GuildWiki talk:Standardizing skill templates/Glossary

Life stealing vs. damage
Please, for the love of god, don't introduce confusion where none exists at the moment. Do not call any cause of health loss that Protective Spirit doesn't limit "damage", or the Baby Prince Rurik will cry. 195.169.149.213 17:38, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Unfortunatley, that's how ANet defines it. Read damage -- it does not include Life Stealing, etc. Edit: I think I read your comment backwards. I was in the process of fixing my recursive definition, oops, but the page is way too active. --Tinarto [[Image:Tinarto-gold-Monk-icon-small.png]] 17:43, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * I agree life stealing should have some different language attached to it to make sure it is not confused as the d word. Say, health loss or loss of health maybe that would keep things better separated? --Chrono traveller 17:46, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * But you don't have to lose health for things to count as damage. "-0", if not life stealing, is damage. Hence my earlier definition of "A red number above an actor's head that is preceeded by a minus sign", or the wordy version per below, "A red number above a player or non-player character's head that is...". --Tinarto [[Image:Tinarto-gold-Monk-icon-small.png]] 17:49, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Agreed, but that is not what I was argueing. My comment (and 195.169.149.213's too) was that the word damage should not appear in the definition of life stealing since, as you have already pointed out, life stealing isn't damage.  In other words, I would say
 * damage is loss of health due to x,y, or z (stuff that is on the damage article)
 * life stealing is loss of health of one actor that heals another actor
 * So while both are loss of health, both aren't equivalent. --Chrono traveller 17:57, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Yes, I was actually trying to fix my life-stealing definition, as it was recursive, but it got reverted out too quick. Edit: Unless we define damage without negatives, it is defined as "everything but this this this this this this this and this" in its article. Is there a better way (red numbers caused by somebody else that doesn't heal them...?) or should we use the "everything but" version? "Being bold" was reverted too quickly for me to actually fix it. :P --Tinarto [[Image:Tinarto-gold-Monk-icon-small.png]] 17:59, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * I don't a big problem with stating something along the lines of
 * damage is any loss of health not specifically stated otherwise
 * I agree that it is less than appealing to state what something is not, instead of what it is, but as a personal opinion, I like it better than your red numbers definition. Maybe combine the two, somehow? --Chrono traveller 18:16, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Describing what happens when you receive damage -- a number shows -- was the only way I could see to define it to-the-point in a positive tone with the fewest "unless"es. Cannot define it as health lost, as "-0" is damage (the damage article is technically incorrect), and that will lead into a negative-definition. Cannot define it as "the result of an attack", because Backfire isn't an attack. Did not want to define it as "everything but all these". The form I wrote it in originally pretty much was a combined version (A red number above an actor's head, preceeded by a "-", that is caused by another actor and is not Life stealing.), although it could use some cleaning, perhaps leading in with a "Damage is shown by...". Note I cannot write "a negative number", as zero is not negative. Anyway, life stealing was going to be (A red number...that heals the attacker for the same amount), although that would then need a definition of attacker -- for example, who is the attacker for Zealot's Fire? Order of the Vampire (significantly more obvious)? Pets (rangers cant order pets while the ranger is under Pacifism)? Do those matter, since they can't lifesteal? Bah. 'Course, lots of dictionaries aren't exactly the clearest things, hence probably why ANet has confusing skill descriptions. It was easier than writing out a term-definition list :) Guess I'm making this too hard, as I'm trying to be totally specific, as I think a definition should be -- but that's probably not required for these, as evidenced by the fact that gwiki's gotten by fine on its not-totally-right, definitely-not-positive-tone definition for damage thus far. Unfortunately, it looks like the negative-tone definition for damage is the least obfuscated way to go, as long as health lost has a note that "zero counts". Another long paragraph, courtesy of Tinny. :P --Tinarto [[Image:Tinarto-gold-Monk-icon-small.png]] 18:48, 7 June 2006 (CDT)


 * Stabber hit on a good definition of damage. I was trying to describe it so you would know it can be protected against, but describing it as being able to be protected against is much better. Thank you for saving my (everyone else's?) brain, Stabber. --Tinarto [[Image:Tinarto-gold-Monk-icon-small.png]] 19:07, 7 June 2006 (CDT)

Actor?
Can we at least institute a policy of sticking as close to the existing terms as possible? Why introduce completely new terminology? 195.169.149.213 17:41, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Sure. I was trying to avoid wordiness by specifying "player or non-player character" each time I would have written "actor". Also, I was in the process of fixing my recursive definition, but the page is too active right now... --Tinarto [[Image:Tinarto-gold-Monk-icon-small.png]] 17:43, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Well, you could substitute both for "creature" which should work rather well. - Greven 18:29, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * Duhhhh, thanks. --Tinarto [[Image:Tinarto-gold-Monk-icon-small.png]] 18:48, 7 June 2006 (CDT)

Alternative
I think, for the most part, the current glossary is poor. In particular, it essentially defines damage to be "what protective spells can prevent." This means we can't use "damage" in descriptions for those spells since it would be a circular definition. Shielding hands prevents what protective spells like shielding hands can prevent. I thought some refactoring and simplication was due and I ended up rewriting the glossary. I didn't want to just replace the current work, so it's at GuildWiki_talk:Standardizing_skill_templates/Glossary/alt. Edit it to see a bunch more of my notes. What does everyone think? Is a change in the right direction? --68.142.14.91 21:30, 7 June 2006 (CDT)
 * I left out the skills section since I haven't thought about it enough. I just rewrote the health section.  If people like what I've done with health, I'll work on expanding the skills section.
 * Refactoring: Life steal is health loss and health gain. Life donation is health loss and healing and axed.  Life steal is useful to have as a term since so many skills do it.  Life donation would just be infuse?
 * Simplication: Life reduction is just life loss. AotL wouldn't even be life reduction anyway, since it's a loss of maximum health, which is unlike IoW.
 * Failure to simplify: Mine is undoubtedly more wordy than the original. I chose exactness over other concerns.  Reducing ambiguity is the goal here, after all.
 * Regeneration: See my embedded notes about pip of health, but in short, my version kills the term "regeneration." This is probably the largest change I make from the way the game currently is.