Path of Exile Wiki talk:Community portal/Archive 4

Requesting Animated Skill Image Feedback

I have uploaded a sample animated gif illustrating the Double Strike ability. Is this the kind of animation everyone would like on the skill pages? If people seem to like it, then I will go ahead and make more animations for other skills in a similar style. Thank you for your constructive feedback. Edit: Animations completed so far: Double Strike, Spark, Firestorm. Adalace (talk) 18:32, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

That's exactly the kind of thing I'd like to see. Great start! Iamacyborg (talk) 21:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Awesome stuff, please make more! --FaceLicker (talk) 22:19, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I thought it would be terrible, but I actually like it. looks good :) -AnnanFay (talk) 22:39, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

That's great to hear. I'll make more, starting with Firestorm. What is an acceptable file size for these animations? I'm keeping them well under 1MB, but there is a direct and perceivable correlation between file size and quality. I can make them as small or large, low or high quality as is desired; it's a matter of what is acceptable. Adalace (talk) 00:11, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Personally I strongly dislike animated content. Perhaps offer a link to the animation for the curious? --Nightblade (talk) 00:40, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

We could do better. Have a static image but animate it when someone hovers the mouse over it. Not that hard to do with CSS. -AnnanFay (talk) 01:02, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

I would welcome that CSS change you mention AnnanFay. I don't know how to do that, but hopefully somebody will. Adalace (talk) 01:15, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Great idea AnnanFay, but still extra load on the server? -- Nightblade (talk) 01:17, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ You need two images, one animated the other static. Most browsers will download both images even if one is hidden and never visible. The solution I can think of is a bit of javascript code. If it's done that way then it should reduce server load since the animated, and larger, image isn't loaded unless it's hovered over. (I can write the javascript if needed) -AnnanFay (talk) 02:05, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Scrap that, background images on hidden elements are loaded but :hover background images shouldn't be. (so just CSS needed) Either way, there's ways around server load. -AnnanFay (talk) 02:09, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

The animation is nice, but it's very distracting when trying to read the page, I don't think it's a good idea to have it there always. I think a "View Animation" link below the static image in the infobox would be enough. — Malice (talk) 05:19, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Notes about changes to images

I can't edit the Community portal page so I've put this here. Let me know if there's a better place to discuss this sort of thing. I've spent the last couple of days categorizing all of the images on the pool domain, and consolidating and deleting duplicates. There were a large number of skill gem icons, most of them being used for linking inline with text in various ways. There is now one full size icon, and one small icon. I chose a 12x12 pixel icon for the small icon as it is small enough to not break the line spacing of a paragraph when used inline. Some of the other ones that were in use were up to 24 pixels high and weren't being resized when included in pages. As a result I had to update the Template:Sl, it uses the 12px image, add a colourless gem to any invalid input you give it that isn't explicitly listed in the template (eg. ), and shouldn't break normal line spacing. It should be easier to find images now, you can find the root category here: pool:Category:Images. — Malice (talk) 20:53, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Forgot to mention there were also two skill link templates, one of which was deprecated, so I went and updated all the pages that used the old one to use the new one. — Malice (talk) 21:12, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I really like the inline images, but could you add an option for a larger image like it was before? If you look at for example Ground Slam, you can see that the gem is a lot smaller than the text "Ground Slam" is in the SkillBox. --Splinturr (talk) 21:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

The next major patch will include icons for all different gems, we might need another category in the pool. --Splinturr (talk) 22:07, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't realise it was being used in that template, it didn't show up in the usage lists for some reason (or I missed it). For the SkillBox, what do you think of something like this? The gem icon isn't showing up yet because I just uploaded it for this test, but you get the idea. If we name the gem icons consistently, they should all show up automagically using the name parameter. I've already named the skill icons uniformly, they should show up already. I don't think we'll need to put all the different icons into the Sl template, at that size they will be too small to differentiate. — Malice (talk) 23:58, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Equipment Mods

If you head over to the Belts page you'll notice I've added a table of possible prefixes belts can roll. This should be done for each type of item (suffixes as well), using this chart along with the prefixes and suffixes information from the PoE official website.

CSS

There are two stylesheets, Mediawiki:Common.css and Mediawiki:Vector.css, in addition to the base stylesheets put in place by the wiki software. Is there any reason to have two? From what I can tell, styles for the wiki's current appearance are disbursed between both css files. —Vinifera7 (talk) 16:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

The Vector.css only modified the site theme for anyone running the Vector skin, which is the default but can be switched off. Common.css effects all skins. I need to have a tidy up and work out exactly what needs to be where. Iamacyborg (talk) 17:17, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I definitely needs to be cleaned up. I would help with that, it's just that I'm not exactly sure what goes where. Also, how do you turn off the Vector skin? I don't seem to have the option to do so anymore. —Vinifera7 (talk) 17:27, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Neither can I, must have been turned off without my knowledge. Will ask about it. In that case, I guess we can safely just put everything into Vector.css. Iamacyborg (talk) 17:34, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Curse doesn't allow alternate skins. Users can change the appearance by creating their own personal css (i.e. User:Wynthyst/Vector.css). -- Wynthyst talk 16:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Item Levels

Much like D2 had Normal, Exceptional and Elite level equipment, we've got something similar going on in PoE. It'd make sense to organise items by these things. Speaking of which, do we even know what to call those level items? Iamacyborg (talk) 11:38, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this is such a good idea. In D2 the differentiation between Normal, Exceptional, and Elite was explicit in terms of difficulty. In PoE, there's no explicit differentiation; Astral Plate is just a higher level piece of armour that uses the same art as Full Plate. For all we know, the developers might add new art resources as they expand the game. —Vinifera7 (talk) 14:42, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the "tiers" only exist in so far as the art is duplicated, but there are no actual tiers. In D2 there were other implications, such as the cube recipes up upgrade from one tier to the next, but there are no such things in PoE. The art also seems to change randomly and without notice, so I'm with Vinifera7 on this. — Malice (talk) 16:08, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Builds

I think if there is going to be builds on the wiki, they should be user pages. This isn't information about the game itself but instead it's about how individuals have chosen to play the game. There probably thousands of people each with their own opinion on what an Ice Spear Witch should look like, for instance. We can still list all the builds people have posted by tagging them with categories. — Malice (talk) 05:31, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

You have a point in that there isn't just one of any type of build. Perhaps we could 1) better organize the naming of build pages, and 2) include builds under the same heading submitted by (or credited to) different users as sub-pages. For example, Ice Spear Witch would contain a list of all ice spear witch builds and Ice Spear Witch/Malice would contain the one credited to Malice. Would something like that work? I'd like to hear suggestions if anyone can think of a better way. —Vinifera7 (talk) 06:05, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I can't decide if builds on here are a good idea or not. Providing new players with some solid starting point would be a good thing. But having every man and his dog post their own build could be troublesome - who would maintain the builds? We'd end up with tons of very detailed, outdated builds. For example links to passive trees will become broken very fast, since even minor changes to the tree will break the whole thing if the changes affect the build in any way. Updates & tweaks to the game will mean the most popular/effective builds are a moving target.

Builds in Guild Wars are much simpler than in PoE, and they devoted a whole wiki just to builds.

I'm not sure how to proceed. — Malice (talk) 07:55, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Does it matter if there are a bunch of obsolete pages lying around? If it doesn't, we could make sure every build has version information, either in the page name or in a category tag. That way builds could be listed by version and it would be obvious which ones were current & being maintained. I think indicating the author in the name somehow is a good idea, either by having all builds in the user space eg User:Vinifera7/Ice Spear Witch, or just by putting the name in the title Build:Ice Spear Witch (Vinifera7). — Malice (talk) 08:18, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I think if we stick to including version numbers prominently, either in the page name itself or somewhere high up on the page it could be pretty self explanatory. I can always use data from GA to see what the popular builds are and make sure those are kept up to date the most. I do like Vinifera7's idea of appending the user name of the writer to the end of the build, or, alternatively, something like Ice Spear Witch could contain all the different build variations. Outdated data will be outdated whether it's on the forums on on here, but at least here we have better tools available to manage it. Iamacyborg (talk) 08:54, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

We should put the version in Category tags. It might be slightly more useful to have it in the name, but if it's in the name that means the page will be have to be moved or duplicated every time it gets updated for a new patch, which could get messy. For the author name in the title, do we want to use /author or (author)? Also, do we want Build: at the start or not? Let's pick one:

• name/author
• name (author)
• Build:name/author
• Build:name (author)

I've also made a simple template for adding category/version information. I added it to this page as an example: Eldritch_Battery_Ethereal_Knives_Shadow — Malice (talk) 09:54, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I really, really, really believe builds should be user subpages. User:Danny/Ethereal_Knives_Shadow keeps it out of the mainspace to avoid clutter or conflicting with other page names. As a bonus it also contains the author name for further clarification. Danny (talk) 02:14, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

There's potentially a flaw in your reasoning, Danny. Putting builds as subpages under the User namespace requires a user to register before their build can be put on the wiki. It's a needless restriction that doesn't comport itself well with a free and open source of information. Pages in the User namespace are specifically about users of the wiki, not players of Path of Exile in general. —Vinifera7 (talk) 02:27, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

That's true, but should builds on the wiki be open invitation for everyone to edit them? I think most people who want to spend the time to write a whole article on a build wouldn't want someone to come along and change a bunch of stuff with it. It feels to me that it's something that should have some level of 'ownership' attached to it. Danny (talk) 18:00, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Additionally, AFAIK it's still true that editing the Path of Exile wiki requires you to register. Danny (talk) 18:06, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

You are correct about that, but the thing that you are not understanding is that by putting builds as subpages under the User namespace you are imposing the restriction that a user must be registered before anyone can put builds credited to that user on the wiki. Do you see the problem with that? If not, I will try to rephrase it, but I don't know how much more clearly I can explain the issue. —Vinifera7 (talk) 23:48, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

We encourage users to share build information and play guides with the community in the same collaborative fashion that they add anything else to the wiki. Every time you press the save button you are agreeing to publish your original contribution under the CC-by-NC-SA license, and that does not change simply by placing that information in the User namespace. As the Edit warning clearly states "If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here." If for no other reason than to make the search function as easy as possible, keeping them in Main Space with the name of the build as the page title is probably the best. Attribution is achieved through the page history, just like it is with any other article. -- Wynthyst talk 04:17, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Works for me. So then, with respect to Malice's original question, the article can really be named anything. Ethereal Knives Shadow, Malice's Freeze Mine Duelist, etc. Danny (talk) 18:04, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

There's no reason we can't use sensible naming conventions though. —Vinifera7 (talk) 19:01, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Skill Template

I see that we have two (new) skill templates now (Template:Gem Infobox and Template:SkillBox). So, which one are we going to use? --Goliath (talk) 15:15, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Infobox looks like it's perfectly suited for support gems, whereas skillbox is better suited for skill gems. I think that's how they could best be used. Iamacyborg (talk) 15:40, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I recently made the infobox one, my reasoning was this:

I had assumed for some reason that all the skills were using the Template:SkillBox, and I didn't realise it was new. So I had thought that icons could be added to all skill pages simply by editing the template. When I realised that the majority of pages are instead using the Template:Skill, and could do with an update, I figured I may as well do a thorough update pass over all skill pages, making sure the quality bonuses are correct, adding categories, etc.). Since that will take some time, I made a new template instead of updating the existing one so that the un-updated pages wouldn't look wonky while I am making my way through the list. I didn't put inputs for all the things that change on a per-level basis, because there's already a nice table on every page that shows that information in a more readable form. There's still room for listing mods that don't change though.

I've started from the the end of the list on Skills starting at Remote Mine and am working backwards. It's going to take quite some time to get through all of them. — Malice (talk) 17:29, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, i was going to update the skill templates to Template:SkillBox 2 or 3 days ago but i've noticed some problems with it. They are easily fixed though (Not enough room for effects and static effects should be above level 1 to avoid confusion, in my opinion). I'm asking this to avoid any confusion that might happen, but i'm also asking because Template:MonsterBox i'm working on should look like the skill template. --Goliath (talk) 17:59, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I think I prefer Template:Gem Infobox, the layout is just much more readable, though it will need some more info added to be as useful as the other template. Iamacyborg (talk) 20:32, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

What more info would you add? It's trivial to add more lines but I didn't think they were needed. I just compared the two templates and there are three in SkillBox that aren't in Infobox - req level, mana cost, and xp. All of which change with every level of a gem.

I think the monsterbox looks good. I don't think it's essential that it looks the same as a skill box, since they will be displaying entirely different stats. That said, changing the styles of one or the other or both to look similar wouldn't be too hard. — Malice (talk) 01:52, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I've done all the blue supports now, starting on green. I added mana cost and required level parameters to the infobox, and increased the max number of modifiers from 5 to 9. — Malice (talk) 10:00, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Collecting Information for Average Monster Damage, Evasion and Accuracy

It should be possible to work out the estimated average damage, accuracy and evasion of monsters for specific levels. What is the best way to collect data?

• Google Spreadsheet
  • (easy to copy/paste data in and out)
• Google Form
  • (we get a nice form to fill in)
• Wiki Table
  • of input stats - Example: Level, Armour, Damage Reduction
    • (no immediate feedback, we need two tables)
  • of output stats - Example: Level, Average Damage
    • (person needs to do the calculation, they could get it wrong. We lose the raw data)
  • of input stats passed through a template - Example: {{CalcAvgDmg|_Level_|_Armour_|_EDR_}}
    • (probably the best solution?)

-AnnanFay (talk) 15:57, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

What is it exactly that you can do with Google Spreadsheets that you cannot do with the wiki? —Vinifera7 (talk) 23:39, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Tonnes of stuff. The main reason I use spreadsheet programs is easy of data entry. I can type 123<ENTER>456<ENTER>789 and it will input data vertically. I can type <TAB> to input horezontally.

The main reason to use it for collaborative data gathering is because maybe more people would be inclined to use it instead of editing a wiki. But maybe not, it would be interesting to set up both methods and see how many people use each.

I would prefer to have the data in a wiki because it's source code with version control, however I'd accept any solution which is likely to gather the most input from contributers. The wiki currently doesn't allow anonymouse page editing, this means most people wouldn't be able to contribute data unless they sign up.

Anyway, yesterday I set up the Monster Damage page so we'll see how it works.-AnnanFay (talk) 13:59, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Item/Unique Template and data duplication?

"Make sure every unique item has it's own page, this will be increasingly important as GGG add the 200+ they have planned."

[snip, my bad]

We're essentially storing the items twice.

We want to display the same data in multiple places Full Unique Index, Unique Belts, Wurms Molt and in different styles. If we wanted it to appear exactly the same we could just use transclusion like we're doing on Full Unique Index.

Are there any plans? I don't want to step on any toes. If not I'll put together something on a test page -AnnanFay (talk) 02:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Is it possible to transclude data when it's displayed in this form below? Ideally, I'd like to use Malice's item template on the individual pages. But you're right in that we'll be storing data twice which is a huge waste of resources. We should have individual pages to display alternate artwork and discuss Diamond Supporter, easter egg, builds and other relevant info for each unique. But how we go about transcluding that data into the sortable table style we already have set up, I have no idea. Personally, what I would do, I would just create the individual pages and then create textual lists of each category with links to the individual pages. Or.. keep the category pages but transclude the item template from each individual page. While the sortable table style can be handy.. I really don't like it. --FaceLicker (talk) 22:46, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

File:Redbeak.png

Template:Hover

If we use partial template specification then we can store the data once (in the item's page) and use it in different formats. Basically transclusion but you get to specify what format you want it to be included in. I'll set up a test over the next few days when I have time. -AnnanFay (talk) 23:19, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I've done as much as I can for tonight, going to bed! You can see the prototype at User:AnnanFay/ItemTest -AnnanFay (talk) 03:35, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Race and Seasons

Since races are a pretty big thing (at least for me) in Path of Exile i was wondering if we should do some articles about them, maybe something like a Events/Season 1 overview page with a list of the unique rewards and a link to every race. The race page itself may have a list of the top 20 players and some statistics, like how many templar/witches etc. reached the top 20/1000. Just throwing some ideas around.
If you are wondering what i'm talking about http://www.pathofexile.com/seasons. Opinions/Ideas ? --Goliath (talk) 08:01, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea. I wonder if we can leverage the API to display ladder rankings on the site, or if this is even the right place to be putting that information. Iamacyborg (talk) 08:41, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

We should definitely have all the basic info - race types/rules, race times(in UTC), and rewards. The ladder results will permanently be displayed on the Path of Exile website, do we really need it also? Not to mention other sites like Temple of Exiles and poestatistics.com that will also have the ladder information and statistics readily available. --FaceLicker (talk) 22:33, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

When i've made the first draft earlier i've noticed that including Ladder Results (manually) is a ton of work. Since (like you said) it's already easily available i don't think it's really necessary anymore... --Goliath (talk) 22:52, 20 February 2013 (UTC)