[Sudy Nym]

I feel the need to reiterate that I never had any problem with the functionality of the depth charts, as known to me and as shown by Mr. Kuffrey. I was concerned with the specifics.

There will be more people providing input to the next manual, so I expect you'll see better explanations - but I wouldn't hold my breath too much on getting too much detail. The "fog of war" is what keeps the game "real" so to speak, and transforming it into nothing but equations would certainly destroy it.

But the game is nothing but equations. I can't be the only one rather upset by the fact that numerous "artificial" obscuring techniques are applied with the intention of making the game more "realistic." Some of us really do just want a hard numbers sim without this superfluous confusion- so please, give us options. (And "fanboys", don't tell me to play Diamond Mind, or something- I love OOTP's features and style, I just loathe the "added" masking.

That being said, certain features and intangible ratings do need to be better explained. Otherwise, they're just undocumented fluff to us, which is cluttering up the interface. I know it's come up before, more than once. But we're not asking for hard math and the pure codes- just an official and definitive explanation of their effects.

Case in point, from deh34's post:

i'm kind of torn about this because (1) an official explanation on something like what Leadership actually does for your team would be great and helpful, BUT (2) maybe it's intended to be extremely blurry and unknown just like in real life, i.e. it could hurt the game if you knew exactly that adding a Great Leader would give you an extra 5 wins or increase everyone's batting averages by 10 points or something.

Right, we don't need to know the exact statistical advantages that a "Great Leader" provides- and we don't want to know, either. However, we require a much better explanation than just whatever the forum gurus can dig up at a moment's notice.

What a feature does shouldn't be guesswork. How to use it effectively should be. But you can't even start to try to use it effectively if you don't have any real idea of what it does.

I'll write the OOTP6 manual for you, for free- but what hasn't been divulged cannot be explained.

Originally posted by BillyBuck:
For the record, I understand what you guys (Henry and Steve) are saying...I think that my confusion came about after reading the 5.11 patch update list. Clearly you can both understand how it was possible to *misunderstand* the way it was worded.

Originally posted by Henry:
Agreed. I think when you consider that "starts every 5th game" in this case had two specifically different meanings...

To Markus, a German explaining the change in his "2nd language", it simply was another way to say "20%" - and he probably was shying away from the term "20%" since it was the original source of confusion. To those of us where English is our natural language, "starts every 5th game" can, and will, (and was) taken literally.

With all due respect, the onus is certainly not on the consumer, here. There are no "two specifically different meanings"- not to us. If we're told that something is going to work this way, it needs to work that way. If not, it's the manufacturer's responsibility to either issue a correction and fix the problem immediately, or issue a professional apology (not a personal one) and re-explain the situation. If Mercedes-Benz issues a press release that is revealed to have a discrepancy due to translation or otherwise, they don't tell the customer that they're "misunderstanding it". Because that's just bad business. It's Mercedes-Benz's responsibility to check and verify their notices- it's not their customers' responsiblilty to approach what they say from every possible angle, and account for any grammatical, philosophical, or any other kinds of differences.