Races wiki page

[Tinker]

Wow, I've really upset you. Sorry about that, I had no intention of doing so.

[Lujo]

What's extra stupid in the whole situation is that I do think you're a great player with no false courtesy at all

[Blovski]

Here we go again.

Lujo, you've a lot to add and the forum would be worse for not having your mechanical insight but you do need to learn when to drop things. In this case Tinker's clarified her position in a respectful and reasonable manner and this sort of post (i.e. the one answering Disleckia) in response to a warning makes the forum less inviting for new posters and for old ones. If you can't answer something in a way that doesn't summon the banhammer, please, please try to leave it rather than worrying about defending yourself and your opinions to the nth degree, getting really personal (more so than anyone's been to you in this thread) and having the last word.

Back to topic:

I'm happy to do a sweep of the class pages for the sake of spelling and punctuation editing (a cursory look suggests there's a little that needs tweaking). While I'm there I'll look at any major omissions, archaisms or errors, while trying not to overload anything by making it too compendial. I'm tempted to suggest that the best thing from a class perspective is to start up a thread per class as I'm doing it, get feedback on any major omissions/points of dispute and then try to unite that into something agreeable to everyone (maybe plonk a link to the forum thread on the wiki page for further reading) and that way there'll be a more specific feedback mechanism to add new information or query stuff that's on there. Does that seem alright to everyone?

[Lujo]

Right!

Well, can I try to explain what I wanted to do with it? (so you know what you don't have to add? Because adding too much insight from too many perspecitves leads to accumulating text and the wiki not being easy to digest).

I wanted short paragraphs on a way you can play each race when the PQI sets you up with it, like, a very general way to approach to how you play the board when you get one of those, leaving all the nuances and subtilities to the actual race pages. It's like "what are those guys about" in short, no items unless for illustration, no specifics, just like a guideline for "I got this race and this class, what do I lean on early, what do I lean on late". This would help steer the wiki from cementing folks into specific paradigms like "X is the best fighter" "Y is the best human" etc. A bit of mechanical explanation as reassurance and pointing towards unintuitive stuff (like explaining what +20% bonus damage actually means, etc, so a newbie could pick it up there etc.)

I even wrote up the big bar, damage and potion races division, but then deleted it because that's the intuitive but not the most helpful way of looking at things for various reasons. I didn't want to go into specifics and minutiae there, just how each race individually approaches conversion with a bit of insight of why a few races actually play out in a way that's not very intuitive (because that kind of thing you can learn from a wiki but the game can't spell out for you). I might've still went too much into details, but that's mainly to provide a bit of hands-on illustration and because I haven't yet touched the actual race pages.

Any shortening is wellcome from my end if it doesn't add more confusion. EDIT: What's important is that folks who read it know there's guys who let you play the glyphs for a while before converting, guys who you get a lot out of for sacrificing a few, and guys who (for some reason) can be played either way to great effect (moreso than others). And also that there's a bit of an explanation for it when it's counterintuitive (why are Orcs and Humans so different? why Halflings and Gnomes? Why Elves and Dwarves? - the essential point of even having that text there is to clear that up a bit). (For example - Gnomes aren't generally back loaded because mana potions turn into most damage if you're level 10, they're best played that way because there's just not enough opportuinity to stumble into situations that turn mana potions into anything meaningful earlier than the boss fight. Halflings are very differrent in this regard, because a pre-bossfight health potions can be brutal in many easy-to-run-into circumstances, so you really can and should pay attention to that when you play them. A gnome is almost always best off playing hoarder-till-the-bossfight, a halfling isn't.)

[berpdreyfuss]

[Lujo]

One thing I thought of is - if the wiki had spoiled boxes (maybe it does), we could make it vastly more easy to use because we could get technical stuff to not be in the main text but in spoilers that people can click on if they want to understand why something works like the wiki sayes. I'm not experienced with wiki's though, can this be done? It would make it a ton more approachable and easy to digest.

[Blovski]

^

Yeah, I dunno. I think the virtue of having a dedicated discussion thread per class for the wiki is that we could link it and math out/nuance/footnote it to death without overloading the wiki pages themselves. Spoiler tags would make putting up more info viable but would also visually clutter the page a little, so I'd be chary about doing that except in scenarios where having exact understanding of complex interactions is really important (Rat's corrosion stands out as an example where spoiler tags would let us explain the interactions in detail without overloading someone who just wants to know that bashing corroded enemies into each other is a good thing).

Hence, with the Berserker page (which is the first one I'm looking at), Orcs vs. Humans is a long, mathematical and metagame intensive discussion and it's probably not worth going into the *exact* thresholds for one being better than the other on the page but it's worth having that discussion findable from the page.

I think the race discussion expansion to run with PQIs and odder combinations is doable and valuable as long as it's kept very bare-bones for the less synergistic races - the main thing is specific interactions.

Hence, Elfzerkers... really just need to note the Mystic Balance interaction, and that they run best as a hybrid. Gnomezerkers, with a Trisword or an Alchemist's Scroll, they're fairly credible. Goblinzerkers - look for boosting items and avoid confronting the boss at too high a level so as not to lose out on your damage bonus.

(N.B. I'm not trying to be autocratic here, just to fish for a consensus on how to balance scale and depth... it''s one of those games where it'd be really possible to just overload the wiki to the point of irrelevance and it stifling rather than helping discovering new strats so that seems important)

[Lujo]

The way I see it working in a most beneficial way (after a lot of though) is that big-bar, damage and such is general strategy material. After all, Goblin's a killer big bar guy, but doesn't boost bars naturally at all, etc. The main race page is about what I put up there (possibly shortened), how to approach any race when it comes to converting in general, and put the particulars, kinks, made-for-preps, gods on each individua race page.

For class pages, completely abandon the "recommended" model, as when the wiki was originally written the game was much more difficult in general and it took being monomaniacal to get things done, list all 7 on each class page (with their icon) with just a few sentences stating the obvious or unobvious and pointing people in the direction of whether that race-class combo is better off prepping for the class or the race or whatever.

For example:

Gnome Warlord - With 25 mana and nothing else you can get a Cydstepp by drinking a single mana potion, and you'd do well to build that pool up, or try to reduce the cost of the Glyph. Preping for mana pool size is a good idea.

Dwarf Warlord - Getting some mid game health will help you get more hits in on stuff. Otherwise just just use your class to help level up your race and transition into a heavy tank with cydstep as backup. Prepping for high health end game is a good idea, and Earthmother is your best friend.

Halfling Warlord - Cydstep is a fine leveling tool on it's own, and you'd do best to boost the health and tank power of your halfling to get most of your potions for the end fight. If you happen to get your health up early enough you can even use a potion or two to add even more hits to your cydstepp leveling, but this is an end-spike combo for the halfling. Prep for either boosting your max health or damage.

Etc. Pick a class, I'll do it just so you guys can see how it looks, it's something that sounds controversial until you see it.

EDIT: With big bar / glass cannon / tank and such things explained in a general strategy section and the general approach with each race explained in the race/races page, the races part of each class page easily become simply about how to best combine that class with each particular race.

[dislekcia]

Apologies.

Lujo has been banned for a week for that unpleasantness.

[lieronet]

I think the individual class page needs a layout overhaul as well. The page should open with a general strategic overview explaining the class' goal in the broadest possible strokes (basically just distilling the existing Strategy section into a paragraph or so), with the racial breakdown following afterwards. Finer points, like deities, items, and preps, can be listed at the bottom. I'll slap something together for the Fighter as an example, and then we can discuss.