View source for User talk:Det

Hey Det. Is there a particular reason why you reverted all of the Sword Master skill pages?

Altair (talk)

The replacement of the columns with all the %'s, for that one with only the N multiplier thing is very non-intuitive to see.

it's very hard to understand, the people dont want to do maths, they just want to see how much can the % of the skill be. well... thats my opinion.

Det (talk)

And i'm sorry for any trouble. i should've talked to you.

Det (talk)

No problem, I meant no offense. I was just curious. I understand that the expressions may look unappealing.

Please allow me to fill you in. At the moment, we're figuring out a solution on how to address updating skill page values. Particularly, we are focused on finding an easier and faster alternative for the common wiki editor. The skill expressions are just an alternative way to save users time.

For several years, the wiki has had serious issues when keeping up-to-date with the current game's patch notes. Most of which are a result of an over-intensive workload. You see, updating every single attribute for a skill (for every skill level) can become mind-numbingly boring and a bit too labor intensive for most wikiers. For reference, look at pages like  Flash,  Elemental Shift (Sword Master), or  Contract: Hodor. These pages could potentially take hours to update, and most wikiers do not have that much free time to dedicate to updating a single page. After a certain point, editors lose the motivation to update pages, leaving a large majority of pages to remain out of date.

If you want to help us with this process and provide feedback, you're welcome to read up about it and join us in our discussion here and here

Altair (talk)

Det (talk)

I messaged one of the admins of the wiki about this earlier, here.

Since skill expressions may turn off some of the users, this alternative may be of your interest, as it maintains the table viewing option.

What we are planning to do is auto-generate the skill table using a Loop statement with skill expressions and variables. If you don't know what a "loop" is (in-terms of coding), it's basically a built-in function that repeats a desired action over a number of times while a condition remains true.

The loop we are planning to use is called a "while loop". The condition we are using is called an "if statement". The "desired action" we want the loop to do is print out on-screen the skill values of each row of the table. I'm sure you can find better explanations online.

In this case, we are using the skill growth expressions (which are found via subtraction and division of the highest and lowest skill values) and using variables (which basically represent skill level). Ideally what should happen is by plugging them into the loop, the system will solve them and output the individual values for us.

If this works, then the only thing we have to technically edit on a skill page (if Neople decides to update a skill) is the skill growth expression.

However, there are a few issues that come along with this:

• First, by using the skill expressions, the values per level could be 1~2% percentage points off from the ones shown in-game. But, the margin of error (difference between them) is so small that it is pretty negligible.
• Second is an issue arises for skills like  Blade Dance which has updating attributes every few levels. I'm pretty sure that we can solve this with extra conditional statements and variables.
• Third is a problem that arises on skills like  Core Shield,  Energy Shield, and  Light of Divinity. The skill's shield value doesn't seem to have a consistent growth pattern and may be difficult to input values manually into a loop. However, we do have a work around. We can store the shield values in an element called an "array" and automatically call the desired value stored in a particular "index" (slot) for each iteration.
• Fourth is the issue with static values. This is more of a visual issue. Since it is heavily advised not to use the "rowspan" feature within a loop, we have two options. One, we can put the static values in the "SkillAttribute Section" or two, allow the loop to keep printing out the same value on every row.

If you are not familiar with some of these coding terminologies, then this may be a bit confusing. If you have any questions, feel free to ask us on our talk pages. You can contact me directly using the information on my User page.

At the moment though, the wiki doesn't yet have the desired features of "loops" and "arrays" installed. The admin, User:Dfoplayer, is working on that at the moment, and will get back to us around this weekend.

Altair (talk)