going on around you, but in duels it seems pretty irrelevant unless you pick an extremely small value.

 

You should probably want to rename section 4A from "General Saber Tactics" to something like "General Tips for Sabering" or "General Sabering Tips", since that would fit the generality of this section more than the word 'tactics'. I'm not even sure if general 'tactics' for all stances and sabers even exist. If at all, I guess you could point to the distinction between aggressive play and passive play.
 
Section 5 leaves me a bit confused. Why is it there and what is it supposed to include? You have "Angel's Rules of Engagement" and something about a saber-switching glitch. Who is Angel and why should we care about his 'rules of engagement'? I'd recommend turning this into a general etiquette section where you keep some of the lines (but define 'gf' and 'gg') and maybe add a line about not killing people when their chat bubble is up or when they're lagging out. If you want to keep this odd thing about the saber-switching glitch, make sure to add on what mod this is supposed to work, although I'd remove it entirely.
 
Section 6 should be removed because it serves no purpose outside of making your clan look mysterious or cool by saying that only members of it have access to certain information. Since you've mostly compiled the info yourself and this is pretty much your guide, you are perfectly fine in advertising your clan, but I think you've already done that by calling this guide the oFc Tome of Knowledge, with a huge oFc splattered at the very top of it all. So I think it would be a good idea to just stick with that and remove section 6 entirely (at least for the public version). It really doesn't look good and has very limited value.
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Since this thread has to do with knowledge of the game, I'll give it a try here.

I've asked on several occasion people in-game but no one seems to answer or they don't seem to know what I'm talking about.

 

Saber blocking. Blocking a swing with your saber. How does it work in JA? Is range all that matters? Can you choose to block any attack? Is chance involved in the calculations? Can blocking be an advantage in JA (I see that you get stunned)? I notice when testing it myself that probably... 8/10 times I just mash through the saber as if it wasn't there, and opposite.

 

Could this be included more or less extensively in the guide?

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Blocking is a very messy topic, probably best answered by the coders here who actually know the digital guts responsible for it. But to a very large extent it seems to depend on all kinds of factors that should not influence the gameplay whatsoever - like the OS that the server is running on, general server box workload etc. You can have two base servers running the very same cfg that nonetheless differ radically in their block rates for whatever reason. This is very messy territory though because it neatly falls into the "lol you're just imagining things / are probably blaming crap for losing" category, for which I agree that a general rule of thumb should be to discount any experiences that contradict the code, but things like these sometimes make you question your own sanity.

 

But randomness (and also ping issues) aside: Range matters, but swing timing and saber placement does as well. You can block most attacks if you know how to time your swings right (except for the special attacks of course), but it's much more difficult against faster stances. Trying to do either is not very viable competitively though, except as a last resort: Lots of players, when they are cornered and have no means of escape without getting hit, tend to just crouch in red stance, look on the ground, move the mouse really fast and hope for a block - which they can then turn into a parry and, to the frustration of the attacker, turn around a most disadvantageous situation into one where they are capable of inflicting severe damage on the opponent. That's probably the extent to which blocking can be willingly used to your advantage in a duel or TFFA.

Boothand likes this
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Ok, I'll contribute with some input; mostly critical for now, but the overall goal is to increase the value of the entire thing, so here we go:

 

You should note that as with anything, only the basics can be taught to any meaningful extent (or advanced basics, or whatever - point is, nobody is going to become a good player by reading a guide or even following a guide to the letter.)

 

I would remove this entirely. Just because a stance is in the game doesn't follow that it is useful; the game could be imbalanced (which it is), making certain stances useless - like blue. In fact, the only times blue was ever used in a competitive setting was to humiliate the opponent, since everyone is pretty much aware how much blue sucks; it's akin to beating someone with one hand or blindfolded in a mere show of dominance.

 

This needs to be far more specific because it is rather useless as it stands there. There can be two kinds of gaps between swings in a combo: ones that you get by not releasing the attack button and ones that you get by releasing the attack button for a short time after one swing finishes, so that the next swing is still going to be part of the combo (and will therefore have all the characteristics of a swing that is part of a combo, like different and shorter swing animation etc) but will come later than usual. You have to specify which gap and which combo you mean for this tip to be useful. But I'd remove it entirely.

 

This is too obvious, but should at least read 'by jumping backwards' to be more correct. This raises the question as to how basic you want your tips to be.

 

It's pretty self-explanatory as to why I would vehemently object to this and recommend its removal. I don't think it needs an argument. If you want to say that people on casual modded ffa servers don't like poke, then you can do that in a separate section on etiquette (which I'll talk about further down).

 

This again raises the question of how basic you want this to be. Talking about how to deal with playing on servers that give you a high latency is a pretty good idea, but I'm not sure if merely saying you should anticipate them is a good tip, seeing as it should be pretty obvious to anyone who has ever played with a high ping anywhere. You could complement that by saying that one should play a defensive style, reduce risks as much as possible, use sweeping attacks that don't leave you open for long or lay "traps" that can either go your way or leave both players unhurt.

 

This is not a tip and should be removed. It has no value in making someone a better player.

 

You would have to say why changing the fov matters at all for sabering, and I really don't think it does. It might help to use the max fov allowed by pure servers when you're in a TFFA setting, since that makes it easier to see what's going on around you, but in duels it seems pretty irrelevant unless you pick an extremely small value.

 

You should probably want to rename section 4A from "General Saber Tactics" to something like "General Tips for Sabering" or "General Sabering Tips", since that would fit the generality of this section more than the word 'tactics'. I'm not even sure if general 'tactics' for all stances and sabers even exist. If at all, I guess you could point to the distinction between aggressive play and passive play.

 

Section 5 leaves me a bit confused. Why is it there and what is it supposed to include? You have "Angel's Rules of Engagement" and something about a saber-switching glitch. Who is Angel and why should we care about his 'rules of engagement'? I'd recommend turning this into a general etiquette section where you keep some of the lines (but define 'gf' and 'gg') and maybe add a line about not killing people when their chat bubble is up or when they're lagging out. If you want to keep this odd thing about the saber-switching glitch, make sure to add on what mod this is supposed to work, although I'd remove it entirely.

 

Section 6 should be removed because it serves no purpose outside of making your clan look mysterious or cool by saying that only members of it have access to certain information. Since you've mostly compiled the info yourself and this is pretty much your guide, you are perfectly fine in advertising your clan, but I think you've already done that by calling this guide the oFc Tome of Knowledge, with a huge oFc splattered at the very top of it all. So I think it would be a good idea to just stick with that and remove section 6 entirely (at least for the public version). It really doesn't look good and has very limited value.

Awesome. Thanks for the help. Right now, I'm focusing on saber strategies. Basically, how should one use the stances and moves for each of the sabers to their advantage as much as possible. Also, how best to evade and move in on an opponent. Now keep in mind, pretty much all the tips you see were actually given by one person who is, in fact, really rusty at this game now so they may not be the best tips at all. :P Ditto for the Engagement Rules. Basically, I asked someone in the clan to contribute and he give me a raw dump of all the basics he knew. Don't worry. I'll go through everything and make all the adjustments necessary.

 

1. Absolutely. I thought that practice went without saying so I didn't put it in.

 

2-8. Good points. But if we're going to overhaul most everything in the Saberology section, let's also make it somewhat complete in the process. We should go through everything for, say, the Single Saber first. We'll expand up that topic in a lot detail. Then, if you feel like contributing more, we'll go on to the next saber.

 

9. Fair enough.

 

10. That section is pretty much for things that don't fit in the other sections. As for the Rules of Engagement, I'll talk to Angel and see if he cares if I take it out and put something else in. (Most likely he won't give a crap.) As to the single saber staff glitch, it's definitely going to be kept but I'll put more details in though.

 

11. Yeah, it's admittedly kinda clan bait there. I won't sugarcoat it. I suppose I could take it out and make something much less obtrusive instead of a whole section. Maybe something at the end saying "We know more than we're telling." or whatever. We'll see.

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