Team Fortress Wiki:Discussion

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Basic Strategy Item Set edits by user InShane.

He keeps on editing the sections of these pages, even though they were fin to begin with. It's become increasingly frustration to un-do all of his edits by myself, so I am asking for the help of other to help me clean up these articles. It would be greatly appreciated. AnthonyX 18:55, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

What exactly is he doing? I'd be glad to help. I see his edits. You might want to post it on his talk page though. —Rocket Ship BBQ(•) 19:03, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

He Keeps removing all of the item sets for each class, and only puts in the sets that have bonuses to them. The sets that don't have any bonuses to them are still considered item sets, even the new halloween costumes. AnthonyX 19:13, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

 Comment The new Halloween costumes contribute no strategies. 19:18, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

Currently discussing this in the IRC. Summary: item sets that have no bonuses have no strategy and thus should not be mentioned. Item sets covers all item sets and list whether or not they have bonuses. The strategy pages, on the other hand, need not list those. Set effects, such as +25 HP or an immunity to headshots, provide gameplay effects that should be covered. Saying "BEEP BOOP SON" does not. -- InShane 19:20, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

This is being discussed in the IRC channel right now. I absolutely agree that the Halloween sets, as well as any other cosmetic set, should not be listed on strategy pages. Those pages should not be comprehensive on all official sets. On the other hand, I think there is value to some non-official sets that were deleted. I think the real issue here is of naming. Calling the sections "item sets" creates some confusion; the sections would be better named something like "Loadout-specific strategies." --Fashnek 19:23, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

Currently, the sections are labelled "Item Set Effects" - This should address the fact that the section only covers loadouts that give specific bonuses, specifically sets from the Mannconomy and Medieval updates. -- InShane 19:28, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

While being thorough is a laudable goal, purely cosmetic items that have no effect upon gameplay would not appear to have their own strategies, and individual weapons are usually covered independently. If a persuasive case can be made relating to why cosmetic item sets should be included however, and their strategy can be outlined in detail, then the community could vote and support or oppose its addition. For example, one (but not me ;)) could (perhaps) argue that the Apparition's Aspect provides an advantage, and outline an anti-Sniper strategy for the Pyro. Then the community could vote on it and a determination could be made. As for this year's Halloween costumes, I'm not sure that their addition adds any value (as my Management say). --- Esquilax 19:32, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

 Comment It shouldn't be labelled "Item Set Effects" but instead "Polycount Sets" as the section doesn't describe the effects per se, but rather the set as a whole. —Rocket Ship BBQ(•) 19:41, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

As of now, I intend to have the sections address how to utilize the set effect, and whether weapons required for the set effect have a significant impact on how to do so. -- InShane 19:45, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

The Australian Christmas#Class_sets have effects as well. Let's not get hung up on the official sets. Some of the effects don't really make a difference to strategy at all, and some sets that aren't official Item sets have the most implications on strategy. I don't think this is about sets. This is about loadouts. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fashnek (talk) • (contribs) 19:46, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

We're not focused on Item Sets, we're focused on the effects granted by certain loadouts. -- InShane 19:47, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

The effect requires you have the set, which forces you to adapt your strategy. Australian Christmas sets are simply Polycount sets released later. —Rocket Ship BBQ(•) 19:49, 1 November 2011 (PDT)

I agree with the Halloween Sets not being added to the strategy list, since they're just hats and nothing else. I've had my posts removed by InShane as well, and he said that the set has to have a real effect (i.e. Sentry Buster Set 20% Resistance to Sentrys or w/e). While I agree with this, some item sets such as the Black Market Buisness should be listed in the item sets, since A) many people equip this set and B) new players want to know how this could effect their gameplay. Just my thought, and I removed the edit to not get into an argument. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by BillyMays (talk) • (contribs) 18:03, November 3, 2011

Item sets without effects are essentially specific loadouts, with a hat or misc. item added for flair. Because these sets are just specific loadouts, individual item strategies cover what is needed. Entries generally already take care of weapon synergy, such as what secondary weapons work with what primary weapons, unless most possible loadouts with said weapon are viable. -- InShane 19:11, 3 November 2011 (PDT)

I see what you mean, makes sense :) -- BillyMays 16:27, 4 November 2011 (PDT)

Quality Checklist?

On every Wiki page that has to do with an item, it's a bit troublesome to have to read between the lines for the item quality's the item can be in.

I propose we can have a sort of quality checklist, or some other format of the sort, that allows us to easily see the quality the selected item can be in — The preceding unsigned comment was added by BillyMays (talk) • (contribs) 00:11, 4 November 2011

This can be quite a tricky subject to add to articles. A number of items that normally don't exist in certain qualities (i.e. Vintage Earbuds) exist due in part to a Customer Support issue awhile back. People would delete an item, then make a support ticket and they would be refunded their item in Vintage. However, I am all for this suggestion, though it would require revamping our infoboxes for weapons & hats to include some sort of quality-colored checkboxes, showing that the item is available in that quality. Perhaps a page could be constructed to list some "oddities", such as the Vintage Earbuds, and how they were obtained. Adding a page on the subject would be a great thing because a lot of players don't know the history behind those illegitimate Vintage items, and how they were obtained. I vote  Support. 404: User Not Found ^(talk) 17:58, 4 November 2011 (PDT)

It would definitely be difficult to add to the Wiki, but maybe in the future it could be done. Thanks for supporting :) BillyMays

Item Tooltips on Item Page Links

This is a proposal for a relatively simple, but useful addition to the wiki - mouseover tooltips on links to item pages.

Similar to how items in-game, on steam community, and when linked in chat have mouse-hover tooltips, such tooltips could also be added to links to item pages. This would at the very least make browsing blueprints a lot simpler as users would no longer have to visit each item's page to see the item.

I have seen such systems used to great effect in other wikis, for example [1] (if you will excuse the linking of another wiki). I have put together a simple example of what I am suggesting in my user-space. See User:Stewart/sandbox and follow the instructions. The changes I have made in order to make this work are thus:

1. I took a copy of Template:Backpack_item into User:Stewart/Backpack_item, and simply added a css class to the outermost div element. (in order to use the template I also took a copy of Template:Item_infobox into User:Stewart/Item_infobox and pointed it instead at my custom Backpack_item template, and I took a copy of a chunk of Sticky_Jumper into User:Stewart/Sticky_Jumper and changed it to use the custom Item_infobox template. Were my suggestion to be accepted and deployed, the only required change for this step would be the addition of a css class to Template:Backpack_item.)

2. I created a template User:Stewart/ItemLink which accepts a pagename as an argument and simply creates a normal link to that page contained within a <span class='backpack-item'> element. Such a template would need to replace links to item pages everywhere a tooltip is desired, for example inside the blueprint template, although if desired it could also be used globally to put these tooltips everywhere.

3. I wrote some simple jQuery-based javascript into User:Stewart/vector.js which performs the work. Were my suggestion to be accepted and deployed this javascript or something similar would need to be added to MediaWiki:Common.js by an administrator. The javascript essentially watches for mouse events on link elements inside a .backpack-item element (as created by the template in step 2), takes the URL and works out which article it is pointing to. It then makes an AJAX GET request to http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/index.php?title=Team_Fortress_Wiki:Discussion&action=render for the target article, locates the 'tagged' tooltip from the change in step 1 inside the html response, and displays it floating near the mouse for as long as the mouse is on the link.

I'm no javascript expert and I'm sure there are more than a few people here who can suggest improvements/changes to my code but at the very least it provides a proof-of-concept for what I'm suggesting. The amount of work required to do this is relatively small, and there are no external dependencies of any kind as the tooltips are generated from the wiki pages which already contain a static version of this. I spoke to Moussekateer on IRC earlier who suggested I post my idea here for discussion, so here it is.

Stewart 13:17, 5 November 2011 (PDT)

I don't see it on the Wowpedia, could you explain how to activate the tooltip on that wiki? Pictures of your examples would be nice also as I'm rather short on time to create a page in my userspace to test. —Rocket Ship BBQ(•) 12:55, 6 November 2011 (PST)

As requested, some images of my example in action - [2], please note that as stated on User:Stewart/sandbox the image and name of the tooltip are broken due to the target page being a page in my userspace, it does match what is displayed here: User:Stewart/Sticky_Jumper. With regard to the Wowpedia example, the tooltips on the page I linked become visible when hovering over any of the item names (in this case the majority are displayed in orange, with square brackets and icons) once they have had a second or two to load. Stewart 13:26, 6 November 2011 (PST)

 Support unless it lags it too much, although it isn't activating for me on Wowpedia. —Rocket Ship BBQ(•) 13:39, 6 November 2011 (PST)

 Support It's cool and it works and I can see it's uses. Do et. -RJ 15:32, 6 November 2011 (PST)

 Support Just tested it out and it works great. Looks very nice and would prove to be useful. You have my support. MogDog66 15:44, 6 November 2011 (PST)

 Support Would be useful.  –  Cructo [T][C] 17:05, 6 November 2011 (PST)

I have made a few more adjustments to my sandbox page: fixed a few glitches in the javascript, and rearranged some of the templates slightly. I pulled a copy of Template:Blueprint/core to try out with, and came to the realisation that some items such as Scrap Metal don't have their own pages and therefore don't have their own tooltips. I had a play around with User:Stewart/Blueprint/core and arrived at what is there now, with some extra parameters - ingredient-N-nolink and result-N-nolink which disables the tooltips on that particular part of the blueprint. On my sandbox page the tooltips are still enabled for the result items, but they won't work as the items are linked to the live pages which don't implement the modification to Template:Backpack_item. Option #2 would be to apply the ItemLink template to all links, and disable the error message in the script, so that items without tooltips will still attempt to load a tooltip, fail to find one, and show nothing as a result. I'm not sure which would be the better option, the latter would require less work, but the former would probably be more technically correct. Stewart 13:59, 8 November 2011 (PST)

Does anyone have any further thoughts on the issue with certain items not having tooltips? Stewart 11:09, 10 November 2011 (PST)

First,  Support. I think that adding those links would be the best of the two options. Or we could somehow setup a code that, when set to the correct parameters, or when it is about a certain item, will point to an item tooltip stored somewhere else (maybe in a template specially for it?) and use it, and either linking to a related page (Crafting maybe?) or not linking anywhere.  –  Epic Eric (T | C) 11:33, 10 November 2011 (PST)

Unfortunately, in order for the script to be able to tell where to find the tooltip (other than the target article) would require a custom attribute on the element, and unless the wiki has html 5 enabled data- attributes are not allowed. None of the permitted html attributes allowed by the wiki are appropriate for storing this type of data. Regarding the nolink parameters it may however be more appropriate to create a dictionary-like template which can be used as a central list of pages which should not have tooltips on their links. Given that the presence of an appropriate backpack tooltip on the target page is not something that should be varied on a link-by-link basis, I think this might be a more appropriate solution to the problem, unless anybody has any better ideas of course. Stewart 15:42, 10 November 2011 (PST)

Misc incompatibility / compatibility

There is something I have been curious about for a while but not sure if we should list it. Should the team team fortress wiki have on each misc page compatible and incompatible miscs listed with one another?. This would be used to inform people of what they can and can't equip with one another to stop them from wasting time/money getting their ideal miscs only to find out they wont go together. Thoughts please? - Lexar - talk 01:54, 6 November 2011 (PDT)

Compatibility is quite apparent from the equip regions, I think. — 01:58, 6 November 2011 (PDT)

Heavily revised user hat checklist template.

With several of the sections that are not class-specific growing larger than the sections that are class-specific, it's making the User hat checklist template extremely messy both to update and just look at in general. I've created a revised template in my sandbox and merged the Promo, Event, and Halloween sections into the class-specific sections and All Class sections (both to keep class-specific items together and to make things easier to update). Some ideas I'm still tossing around currently are:

• Giving the All Class Halloween items their own Halloween section (class-specific items would remain in their individual class sections).
• Changing the Ghastly/Ghastlier/Ghastlierest Gibus hats a switch (like the Treasure Hat) so that one would show up instead of all three.

Eventually, I might try to find a way to include coding for item quality, but for the time being I just want to clean up the template; in the long run, it'll make it easier for me and anyone else who updates this template to do so quickly while removing categorization/sections that really aren't necessary and reduce the page size. Any feedback and other ideas for improvement are welcome. ButteredToast 08:19, 8 November 2011 (PST)