Just a few changes I'm proposing to our FFXIV pages. Our coverage isn't nearly as bad as some people will tell you, but it's definitely not on the level of articles for other games, mostly because FFXIV is the sort of game you play instead of write pages for. Anyways: Firstly, our Classes pages. I personally think the layout needs updating. For one, we have two sections, "Role" and "Overview". These two sections are very overlapping. Ordinarily I'd say to put "Traits" and "Abilities" as subheaders under a header, but since the game literally calls one of the menu options "Abilities & Traits", probably best not to do that. As for Soul Crystals header...tough one. While I am not sold on it, mostly since only Arcanist has two different Jobs, there's nothing specifically wrong with it. That "Abilities" small header underneath bugs me severely but only because I'm compulsive and not because it doesn't belong there. Finally, should we include details about the classes' quests? Generally our coverage of quests in FFXIV seems...non-existent. More on that below. Secondly, a lot of the content on Final Fantasy XIV seems like it can be moved to other pages. For instance, Character Creator seems like it belongs on Adventurer, not on the main page. On the main page it can get a brief overview and have races listed. The Gameplay section in general...seems like most of it should link to other places and cover it in more great detail elsewhere. "Release", "Reception and Sales" and stuff I would say could be grouped with Development but that's a discussion about release pages in general and not FFXIV. The thing I do want to discuss is "Major Updates and Expansions". This to me seems like it could be a subpage, since it's only going to incrase. I would definitely say expansions like Heavensward should stay as they are, but 2.2, 2.3 etc? That again feels like too much content to go on the main page, similar to Gameplay. Finally, this is more of a question but, do we have anything specific on how much we cover the quests? I would say that coverage of quests even as their own pages is not something I am opposed to doing, I've seen it done on multiple wikis. I just wanted to know if we have any sort of policy on it, or if we should. | |||
Well, to start with, Overview is almost certainly an artifact of 1.0, and I would bet my bottom dollar it was something found on an official site for 1.0 pre-release. It's been on every class page since the first edit. In fact, if it is to be kept, it should probably be replaced with the descriptions used in the current website, such as what's found here. Overview is how the game describes it, and Role is how an actual person describes it. If you want to change headings or get rid of bits, whatever, I don't honestly care that much in that regard. Since jobs are basically inseparable from classes, and because Jobs are only one aspect thereof, I really don't support the idea of their removal, which I know you weren't proposing but I still wanted to put that out there so we were very clear. As for quests... well, more on that below. Moving information... with regards to Character Creator, I was going to say I didn't care either way. Then I looked at the page, and... it's a really small section, and moreover, it contains key information for a starting player (what city they're going to start out in, based on what class they pick initially), so I object to moving it to a page someone's not very likely to see. The gameplay section... I'm really not sure where else this information would go, and it's not like it's the only release page with a long gameplay section. Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, for example. The problem is just that as a MMO, there's a lot of gameplay, so there's a lot to describe. As for big patches... well, XI doesn't even list their patches and what got added with them, so there's no real benchmark for comparison here. I would say a subpage is probably the way to go, if we're going to list them all. It would probably also do to list more of the patches than just the big ones, and all of the effects thereof (in at least some detail). That's a big undertaking, though, and one that's not incredibly likely to be seen to. Er... we actually already have one of those, upon double-checking the page. It could do with some expansion and organization, though, because, case in point, it's been neglected for the last two major patches. Typically, quests are covered on the location page where the quest is started, though that's a system that is designed around other main series games and may not be as applicable in XIV. I know that XI has subpages just for the main story missions and their descriptions, it would definitely be possible to do something like that for XIV story missions and for class/job quests, and it seems doubly justifiable since the Journal has different subsections for those types of quests. The problem, again, is how much you want them to be covered. If you were thinking about detailing, say, strategies for the fights (like the one with the trained attack squirrels that mauled you), then it becomes a lot bigger an undertaking than just listing, for example, the journal entries. It's all in how you want to play it, really. | |||
I agree with everything Jim says, pretty much. | |||
Hexedmagica - Rathalos: World Tour/All Ass Sword TALK - My companions' feelings have been etched upon this body. I'll change this eternal darkness into light! Heaven and Earth! One who matches the gods! CHOUGINGA GURREN-LAGANN! 12:43, November 23, 2014 (UTC) | |||
I feel that if we list quests, we sorta have to list everything, I don't think strategies for the instanced quest fights are big enough a deal to be put in but I might be wrong because they're all fairly simple. If we wanna do a page per quest, that's something I'm also fine with, Quests by location I feel will just cause a bunch of bloated pages per location, but that might just be my opinion, I feel multiple (relatively) short pages would work a lot better, with a listing in the location article. | |||
I would say replace "Overview" with "Description" in that case, as well as with the text from the new site. Role can maybe stay as-is. But if it's a site description, probably shouldn't be grouped under the same header as Role. The only other thing I can think of us describing on those pages is their general attire/weapons. On discovery that Dissidia's gameplay section is long, I think I have to agree with keeping the gameplay info on the main page, in that case. As for patches, I would say still that if we move information to a subpage, then maybe we should do it when we get more content? I'm not sure. Short pages per quest is not undoable, we can probably justify their existence with infoboxes for quests (which is not out of the question, imo) and then brief descriptions on strategies, though they are all pretty simple. I think it would be reasonable to cover it if we had a proper layout and idea what we were doing with them, the reason they aren't currently covered is that we don't. | |||
Description works. But yes, they should not be under the same header as Role. As for quests, we can do individual quest pages, but my issue is, at the risk of repeating myself, the worry about how feasible such a project actually is. We are talking about hundreds of quests here. If you think it'll actually get done, then that's all fine and dandy. But in the more likely scenario where it only gets half-finished, things are going to be ugly. | |||
Hexedmagica - Rathalos: World Tour/All Ass Sword TALK - My companions' feelings have been etched upon this body. I'll change this eternal darkness into light! Heaven and Earth! One who matches the gods! CHOUGINGA GURREN-LAGANN! 13:51, November 23, 2014 (UTC) | |||
well, I'm all for doing them on the location pages until we get enough done to make individual pages. | |||
I think gameplay should stay on the main page.. tho perhaps simplified so its shorter, and maybe have a separate page that goes into the details of whatever needs to be detailed. for example, i don't think we need to list the requirements for unlocking jobs all in the main page, but rather just tabulate whatever jobs do exist. Crafting/Gathering could be simplified and then have its own page with specifics. as for page per quest - i'll just say its better not to start what we know we wont finish. while we're on the topic of FFXIV article, can we do something about the Ongoing template on the top? Considering XIV is an MMO, updates are a given. its going to be there forever... and its kind of an eyesore. | |||
Naturally I think we should cover as much as we can, like we would do for any other game obviously.
Large task, yeah yeah; unachievable, sure.
But let's do this the best way: Try to cover everything before we cover things in depth. A full list of missions and basic relevant details is probably better than more in-depth info on some.
If we don't want our pages to look bad (though I don't see that as a bad thing-- given there are pointers for improvement) then just don't include the sections if we don't have them. Don't just say the wiki would be better without them though and outlaw their existence. Although if we do include the stub sections we're more likely to get randoms who decide to expand it.
As with ongoing template, I agree with eyesore. Change to look more like {{Nameless}} I would say. I was thinking don't include it on every MMO page but I think it can be useful. JBed (talk) 17:30, November 23, 2014 (UTC)
I agree with most of Spira's suggested changes when it comes to simplification. I would be fine with changing "Overview" to "Description". For some reason I can't access the info for the Classes on the web site in free trial, which is...odd. Unless I'm looking in the wrong places. Should Descriptions be added to the Jobs as well as Classes? As for the rest of the layout...I think it's fine as it is. The only genuine thing I can think of is adding a "Characteristics" h2 for Role, Abilities and Traits, which isn't entirely necessary but might not be too bad. An Equipment section might not be a bad idea. It would link to the List of FFXIV/whatever subpages for the weapons for each class and briefly outline what they are, which might be enough for a paragraph or two. And I purposefully made this topic's title broad because another question of mine has come up: so I split the List of Weappons and List of Armor pages into subpages, do we link to each of those subpages on the Navbox? | |||
Class page layout[]
Okay, proposition of the new layout to the class pages:
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Hexedmagica - Rathalos: World Tour/All Ass Sword TALK - My companions' feelings have been etched upon this body. I'll change this eternal darkness into light! Heaven and Earth! One who matches the gods! CHOUGINGA GURREN-LAGANN! Hexed 14:14, December 8, 2014 (UTC) | |||
can get all the icon images for PLD, SCH/SMN and loldrg here, so will do that tomorrow. Most generic class images probably would just be artifact gear for jobs, that's pretty much my only thought. | |||
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- Actually to make this easier if you guys want, all the icons for FFXIV; class skills, traits, pet abilities, and chocobo abilities, can be found here under the "Icon Compilation" section, this excludes NIN I believe. However like SCM pointed out, those can be gathered on sites like Gamerscape or XIVDB if they aren't in the package. We also have some of them on a couple of the ability pages here, like for Hallowed Ground, Blizzard II, Dragon Dive, etc. I have had all of them on my comp a while, but haven't been able to upload them due to unforeseen family issues in the last couple of months. (;; >_>) But I can upload them all today if you guys want me too. :O --Miphares (talk) 14:34, December 8, 2014 (UTC)
I don't mind who's doing the uploading but I won't do it myself if other people want to instead. Up to you guys. | |||
- Whew -_-;; All the class and job ability icon images have been uploaded to the wiki. Now how are we placing them into the articles? :O I know Xeno and I had a discussion about this back in September on putting them into the ability lists on the class pages, I suggested a possible format located here, but we never met an actual conclusion on whether to use it or not. We don't have to use my version ,but I just thought I'd leave it as a suggestion. ^^;; --Miphares (talk) 22:35, December 8, 2014 (UTC)
I'd add them in the tables in the same cell/just above the names of the abilities, here or so. I can do that for you if you want, I imagine that huge image job must've been super tiring. :p | |||