Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Weapon formatting

Images

Can we get a spot in the infobox for screenshots? Even if its blank for 99% of our content, having it there will let people know we want to fill that out, it may encourage contributions. Torrenal 05:18, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Rarity

Where does rarity fit in for this? Some rarity notes I've made:

• Karma merchant prices halve going from green to blue. Note: They *halve*, rounding is applied when going to the smaller prices.
• At Mei Shadowwalker, the Lionguard Piercing Harpoon (blue) has these stats:

Weapon Strenght: 270-299

+38 Power

+27 Condition Damage

Req lvl 32

• the same weapon (green) has these stats:

Weapon Strenght: 294-324

+42 Power

+30 Condition Damage

Req lvl 32

I've also got a slew of screenshots from the BWE2, which includes stats for various karma-merchant weapons & armor. Ping me on my talk page if you want to dig through them.

Some how, some way, we'll need to account for weapon rarity on the weapon pages. I personally would not be happy with a page for each rarity... In fact, I suspect that the stats will scale equally across like weapon types of the same level. (eg: All white level 5 daggers have the same strength, all blue level 40 tridents have the same strength, etc... If that proves to be true, we can drop recording weapon strength for each weapons, and instead devote that information the general page for each weapon type. Torrenal 05:18, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

delete?

I stub out the page and promptly find it marked for delete... Even had plans of getting more real content onto the page.

Please name for me one good reason why we should not have a centralized location for editors to find up to date page templates and why we should not have a central point for discussing the design of those page types? Torrenal 14:00, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I also disagree with the delete - the delete reason says it should be "replaced by a more encompassing and more useful item formatting guideline," which is a bad idea. There are too many different types of items with highly specialized data to cover with a single guide - if something has a distinct infobox template, then there should be a distinct formatting guide for it. —Dr Ishmael 14:08, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

We can definitely keep it. It just needs to be more than just a info-box template guide and user friendly like gw1:Guild_Wars_Wiki:Formatting/Weapons. Yeah, essentially it just needs more content where it can be acquired, or dropped from enemies, etc. It's a WIP, so the delete is premature. --Lania 14:16, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Also disagree with the delete. I do believe that these templates are useful to have. From that, if we want this page to be useful, making it one page for every single item type would be highly intimidating to refer to and to contribute to. Redshift 14:21, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

intimidating is making a new page, from scratch, without a template to pull from and 6 completely different examples you can clone. Intimidating is trying to give those 6 examples a consistent look.... Gah, wrong place to be having this conversation...Torrenal 17:58, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Haha, I just realized how that could be interpreted. I meant that having one supermassive page encompassing every single item type would be intimidating, not that giving each item type its own respective template page and discussion would be intimidating. Sorry. Redshift 19:08, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

(ri) "Please name for me one good reason why we should not have a centralized location for editors to find up to date page templates": we should. That's exactly why we should have a single, centralized item formatting guideline, and not have this formatting one (which needs to lose the " template" title, for the records; a wiki template is something else entirely). Showering people with a hundred guidelines for every kind of item in the game is not going to help new users. Meanwhile, the formatting guidelines are going to be strikingly similar to each other - has anyone complaining about the deletion actually stopped to think which sections is a weapon page and an armor page going to have? A section for stats, a section for acquisition, a section for a gallery, notes, trivia, and that's it. Those are things shared among all items.
torrenal, you should not take a deletion tag in a page you have created as a personal offense. You will soon notice that most of the content you add to the wiki isn't going to last more than a few weeks as you added it, and that's how a wiki works. We are not here to own and defend our contributions as if they were our possessions; we are here to improve the wiki as much as possible. Erasculio 22:06, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure that's a fair rebuke; certainly that's why there's a link to the discussion page from the delete tag rather than a straightforward delete. Pages may or may not wind up the same; it's still much too early to tell. Weapons might be similar to Armor, but is Armor similar to Runes? Are Runes similar to NPCs? Are NPCS similar to Monsters? Are monsters similar to Events? It's not just a weapon page tied to this attempt at organization. Even if these may or may not pan out in the long run, I would say that these efforts have already generated useful discussion, and these discussions are a valid means of improving the wiki. I would like to see these discussions continue, and thus I am still of the belief that it's premature to ask for this to be deleted. Redshift 22:46, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Making multiple guidelines instead of using a, as Torrenal said it, centralized location for editors to find up information just because weapons might not be similar to armors, regardless as how of now those pages would have basically the same layout... That doesn't strike me as a particularly good idea. I would rather deal with existing problems than create new problems while dealing with imaginary ones. Erasculio 22:59, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Escrulio: The page is not titled 'Template'. It is titled 'Guild Wars 2 Wiki:Weapon formatting'. Every other page in the wiki is automatically titled with the namespace+filename for the page, this one is no exception. This page will be gaining content, however as some of the content I wanted to add was contingent on questions I had put forth in the discussion page, I was not prepared to promptly add it. Further: the amount of content I add will be inversely proportional to the time I spend arguing for the pages existence. A page does not begin complete, but it begins somewhere. This is the start for this page. Give it time. Just because you do not envision more for the page, do not assume others do not. Lastly, the format of the content is only similar to other items. And the items themselves are different. Because they are a different kind of item, a separate page can easily be merited. In the case of weapons, unlike most other inventory objects in the game, these can appear in screenshots. I suggest discussing the merits of individual template pages. For the moment, I consider the delete stalled, at least until a more general discussion can be held. - Torrenal 00:15, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Wait...so what's the difference between this page and the one that lania posted? It looks like we're doubling up on helpful resources? --Xu Davella 00:23, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Lania's is the one at GW1W. —Dr Ishmael 01:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

@Torrenal: "I suggest discussing the merits of individual template pages" - uh, this is not a template. I'm not sure you understand what is a template, in wiki terms. The content of the section you have titled as "Template" is not a template. This is a template, for example - a function called by summoning it with twin brackets, as in {{quote|}}. Everything you have been calling "templates" in not what a template actually is here.

The argument that different item types should have different guidelines is exactly the kind of thing we should avoid. There are dozens of item types in the game - having dozens of nearly identical guidelines would not help new users, quite the opposite. Having a single, unified and easy to use guideline is significantly better. After all, can you actually back up your claims? What would you add to a weapon article that you would not add to an armor article? Erasculio 01:31, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

He's using "template" in a generalized way, not meaning wiki templates. A better word might be "boilerplate". —Dr Ishmael 01:40, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Pesky multiple-definitions-for-one-word. Erasculio: Can you back up your claims that I'm dealing with imaginary problems? I have no interest in a pissing contest. Please, stop insulting my intelligence, and move the discussion over the merits of subject-matter specific guidelines elsewhere Torrenal 02:01, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Answer my question, then. What would you add to a weapon article that you would not add to an armor article? Erasculio 02:26, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

There are two questions we could be asking. One is 'functionally, do we need a separate page for weapons formatting?'. Another is 'Is the wiki better off with a separate page for weapons formatting?'. You are asking the first question on this page. I am asking the second question here. For the good of the wiki, which question should we be answering? Torrenal 04:19, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

You should be answering mine, instead of trying to dodge it. I am still waiting.Erasculio 14:28, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure that the conversation is moving forward at this point, and I think a little more time should be given for the page and pages like it to be given a fair shake. The delete tag has already been removed and more content has been added to the page. Though the final pages might arrive at similar results, the methods, guidelines, and recommendations (such as specific infoboxes, screenshot methods, etc) have headed towards being specific. If these guidelines continue to serve as a specific aggregation of how to handle a specific type of item, then I personally have no qualms in their existence. Redshift 15:28, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Agreed with Reshift - you are being obstructive, rather than constructive, Erasculio. These formatting guidelines are brand new, and we don't know what the final versions will look like. If they end up being similar enough, then we can merge them in the future. But I don't think that will be the case, due to important differences like infoboxes. Also, galleries will be handled very differently between weapons and armor - weapons will probably include a gallery directly on the article, while armor galleries will be subpages. Not to mention that if we do force all item types into a single formatting guideline, it would stifle any creativity toward differentiating the item types. —Dr Ishmael 15:43, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

@Eras: Give it time and let the page mature as more editors put their input into it. Slapping a delete tag as soon as it goes up is not helpful, and expecting the editors to know exactly what needs to be in this guideline immediately is unreasonable. A creative process takes time and a lot of iterations so it would be good at this time to disengage from the conversation and let things run it's course. --Lania 18:47, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

@Ishmael, you claim I am being obstructive just because I'm trying to prevent the implementation of a hushed idea you happen to support. The fact you removed the deletion tag without waiting for a resolution to this discussion, using a rather nonsensical argument, is IMO another strong signal of how you don't want to have this discussion at all, instead just bulldoze over it and do what you want to do.

@Lania, the fact this formatting guideline isn't complete doesn't really matter. It is redundant to have a different guideline for each kind of item, and it's the kind of thing that would only lead to a long discussion about minutiae and also confuse new users. We should adopt here the same approach applied to policies - instead of trying to codify each little detail and become lost in small things that don't really matter, we should make a clear, centralized and concise guideline that helps when trying to format all items, regardless of type. The longer people keep editing this article, the more likely we will have people unwilling to try a different and better system, just because they would rather keep the familiar system they have worked so much on.

However, I give up. There's no way I could keep a productive discussion with a sysop trying to stomp it away. Erasculio 02:30, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Uh... you were the one trying to bulldoze here by attempting to force the formatting guidelines to fit your vision for them. I'm saying we should let Torrenal and everyone else develop them how they want, and we'll see what happens as they grow organically. There's no urgency to "nip it in the bud" as you are implying. —Dr Ishmael 03:01, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

@Eras: Please don't make it sound like the lone sysop (Dr ish) participating in this discussion is the only one disagreeing with you. From what I can tell in this discussion, no one except you is opposed to let the guideline mature. If it turns out that we don't need it then I am sure Torrenal, and the other editors will slap a delete tag on it. But, at this point the number of items, and the different properties in each type of item is a lot more complicated than we expected for GW2, which may make a single item formatting guideline page to encompass every item type to turn into a monster page which likely will be neither concise or easy to use. But no one can really know at this point what will and will not work and that's the whole point of a collaborative creative process to try to find what works best and what most people will like to see. What harm is there for some exploratory guidelines that several editors feel is worth pursuing? --Lania 18:53, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

My two cents, and then I'll shut up for this topic as I think benefits nobody to keep it rolling. This is a wiki. An electronic document where you can nest content, cross-link content, cross-reference, sort, etc, etc, and otherwise make it such that when you want to know how to do x, that is exactly what you get presented, and changes to one sub-type of content (say quotes) get automatically propagated to all pages that reference them. All without using a single massive document that doesn't even sort... That's not really the true picture, however - looked at another way, the wiki IS your single massive document, we are just looking to organize it into smaller pages, just like your massive document on paper would be split into individual pages as well. Torrenal 01:34, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Weapon stats & Weapon skins

It seems we need to take a moment, and step outside the ❑ box.

Near as I can tell, GW2 weapon stats and weapon skins are two entirely different things. To the point in fact that they gave us transmutation stones, letting us take the stats from one weapon and combine them with the skin of another weapon. I also suspect (can't prove, but I'm sure some data diving will) that weapons will come 'perfect', modified only by their level and quality. Eg: A white weapon has poor stas, a gold weapon has good stats. Put another way, I don't think the individual weapon pages really need any stats based content. The weapon skins can be obtained from multiple sources (a merchant sells the steam greatsword, lvl 80, or you can get one (lvl 35) to drop in the Ascalon catacombs). The level of those weapons pertains directly to the stats, but they are still steam greatswords. But my steam greatsword (lvl 35) does not match the steam greatsword listed for sale by the merchant, nor does it match the Steam Greatsword listed in our wiki.

I propose that we split weapon content at the skin. Make documents for the skins and where to obtain which skins. Make a small subset of documents to cover the weapon mechanics, including their stats, how the weapon level and quality modifies those stats, and what modifiers there are (insignia, etc) to give weapons varied qualities in combat. Torrenal 01:56, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

I think crafted weapons will always have the same stats, won't they? Or will they scale to the level of the character using them? I don't know enough about crafting yet... Anyway, for weapons that are crafted, can you obtain non-crafted versions as drops or from merchants? If there's no overlap, that's great - crafted weapons have stats, non-crafted weapons don't. If there is overlap, then there should be a way of documenting the default crafted stats while making it clear that non-crafted versions are random. —Dr Ishmael 02:51, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

perhaps I'm being optimistic. I half expect every weapon to be max for its level+rarity. May be good to confirm that directly. Be that the case or not, I would not be surprised if crafted gear finds itself available from other sources. Or if some gear (crafted or otherwise) is unique. If it has a unique origin, by all means show the stats. If its got more than one origin, show the origin specific stats with where it was created. My current project is aiming to do just that for merchants, by creating a standard layout that is (I think) easy for users to contribute using, which can embed information into SMW (I think), and covers the significant weapon attributes (bonuses, sigils, level, rarity). Torrenal 16:10, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Weapon Power Equation

That I can tell, Weapon power values fit a N=P(X,Y) format, where the low and high bounds for a given weapon type (dagger, sword, hammer, etc) for a given grade (common, fine, masterwork, rare, etc) and level (0-80) are constant.

• At low levels, reducing the weapon level by 1 reduces these numbers by roughly 2%, however the power does not neatly fit either a power curve or an exponential curve (perhaps they fit one with an offset
• Blue grade weapons are roughly 12/13ths the strength of a green weapon.
• White weapons are roughly 4/5ths the strength of a blue weapon.

Post beta, it occurrs to me that I could have trolled the marketplace to get a fairly complete set of weapon and armor values... The most complete set of numbers I have is for blue tridents:

Level	Low Power	High Power
5	148	163
6	150	166
10	165	183
11	169	187
15	184	204
16	188	208
20	206	228
22	216	238

However, whatever equation that fits them will also need to fit Gold tridents, with a level 80 high value of 886, and 417 at 49 and 375 at 35. I can find equations that satisify one set or the other, but have failed to find any that fit both. :/ Perhaps some math wis can beat me at it. —Torrenal 01:52, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

General weapon pages

I am pretty dissatisfied with the state of the general weapon pages such as warhorn or sword, but there doesn't seem to be a formatting page detailing how they should be formatted and this is the closest place I could find for relevant discussion. At the moment it really feels like you have to click through multiple links to find out what any of these weapons do in terms of what skills they grant, etc. This makes it pretty difficult when you are trying to work out what various weapon types will actually do. I am aware that pages such as list of warrior skills exist, but this seems clumsy and counter-intuitive and I know I went to all the weapon pages first. As such, I would like to propose that these pages are reformatted to match something like this.

Admittedly my coding is horrible and I have 3 separate dpl calls, so it would be great if someone could do it better, but now I feel like the page gives you an at-a-glance overview which is more useful for someone who doesn't understand what the various skills do and I feel that such a person is much more likely to come to the weapon page. Does anyone have any thoughts or a better implementation? Misery 13:24, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I'd favor tables that match the profession skill lists in format. Not something I see happening with DPL, to be honest, but it's a finite number of skills, keeping the lists current won't be much effort.—Torrenal 13:57, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I simplified your DPL to a single call(stupid wiki errors, my edit didn't save, but you did exactly what I intended) - weapon skills are categorized by weapon, so we can leverage that on weapon pages. Otherwise, I like it. We could also combine the skills into a single table like on List of downed skills to make the presentation more compact. —Dr Ishmael 14:01, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Updated as per Dr ishmael's suggestions after one major derp. Should have used show preview. Any thoughts on whether there should be a cache warning or not?

@Torrenal: What do you mean? It does match that format, which uses dpl at the moment. Misery 14:15, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Also, while I am here and have people looking at this, does it look extremely weird to anyone else that the skill entries are left aligned and the column headings center aligned? It does my head in trying to work out where the types line up with the type column. I suspect it should all be left aligned, but I don't want to go and do a change like that on so many pages without hearing what someone else has to say. Misery 14:22, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

That's standard format for any table - headers are bold and centered, data is right/left/center-aligned per the data type (text usually left, numbers usually right). Your problem might be that our "new" tables don't have any vertical cell borders. Of course, it's been mentioned somewhere that the skill tables don't really need a header row at all, since the data is fairly self-explanatory.

For the section headers inside the table, they need to be level 4 to match the CSS rules I wrote for them. —Dr Ishmael 14:30, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

With the headers, that was just me miscounting and then figuring it looked wrong because of some weird caching issue. All fixed now. Yeah I noticed that the alignment was never specifically defined when I went back and looked at the wikicode, so I guess that isn't changing any time soon unless it bothers a lot of people and someone wants to change all the tables on the wiki. Ok, I'm pretty happy with how it looks right now, but I might leave it a while to see if anyone objects or wants to change anything else as it potentially involves a fair bit of work, although mostly copy + paste I will grant. I guess the formatting for these pages was never specifically defined as the number is fairly limited and new weapon types should not come up frequently. Would it be worth adding a note to this page about the general weapon type pages, whichever direction we decide to go? Misery 14:38, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

You have to admit it's a lot less work than the old skill table format, no? :) I don't think it's necessary to note this format for weapon-type pages since, like you said, the number of pages is small, and they're already completely documented. When they add a new weapon type, the format can be copied from an existing weapon type article. Formatting guidelines like this are intended for the more detailed pages where certain parameters/sections aren't used on all pages, making it necessary to have one location where all possibilities are documented together. —Dr Ishmael 15:23, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, sure, the only difference is someone already did all that work ^_________^ Misery 15:34, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Non-dpl option

A table such as: Table commented out as unnecessary and containing dpl calls.

Which wouldn't require dpl, but looks horrificly ugly. I am being a little disingenuous as all of those templates use dpl, it just wouldn't be called on the page itself. Maybe someone would rather try and fix that up, otherwise I am still for my implementation from earlier. Misery 15:34, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Because every one of those {skill *} templates encapsulates a separate DPL call, that kind of table design is much less efficient. Using a single DPL call per page is best (until we get SMW, anyway). —Dr Ishmael 15:57, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Start of changeover

I have some time today and no one objected overnight, so I am going to start converting pages. If anyone else wants to help, my progress can be found here to prevent overlap. I am not sure how to handle environmental weapons yet as most of those pages are stubs and I am not convinced the relevant skill pages have been made in all cases yet, but all of that will likely be sorted after launch. Misery 09:07, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

All inventory based weapons are done. Misery 13:36, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Stats in infobox vs quotation

e.g. Ravaging Glyphic Longblade. It's odd to have the strength stat (362–400 in this case) in the infobox when the precision/condition damage stats are in the quotation. I'd prefer to have them both in the quotation part, since the game puts them together (thus utilising a format players are already familiar with), and also because infoboxes aren't the first thing I see when I visit a page, the top of the page is.

I'd also prefer to put the level and to a lesser extent the value there too, but these aren't as important as the strength bit. What do you think? pling 16:18, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with this. However, it leads to the bigger issue that weapon stats scale with the weapon's level and quality, and the attribute bonuses depend on the weapon's prefix, and the example you linked demonstrates all of that perfectly. The Glyphic Longblade is really just a skin that can drop with various prefixes, at various levels, and at various qualities. We need to come up with a way to structure "weapon skin" articles in a way that makes this obvious and provides links to page(s) with details on the prefixes and scaling mechanics. We have item nomenclature, but it probably should be expanded.

I really should've been doing this from day –3, but starting tonight I'm going to record the stats on every weapon I see so that we can figure out the scaling formulas. I'll set up a Google spreadsheet where everyone can input their data.

Getting back to the original point, for crafted and cultural weapons (and any others that always spawn with static statistics), yes, it would work much better to have all the stats in the same place, that place being the description. —Dr Ishmael 18:19, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Item tags

Seeing how you can copy and paste item tags like [&AgHedwAA] . Wouln't it be nice to have a parameter in the infobox for it? It would come really in handy, specially for legendaries. MithTalk 02:33, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

See the discussion here. In short, the asset ID that the code represents would be much more useful within the wiki, and creating the chat link is a simple base-64 encoding of the asset type and ID, which we can do on-the-fly. Poke is working on some code for handling all this, and Malacon has already set up a page collecting all 18,000 item IDs. —Dr Ishmael 03:08, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Weapon family pages

→ moved from Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:General formatting

Template:Weapon set nav links to the singular of the weapon family name, but some pages are at the plural location (triggering a redirect from the top of the nav). I suggest we move all plural family names to singular ones (i.e. the dark blue table). + then create the remaining navs (i.e. the brown table)

1 Singular + has nav already
Adamant Guard weapon Bandit weapon Carrion Flame weapon Carrion Verdant weapon Corrupted weapon Dragon's Deep weapon Dredge weapon Ebon Vanguard weapon Godskull weapon Golden Wing weapon Inquest weapon Kodan weapon Lionguard weapon Molten weapon Mystic weapon Nightmare weapon Royal Ascalonian weapon	Ogre weapon Pact weapon Peacemaker's weapon Pearl weapon Penetrating Krytan weapon Pirate weapon Priory weapon Priory's Historical Weapon PvP Makeshift weapon redirecting from Makeshift weapon Ravaging Steam weapon Seraph weapon Simple weapon Traveler's Aureate weapon Whisperer weapon Wolfborn weapon Vigil's Honor weapon

It seems the pages with plural titles use Category:Weapon navigation templates but are not listed under Category:Weapon sets. (Weapons in the latter category seem to use singular category names + weapon family pages) --Chieftain Alex 13:10, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Anything that standardizes is good. —Dr Ishmael 14:09, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm inclined to edit the nav of each weapon set to categorise the weapon into the appropriate weapon set... currently many weapons have sub-categories of Category:Weapon sets manually added to the bottom of articles so it only seems natural to include them in the nav templates when adding them. (hopefully one edit per page.) Chieftain Alex 15:45, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

On second thoughts I'm overwhelmed by the category tree for weapons, I had been thinking of:

• Category:Weapon sets
  • Category:Cultural weapons
    • Category:Adamant Guard weapons

but the weapon navs currently categorise directly into Category:Cultural weapons and I'm honestly not sure I want to go fucking with the categories everywhere. Chieftain Alex 16:02, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about the hierarchy of the categories, just make sure each weapon page gets into the correct category for that weapon set. The hierarchy can be rearranged later. —Dr Ishmael 16:20, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Ok all the current navs have been set to correctly categorise all pages they are used on. I'll leave setting up the other navs until another time. Chieftain Alex 19:22, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Apart from {{Tier 1 crafted weapons nav}}, where I don't know what category to tag the items as, the task is complete. Each family is now singular, has its own nav, and has its own category. Chieftain Alex 22:09, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Weapon families — pt 2

It has been suggested that the prefix that has been attached to several of the weapon families and weapon pages themselves be removed. (similar to if we had a "Zealous" prefix in gw1, we wouldn't store a chaos axe under the page "Zealous Chaos Axe") This might apply to the following weapon families:

Current title	Move to...
Carrion Verdant weapons Ravaging Glyphic weapons Carrion Flame weapons Ravaging Steam weapons Penetrating Krytan weapons Traveler's Aureate weapons Mending Shiverpeak weapons Shaman's Norn weapons	Verdant weapons Glyphic weapons Flame weapons Steam weapons Krytan weapons Aureate weapons Shiverpeak weapons Norn weapons

This would likely mean that we have pages laid out like Steel Axe - with a table to indicate the effects of different prefixes. I would also like to propose that we limit the font weight to only be bold once (i.e. not like this) - this would require editing the item icon template to not self link if being used on its own page. --Chieftain Alex 14:13, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Dual Bounding

Arenanet has recently added new weapons and items that are bound on use as well as account bound. Where can we edit the templates to allow for multiple bounding options? Shimpchip talk 00:42, 21 November 2012 (UTC)

Use of {{item icon}} in crafting table rows

Like this, I'm not a fan of the superweight bold as I said above. Also it needlessly repeats an icon which has already appeared at the top of the page and in the "generic ingredients equation" above the table. thoughts on removing it like in my example? -Chieftain Alex 22:26, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

fine/masterwork combo pages - new templates

This will eventually apply to armor and trinkets as well, but since we don't have a central "Equipment formatting" page and it's only enabled on weapons right now, let's discuss here.

Nearly all level 15+ renown heart NPCs, as well as some other merchants, offer equipment in pairs of fine/masterwork variants. Let's use Seraph Soldier Tripp as our example. In most cases, the f/m variants have the same name (aside from a rune or sigil suffix on the masterwork one), which led to the wiki documenting them on the same page, e.g. Seraph-Issue Greatsword. The obvious problem there is the dual infobox - not only does it look dumb, it's also inefficient in terms of wikicode, since you have to enter all parameters in both infobox templates, even when the values are the same (weapon type, level, icon, binding).

The ideal solution is to have a single infobox so you only have to enter the shared data once, then have a second template to display the differences, and that's what I've done with the templates Template:Item stat lookup fm and Template:Fm table. The first one builds continues the work of Template:Item stat lookup that is called from the infobox by populating additional variables specifically for rarity values of fine and masterwork. It gets called within the second template, which is used to enter the differing data for the variants (upgrade component, cost, game ID).

Live demos are on Magister's Staff and Modniir Baton.

What does everyone think? An obvious improvement would be to hide the Strength (and Defense) and Rarity entries in the infobox, but that code is already somewhat complex (rarity is in a subtemplate, even) and I didn't want to mess with it yet. Any other feedback is welcome. —Dr Ishmael 18:17, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Technically, good. Appearance-wise, its got double bold weight in the header poke fixed as I was previewing it. I don't like how the prefix stats column is indented, we could use a div to move it left a bit, or we could indent everything else. and now I've purged my cache its ok. -Chieftain Alex 18:34, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I definitely prefer it like this. One thing that bugs me a bit is that the colored text for the f/m names. While the green is okay-ish, the light-blue is hard to read. (Note that I removed the double-bold effect as that was just terrible). poke | talk 18:34, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Btw. anyone else has this problem with f/m always being female/male inside the head? poke | talk 18:35, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, the coloured headings are awkward to read. We could possibly switch the rows and columns, and put the type on a white background (still pretty meh for contrast between fine and white) -Chieftain Alex 18:36, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I think the column format works best, because the data is presented similar to how it is in-game. It could be worse: on GW2W.DE, they have a complete table for each variant (de:Verbeulter cathanischer Kelch) with redundant labels.

Formatting assistance is very welcome. I've been wondering whether we should modify the RGB values we use for rarity colors to make them more visible, or maybe adding some CSS to give them drop-shadows or something so they're readable on any background. I don't have a clue where to start on any of that, though. —Dr Ishmael 19:05, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Not to partypoop, I don't like having {{Item stat lookup fm}} and {{fm table}} for the special case of karma items where the level is the same. It acts as a hotfix. Quick searching tells me this won't work for Blood Legion Shield (Level 15) and Blood Legion Shield (Level 5). The only parameter you can remove is the armor type for generating the tables. We want the flexibility to generate columns for any level and rarity anyways. I have no doubt we'll be making subojects for each weapon version. We can generalize this to level1, rarity1...level2, rarity2... parameters until we get #arraymaps.--Relyk ~ talk > 23:48, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

The entire point is that it's specific to karma items. They constitute a special class of equipment that almost always comes in pairs. No other source of equipment is anything like that, and I think we should make it obvious by formatting them differently.

Generating rows is easy, because you can call the base lookup between each row - you don't need the values you used in the last row anymore, so you overwrite all the variables. You can't do that when they're in columns like this. —Dr Ishmael 23:56, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

The Blood Legion Shield I linked to is a renown heart item, the level 15 being the f/m. Do you want to disambig by "<x> (renown heart)" to follow this approach? We can disambig ascended like Triforge Pendant/Triforge Pendant (ascended) because ascended weapons are innately different and not bother with Basic Sword. In that case, we would only have to address this special case. When you generalize it, you would do "#var:<variable> <level> <rarity>" for each call to {{Item stat lookup}}. It should be feasible to create a general template to work off of...--Relyk ~ talk > 00:40, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) rarity=unspecified seems misleading. Why can't that read "fine or masterwork" or something along those lines? Same for for the "unused upgrade slot," since the upgrade slot is used for the mw version. Otherwise, looks fine masterwork to me. 75.37.20.51 01:09, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I addressed that: "An obvious improvement would be to hide the Strength (and Defense) and Rarity entries in the infobox"

@Relyk: Sorry, I overlooked those links. Yes, obviously, if different levels of items exist with the same name that are sold by different NPCs, they should be split by level, like the Blood Legion Shields. —Dr Ishmael 01:19, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Looks ugly but it works. The semantic of showing strength (defense if shield) is because all weapons have those properties and needed to be defined. We only need to define rarity and level, so we can hide those parameters as they are only overrides. We still need to show rarity and level as needing to be specified. We can use the "varies" keyword to hide rarity as needed.--Relyk ~ talk > 03:27, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Level shouldn't be required, either: Bronze Axe really shouldn't display Rarity or Level, because they are not common properties of the individual items described on the page. Showing "Varies" is just as useless as showing "Unspecified." —Dr Ishmael 03:58, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

For default item parameter, level is already hidden by default, the weapon infobox sets the value to 0. And use varies to hide the rarity, not display "varies". All that good stuff.--Relyk ~ talk > 07:06, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

By requires, I'm talking about having a value for the parameters versus omitting them. For items with more than one version, the varies keyword would be the flag to hide them rather than omitting the parameter, which can indicate that the value is just missing.--Relyk ~ talk > 07:23, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

But if I put level = varies, that makes it display "Level | Varies" which defeats the purpose. —Dr Ishmael 12:37, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Naming with suffix?

So, i was looking through some of the Jeweler pages, and I noticed that Exquisite Ruby Jewel had some broken image links, but the images were there. Digging a little deeper, it looks like an issue between Ruby Orichalcum Earring and [[Ruby Orichalcum Earring of the Berserker]]. So, there's a bit of redundancy here, but which is correct? --JonTheMon (talk) 17:30, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Ruby Orichalcum Earring, most crafted equipment doesn't come with an upgrade component. Jewelry happens to be an exception. It follows the same semantic that you can replace the upgrade component and therefore including the suffix is pointless. We can leave the recipe item name as "Ruby Orichalcum Earring of the Berserker" on the Ruby Orichalcum Earring article. Or have an upgrade slot parameter to indicate the crafted item comes with an upgrade component.--Relyk ~ talk < 19:51, 2 June 2013 (UTC)

Screenshot guidelines

After a discussion via Twitter today, I think it may be time to revisit our weapon article screenshot guidelines. My goal here is not necessarily to alter those guidelines, but at the very least we will have documented rationale that we can point to if it comes up again. So with that in mind, the proposed change is to move from screenshots of characters in their underwear holding weapons to screenshots of the "Weapon Only" preview screen. It's worth noting that Weapon Only is a fairly recent feature and was not available when the bulk of our screenshots were taken. I'm going to attempt to list what we'd gain and what we'd lose with this change; this isn't a perfect list by any means, but it's a starting point.

• Gains

1. Consistency- Weapon Only screenshots will be more or less uniform, lighting will always be the same, no potentially varying character models.
2. No distractions- Weapon will always be the absolute focus of the screenshot, there's literally nothing else in the window.
3. Easy production- Choose weapon from wardrobe, select Weapon Only, rotate, take screenshot. No mess, no fuss.
4. No possible perception of impropriety (i.e. boobs and butts)- One's initial reaction might be to scoff at the suggestion, but I've seen it come up multiple times now, particularly with the current charged environment in gaming and the game industry. As the official wiki, we can't ignore that our content may reflect on Guild Wars 2 and on ArenaNet in ways that we didn't intend or expect.

• Losses

1. Extra work- We'd have to replace virtually every current weapon screenshot. This is somewhat mitigated by Gain #3 above, but it's still going to be a number of hours for anyone who takes on the task. Additionally, User:Chiubi from the German wiki has been working on producing consistent weapon skin screenshots for some time now and it would be a shame to waste that effort.
2. Lower quality, smaller size- To my knowledge, the Preview window cannot be scaled, so there is a hard cap on image resolution. Furthermore, some weapons are actually too large to fit in the Preview window (e.g. Phoenix Greatsword Skin) and would be partially cut off.
3. No sense of scale or location- Without a character model to compare to, it can be difficult to tell how large or small a weapon is, and it can also be useful to know how a character holds or grasps a specific weapon.
4. Particle effects- Some weapons do not displace their particles in Preview, such as the Royal Ascalonian weapons at night. We would need character model screenshots to show those particles, which would mean mixed styles of screenshots on some articles.

That's all I can think of at the moment, folks. I welcome and anticipate your input. 03:15, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Use a male model instead of a female. I guarantee that would eliminate all complaints about "underwear". Stupid sexism.

To be constructive: the weapon preview sucks. You're correct, it can't be resized at all. A significant portion of greatswords, staves, and rifles get cut off. And the lack of particle effects is a huge loss.

One thing that hasn't really ever been mentioned is uMod, the next-gen TexMod. It could be used to replace all of the character model's textures with transparent textures. —Dr Ishmael 04:20, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Is that something you could automate, or would it simply be taking screenshots normally with an invisible dude? 05:13, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree that we should do something but determining what that something is will be a bit difficult. The preview screen is unfortunately not of much help. In addition to the reduced size and the missing particle effects (which some weapons are solely defined by) the display quality is also reduced.

The uMod idea is certainly good but I’m not sure if that would really work. But it’s certainly worth a try. We could then provide a texture pack that “invisiblies” the naked character so people could just prepare everything, activate the texture change and make the screenshots.

However, it still does not really solve all problems. The point of the screenshots with the weapon on the back is meant to give both an idea about the size of the weapon in comparison to the character, as well as to show how it’s stored and might conflict with back pieces etc. (although those naked screenshots do not help there at all).

So maybe, we could determine some “standard armor” that has minimum distractions and works for different characters without adding a thought of sexism. I think the Ascalonian Performer armor, the Embroidered armor, or the Student armor would work well. Especially the human male design has little distractions. We could then add a rule to disable shoulders and gloves, and require a single (plain) dye on all pieces to produce a consistent design. poke | talk 09:43, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Btw. reading de:Diskussion:Waffengalerie, the screenshots were created on a test server with access to all skins. So if we end up creating them all again, maybe we could reuse that offer, making it a bit easier to end up with consistent screenshots. poke | talk 09:49, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

To provide a texture pack for anyone to use, you'd have to find every single hairdo texture for every race and gender. I don't really know how body textures work, but there are probably multiple combinations there too, especially for charr and asura spot/stripe patterns. I primarily suggested uMod in connection with the test-server usage (which I was already aware of), i.e. only have to alter the textures for a single character model that you use for all screenshots.

I still think that just using a male model would satisfy these hyper-sensitive people. I don't recall anyone ever complaining about our previous crafted-weapon screenshots like this one (well, complaining about the "nearly nude" norn man; I think someone did complain about the orangish lighting). Or use a charr, there can't be anything distracting about a naked charr. Oh wait... furries. Although I doubt they'd actually complain...

Anytime you allow armor, you have to specify a list of extra restrictions and guidelines to go along with it - as you've already done. Complicated guidelines like that are also difficult for people to follow - "naked male" is astronomically simpler than "only armor set A/B/C with dyes X/Y/Z". —Dr Ishmael 14:10, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Sigh. try this - NWS, but only to the people who are making this a problem in the first place. I guess it would be too much work for ANet to provide a bland, featureless outfit purely for screenshotting? — snograt 14:47, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

My objection to requiring specific armor sets or specific character types is that it raises the barrier of entry for readers who see a weapon page without a screenshot and say "Hey, I have this weapon." It's a fairly weak objection though, because in the past typically those people won't find the formatting guides anyway, and we eventually replace the screenshots when we can. 15:52, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

At least there's not so much revert-warring these days, with people replacing screenshots for one of their awesome character. A nice little toggle to display a character as an unskinned entity would be nice - although all screenshots would then look like the Blue Man Group. — snograt 16:04, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Oh boy. Okay. It seems this is a bigger issue since this is the second time we've had this complaint, and it is time it's addressed more seriously. The "weapon only" idea is bad because, as they have said before me, it lacks in proper effects, quality and has absolutely no color neutrality. I'm assuming that the biggest complaint is that the galleries themselves appear sexist, as their main function appears to be eye candy rather than do the proper job of showing a weapon. Like I've said before, female humans offer the most quality while not having any "extra" stuff that would otherwise obscure the weapon itself - such as fur, branches (looking at you, sylvari) or tattoos. I somewhat agree with Ish, replacing the female aspect of the screenshots with a male human could solve the problem, but that just feels like bandaging it in order to silence the complaints.

Compare the gallery of warhorns with gallery of foci. Chiubi & team used a male model for warhorns (for some reason), and the guy's abs and legs can be seen in the screenshot, while the foci themselves have no visible parts that could be connected with the female gender. Now, if we replaced the entire galleries with men, would it solve the problem?

Then again, the decision to create all of the galleries using the female model wasn't our decision, the german wiki decided it. I'd like to hear their reasoning behind it, since I don't recall the other wikis being directly involved in the making of the screenshots.

As much as it was tedious to upload 19 galleries of weapons for me, if the GW2 community doesn't like it - it calls for a change, because this wiki serves the community. It clearly is offensive enough to be labeled as "sexist", especially when the wiki gets its complaints directly from Twitter, and other sources - heard a few complaints in game, mostly from girls while guys tried to defend it and labeling it as "hot" or similar. The wiki should definitely stray away from inciting that sort of content and it makes me wonder - like the person on twitter mentioned, did the distracting armor get replaced with distracting characters? --Ventriloquist 18:24, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

It seems like we generally agree that the Weapon Only preview won't provide sufficient quality. If we have access to this test server, what about using a human female wearing the Cook's Outfit? It's very plain and simple, with the possible exception of that spatula, and can be equipped by any armor class so we can use it for every weapon. 19:17, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Dyed or just using the default? The spatula could prove to be an issue when dealing with smaller weapons, such as daggers or scepters; some weapons are also quite dark, for example Orrian weapons, and unless we plan to dye the entire outfit in a certain color, it could get mixed in with the darker areas of the outfit. I do like the idea of using an outfit, though. --Ventriloquist 20:03, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

How would it look dyed white? I don't know what's possible in this test server. For a lot of one-handed weapons (everything except scepter?) we can use a class that can equip it in the offhand, so the spatula will be hidden. 20:06, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) "replacing ... with a male ... just feels like bandaging it in order to silence the complaints." If the offended people are offended because of the female aspect of the "nearly-nude female model," then it is not a bandage, it's exactly the solution that's needed. Without understanding why they are offended, we're just making assumptions about what the best solution would be, so I took the initiative of posing this question to the Twitter convo.

"the foci themselves have no visible parts that could be connected with the female gender" Uh... I think I have to disagree with that statement. —Dr Ishmael 20:15, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

The thing is, someone could complain about that as well. "Why is the entire gw2 weapon gallery naked guys?", or something like that. I think we should find a solution that has the least amount of offending content to it, as well as being the most neutral one. Switching up the genders, while (likely) fixing the sexist claims could easily be turned around in some people's heads. As for the foci, I knew you'd put those examples, but the truth is that the majority of "small weapons" are (for the most part) neutral. Show this example to people and they won't be able to make out the gender (not including the super detectives that will notice the hand size). If the entire gallery of weapons could be displayed in the same way, be it with outfits or something else, that'd be great. --Ventriloquist 20:33, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

My original point in mentioning "sexism" in the first place is that no one is going to complain about men in boxers. I guarantee it. That's what makes situations like this sexist - people cry "Exploitation!" when it's a woman, but "Meh" when it's a man. —Dr Ishmael 20:49, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Regardless of your opinion as to whether such complaints are valid, I think you'd agree that men in boxers wouldn't be an improvement over the current situation. Try to approach this discussion not as "let's shut up the whiners," but as "how can we make weapon screenshots better, while also addressing people's concerns?" 21:22, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) When you have people complaining about this armor or even this as oversexualized for guys, it's possible. It makes guys feel "uncomfortable", same for women who see every single weapon coupled with a boob shot. We shouldn't mask one problem with another one, we should find a new solution that doesn't leave room for offensive interpretation. --Ventriloquist 21:26, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Alright, fine, I'll stop crusading. :/ But if we're going to use an outfit, then why does it still have to be a female? (Felix: "using a human female wearing the Cook's Outfit?") And why human? If you used a max-height male norn, the weapons would scale to their largest possible size, which I would think we'd prefer for screenshots that are supposed to show off the weapon's details.

I think the cook's outfit is a terrible choice because it's so bulky. What about the Ancestral Outfit? It's much less bulky and doesn't have spatulas hanging off the hips. —Dr Ishmael 21:37, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I've looked through all of the outfits and that one does seem best, if we ignore the dragon-y parts, that is. I agree with the race/gender part, a max-height, bald-headed norn could show the weapon much more clearly while not being distracting with hair and such. However, I think the Ancestral outfit has a dragon accessory on its back that, when dyed pure white, appears as silver, and isn't hidden well. --Ventriloquist 21:40, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Ventriloquist said human females are best for screenshots because of fur, branches, etc. If using an outfit makes those things not matter, then we don't need to use human females. 21:42, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

If we're going to use male norn, I think Shadow Assassin would be more suitable than Ancestral. It's form-fitting and appears to dye uniformly, and with the headpiece disabled it shouldn't have any dangly bits. And also it's not weird-ass pajamas. 21:45, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) That argument is valid for only the "weirder" races, the humanized ones are still the best option. Back when Poke mentioned the first complaint, norns were a bad choice because of their bulky underwear, but since we're no longer trying to show naked models, it's irrelevant. It's either human or norn, as they don't have any protrusions from their body that could obscure an image. --Ventriloquist 21:49, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I have no relevance here, but I just wanted to say that wow the galleries look great when they all use the same location/wielder (I'd noticed Ventriloquist uploading lots but hadn't realised that all the images had been updated). Nice job these german wiki folk did, and thanks to Ventriloquist so we can benefit from their endeavours. -Chieftain Alex 21:49, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't agree with requiring an outfit. Having an outfit doesn't provide any advantages over using underwear models. Most prominently, such a requirement makes adding images more difficult for editors. Someone finding models in underwear offensive is not a legitimate concern nor should we treat it as one; don't fix what isn't broke. I'm not sure the size of the hand is a significant enough difference to prefer on model over the other.--Relyk ~ talk < 23:25, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree Relyk, but we've been overruled by political correctness. So I guess these images will have to go, too. /sarcasm —Dr Ishmael 00:58, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

"Someone finding models in underwear offensive is not a legitimate concern nor should we treat it as one..." This might sound harsh, but how can you say that? The fact that someone felt uncomfortable and offended enough to post the complaint on Twitter, directly to the wiki's communication channel says it's an issue enough. A couple of days ago, an IP commented on this image with just "Dat". Any clue what they were trying to say? And trust me, it wasn't because the rifle itself was appealing...

We shouldn't ignore a complaint just because we don't think it's worthy of one. Putting your personal opinions of something and seeing it from a different angle and maybe trying to see what *is* actually offensive could be beneficial, especially when the problem itself lies in the readers' way of interpreting the images.

The complaint should not fall on deaf ears, it makes us look ignorant and careless about the wiki's content and its readers. --Ventriloquist 07:54, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

This argument is, sadly, pointless. Sure, the majority of us broadminded folk don't have a problem with underwear-clad fantasy models. However, as long as there are people who do have a problem with it, we have to respect their sensibilities to an extent. The only useful topic of discussion here is: to what extent. — snograt 15:39, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Just wanted to throw in my 2ct as i was pointed to this discussion on IRC: the statement about maybe "women feel objectified" of this was stated by a guy on twitter - he didn't say that he felt offended. The current discussion has all male participants - i wonder what women think about that - so if you really want to change something, you should maybe ask the ladies on GW2W first. Changing the screenshots to all male models instead would just support the misogynist movement which is currently cooking up on the web, i guess. --Smiley™ de: user | talk 15:53, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't believe that only women can speak on behalf of women. Nonetheless, Ventriloquist mentioned that he's seen complaints in-game from women as well, so this isn't just an isolated incident from an armchair SJW. 16:16, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

It would be nice to receive more feedback from the community about this issue anyway, not just exclusively from men or women. --Ventriloquist 17:11, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

@Ventriloquist: Yes, we should ignore complaints if they don't support their position with reasonable arguments. I can go on Twitter and give my personal opinion all I want, but it does not mean the wiki is forced to listen and respond. The people who are arguing about sexism (such as Andrew on Twitter) are making a correlation between the number of images using female models and sexism on the wiki. This is a false correlation. The decision to use female models is based on community consensus, not, for example, a user uploading the images and pushing his or her own personal agenda on model preference.--Relyk ~ talk < 17:33, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

What decides if a complaint is or isn't valid? It's obvious that the german wiki team had no sexist intentions whatsoever, but sometimes people unknowingly do cause a certain level of offensiveness. Their intention was good, but unfortunately it came out as sexist to several people. This brings me to one of my previous comments, if people take something as offensive, why not go the "extra mile" to change it to something that couldn't be taken in any other way but good.

"...but it does not mean the wiki is forced to listen and respond." Yes, it does. The wiki should take any reasonable complaint in consideration - "is this content offensive?", "is this content presented in an acceptable fashion?" etc. If the community consensus was to use the female model for all images, and it was badly received, shouldn't that be reason enough to change it? --Ventriloquist 19:26, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

"It's obvious that the german wiki team had no sexist intentions whatsoever, but sometimes people unknowingly do cause a certain level of offensiveness."

You shouldn't mix up the german and english wikis. I've never heard anyone complaining about female toons displaying weapons on the german wiki or ingame (even gw1). In fact this is probably an american "problem", one of which feminism is all about: to treat females as humans, not as objects - america seems like still living in 19th century when it comes to this (from a german/european point of view).

"I don't believe that only women can speak on behalf of women." In this case this isn't true, sorry.

--Smiley™ de: user | talk 20:04, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I'm afraid you misunderstood me. The german wiki created all the images of the galleries, meaning they reached a consensus about using females for the weapon previews, not any other wiki. I didn't mean that the german wiki didn't complain about it, I meant that they were the ones that agreed on which model to use, not us. --Ventriloquist 20:12, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I meant the same, the readers didn't complain. If i remember correctly there was a consensus on the german gw1 wiki to use female models because of the tinier bodies, so that the weapons are better visible (someone may correct me if i'm wrong), but mostly that was the reason to also use female models on the gw2 wiki. --Smiley™ de: user | talk 20:44, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean now. The problem is, the complaints never came from the wiki community, only in-game or on other social platforms. None of the people that were aware of the changes being made have complained, as far as I know. At the end of the day, objective opinions are more important than subjective ones. --Ventriloquist 21:31, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Is there a list of all these "complaints"? I only saw a link to a tweet and it'd be useful to get some context around this discussion. Thanks! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:33, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm afraid nothing that can be actively tracked. I saw several discussions in Lion's Arch from people that felt uneasy with the entire gallery being just naked ladies, some posts on Tumblr (guild wars 2 tag, I think?), but these were all from a while ago and didn't really incite any discussions. There was also another Twitter complaint that Poke left on my userpage, but it has been delete since then. --Ventriloquist 21:39, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Quick message so everyone is aware: I'll be taking a deeper look at this discussion as soon as I can. I've explained here that I've worked with someone on these picture galleries. I'll be discussing with more people, gathering opinions and then thinking it over before I go back to you, but please do let me know if you have questions that need answers. Thank you --Stephane Lo Presti talk 21:06, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Stephane. It'd be great to see what the german wiki members that participated in the project have to say on the subject. --Ventriloquist 21:31, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Hey everyone. Seeing as I was the main point of contact and initiator of the project on the german wiki, I'd like to give a little insight. When brainstorming about ways for ArenaNet to help with improving wiki content, we were happy to find that there was a way of using a testing server to take images from an unlocked wardrobe. After working out the access details, I was able to use two testing accounts, together with Chiubi, to take pictures of all the weapons.

The choice of the character model and screenshot was entirely due to technical reasons. The requirements were simple: show as much detail of weapons with as little distraction as possible, distraction being clipping issues with the character, background and lighting choice. The locations - as was mentioned before - was intended to be the same for every image, and the spot in Lion's Arch we chose was one of the few that fit most criteria (at daytime). It was found by other members of the german wiki (among them, at least three female sysops) before the project started. The same applies to all the other criteria: The character model, her "nakedness", and gender were suggested or encouraged by the weapon and armor policy that existed for a long time, and there wasn't ever any problems associated with that choice. All images were taken using one or two characters (due to camera positioning, some weapon types required a "photographer"), then cropped and sent to Stephane for review (mostly due to the testing nature of the server and possibly leaking unreleased pictures). After confirmation, they were uploaded to the wiki. This amounts to work of 2-3 hours per weapon type, split between myself and Chiubi.

The topic of the choice of character model only came up once with Stephane: it was on the warhorn gallery, and I agreed with Stephane about his concerns over the camera perspective that was chosen for these pictures (you can try it out yourself by equipping a warhorn on a female character and try to replicate a good screenshot perspective), so that gallery was voluntarily retaken on a male model, just for comparison. I'd like to note that taking these pictures on a male character was much more time-consuming than the same on the female one due to several clipping problems in the fight pose with legs and hands of the model, which required exact timing of the image.

Seeing as I'm from germany as well, there is my personal observation that smiley already shared earlier: there are things that are absolutely fine in germany/europe, that are considered inappropriate in american culture, and vice versa, and the current situation seems to reflect this. I'm looking at this discussion and I can see the arguments, but I'm only trying to understand the reasonings, so please bear with me. If there's any additional questions, please ask, and I'll try to answer to my best. I can only repeat that there wasn't ever any intention of objectifying or sexualizing a certain character, and the choice was purely due to practices going back to the original german Guild Wars wiki, where also, no comment was ever made on the choice of character models. --Tera (talk) 10:58, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply. Like you said, the whole project was created to increase the quality of the wiki's content, that is dependent on the readers' feedback. Whenever there is a complaint from a group of people or just a handful, it should be taken seriously. I never had a doubt in my mind that the project's participants purposely expressed sexism, no way. Unfortunately, sometimes things may seem offensive in a certain way even if the original intention was something completely innocent. We should attempt to communicate and find a reasoning from the complaints that initiated this entire discussion; I see Felix sent the person on Twitter an e-mail, so we might get a reply there. --Ventriloquist 12:21, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I share the view of Tera and Smiley about this "problem" and i think this mainly american problem can only be fully satisfying solved by Arenanet by implementing a gender neutral mannequin/display dummy for this kind of pictures. Because you can't make everyone happy. There will be other things, beside the technical stuff, which some other people could complain about, regardless if you use a male model or this armor or that instead of the underwear. But to look further, what about the armor galeries and the kind of armors which show even more of the body than the normal under wear of the standard models, people could be offended, too. For this it's also up to Arenanet to implement only "fully closed" armors for male, female and other models. Maybe a special us version of gw2 could solve this entire thing, like blizzard did in wow in the past with the undead models in china, i think.--Dusk 03 (talk) 12:29, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

China has an actual law forbidding the depiction of... I forget exactly, but skulls and blood are definitely included, probably occult symbolism as well... in video games. That's why WoW and GW1/2 and other games all have to make special exceptions for China. The USA doesn't have any law against "nearly-nude" character models, so no game developer will ever create special "fully-clothed" versions of their games to cater to the overly sensitive crowd. —Dr Ishmael 14:01, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, then we need the first option i mentioned. I suggest one of the following to implement as a model into the game by arenanet this, this or this for Charr.--Dusk 03 (talk) 14:26, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Some do. Re: this whole topic though, ugh. There are occasionally serious issued that need to be addressed, and this isn't one. Considering the amount of work that already went into making the pics uniform and as much about the weapon as possible (even including an ArenaNet screening process!) it's ridiculous that we'd consider scrapping all of it because of some herpderp on twitter. The pics weren't made to be sexist, and that was made pretty clear by the german wiki editors who did all that work. The choice made was logical, practical and functional; discounting that, especially for reasons absent of logic, is patently ludicrous and shouldn't even be considered. At best we'd be doubling our efforts, at worst it would cost ArenaNet time and money to come up with some kind of middle ground so the sensitive skin of some twitter users doesn't get rubbed the wrong way while they're trying to view weapon skins for an online video game.

This is pretty much the textbook definition of attempting to fix something that ain't broke. Utter waste of time. -Auron 14:31, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

(Making this small because it's off-topic, but I feel it's important to share this general information.) That example actually does have a juridical basis - child pornography laws. Merely updating the characters' ages may have been seen as insufficient, since the characters still look very young, so Square took the extra step of modifying the outfits. Also, that game was originally released in Japan, where there are hardly any laws besides "don't show pubic hair," and was being ported to Europe; GW2 was designed and released specifically for the West.

On-topic: Auron nails it yet again. Knowing that it took 2-3 hours per weapon type (thanks to Tera), and knowing that "taking these pictures on a male character was much more time-consuming", that would be a minimum of 57 hours that we'd be demanding of someone's time to re-make all of the images. I would not feel comfortable asking anyone to spend that much time to fix something that only a few people find "wrong" - especially when the problem is with those people, not the images, as Ventriloquist unwittingly explained: "the problem itself lies in the readers' way of interpreting the images." The readers (most clearly the Twitter guy, since he can't possibly be offended directly) chose to interpret the images offensively. And that's their choice. It's not something we can fix for them. —Dr Ishmael 15:18, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I must admit, I hadn't really taken the time and effort it would take to recreate the galleries in consideration when discussing the subject. I was more caught up in the fact that this is the second time the wiki's twitter was directly contacted regarding this issue, so I guess I wanted to prevent any further complaints. Unfortunately, it (clearly) isn't simple to recreate the entire project, and 57 hours seems like a tedious task to complete. As much as I'd like to silence every and any reasonable complaint that gets sent our way, I'm afraid this one would require too much work, with a result that could, possibly, offend more one day. I realize it might sound like I'm contradicting myself right now, but due to Tera's mention of the time it would take and with us having no real solution, it just seems like a dead end. I'm still quite interested in what Andrew had/has to say on the matter. --Ventriloquist 20:25, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't expect a response from Andrew at this point. I invited him to participate directly in this discussion multiple times and he has made it clear that he has no interest in the matter beyond voicing his complaint. 21:34, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

(Peanut gallery) If he can't be bothered fixing the problem that he believes that he has identified - or at least contributing to the discussion, then he can't think very much of said problem. -Chieftain Alex 21:50, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Not following through does not mean his complaint can be dismissed. This discussion seems to have died down for now, so let me share my thoughts here. First and foremost, I care about the reputation of this wiki and its contributors. When someone complains "Hey, you wiki folks are sexist" or "Hey, you're objectifying women," I will examine and address that complaint to the best of my ability. Of course I know there was no sexist or misogynistic intent behind the current guidelines for screenshots, but I also know that our best intentions do not always translate perfectly into reality. That being the case, I do consider the state the galleries are in right now to be problematic and I do not agree with the position that there's nothing we can or should do about it, but I also acknowledge that we have to weigh that problem against other concerns, such as quality, uniformity, and availability. If the community's consensus is that we cannot create sufficiently high quality screenshots while also addressing the complaints that the screenshots are too distracting or objectifying, either because it's practically impossible or because nobody is willing, then I will accept that with the hope that this can be revisited again if new options become available to us. - Felix Omni 16:34, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree that it's important to have principles, but I'm not sure if people realize the gap between their desires and the reality. As Tera explained (and I can vouch for this), this was an enormous amount of work. It sure impacts the perception of wikis, but I'm wondering if: 1) it's only about galleries, i.e. no one will complain if they only look at articles; and 2) what does the global wiki readership thinks, i.e. a few comments vs a large number of opinions. Would it be worth that one of you asks the question, for example via the Wiki twitter account (or even on reddit)? --Stephane Lo Presti talk 16:50, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Hey everyone. First a big thank to Tera for providing a lot information on this project and, once more, for the amount of work he and Chiubi did. Thanks to everyone for participating in this discussion too. I want to say that this discussion is NOT a waste of time from my perspective, as long as we don't focus on who brought the question to light. I'm a European and I work for ArenaNet, so I can legitimately say that this is NOT about differences between both sides of the Atlantic, please see this as a wider issue of sensitivity. We want GW2 to be fair to both genders in terms of representation and we're putting the same expectation on the official wiki, although we acknowledge that in practice it's a more complicated thing to do. I also see this as an opportunity to continue to raise the bar with the quality of the wiki (which is already very high) and to communicate. The latter is particularly important: both us and the editors, to make sure we're on the same page, but also the editors and the readers, so that they understand better what's in a wiki. Every time we engage with the community of readers, we strengthen the link and the position of the wiki. I've kept a link to this discussion in the hope that I can use it in the future to illustrate what goes "behind a wiki" and the thought process (consensus). Let me know if you have questions or comments. Thanks! --Stephane Lo Presti talk 17:03, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Weapon trails and animations

We would like to categorize all the weapons with animations and/or leave foot trails. This comes up since more weapons beside legendary weapons can leave trails now. This extends to other equipment but we can start with weapons.--Relyk ~ talk < 00:17, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

I was using the "Graphics" section used on legendaries. But you may want to give it a different name, like "visuals" or "Visual effects" or something. As long it's the same for all pages and it's obvious what it means, I'm fine with it. MithTalk 00:48, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

It'd be nice to finally have a list of these, since it's mentioned on reddit pretty often. Would it be a mere list including galleries, or a fleshed-out page describing each effect? --Ventriloquist 01:10, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Start with a category, "Weapons with visual effects", and go from there. I wouldn't think a list page would be all that useful or even be easy to assemble, as it would have to include a variable number of images per item, which would result in an irregular page structure. I think readers would be better served going to the individual pages, which are already formatted with the images and prose descriptions.

However, I think getting more GIFs of these items (like [[:File:Belinda's Greatsword (Imbued).gif|File:The Delaqua Family Blade.gif]]) would be a great way to enhance the wiki's documentation of these items. The difficult part is finding people who both know how to make them and are willing to dedicate their time to the task. —Dr Ishmael 04:20, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Why not include the community in this project? Posting to reddit or the forums could prove useful, since I'm sure some people would be more than happy to help, even if it is just creating a gif. Ventriloquist 12:05, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Reddit is a good place to find people to do things, yes. —Dr Ishmael 15:27, 8 February 2015 (UTC)