Short List of Questions for Duwis

[Tolero]

I'm seeing a lot of responses that imply folks are "scared" to add to a page?

Don't be afraid of adding useful info in addition to the official info (and the newer layout will make it a lot less visually jarring. I definately understand that "BIG BLACK BOX OF FORMAL FORMATTING" is overwhelming the cool player entries. We'll be changing that ). If you found out a cool "special" effect that wasn't on a weapon...add it! It's kind of like the researchers of the Twelve... new things are always being discovered by the people of Stormreach. We don't want to take away all the fun for you explorers out there who like to "discover" things... if we can help it but we also understand that some people don't want to "discover" they just want to "know". I've seen a few instances where players have found a good balance for this by adding a "SPOILER" header. The Quest pages is a good example of this... they added a sub-header called "SPOILERS"... that way if you have something you want to mention that you think might detract from the fun of discovery, you can put it under a "spoiler" header, and it's a little bit of a warning for people who don't want to flip to the last page of the book, so to speak ^^

If you have something you feel is more a matter of opinion than "fact", feel free to add it in the "discussion" tab of the article. That way people know it's not that it's a "concrete" piece of info, it's food for thought this is especially great for times when you want to mention something about a class, but you're not 100% sure on your number crunching etc.

We'll add some help pages this week to help out - I do find it can be scary when you try to edit a page but you're afraid of "messing" something up. Or you want to add something to a page, but you have no clue how to make it look "nice". We'll see if we can make it a little more fun, and less intimidating, in there with a couple basic help pages (just finishing em up tonight).

[Ustice]

Will we be able to add those weapon effects where it is integrated with the rest, so that if someone if scanning the pages they have only to look in the one place (the proper place) for the info? If it is as an addendum, it is a lot less useful, even if it is prettier.

A lot of this is just so speculative. You said you'd give us some previews, so what are we looking at? I can't wait to see what yall are cooking up.

But the most important question is, will the favicon be updated?

Oh, the spoilers thing? Very nice. Will it be as a roll-over thing like on the on the unfiction.com forums?

[Strakeln]

Don't play a paladin; they smell of elderberries

There you have it, folks, a dev quote establishing what we already knew!

[Kintro]

One problem I find with the compendium is that having multiple entries for the same thing in one single page doesn't really work when the page is long.

For instance, if I want to find more information on a particular enhancement/feat before I take it I'd go to the compendium and find the same descriptions I saw in game. I'd never know there was a second entry about the same thing further down the page. See the Monk page and in particular the stances for an example.

Is there a way we could tie the two sections together a bit more? Like if we could tag sections to reference them back to something in the official section. The presence of such a tag would trigger the addition of a "more info .." link through to the player added notes.

[Duwis]

One problem I find with the compendium is that having multiple entries for the same thing in one single page doesn't really work when the page is long.

Yes, this is something we are working on in general. Junk items are particularly annoying...

For instance, if I want to find more information on a particular enhancement/feat before I take it I'd go to the compendium and find the same descriptions I saw in game. I'd never know there was a second entry about the same thing further down the page. See the Monk page and in particular the stances for an example.

Can you be more specific with this example? e.g., Go to http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Class:Monk, then click on feat X, notice that Y is repeated. That will help me better understand at least this particular instance.

[Angelus_dead]

Can you be more specific with this example? e.g., Go to http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Class:Monk, then click on feat X, notice that Y is repeated. That will help me better understand at least this particular instance.

The situation there is that the icons for the Monk Elemental enhancements (like Disciple of Breezes) don't do anything by themselves; they provide two other icons that have active effects. So reading the description for Disciple of Breezes gives no useful information, meaning the auto-generated enhancement list is non-useful.

Players are unable to edit the contents of the automatic list to make it useful. Instead, some player has gone to the bottom of the page and provided full decsriptions of what Disciple of Breezes actually does, but there is no way for someone reading the auto-list to know it's there.

[Kintro]

Can you be more specific with this example? e.g., Go to http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Class:Monk, then click on feat X, notice that Y is repeated. That will help me better understand at least this particular instance.

By repeated I meant when they have one entry in the "Official" section and another in the "Unofficial" section. Once you find an entry on something you're unlikely to continue down the page looking for more about it.

Go to http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Class:Monk, scroll down to Enhancements, locate Disciple of Breezes. See the same description as was in the game and no more detail on what it does. Close page without realising there was much more detail added by players further down the page which isn't referenced anywhere else.

I suppose what we should do is add our information about feats/enhancements to the relevant subpage once you click away from the Monk page. However, you then lose the convenience of having them all together, have to click around and wait for page loads and have no natural place to put things that are about the class in general (ie, Finishing Moves).

Could we make more use of the popups? At the moment they just repeat what's already in the description column. Would you be opposed to having player generated content appearing in those boxes? That way we could have the popups giving what the actual benefits of some of the vaguer feats/enhancements (ie, Defensive Roll, Monk Stances) appearing in the popup.

[Duwis]

The situation there is that the icons for the Monk Elemental enhancements (like Disciple of Breezes) don't do anything by themselves; they provide two other icons that have active effects. So reading the description for Disciple of Breezes gives no useful information, meaning the auto-generated enhancement list is non-useful.

Players are unable to edit the contents of the automatic list to make it useful. Instead, some player has gone to the bottom of the page and provided full decsriptions of what Disciple of Breezes actually does, but there is no way for someone reading the auto-list to know it's there.

OK, that is a good example and has stirred up the juices around here. We're kicking around ideas on the overall structure of the class page/data. However, I should be able to slide into the next update at least listing the stuff an enhancement grants in the class list.

Keep those examples coming!

[Duwis]

By repeated I meant when they have one entry in the "Official" section and another in the "Unofficial" section. Once you find an entry on something you're unlikely to continue down the page looking for more about it.

*nod* *nod* The juices are flowing again around here to figure out how to best handle long pages like the class ones. Stay tuned!

Could we make more use of the popups? At the moment they just repeat what's already in the description column. Would you be opposed to having player generated content appearing in those boxes? That way we could have the popups giving what the actual benefits of some of the vaguer feats/enhancements (ie, Defensive Roll, Monk Stances) appearing in the popup.

Hrm... player entered text in the tooltips probably won't happen, but putting more useful information from the game data into them is something we can do. We don't want to overload the tooltip w/text, but if you have suggestions for them, please post them and we'll see if we can balance form and function.

[Kintro]

Hrm... player entered text in the tooltips probably won't happen, but putting more useful information from the game data into them is something we can do. We don't want to overload the tooltip w/text, but if you have suggestions for them, please post them and we'll see if we can balance form and function.

The main thing I always like is more details, if something says, for instance, "grants increased attack speed with staves", the first thing I want to know is "well, how big of an increase?". If it says "granting increased Dexterity" I want to know how much more. If I can't find the numbers in the compendium I have to go elsewhere for them, I'd much prefer it all in the one place.

I think the popup would be a good place for the extra info as it allows you to keep the more wordy description on the main page too.

[Ustice]

*nod* *nod* The juices are flowing again around here to figure out how to best handle long pages like the class ones. Stay tuned!

You know... With more access, we could HELP with that.


(I know, I know.)

Hey, you aren't the guy to ask about the favicon, right?

[Strakeln]

The main thing I always like is more details, if something says, for instance, "grants increased attack speed with staves", the first thing I want to know is "well, how big of an increase?". If it says "granting increased Dexterity" I want to know how much more. If I can't find the numbers in the compendium I have to go elsewhere for them, I'd much prefer it all in the one place.

I think the popup would be a good place for the extra info as it allows you to keep the more wordy description on the main page too.

This would be very helpful. One of the more annoying things to me is when there is a poorly defined benefit ("You attack faster").

[Duwis]

The main thing I always like is more details, if something says, for instance, "grants increased attack speed with staves", the first thing I want to know is "well, how big of an increase?". If it says "granting increased Dexterity" I want to know how much more. If I can't find the numbers in the compendium I have to go elsewhere for them, I'd much prefer it all in the one place.

I can understand the desire for more numbers, and where we can add them, we'll work on doing so.

I think the popup would be a good place for the extra info as it allows you to keep the more wordy description on the main page too.

Duly noted. Thanks.

[Duwis]

Hey, you aren't the guy to ask about the favicon, right?

I don't play favorites with icons; I work them all equally to the bone.

[sephiroth1084]

The main thing I always like is more details, if something says, for instance, "grants increased attack speed with staves", the first thing I want to know is "well, how big of an increase?". If it says "granting increased Dexterity" I want to know how much more. If I can't find the numbers in the compendium I have to go elsewhere for them, I'd much prefer it all in the one place.

I think the popup would be a good place for the extra info as it allows you to keep the more wordy description on the main page too.

Ditto. It's worth it for both new and veteran players.

[Junts]

I can understand the desire for more numbers, and where we can add them, we'll work on doing so.




Duly noted. Thanks.

There's a lot of inconsistency on that, too - zeal tells you how big its bonus is, but other effects dont. there should be consistency with which types of mods are and are not given specific numbers, at least, and information on their type so we know about stacking: aclarity items cause a lot of confusion becuase they are enhancement bonuses, but their flavor text does not specify the bonus type, and untyhped bonuses do stack.

[Angelus_dead]

I can understand the desire for more numbers, and where we can add them, we'll work on doing so.

You know, some numbers that are embarassingly wrong are the BAB entires on character class pages.

The wiki entries show D&D BAB (+6, +1), but DDO BAB is very different (+6, +6, +11)

[RTN]

I can understand the desire for more numbers, and where we can add them, we'll work on doing so.

This gets to my biggest concern. Why couldn't you add hard numbers for many of these things? Will we be allowed to add them if you don't?