GuildWiki talk:Style and formatting/Quests

End of Quest Text
I am of the opinion we should add end of quest text that the NPC usually says before accepting the XP. There are a lot of good story bits contained therein, and although it is a spoiler, I feel it can be artfully done to minimize any unwanted spoilage (although people who don't want to be spoiled that are looking at the quest page are very rare, I would think). I am up for taking on this project, if no one objects. --Ravious 09:06, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
 * If we do include it, it should be done the same way as the beginning of quest dialog, i.e. exactly what is stated. An issue arises with what to do with quests that have multiple parts, where you will get a block of text in the middle of the quest (which may actually explain more than the end of quest text).  --Rainith 12:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I guess just have like 'Quest Beginning Dialogue', 'Intermediary Dialogue #', 'Quest Ending Dialogue'. --Ravious 08:43, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree with adding all the dialogues. -PanSola 01:08, 25 February 2006 (CST)
 * I am for this as well. All the dialog should be included, not just the ending and opening statements. Some quests, such as The Forgotten Ones and The Hero's Challenge have very...interesting information. -Ordin 05:06, 28 March 2006 (CST)

List formatting
I think the list of rewards should be in a bulleted list, since usually there are skills or items as rewards as well. 21:09, 18 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I agree re: bulleted lists for rewards. I'm ok with numbered lists for requirements but I'd prefer bulleted there too because numbered lists imply order and often quests like Cities of Ascalon have no order to their requirements presented in the Quest Summary. I do like Dialogue rather than Mission Text, though. MartinLightbringer(CS) 00:10, 19 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * *Waves wand of discussion revival* ... After looking through my notes, I'd love to see the Quest Summary become a bulleted list. While there are often occasions where quests tell you to do things in a specific order, the opposite is just as often true and I don't ever recall the in-game quest log giving a numbered list. I think by presenting one here we imply something that's not necessarily true. Of course with the number of quests we have right now I'd prefer to see a bot update of these, but I believe that at the least the template should be updated with this change moving forward. --Zampani 12:05, 2 November 2006 (CST)
 * I'm thinking that it might be easier to just add a note saying that certain steps in the quest summary can be done in any order for the relevant quests. For some of these quests, while the first few objectives may be done in any order, the last step must always be done last. Using bullet points would just not be able to convey that. Adding a notes section allows for better explanation. Also, the reason why the log doesn't use numbered lists is probably because it doesn't need to. The quest objectives appear one at a time anyway. -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 18:30, 2 November 2006 (CST)
 * I'm not keen on the "add a note" idea, but your reasoning for the numbers is at least as good as my reasoning for having bullets. So for the time being I guess it's business as usual. --Zampani 12:20, 5 November 2006 (CST)

Requirements
Also I'm a little confused about the interpretation of Requirements for Althea's Ashes (which I've chaged back to what I'd put originally). The Duke's Daughter must be completed before you can receive Althea's Ashes. This seems like a Requirement to me. Although perhaps Requirements should be split into two parts -- one for dependencies like this and another for requirements like the quest only being available to a certain class.


 * Nah, I'd say that's fine Martin, it IS a requirement. 02:08, 19 Jun 2005 (EST)


 * I agree, too. The requirement either wasn't there when I edited the article or I accidentally removed it. Adraeus 17:26, 20 Jun 2005 (EST)

A plea for some clarification on the Requirements section concerning quests which require a specific Hero be present in the party. Some have placed this in the requirements section with a line like "Koss is required in the party", while others have written "Required Hero: Koss", a third alternative has been to create a seperate Required Heros section following imediately after the Requirements section. Would be nice to have a standard defined in the S&F. Comment? --Wolfie 04:44, 10 January 2007 (CST)
 * There aren't any standard defined for the other types of requirements either, such as quests and missions. I think the first type is better ("Koss is required in the party"), since we obviously have other partial sentences like "Prophecies characters only". And for quests and missions, there's no need to specifically say "Quest: Blah Blah", just "Blah Blah" will do, since a click will tell them what it is. -- Ab.Er.Rant (msg Aberrant80) 19:48, 10 January 2007 (CST)
 * My personal preference is "Required hero:X" and "Prophecies character" for those situations. I would like to work through and update this S&F at some point, so if we could come to some sort of consensus on this that would be a good start.  --Rainith 20:08, 10 January 2007 (CST)

Skills given
Should there be a standard way of noting what skills, if any, are given when you accept the quest? (This may only apply to Pre-Searing quests, so perhaps it's not important.)
 * Somebody added this heading ages ago but nobody answered. Ok if you look at Spark of Interest you can see Gem has added some nice profession icons. On Snaring Course, Tetris L has done the honours. However on this style guild there's nothing about adding profession icons.


 * If we look at some of the old Category:Prophecies quests like: Malaquire's Test, The Price of Steel and Blood And Smoke it is in the form:
 * Profession: Skill
 * You'll note there's no profession icons.


 * On Monk Test we've got skill icons (added by Xaque.)


 * If we want icons we should add it to the style guild and make it standard.
 * Also for the times that you are given a skill before you've finished the quest, are we going to add a note about this in the walkthrough section or under the rewards section? --Xasxas256 08:00, 11 May 2006 (CDT)
 * I've been adding/moving the skills that are gained either for accepting the quest or durning the quest to the walkthrough as they are not posted in your quest log as rewards nor are the listed in the chat window as rewards when you gain them. As for the icons, I'm in general against the over iconization that has been going on lately.  And as it isn't noted specifically in the S&F guide, nor is there a current discussion about them anywhere, I've been removing them from pages that I've been updating as I come across them.  --Rainith 13:22, 11 May 2006 (CDT)
 * I also think the icons are probably unnecessary although I'm not particularly strongly against them. Check this one out: Snaring Course, Tetris L had a field day! But I won't remove the icons until I see the project page changed or more people in agreement here (at which poing I'll change the project page myself) --Xasxas256 19:57, 11 May 2006 (CDT)
 * I think the icons look a bit too tacky, thats why I never add them when I create new articles and remove them when I am already editing an article that has them. Most are too detailed to even notice what is going on with such a small pixel size, and they make the article look "fat" with how they stretch out each skill with their height. *Not the most technical, but I've had a LONG day. :P --Gares Redstorm 20:09, 11 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Actually as the project page says nothing about icons they probably should be removed (that's my thought anyway, make it coform to the project page). But, I also wouldn't mind hearing from the man himself (Tetris) and his arguments for them.  The one thing I would like to add to the project page is that skills given "upfront" for accepting the quest should be listed in the walkthru, not in the Reward section.  Either that or we need a seperate section in the overview for them.  Opinions?  --Rainith 10:34, 12 May 2006 (CDT)


 * I am strongly in favor of a separate section "Skills given" in the article. For me, and for many others, the skills (regardless if given as reward or upfront) are the #1 reason to do quests, and this warrants a separate prominent section!
 * As for the icons, I don't mind. They are mostly eye-candy, and disposble. But it is well known that I'm generally a friend of icons. IMO they make it easier to get a quick overview. Also, GuildWiki is 98% plain text, to the degree that it's almost boring. If we want to compete in the league of Official Elite Fan Sites it won't hurt if we make the site a bit more pleasing to the eye. --Tetris L [[Image:TurningL sml.gif|Tetris L block]] 03:05, 18 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Yet another °BUMP°. Rainith? --[[Image:TurningL sml.gif|Tetris L]] 04:48, 2 June 2006 (CDT)


 * I have an interest in quest articles for some reason or other but I guess this discussion fell off my radar :( I've added a section in the article on skills in the form of:
 * Skills:
 * Necromancer: Strip Enchantment
 * Ranger: Serpent's Quickness
 * It seems to be a common way of doing it at the moment, I figure if we change it to include icons or have a seperate section that's fine, but the current way should be included in the current guide. --Xasxas256 22:49, 28 August 2006 (CDT)
 * I just wanted to put my two cents here: I like the look of the skill icons in the quest rewards.  It makes the skills stand out just a little bit more, and as mentioned above, that is often the #1 reason to do quests.  The skill icons, albeit small, are not unrecognizable, and in fact I often find myself recognizing skills by their icons rather than their names.  Seeing the icon in the reward list would save me the click to check whether I have that skill already.  I also agree that (as Tetris said above) "it won't hurt if we make the site a bit more pleasing to the eye" (and at least one competitor's site has hover-over info for each skill icon, very slick in my opinion!)
 * However, I also believe that text is the only sure way that the important information is portrayed, and so the inclusion of the profession names is a good idea. I also propose that the type of skill should also be stated in the reward list;  for example (and for those who aren't fans of icons, I apologize for polluting this conversation with one!)
 * Elementalist Spell:
 * I also agree with the comments regarding the importance of distinguishing between skill rewards for completion, and skills given upon accepting the quest. At this time, I don't have any good ideas about how to best portray that distinction. --Qrystal 09:06, 17 October 2006 (CDT)
 * Bump? And I was thinking as well that perhaps a halfway between iconifying and cluttering could be reached, something that unifies this with other things seen on the site. Perhaps just the profession icons should be used for the skills, removing the need to have the profession name listed as well, which I think bugged me because it was too wordy.  I think one of the reasons I liked the skill icons was because it hinted at the profession, but that's not colour-blindness-friendly and not very clear or informative.  However, the profession icons give information clearly to all who view them, and they'd make the skill quests stand out in a way that is useful to the people viewing the page.  I also take back my suggestion about the type of skill being specified in the reward list, because I've realized that we players just want to get all the ones we can, no matter what kind they are, and so all we want to know is whether there's a skill reward for one of our professions.  My proposal is updated to this:
 * Flare
 * Hmm, upon previewing it, I like it even more. Anyways, I am also offering to assist with updating the Prophecies quest articles (I don't own other chapters yet, so I don't want to delve too deeply into knowing about them yet!) in making them adhere to the new standard, if we can decide on one.  --Qrystal 07:54, 18 November 2006 (CST)

Followup
How about adding a section Followup to the template, to list any quests that become availible after finishing the current one (like "requirements in reverse")? This information was already added to several quests (mostly by me :o), see Barradin's Advance for instance. I think this would be a nice thing to have. --84.175.70.38 00:54, 31 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * Seems like a good idea. --Fyren 01:39, 31 Jul 2005 (EST)
 * I'm for it as well. Seems natural to list it. kaarechr 01:40, 31 Jul 2005 (EST)

Categories
I think we should split quests into categories, at the moment there's just the great ugly category:quests, I propse we make category:Ascalon quests, category:Fissure of Woe quests etc 19:00, 2 March 2006 (CST) 19:05, 22 March 2006 (CST)
 * Considering they also automatically show up under diff headings in the quest log, I agree. -SolaPan 19:07, 22 March 2006 (CST)

Campaign Categories
Anyone object to me splitting up the Quests category into Prophecies Quests, Factions Quests and Battle Isles Quests (assuming that we have those few listed). I see that right above me here is the suggestion to move them into their repective regions, I'm not disagreeing with that, but no one has moved on that since, it looks like Skuld suggested it on the 2nd. Also that would require a little more work to seperate out the Primary Quests from the region (side) quests. --Rainith 01:09, 28 March 2006 (CST)


 * No objections here -SolaPan 05:05, 28 March 2006 (CST)


 * No objections, I'm going for it. --Rainith 11:24, 1 April 2006 (CST)


 * Hmmm, see talk:Locations. I would have rathered heard your voices there. I think we should split all the same way. --Karlos 20:14, 1 April 2006 (CST)

Dialogue
Anyone ever thought about changing the dialogue section to include who is speaking? It's obvious when you are just doing "quest given" dialogue and reward dialogue, but when it comes to intermediate, user's might wonder who said that, as it is usually someone along the way or a mulitude of intermediate dialogues from many people involved in quests. I say we should add, for example,
 * Gares:"I like this idea. It will let users know who is saying what."

Any objections or support on this? -Gares 18:48, 17 July 2006 (CDT)


 * I always do it, I think. d-: -User:PanSola (talk to the [[Image:follower of Lyssa.png]]) 19:16, 17 July 2006 (CDT)
 * I like the idea. Ditto to what PanSola said... I think I do it usually anyway. --Zampani 09:34, 18 July 2006 (CDT)
 * Expanding on previous comment... for intermediate dialogue that's a single person talking I prefer the individual's name in parentheses directly following the "Intermediate Dialogue" phrase. If there are multiple persons talking in the same instance of dialogue I prefer something like Wee Tommy did on Too High a Price or as Rainith did on Finding The Oracle. --Zampani 12:16, 1 August 2006 (CDT)

How do we format the other quest dialogue? Specifically, the dialogue you get when you ask the quest giver about the quest, as well as the quotes for accepting and rejecting the quest. -- Gordon Ecker 23:42, 25 August 2006 (CDT)


 * I happen to like the way you formatted the Accept/ Decline/ When asked about it/ sections for The Count's Daughter, and think we should follow something like that. It'd be good dialogue to add, as some of the new Nightfall Accept/Decline dialogues are quite humorous and interesting. "Accept" and "Decline" seem to fit, but how about something like "Additional" or "Further dialogue" for the quotes the quest giver hands out after accepting? I'd also like to see those elements to be emphasized to stand out from the rest of the dialogue (see the Accept/Decline on Into Chahbek Village). --Zampani 11:50, 2 November 2006 (CST)

Wikification of Summary and Obtained from sections
I've done quite a lot of work to our quest articles and the S&F is pretty much in line with how our quests should be formatted although there's a small point that isn't. If a term occurs in both the Summary and Obtained from sections, the term (usually a person) is only wikified in the Obtained from section and not the Summary section. This differs from the normal order of things where the a term is only wikified the first time it occurs. So I'm changing this S&F to reflect this and I'm just documenting the reason for this change here. --Xasxas256 15:55, 1 November 2006 (CST)

Skills given (revisited)
Going to reopen this discussion as it seems we have a "new" formatting standard creeping in. Refer to The Lost Princess and The Royal Papers quest recent (at time of writing) histories to see what I mean.

Basically, there's the current format as documented in the S&F/Quests: Reward
 * ? XP
 * ? Gold:


 * Skills
 * Monk: Protective Spirit

and then there's the "new" format that is starting to appear: Reward
 * ? XP
 * ? Gold:


 * Skills
 * [[Image:Monk-icon-small.png]]: Protective Spirit

Personally, I think if we are going to favour this new approach, then should think about using "" instead of "" (and no colon), but figure firstly need to hear what the rest of you think. --Wolfie (talk|contribs) 10:13, 20 June 2007 (CDT)

Those in favour of the change:
 * 1) I like the profession icons. A crusade of a group of users can easilly divy them out and update them in a relatively small amount of time, or this is a simplistic task for a bot to do for us if someone has one registered.  My only comment is that instead of spelling out the icon link, it's much simpler to just use  to generate the  profession icon. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 21:02, 20 June 2007 (CDT)
 * 2) Been relooking at this and after having inspected a number of quests which have skill rewards, have to admit the idea has grown on me more, so changing my vote to in favour of the change. --Wolfie [[Image:Wolfie_sig.jpg|19px]] (talk|contribs) 20:55, 14 July 2007 (CDT)
 * 3) This argument has come up time and again, and I'm still in favour of the icons. I thought it was just because the icons give their message more quickly (one symbol instead of a whole word, and colour making them so easy to distinguish) but now I realize it could also be because they make the skill names line up so nicely. --Qrystal 07:23, 20 July 2007 (CDT)

Those against the change:
 * 1) Add your comment / name here

Undecided:
 * 1) Never really had a problem with the current standard, but using profession icons instead of names would align skill names more neatly, but will mean re-editting all the quests with skill rewards (not end of the world). --Wolfie [[Image:Wolfie_sig.jpg|19px]] (talk|contribs) 10:13, 20 June 2007 (CDT)
 * 2) It's the fine the way it is, but the prof icons look okay too. I see no reason to change dozens (hundreds?) of quest articles, but if someone else is up to the task then sure. BigAstro 12:56, 20 June 2007 (CDT)

Well nearly a month has passed, and still unsure if at the moment can say there is a clear consensus (could be for a number of reasons). So going to update a couple of quests with a link back to here to see if can generate some further responses. --Wolfie (talk|contribs) 21:30, 18 July 2007 (CDT)
 * Ok, has been a full month now, we have three votes in support, zero votes against, and one undecided, so believe can now declare this vote as carried. I will modify the S&F/Quests with this (and going to update it with current formatting guidelines at the same time). Thanks to Barek, BigAstro and Qrystal for their comments. --Wolfie [[Image:Wolfie_sig.jpg|19px]] (talk|contribs) 20:47, 20 July 2007 (CDT)

Common profession
I just added a few skill icons to some quest rewards where the skills given were PvE-Only from GW:EN and they were title track related. Then (belatedly) I came to check out this page and saw the consensus here. Before I revert them though, is there consensus on how the non-profession skills should appear in quest reward sections? The skill icon looks better to me than the generic "X" that was there before. Shadowlance 23:52, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Also what does everyone think about coming up with some icons to represent the title tracks (ie. a Norn icon, a Deldrimor icon, a Sunspear icon, etc.) Then for the skills given section of quests like this that icon could be used.  In my opinion the generic "X" makes it look like a "broken image" graphic which makes editors want to "fix it".  Shadowlance 01:27, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah the general consensus is using the when the skill is non-profession specific (though technically the "X" is used to indicate "no profession", which is not 100% the same thing). So that said, if someone with a bit of artistic flare can come up with a better symbol to indicate "non-profession specific", then could be some merit to adding something like ❌ to show "profession is non-applicable". Ie, keep it generic (rather than needing one icon for Asura, Dwalf, Ebon etc etc). Let's see what others have to say... --Wolfie [[Image:Wolfie_sig.jpg|19px]] (talk|contribs) 05:52, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I noticed you put the X's back on the Attack on Jalis Camp quest - that was one of the ones where I incorrectly put the skill icons put hadn't reverted it yet until we had some additional feedback here. Anyone besides me and Wolfie have an opinion on this?  I'm still of the opinion that we need something better than the X's - they just look "broken" IMO. Shadowlance 12:19, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, in the absence of any feedback, have gone ahead and created a   template which uses the "common profession" icon  used on the Common armors page. It has the same dimensions as all the other profession icons, so fits in nicely and indeed looks less "broken" than the "X". Have requested integration with the ProfessionIcon template (so it's centralised with the other prof-icons), but that template is (rightly) protected so may take a little while. Meanwhile, it's available now, so can begin including in quest articles etc. --Wolfie [[Image:Wolfie_sig.jpg|19px]] (talk|contribs) 03:09, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Nice work on that. I like it.  Shadowlance 13:17, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Pictures
I've noticed that it seems many quest pages have been getting screenshots of maps on their pages (see Mysterious Message (Prophecies), A Bushel of Trouble, or O Brave New World for a few examples). I'm wondering if we should add this to the format guide; thoughts? And a second, though related, issue: What do people think of having an "action shot" on each quest page? A picture that gives the reader some idea of the quest just by glancing at the page (I did see the A Leap of Faith article with what might be considered one of these shots). Thoughts? Vidar816 18:09, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
 * If we can take action shots, that would be good! RT | Talk  18:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * The maps are fine to me, they really help some people, but an "action shot" only clogs the page, imo. It adds little besides show you the game... AGAIN. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG]]-- (s)talkpage 18:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed, keep in mind, the primary purpose of the quest articles are to provide assistance to a player seeking help with completing a quest. While all the dialogues etc are recorded and added, which can be useful for getting a general understanding about a quest (and can be an entertaining read sometimes), it's fair to say most "hits" on those pages will be the Walkthrough and Notes sections, so quest maps etc are handy, "action shots" don't provide much in the way of assistance, just clutters the page. --Wolfie [[Image:Wolfie_sig.jpg|19px]] (talk|contribs) 04:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Subheadings
The subheadings are NOT formatted like the editing guide suggests:

Heading== ==

Subheading=== ===

Sub-Subheading==== ==== Rather, we have

Heading== ==  Subheading 

What is the reason for this?

To me, the current form appears to not be proper markup, and it makes the wikitext harder to read and modify. I propose that the regular ===subheadings=== be made standard. --◄mendel► 02:03, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Dialogue formatting
See User_talk:Quizzical for a discussion for a new method to format dialogue. (Should we move the discussion from there to here?) --◄mendel► 02:03, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

We now have a new way to format dialogue which does away with the need for tables to make multi-line dialogue text flow pleasantly. It requires a  and a final   inside each section. The page would display ok with just a single div around all of the dialogue sections, but then the edit section previews would not show up correctly. The speaker names are automatically bold, but you still need to use  to mark the spoken text. Do not use quotation marks (") to mark spoken text.

It may be decided at a future date that quotation marks should be added or that the speaker names should indent some (as they did in the example that was on this page previously). In that event it is not necessary to edit the dialogues again: the addition of quotes and indents can be done via small changes to the dialogue class in Mediawiki:common.css. --◄mendel► 21:31, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

New Style - cleanup needed
Everything I wrote here is in the wrong place, it doesn't apply here, so I'm removing it to avoid confusion. --◄mendel► 23:51, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Overview formatting
I think we need to revert this guide to the old style of formatting for the Overview section. Here's why:


 * 1) The subheader style has been on this guide for over 2 years, yet less than 3% of our quest articles (25/925) have been updated to use it.
 * 2) The subheader style makes the ToC much longer than is normal for similarly-sized articles, forcing editors to resort to non-standard formatting to make it look "good" (7 of the 25 articles using this style also use ).
 * 3) Given the very small size of the content in each of these sections, the subheaders serve no useful purpose (i.e. page navigation).  The relative size of header-to-contents also tends to make the header a bit overbearing (especially for the "Obtained from" section, which is almost always a single line).

In order to make the old style look more like "proper markup," it should be converted to a definition list.

;Summary
 * 1) List of objectives from the Quest Log.


 * Obtained from
 * Who gives this quest and where


 * Requirements
 * Any quests or actions that need to be satisfied before this one is given
 * This might include professions, i.e. some quests are only available to Monks, some only to Rangers


 * Reward
 * ? XP
 * ? Gold
 * Skills
 * Cyclone Axe
 * Protective Spirit
 * 
 * 
 * 

In the end, what this really boils down to is: who's going to bother reformatting the other 900 quest articles to the "new" style? Even I, the human robot, have absolutely no desire to do that. Let's just document these articles the way they are. &mdash;Dr Ishmael 18:12, September 16, 2010 (UTC)