Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Projects/Dialogue Pages

S2 and Beyond

So, initially the /dialogue subpages housed open-world (non-story instanced) ambient scenes and dialogue (text-based interactive trees), with forwards to instance pages for instanced dialogue. Then I was told that no, the ambient scenes should go on location pages with /dialogue pages forwarding to those instead and I still haven't heard any response on sorting out a unified format with that. While there are still some open issues like this regarding season 1, I am really here to ask about the future of /dialogue pages.

As I work on Season 2 pages, it's becoming clear that the new format of Season 2 (highly instanced, haven't seen the B-iconics out in the open world since Festival of the Four Winds) may make the /dialogue pages somewhat obsolete, or else largely filled with forwards. For example, Kasmeer's current dialogue page. I'm also noticing that on NPC main pages, the Living World Involvement sections are beginning to get a bit long. I'm thinking of how to make these pages as useful as possible going forward. My rough proposal as of now:

1) The forward to the /dialogue page from the "Quotes" header of NPC mainpages should be removed.

NPC quotes are currently unrelated to what is documented on the /dialogue pages. If by chance the NPC greets, combat chatter etc suddenly changes, I'd be all for reinstating the link and archiving those quotes on the /dialogue page. For now, it just seems like it would confuse people. I'm unsure why they were ever linked tbh, unless people were initially reproducing ambient scenes under this header.

2) Merge the Dialogue and Living World Involvement headers on NPC mainpages.

The "Dialogue" headers on Living World involved characters' pages are constantly out of date. Furthermore, with Season 2 there really isn't a "current" dialogue for these NPCs, as they are increasingly restricted to instances. What makes sense to me is to change the format of the Living World Involvement header. A few people agreed that /dialogue subpages should be chronological (due to the former /dialogue "quotes" sections being improperly named -- according to current Quotes and Dialogues standards -- plus a few other idiosyncrasies), so now (or soon, since I'm pretty much solo editing atm which makes the change slow) the /dialogue TOCs look like more detailed versions of the simple list that currently exists on NPC main pages for Living Story. I propose that the LWI header on the main page contain a relatively short prose summary of Living World involvement (a short paragraph per season or so?) perhaps with a spoiler template, while the opening paragraphs of the NPC mainpage contain generic or pre-Living World information. An italicized "For in-depth Living World Involvement, see here" (or "For Living World Dialogue", or what have you; discuss the wording as you please) with a link to the /dialogue page should then be placed at the top of the LWI section.

3) This LWI connection leaves /dialogue pages to include more episodic character-centric Living World summaries.

Each story instance linked out to for dialogue could now also include a short prose summary of that character's involvement in events to avoid the "page full of forwards" look. OR the character's dialogue could be flat out copy-paste'd, which I get the feeling would be a less popular option but one I'd absolutely get behind if people were interested. Or neither could happen; if linked to from the LWI section, a page of forwards would be more forgivable as a detailed Living Story outline for the character.

It may be that we get some open-world living story updates in the back half of season 2 that makes my worry of semi-empty /dialogue pages misplaced, so I'm really interested in waiting out the season before I implement anything. I just wanted to get a feel of what people were thinking and to ask that interested parties keep an eye on the NPC main page + dialogue formatting situation as the season unfolds so that we can have a good discussion. -Kymtastic (talk) 18:00, 14 August 2014 (UTC)