GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting/Skills


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 * [[Image:Warrior-icon.png]] ||Profession:|| Warrior


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 * [[Image:Ranger-icon.png]] ||Profession:|| Ranger


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 * [[Image:Monk-icon.png]] ||Profession:|| Monk


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 * [[Image:Elementalist-icon.png]] ||Profession:|| Elementalist


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 * [[Image:Mesmer-icon.png]] ||Profession:|| Mesmer


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 * [[Image:Necromancer-icon.png]] ||Profession:|| Necromancer

Distinguishing Skills by Profession
We spoke a while ago about having different colors for skill boxes, and I was against it, as it restricts our choice of colors for other types of box, i.e. locations, beasts, items etc.

In order to provide some visual aids besides color alone I've created some icons using the same look as the ones for energy recharge, activation time etc. that are currently visible as Skill Details in the skill box. I tried modifying the template for this demonstration only, but that's not really possible, since it would affect all other existing skills, so the wiki code to produce this has been a bit "hacked" in order to demonstrate how a skill using these icons would look :)

Alternatively the icon could be included somewhere else. I've messed about and I think this sized icon is big enough to act as a visual to let people see what profession a skill is at a glance :)

Please let me know what you think! LordBiro/Talk 23:03, 29 May 2005 (EST)


 * Just topping this because no-one's replied yet :P LordBiro/Talk 17:49, 31 May 2005 (EST)

I like 'em! About to start going through Necromancer spells (at least all the ones I've unlocked so far) and will make sure me little icon gets in the box. Nunix

I just finished completing the first batch of Category:Blood Magic skills. The extra icon looks REALLY nice there! We don't have a metric tonne of skill entries filled out so far; I say break the current template, insert the new icon + profession entry in, and we'll tidy up the mess afterwards. Nunix


 * I was hoping someone would say that ;) I'll alter the template now, and I'll make the change to Life Siphon as an example. I'll also update the Style & Formatting/Skills page to reflect the change :) LordBiro/Talk 17:46, 2 Jun 2005 (EST)

While I think the icons Biro made look great, maybe it would be more appropriate to take the icons from the runes in-game? They would of course be true to the game but might not be recognizable by everyone (or most?) so, uh, it's just a thought. --Fyren 11:05, 29 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Good suggestion Fyren, although in a way this seems inconsistent within Guild Wars itself. The icons on the site are modified versions of the icons in the manual. Guild Wars also has a seperate set of icons (most obviously visible in the menu of the Priests of Balthazar). As you might expect, I vote we stick with the icons we have :P hehe 21:00, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)

actually i am for skill colors by profession. even in the game itself, skills are colored based on the profession; orange for warriors, blue for monks, purple for mesmers, etc. and heck, even boss monsters are colored according to their profession. the 6 colors are really significant in identifying professions in this game. as for using colors for other types of info "i.e. locations, beasts, items etc.", there're still plenty of color we can use apart from the said 6. Nuble 05:23, 10 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Well, I disagree there. We do all know the colors for the six professions that are used in-game, but what colour do we make Resurrection Signet and Signet of Capture? I think icons are the most effective option. I would like to see colours used to represent the different types of objects in the game, "i.e. locations, beasts, items etc.", if we did take out yellow(W), green(R), blue(Mo), red(E), purple(Me) and green again (N) then what easily identifiable colours would we have for locations? Orange? And then what about beasts? And items? Yeah, we could have different shades between them, but I think that's limiting our options too much :) But yeah, I think the point here is that we don't agree and there needs to be more discussion on the subject. LordBiro/Talk 07:17, 10 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * gray for signets? we can easily differentiate between skill and non-skill articles with different background color of the info table, or different border style, or different layout of the table? Nuble 13:12, 10 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Gray for signets, like the game itself uses. I strongly feel we should color-code infoboxes by profession, because, as previously stated, the game itself does this in many ways (monster auras, colors of skill icons, default armor colors, the entire Dragon's Lair zone). Tanaric 21:13, 20 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Well that's 2 against 1 :( hehe, I would like some more people to be involved with this before we make any changes, but if that's what the majority wants then fair enough :P 21:27, 20 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I say color code it like the game. The difference between a skill box and an item box should be obvious from the content.


 * Coloring the entire box is, I think, a bad idea. A few reasons:
 * 1) It will diminish the number of colors available for other tables. I hear someone saying "16 million colors baby!" but the reality is, the colors of the professions cover the basic ones (yellow, green, blue, purple, red) and as such will leave us with relying on variations of the same color to tell different things. This is a bad practice in UI design. If you rely on colors, they should contrast and be clear. Many people cannot distinguish color variations clearly.
 * 2) It will interfere with the color theme of the site itself and thus be in poor taste. If our main theme is this grey, then a whole bunch of series with a big purple thing in the middle will stand out, and stand out in a not-so-pleasant- way.
 * I suggest we color code only the background of the title area of the table. i.e like this:


 * {| border="1"

! Hammer Bash !! Winter !! Immolate !! Life Siphon !! Heal Other !! Backfire
 * - align="center"
 * Bla || Bla || Bla || Bla || Bla || Bla
 * - align="center"
 * }


 * We already only color the title area. Look up on the page and you can see that.  Furthermore, your table-thing broke the formatting of this page; please make sure to close your div tags next time. :) &mdash;Tanaric 00:46, 17 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Sorry about the formatting issue. All I see is green: Hammer Bash Backfire --Karlos 04:20, 17 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I think what Tanaric meant Karlos (although Tanaric will probably correct me! :P) is that at the moment only the title (and the bit saying "Skill details") is green, so your suggestion of only colouring the title is pretty much what was suggested in the first place. 08:02, 17 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * At the moment, it's all green. And for some reason (Nuble's comments) I understood what is being suggested as coloring the entire table's borders or background. In any case, this is my vote. :) --Karlos 08:08, 17 Jul 2005 (EST)

Skill ranges
Let's talk about skill ranges. Most skills have increased effectiveness depending on a linked attribute. Normally we represent this by lower_range...upper_range. lower_range is obviously zero. What is the upper_range? I can see two useful ways to do this.


 * 12: This is the natural limit of attributes. Most skills grow linearly from 0 to 12, so it is easy to figure out the damage at any level up to 12. For example, a spell listed as 1...13 would most likely do 7 at a level of 6.


 * 16: This is the limit of primary professions (12, +1 from headgear, +3 from a rune). Some spells do more damage above 12, but the gain is smaller than normal. A spell listed as 6...50 would give an exact number for the highest damage possible, but makes it difficult to estimate the damage at level between 0 and 16. Also, secondary professions cannot achieve 16, so this can be misleading.

My feeling is to use 16. This gives us the absolute maximum which is more useful for designing a skill loadout. Players who care a lot about the exact damage of a spell will be knowledgeable enough to figure out the damage at 12. Players who don't care, won't know the difference. One downside of this is that entering the numbers will be harder since only people with primary professions and superior runes will be able to input the numbers.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

I've been doing up to 14 on most of my skills, since I have most of the minor runes but very few major or superior. My feeling is that someone who's got a 16 available could go through and correct things if they were so inclined (the game alt-tabs so cleanly, after all!). I think this may fall under the auspices of "don't worry if all your information is 100% complete/correct", since it leaves things for new visitors to tweak and contribute to. Nunix


 * i personally think that the range should be left 12. additional information can be added for bonuses at >12 in an "Over 12" subtopic or something similar. Nuble 05:26, 10 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I agree that 12 is the most sensible option. LordBiro/Talk


 * Why not use the ranges that the game itself gives you when you unlock a skill? No research necessary that way. Tanaric 21:17, 20 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I would not use the ranges that the game gives when the skill is unlocked. Those ranges may be wrong. The only way to confirm if they are right, is to do the research.


 * Well, in that case, we shouldn't use any information from the game. Not weapon types, nor attribute requirements, nor anything else.  After all, they could be wrong!  (Oh, and please sign your posts!) &mdash;Tanaric 21:47, 22 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Incidentally, that number range is 0-12; I never noticed before. So, yes. Standard range:  ... 

There seems to be a consensus for 0-12 so I'm going to codify that in the main article.

Format for Skill Ranges
What format are we sticking to? Just noticed a comment and want to be sure. Is it X-Y or X...Y? LordBiro/Talk 09:07, 12 Jun 2005 (EST)

I've noticed people representing numbers in different ways on the skill pages. We should decide on a standard way. E.G. is it "does 5..18 fire damage over time" or "does 5..18 fire damage over time" or "does 5..18 fire damage over time" ? Gravewit (Moved)


 * X...Y for the numbers that are green in the game. (It would be nice if we could make our numbers green to match the game more closely.)
 * I'm not too fond of that. I know someone (Adam?) started making the armor pages look just like the armor pages on Guild Wars, using the same background colour (dark grey), and the same font (Palatino Linotype I think), and it didn't look fantastic. I think making it show the same info as Guild Wars is enough personally. :I LordBiro/Talk 22:40, 12 Jun 2005 (EST)

Nonexistant stat in a skill box
From the Talk:Rebirth page.. Stick to whatever entries GW lists in the game (that is, what you see if you press K while in the game, or browsing skills in PVP character creation). If it's not there, don't 0 it, just leave it out. If there's some kind of outcry about "missing informatix0r" there can be a little note in the Style & Formatting/Skills article about the standard. Lots of Warriors skills DON'T have an Adrenaline component, as a counter-point; at most, maybe consider a Category:Adrenaline Skills if that would be something worth sorting by. Nunix

Hyperlinking
Added a small section on hyperlinking. What should we hyperlink other than Conditions? Skill descriptions are loaded with important terminology. We could make a policy to hyperlink everything meaningful. Consider a fully hyperlinked Conjure Flame.

Lose all "Enchantments". For 60 seconds, if you're wielding a fire weapon, your attacks strike for an additional 1...13 fire damage.

All those words are meaningful, but it seems too "busy" to me. I suggest that we only hyperlink Conditions and "fire weapon". Everything else should be obvious to anyone except the most noobish player. Comments?


 * Yeah, I dont think we need a standard for this, it's just common sense. It's an enchantment, thats important, other than that I dont think anything else needs linking, even though i notice fire damage is linked on the original. And I wouldn't say linking every noun is necessarily "fully hyperlinking". Take a look at wikipedia, most of the nouns in a page have an article on the wiki, but they aren't all linked. This is something that should really just be decided on a per-article basis in my opinion LordBiro/Talk 06:16, 14 Jun 2005 (EST)

Images
Could someone add instructions to this page on where/how they create the nice 128x128 pngs? I've tried to crop screen caps with GIMP of the skills window but the largest image I can find is smaller that 128x128 and scaling them makes them look, well, scaled. I'd be happy to contribute all of mine if it was clearer how to get that image. Thanks. MartinLightbringer(CS) 04:40, 18 Jun 2005 (EST)

There's a fansite kit up on guildwars.com that actually has all those images; the problem is it's not -all- the images, there's not even a complete list of skills I don't think. Just most skills, and most of those have the images. And I THINK Gravewit's uploaded all of those already (you can search for what images are uploaded by doing Upload file > list of uploaded files). So until they update it (or someone manages to hack the game files and extract) I think we'll live with scaled and be okay. Nunix 04:44, 18 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Ah. I get it. Thanks. There's more there than what Gravewit's uploaded (The Warror Skills for example) but I see why they haven't been done. High PITA factor as what they distrubute is a word doc for each profession that has embedded images. I'll start working on the Warrior one since that's what I dl'd to take a look at and go from there. MartinLightbringer(CS) 05:04, 18 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Yeah, that's the exactly, martin, I don't even -have- Office on my machine (I user Apple's wonderful OS X and BBedit for all my text-editing needs) so, if you've got the time, well... go ahead and upload them all : ) Gravewit 05:17, 18 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * Ok. I've got all 56 Warrior images converted to PNG and uploaded. Not all of them have their skill stubs created. I'll get to that later. I've got a decent process down to convert them fairly quickly. I'll get started on the Monk ones next and eventually get them all done. MartinLightbringer(CS) 01:44, 19 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I've uploaded all the monk and ele images. 02:07, 19 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * ah ok. :) Ranger it is! :) MartinLightbringer(CS) 02:09, 19 Jun 2005 (EST)

What are we going to do about the images that weren't in the fan site pack? It'd be obvious which someone screenshotted from in game and which were from the pack, but I'm not sure what other choice we have. We'd need a standard for size and where to crop if we take screenshots, also. --Fyren 04:27, 8 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Yeah that's a problem. I'm hoping that maybe they'll release updated fan site packs but I'm not holding my breath. In the mean time, I'd suggest that the elite skills, etc use the version from the skill listing (as opposed to what is the character's active skills) to avoid the numbers on the image. Ideally the image from the 'skill unlocked' window that pops up would be best since it's larger still and pretty clear but short of digging through the installed/dl'd files that come with the game, I'm not sure how we'd get those. MartinLightbringer 05:03, 8 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * It is possible to remove the numbers from the images. If you reconfigure your keys so that they dont use numbers the numbers on the icons dissapear. You can then edit your interface to get some big sized buttons and take a screenshot of that, cropping to 128x128px. Even then the image is blurred; it seems the images in the game are lower quality than the images in the fansite kit. 05:23, 8 Jul 2005 (EST)

Skill Formatting Example
As I went through the skills as per the discussion in GuildWiki_talk:Peer_review there were some common problems with the skill articles.
 * Ranges weren't bold
 * Ranges only had two periods
 * Misformatted acquisition section
 * Irregularity with bolding the article name
 * Irregularity with denoting exhaustion, penetration, and elite status
 * Missing "(Elite)" in the template for elites (?)
 * Missing elite skills category for elites
 * Fractions not using sup and sub
 * Missing no attribute category for some skills

The first two are easy, no debate there I presume. The next I give an example of what I think is a good way (and somewhat common way, from looking at most of the skill articles) of listing the three ways to acquire skills in GuildWiki talk:Style & Formatting/Skills/Everything Example. For bolding the article name, in the main style page, it's suggested you bold the article name only the first time it's used. For denoting the various things, I suggest what's in the example but I don't think it was ever discussed. For the last point, I don't think it was ever discussed but I like it.

Please mess with the example as you see fit before we start taking things out of peer review. --Fyren 03:42, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)

Good work Fyren! I like it a lot :) It's a good way to be able to talk about the format of articles! Points of interest: 07:18, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Article names should always be linked rather than bolded, even if they are referencing their own article. MediaWiki recognises the link and renders it as bolded text. This was decided upon some time ago (I was unwaware that MediaWiki did this at first, until Tanaric pointed it out) as the content produced is more useful when referenced from elsewhere, i.e. if an article is Included elsewhere, the link will not be rendered as bold and will point back to the included article, which is desirable! :)
 * Although I disagree with it, Template:Skill begin is included in the Skills category, meaning any page that contains the skill box is automatically included in the skills category. While this is a labour saver it means that a few example pages are included in Category:Skills :/
 * I don't agree with the use of the "spells" category, or of "enchantment spell" or whatever other categories are used to group skills by their type. Firstly, all instances of these category names are singular, whereas other category names on the site are typically plural, (save for the "contains xxx" categories, although thats reasonable) so I vote the category names are changed if they must be kept. Secondly I think they are pretty useless. I'm always wanting to find out what kind of skills I have and what I need by looking through the categories and I've never used this method of browsing. If a number of people do then obviously this is just me :)
 * Probably not the right place to say this but Elite redirects to Elite Skill and is pretty pointless... :/

My point about the bold/linking was sometimes it's not linked at all and sometimes it's always linked. I think categories for skill types can be useful, but I guess they should be singular. (I also suggested that 'contains whatever' should be 'yields ' so things don't complain piles of dust, as was complained.) If you wanted to make a build around ether renewal, you might look through all the enchantments to see which profession you want to choose to pair of E.  The elite link is just there to mark in the template that the skill is elite. Is there a better way to do this? --Fyren 11:26, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Yeah, I was just over-clarifying really Fyren :) I'm prone to doing that, hehe. Well if you think they are useful then I'll concede that skill type categories are ok. But I still think we should refer to just like we do to  and  etc. I like the elite link as it is, although it shouldn't redirect :) 21:17, 9 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * I agree with you in principle, but there is a practical problem with Skills. Bear with me here. There are skills and Skills. "skills" represent the general idea of things you put on your skill bar. "Skills" are skills that begin with the in-game text "Skill.". If we go with pluralized categories, then Category:Skills will conflict with Category:skills. See what I mean?


 * I think we should make categories based only on sortable criteria in-game. Thus, Enchantments would be valid, since you can sort your skill list by type and get an enchantments header.  However, does a "skills" header ever appear?  If not, the category is not useful, and the point is moot.  &mdash;Tanaric 15:24, 13 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Just checked, and Charm Animal, Comfort Animal and Troll Unguent are "Skills". This puts us in a difficult position, since it means we cannot look for these skills through their type like we can with skills that are enchantments or spells etc. Unless we can come up with a different way of referencing something. I would not like to see changed, because it would be a lot of hard work, and more importantly because it is a category of skills, and any other name would be confusing. Any suggestions are welcome (although I suggest we perhaps start a new section for this discussion to avoid confusion)  22:51, 13 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Lots of skills are of type "Skill". Expertise specifically triggers off of Skills not Spells. Also, many of the interrupts will specify Spell or "action". A Skill would not be interrupted by a Spell interrupt. This is why I have been putting the Skills into . Every skill has an official type. It is the the first sentence of the in-game skill description. (Which we put in , but omit from ==Description== for brevity.)

This Everything Example is very handy. There are a few changes I would like to make. I will modify the example page so everyone can see what I mean.
 * I think the Acquisition section should be ordered by cost, Quest (free), Capture (half price) and Trainer (full price). We could order by location, but one could argue over the correct ordering of locations since you can skip ahead of the missions.
 * Hyperlinking "Signet of Capture" kind of breaks the formatting of Acquisitions. I think it should just be "Capture".
 * I'm changing the casting time to 3/4 so we can argue over "3/4", "&#190;" and "3/4".
 * You're right that there should be an order for acquisition, whatever it might be. I'm not sure how linking the signet breaks formatting, could you explain?  And the decided format for fractions was the last of your three, though I guess it doesn't really matter as long as we're consistent.  I like the last one the most.  --Fyren 10:25, 14 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * "Quest" and "Trainer" aren't linked, so it seems inconsistent to link "Capture". We could link all three I suppose, but I am opposed to that. If we need to explain the meaning of something we should do that in a single article, e.g. Skill Articles Explained and make a link to that at the top of every skill via the macro. Then we can do a full write-up explaining the terms (like Capture) for all of the skills in one place instead of having to maintain 200+ skill articles.


 * I vote for &amp;#190;, as it's semantically correct. &mdash;Tanaric 20:09, 14 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Well I think this kind of thing could be discussed in Skill details since it already exists. Although perhaps this is the wrong place. Help:Skills might be another good option. I'm torn between &amp;#190; and 3/4, while the first is technically correct the second is much easier to edit, and much easier to read if you are just looking at the wiki code. As far as semantics goes I think anyone getting hold of the html of the page would understand 3/4 means &#190;, but I'm not entirely convinced which is best. Hehe :) {User:LordBiro/Sig}} 20:15, 14 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * How about we make a set of macros, , and use that. Then they will all look the same, and we can change the formatting in the future if we decide to do it differently.


 * Biro, I agree with your last sentence, but it really doesn't apply. 3/4 is fine, semantically, but 3/4 is not.  Fractions are not written in superscript or subscript, but a special format all of their own.  Furthermore, maybe I just read too much math, but 3/4 just doesn't look like a fraction to me. Since it's not quite a fraction, it's jarring.  At least 3/4 is commonly understood to be fractional form.  Alternatively, we could just call it 0.75, and avoid the problem entirely.  &mdash;Tanaric 22:09, 14 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * You think 3/4 doesn't look like a fraction but Â¾ does? Will the latter display properly on all systems?  --Fyren 04:22, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)


 * Yes Fyren, I believe that &amp;#190; will display correctly on all browsers, or should do at least. In fact it is 3/4 that is less likely to display properly, as shown in my example using lynx on linux. Tanaric's suggestion of using a template to describe fractions is a good one. We could even use Template:1/4, Template:1/2 and Template:3/4 if everyone is ok with it. I realise that slashes suggest a sub page, so this might not be the best solution, but I don't know of any disadvantage to using a slash in an article title. It's not like creating a namespace, afaik. Someone with more knowledge on this subject could perhaps give some input? If this is not ideal then I think Template:One_quarter, Template:One_half, Template:Three_quarters etc. would be easiest to understand. 07:36, 15 Jul 2005 (EST)

I propose we change the example article, specifically to change "Usage Notes" to simply "Notes", because there might be more to say about a skill than just how and when to use it. Alternatively we could add a new paragraph, although that seems pointless when we already have such a closely related one.

Please note: I have uploaded a small java program to create simple skill tables that relates the linked attribute to the skill's effect(s). Look here for the code.