Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:NPC formatting

Archive

---

• /Archive 1

Drops

How should Drops be listed? By NPC level, by location? There should also be a section for drops for any level/location. - Zerebruin 22:10, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

I think alphabetized with something that states the level would be clear and easy to maintain. If we had separate sections for each level it could be very cumbersome with say, levels 7, 8, and 9 dropping the same things. I'm not positive, but it seems like trophies, salvage items, packages, etc are based on creature type, and then by level (a low level might drop a "small bag" while a high level might drop a "heavy bag"), while any creature of a given level drops equipment of a certain level requirement, of any type. If that's true, then I don't think equipment should be listed at all.

I'm not sure what you mean by things that drop from any level/location. If every enemy drops coin, for example, then it doesn't need to be denoted on every killable creature's page. If all enemies in the Shiverpeaks drop Shiverpeak weapons, then maybe something like "*Shiverpeak weapons". I don't know if either of those examples are true, nor do I think anyone is really sure at this point. It's probably something we'll have to wait on to decide. Manifold 22:26, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

The level-scaled drops ("trophies, salvage items, packages, etc") are actually scaled by crafting tier, so you'd have levels 1-15 drop tiny bags, levels 16-30 drop small bags, etc. I'd think that would be the best way to group drop info. —Dr Ishmael 23:12, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Is it in 15 level increments, or is that just an example? Because I've sat and grinded (ground?) level 16-17 River Drakes and gotten both Tiny Claws and Small Claws from them. So I think there is some overlap. But could we do drop lists in tiers but not state what level range the tiers are until/unless there is some firm info on what they are?

Also, I've seen people adding the mini icons on the drop lists. Do we want the lists with or without these icons? I've also seen the lists split up by "type", like crafting material. Do we want to do that? I think, if we're not including the random equipment, that we'll find that there's only a handful of items dropped by each type. If that is the case, I don't think it worthwhile to separate by type. Jauranna 20:56, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Jauranna here, even mobs that have multiple levels (as in low-medium-high lvl) have a limited amount of drops. I think the icons look good and maybe we should include the rarity as well, for example: Jungle Troll Smurfzor 21:42, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Documenting Species and their category

Not sure where would be the best place to put this, so placing this here as I figured this is most appropriate (though perhaps not most obvious). Something I've noticed is that there are mechanical "Families" (as Anet calls them - or Creature Types as GWW calls them) that are not completely the same as the lore species - or rather, to be more accurate, the mechanical families group multiple different species together, despite not actually being the same species (but it's still consistent, unlike some GW1 cases, at least). One specific example I've noticed is the Fleshreavers situation. Based on sigils and runes, their Family is "Demon" - similarly, Shades and Aatxes seem to be of the same creature type (killing a shade for the first time of the day did not progress the daily variety bar, though I've killed only 2 possible shared Families - Fleshreaver and Risen). Imps are also part of the Demon Family I believe. However, in lore, a Fleshreaver is vastly different from an Imp.
Then there are cases where we have articles for a certain kind of mechanical Family, and then the lorical species - e.g., all Treants are Plants, but they're also not the same from the other Plants in the game (which are actual trees and only seen during the Arah seer path, as far as I know). Another case being Dolyak, which shares its mechanical Family with sheep, rams, and so forth (I think they're all bovines, but not sure - Saimoths and Plated Behemoths may be in the same Family, I'll have to do testing on this).
To the point of this section: How do we wish to document this on NPC articles? Normally, I would merely put the mechanical Family in the infobox and call it a day, however that can lead to be misleading (and what do we do for the demon case, where there is no Demon article and, with how things are for mechanical demons, it would be hard to have such?). I recently noticed the user Yandere alter {{NPC infobox}} with one particular line:

| oakheart
| plant = [[Category:Plants]]

I would suggest we do this - denoting the lore species in the infobox, as those would be easier to have individual pages for, while having them link to the mechanical category (of course the above situation would change from oakheart to treant, the actual species name, but you get my point, ja?). Oppositions? Suggestions? Konig/talk 05:00, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

The infobox should only retain properties of the entity, the lore species doesn't have gameplay implications. Kingdom of Loathing, for example, uses the term "phylum" for grouping certain foes together solely for a new game mechanics with no specific pattern and races for the species lorewise. That's what Anet has done for grouping enemies together for killing achievements and the Daily. I think it's better to specify the species in the article. Having a page about the family when species are clobbered together or a category for the species in lore are both not very useful. Family itself is a game mechanic, so we can have a single page on Family and list all the creatures that fall into a family. We simply link to the category for the family.--Relyk 06:35, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

The main reason why I did this was basiclly to stop the Category cluttering. Before this an oakheart would be categorized under oakheart an a plant under plant. The "lore speces" is far easier to detect than the "game species". Before Konigs post I didn't knew that Dolyaks are sheep, or that Shades and Aatxes belong together. I think it is a good thing to allow people to document what they see, which is usually the lore species and put the knowledge what in-game species that is in the auto-categorisation. Just my 2 cents - Yandere 09:26, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm usually of the opinion that, as a wiki documenting a game, we should document the objective game mechanics. Anything outside of that can be subjective and open to interpretation. —Dr Ishmael 14:48, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to see the mechanical species somewhere on the page. Is one mechanical species and lore species too much for the infobox? Does anything belong to more than one lore species? Manifold 16:13, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

In any case, "species" is entirely the wrong word to use for either of these classifications. Dolyak and sheep are in no way the same species. —Dr Ishmael 16:27, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

@Relyk: I'm really not sure what you're suggesting - the beginning of your response seems to be wanting to opposite of what I said, while the ending of your response seems to be what I suggested...

@Ishy and Mani: My issue is... what would we put for Demon? What would we call the mechanical shared group that is Ram, Sheep, and, iirc, Moose, Bull, Dolyak? (Perhaps Bovine? seems to be the shared concept, though I don't think the first two count there?) And what would we put there to explain what they are. Wouldn't that make articles like treant, imp, fleshreaver, dolyak, and even Graveling obsolete since the "species" would be on Plant. Demon, [[Bovine]](?), and yes Ghost? Keep in mind that dungeon NPCs share the same slayer achievement and same type - outside critters - thus all things in Ascalonian Catacombs - even gravelings which are very much more akin to skelk than ghosts - would count as a ghost and the Ghost Buster achievement; things in TA, even spiders, are Nightmare Court; etc.

@Ishy 2: Dolyaks and sheep being different is actually my point in bringing this up - it'd be weird to say that the Species is the same for them both, but there's little issue in putting them under the same category. We don't really need an article to list the types of a mechanical type since there's no unified lore behind them (demon we probably could do, given GW1 lore, but we don't know if GW2's mechanical demons are the same outright). Konig/talk 18:08, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Only a few of these mechanical groups don't include a slayer achievement, so we'd only have to make up a few terms. Pages like Demon could include the slayer achievement associated with it/appropriate ___ of slaying potion, if any, general demon lore and have sections for each "subtype", such as imps and fleshreavers, each with a list of NPCs and lore surrounding them. The Fleshreaver and imp pages could redirect to the appropriate Demon section. Manifold 18:58, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Regarding slayer achievement, and I should have mentioned this above, but I believe those achievements don't look for the creature type (Family), but rather the affiliation (Army). Reason I say this is not just because of the dungeon situation above, but also that Pirates are all the same slayer achievement, and Risen/Icebrood (perhaps Branded too) appear to count for multiple Daily Variety Types, but the same Slayer Achievement (I noticed that Icebrood Wolves and Icebrood Seers/Hunters/other norns have different Variety Types; similarly, a guildie told me that Risen Gorillas gave him Daily Variety despite having killed a bunch of risen already - Risen Giants very clearly do not count for the Giant Slayer either, and I don't think I've killed a Risen that didn't count towards Zhaitan's Bane). This actually makes more sense, and implies that the wildlife groups have a shared type and affiliation.

Demons wouldn't be made up, due to the Sigil of Demon Summoning‏‎ and Potion of Demon Slaying being where I got the name from, btw, but there doesn't seem to have an associated slayer achievement. I'm not too keen about having information on Imps and Fleshreavers on the same page. They are very very different and though imps are called demons in lore recently, Fleshreavers are not - they are, in fact, very different from demons in the GW universe (so are imps, for that matter - and Aatxes in GW1 were called Nightmares, which were, effectively malevolent spirits). The Demon creature type in GW2 seems to be much like gw1:Ogre which were a catch-all for non-giant large creatures; with GW2 demon being a catch all for Mist-related creatures (be they spirits (aatxes/shades/Shadow Behemoth), elemental-based creatures (imps), or... whatever the heck fleshreavers are, which seem to on occasion appear from portals to the Mists). Konig/talk 20:10, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

As far as I understand this there are two kind of slayer archivement.

First for family: Harpies for example. Second for Faction: Risen. A Risen Harpy counts for the Risen and for the Harpy Slayer archivemet. - Yandere 21:11, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Except that Veteran Risen Giants do not count for the Giant Slayer achievement, similarly, neither do Risen Sea Turtles/Sea Scorpions count for Shell Slayer. Icebrood Trolls do not count for Troll Slayer and Branded Devourers do not count for Devourer Slayer. Similarly, Nightmare Spiders - at least those in Twilight Arbor - do not count for Spider Slayer, but rather Nightmare Court's Bane. Konig/talk 22:03, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I didn't realize anyone else was working on this already. I started trying to keep track of what counts toward a point in Daily Kill Variety ("species"), especially among Yellow mobs. Red mobs seem to follow the Slayer achievements. I started a Daily Kill Variety entry, which I was hoping people would jump in to contribute (and clean up since I've never messed with Wiki Code before today). Sorry to have jumped in on your project. - RD

(Reset indent) My two cents about the topic: first of all, whikle I understand wiki is not a database, I don't like typing down lore stuff in the infoboxes. Like what profession NPC is and what group mob belongs to, if the game does not do this - while in fact NPCs aren't tied to profession at all and mobs belong to different groups too. It may be sometimes hard to prove or prove wrong what family articular mob belongs to.
Like you all noticed, "family" is used in various checks - slayer achievements, daily variety kills, potions (It took me soem time to figure which monster is "Demon") and some upgrade compontents - more to potentially come as well. I support the idea with adding the values like they are used in game, even if it's uterrly wrong - with a proper bug/anomaly notice at the bottom of the page. I nevr realized that slayer might be different than daily kills variety, I'll keep that in mind. I'd also want to mention that while probably lots of us have 1,000 kills in varieties of spicies already, refer a friend weekend is a good moment to test this! our friends will start with 0 kills in everything, so it's good moment to test any achievement-related things.
—Faalagorn☎/✓ 12:35, 14 November 2012 (UTC).

Regarding Dolyaks and their shared creature type with sheep, rams, bulls, etc. I believe the best description for these would be Bovids, which seems to me to be how Anet grouped those. Would anyone oppose me to changing all their species to this and categorizing them as such? Konig/talk 03:50, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Armorsmith (vendor) store inventory

So, I've done a couple of armorsmith pages so far, and I'm posed with a conundrum: how are we suppose to list what items they sell, if they sell the same items, but at different levels depending on the current level of the character they are talking to? --Jyavoc 19:15, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Skills, etc

We don't have any standard for documenting Monster skills, or permanent effects on NPCs. I've seen several instances where it is added to the Abilities section, which we've come to use as meaning something else. Little research has been done into monster skills, but some mimic player skills, in combinations of name, animation, and what it does. Some monster skills we can't even get the name of because they are not used on players, such as the Dredge Disaggregator's "Gong skill", which gives it boons. Some NPCs, like the Skritt Burglar have permanent effects, like Stability, or Unshakable on Champions. I propose we change the "abilities" section into something that covers abilities, skills, permanent effects, and maybe Thief stolen skills (more on that in a bit). I'm not sure what this section could be called, but I see it being formatted like this:

==Section name==
===Abilities===
*[[Daze]]s
*Flies

===Skills===
*"Gong skill" - level 50, 51: Activation takes several seconds, grants [[protection]].
*Serpent Strike - all levels: Deals damage, causes 5 second [[poison]], evades during animation, mimics [[Serpent Strike]].
*Stab - level 24, 25: Deals damage.

===Effects===
*[[Stability]]
*[[Unshakable]]

===Stolen skills===
*[[Blinding Tuft]]
*[[Throw Scale]]

The idea with the skills section is to give a description and provide any concrete data possible. Any subsection that's not needed could be omitted. Skills could be alphabetized, but abilities and effects would be in the order they are in game.

And while I'm talking about skills, I want to discuss stolen skills on NPC pages. We should have a list of what can be stolen from an NPC on its page. Unfortunately, I don't think much research has been done into if this is entirely race-based or what. There's some skills I'm confident that some races never have, but does every single pirate have Drink? It seems like some special monsters, especially champions, may have different skills than others of its kind, but I don't have any specific data on that. A stolen skills section should encourage people to start adding their data in a much easier, more visible, and more convenient way than Steal/Creature. Manifold 21:52, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

This idea makes sense. That section structure is a good start. If anything, I'd rather not have the level 3 sub-sections since they're going to be awfully short sections. -- ab.er.rant 14:50, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

My prime issue is the skills section - I don't think such detail is needed. Or useful, for that matter, in regards to listing the skills. I mean, will anyone really know what "Tooth of Jormag" used by Subject Alpha mean? No, not really.

Other than that, just use ; instead of section headings. And I would use "Combat abilities" as you do on Veteran Karka Egg Layer. Konig/talk 21:39, 17 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the skills section not needing so much detail. If the skill is still "unknown" then a short description would make sense, but for those that we do know, such as Serpent Strike, wouldn't it make more sense to create a page for the skill and just provide the link to it, as per GW1 wiki? Serval Stareater 15:50, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Aberrant - Semicolons would be better than subsections, I agree

Konig and Serval - There is limited information we have about enemy skills. We agree that stuff like "4 second knockdown with long activation" or "causes 20 second poison" is useful to document, right? We can get the name for anything that hits the player, which is a useful way to refer to it. We still don't really know enough for a skill page to link to, we don't know recharge, activation, conditional alterations. Maybe ditch the level info? I agree that the skills isn't ideal in that form, but I don't know how else to do it. Manifold 17:27, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

Some monster-only skills' info can be found via dat diving (linked skill is the one by Subject Alpha that looks like multiple Dragon's Tooth at once). While not complete in all this, it gives us a fair amount more. Enough for a page, I'd wager. I just don't like the whole sentence-long description thing. Konig/talk 19:45, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

The skills and effects can go under the same section. Skills and effects are both described by abilities, so there is a mechanical reason to do so :P The effects section will have 0-2 effects max and wastes space. If the effects are gain via monster skills like was done in GW1, it makes more sense to list the skills and describe the effect given by the skill.--Relyk 04:01, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Skills and "effects" are all one type of game asset - they are all defined within the same data structure in Gw2.dat. I agree that we should treat them the same here on the wiki, as well.

Unfortunately, said data structure is encrypted (unlike GW1), and I don't know how to grab it from memory while the game is running. So until that comes out, we have to rely on Gw2db (which Curse is running for a profit off of reverse-engineering someone else's game... >.>). Even with all that info, though, the only link we have between the monster and a skill is the skill's name, from the combat log. There are a TON of skills that share the same name, so it's still going to be difficult to be sure which instance of a skill name the specific monster is using. —Dr Ishmael 13:38, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

We can easily make up skill and effect names in the mean time.--Relyk 01:06, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the name is the only thing we do have, because it shows up in the Combat log. —Dr Ishmael 01:28, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

As it's finally time to play my thief again, I'll be adding stolen skills soon, and changing the "Abilities" section to "Combat abilities" unless someone has a better name for it. Manifold 23:34, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

What's wrong with leaving it as "Abilities"? That is the official term anyways iirc. All abilities are combat abilities so it's a bit redundant. I find it rather inappropriate to split into separate sections, Anet has been good about adding to the abilities label to reflect the skills the foes use. They adding the Stability to Earth Elementals and abilities used by neutral creatures like the boar. They are still missing many like the "Charge" attack on Risen Bull Sharks. They are all really the same thing. If we created monster skill pages, it would literally just be listing the abilities and making an interwiki link to the corresponding monster skill and listing the skill description after the ability name.--Relyk 03:41, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

While I think "Combat abilities" is a bit redundant, not all "abilities" (which is fan-made, iirc) are combat based - "Ability" refers to the descriptor name beneath the NPCs' health bar, and some, such as the Fallen Angel Soldiers in Ebonhawke, have non-combat abilities or just simply peculiar descriptors. Those Fallen Angel npcs have the descriptor "Queen's right hand in Ebonhawke" or something of that regard. Hardly a "combat ability." Issue with keeping the section title as ability is that it's already used to describe the descriptor. Konig/talk 03:53, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

(ec)Abilities, to my knowledge, is not an official term. I haven't been able to find the official term or where the term "abilities" came from. I've asked on several forums and official contacts. For better or worse, it's pretty established now that the text lists "abilities". There'd still be a list of them under the name "abilities" on the page, I just want the section to expand to encompass more data about NPCs. Eventually we'll start recording things like max health, defense, condition damage, etc. And no, I don't think they are at all sufficient for describing what skills NPCs use. Many are descriptive of what the NPC is like, many have none listed at all. I'm not broaching the idea of monster skill pages, since we don't have much to go on yet, just describing them and naming them as best we can for now. Manifold 03:53, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd call it Traits or Attributes (if those weren't already used), since Anet can use the descriptor for more than listing abilities like konig pointed out.--Relyk 04:07, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I do believe we should revisit this. These 'abilities' often indicate hints to some of their combat abilities (the noticeable effects of the skills they use) and other behaviors, but it is not always the case. In several cases, it's merely a short description (e.g. Shrieksy). Also, Many creatures present abilities that others have noted, but they don't have them noted themselves. For example, not all creatures that stun have a "Stuns" ability listed. In GW1 we could simply observe the skills they used in the skills and damage monitors to note them down, but in GW2 we are limited to the combat log, and only skills that deal direct damage appear in there. Because of that, not everything they do gets noted in any way. So I had to improvise, following the existing example. Currently, I have to do the following to note some missing things:

• Under "Abilities":
  • When it's not combat abilities, the text as is in a single line, verbatim.
  • When it's combat abilities (e.g.: Knocks Down • Flies • PBAoE), the text split at the bullets, one entry at a time in a list.
    • When a combat ability is an 'alias' for a generic mechanic or works mechanically like one, I add between parenthesis, the most common name or the generic name of the actual mechanic. For example, some creatures that have "Flies" simply "evade" like some imps and griffin 'fly', but others will become "invulnerable" and "untargetable" like when harpies fly up and vanish.
• Under "Unlisted" I'm adding observed abilities that can be found listed in the description of other creatures, but the current creature does not have in their description. For example, if two creatures Poison and the first one has "Poisons" under its name, if the second creature has no texts that indicates that they can poison, the second creature gets "Poisons" too, but under Unlisted.
  • Sometimes when a creature is altered by an update, the description does not change; for example, some Orrians that used to immobilize no longer do that, and cripple instead. I'm currently noting that as "(no longer does this)" after the entry under Abilities, and then adding the mechanic that replaces the one noted under "Unlisted".
• And after that, Stolen skills.

There's still some things that I'm not noting:

• Some creatures present abilities only within certain level ranges. For example, jungle trolls poison only after a certain level.
• Abilities may also change while underwater. Some creatures get completely different skill sets and abilities. For example, I've found some creatures that 'pull' in ground, but once underwater the 'sink' instead.
• The actual skills they use. Some of them we know thanks to the combat log, but many of them we don't know.

I think it'll be better if we designed a more generic way to note all of this. For example:

• First, adding a "description" section similar to the one for Items to put the verbatim text that can be read under their names, to appear somewhere near the top of the page (with [sic] when they have mistakes).
• Then, under a section named "Abilities", "Combat", "Skills and abilities" or something like that, note:
  • Combat abilities and behaviors we can observe, using the same third person notation as descriptions: Poisons, Steals, Summons XXXX, etc.
    • Next to each, level range and locations at which they present those abilities, if it's not an ability they always have regardless of level and location.
  • Known skill names we get from combat log.
    • Next to each, if they match one or more abilities, those abilities separated by commas. For example, for the Risen Wraith: * Vampiric Touch - Steals Health.
  • For creatures that can fight both on ground and underwater, a second set of underwater combat abilities and skills.
  • And just as now, the skills a thief can steal from them.

Hm... I think that's all...
Sigh... why can't we just have a "Scan" cross-profession utility skill or everlasting consumable (like the candy corn-powered meter) we can use on them to get a panel that shows their stats, gear, skill bar, possible drops and possible stolen skills? MithTalk 07:45, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Abilities

This has been stewing in my head for a while now, but I don't believe we have a list or glossary on the wiki for all of the abilities found in-game on NPCs. Some of them are more self explanatory than others (ie, Pulls), but others (ie, Unstoppable) might not be so. I personally don't think it a bad idea to have a definitive glossary for these—not on different pages, but just as one long list, that perhaps the abilities would link to (ie, *[[List of NPC abilities#Unstoppable|Unstoppable]] *[[List of NPC abilities#Pulls|Pulls]]). —Jyavoc 17:46, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I haven't updated this in a while. When I started it I envisioned a page for each one, but they just aren't that precise or descriptive. There's several ways of saying "this enemy can knock you down", and I don't believe the same wording means anything special, like length of knock down. Manifold 17:59, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't exactly suggesting that the page have descriptions like "A creature with Pulls can pull you with a range of 1200, and the pull projectile will deal exactly 529 damage" or anything like that; much less specific, and without exact, specific information. Just enough of a description that beginners can go and translate what each ability means into something they're more familiar with, concept-wise. —Jyavoc 18:03, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Quotes

As I'm sure we've all noticed, quotes that NPCs say are reused throughout the game. And just for clarification for the topic, by "quotes" I mean the tiny snippets of dialogue spoken when an NPC is interacted with. Just about every asura will say "Excelsior." if spoken to often enough, as will a sylvari "All things have a right to grow." Some quotes also seem to be geared towards other factors, such as the age of the NPC speaking (a younger asura might say "How are your endeavors progressing?" while an older asura might never ask that, but would say "I've forgotten more things than you'll ever know."). I would assume that levels of wealth, order/group affiliation, and other generic factors play a role into determining the pool of quotes that NPC has access to.

Because of this, it seems like a complete waste of time (and potential gain of information) to not do something about this. If, instead of simply listing the quotes for each NPC manually, we were to create a template, and, say, for a Retired Researcher, we included the template {{npc quotes|race = asura|age = elderly}}, or for, say, Trahearne, we included the template {{npc quotes|race = sylvari|wyld hunt valiant = yes|pact = yes}}, we would be able to prevent redundant manual listing of quotes, and we have the ability to gain more information about each NPC (we could, for instance, have the templates tag Retired Researcher as being elder, in SMW or otherwise). I definitely think this is an idea that we should implement, both as a time-saver, and in terms of standardization. I would be horrified if GW2 didn't use a shared-pool system for NPC quotes in any event. It would just be a matter of figuring out what tags each NPC has that determine that pool. —Jyavoc 20:02, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think these minor quips are important enough to display on every NPC's page. Documenting them in one location is fine, but do they really need to duplicated all over the wiki (even with a template)? —Dr Ishmael 21:32, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I didn't think they necessarily were, when I just assumed that they were by race, and that was it. Or by race and which of the three orders they were in. But, if we did a little research and found that there were additional criteria that affected what an NPC could say–if an as-of-yet undocumented "age" qualifier was in use, or other such qualities about an NPC, it'd give us a chance to document them, plus then it would, imo, have a better purpose on the individual pages, as it would be able to show information about that, sometimes otherwise not fleshed-out, character. Ie, {{npc quotes|race = human|patron = Lyssa|wealth = poor|age = middling|location = Kryta}} would be just a few criteria that could be easily discernible about a minor, nameless NPC that would nonetheless provide information we could display on the wiki, and which we could use to query information later. AS IT STANDS, where we're just listing the quotes, it's incredibly repetitive and not exactly something I liked, but if we were to change it so that the quotes section actually said something about the NPC, I think it might have a greater merit and reason for inclusion. —Jyavoc 21:56, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Either way, if we were to do away with the Quotes section and have even just a page with the list of quotes, we'd still likely break them down into certain criteria the way I'm describing above (at least, I would hope we would, as opposed to having a large list of "something anyone could say!"). So if we'd be putting the research into figuring out what the different properties could be, we could at least use them. Not to mention, it would give us more information on otherwise really empty pages (such as, say, Retired Researcher, which without quotes, would just have locations). This isn't a fully fleshed out idea–I don't know how we'd handle something like "Citizen (human)," where we can have multiple instances of the same type of person (ie, gender = male, gender = female, wealth = poor, wealth = rich, etc), but I think we could at least consider the possibility. —Jyavoc 22:00, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

I stopped screenshotting Quotes once I saw they were mostly the same for NPCs of the same race. Before deciding whether to keep them or move them out, start with the research first and draw some conclusions first? -- ab.er.rant 13:46, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Gladly. I'll start putting together some research effort in my spare time into this, but as I'm expecting this to take some time, I'm fine with shelving this conversation for now until I have something to present. —Jyavoc 19:16, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Actually, right away, I noticed something that I can't believe I hadn't noticed earlier. They're all voiced, the quotes are. I think our "grouping categories" would be voice actors. —Jyavoc 21:29, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

That's easy, list Steven Blum for all male charr.--Relyk 21:36, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

On a side note related to quotes, I noticed that there are many spontaneous conversations between two or more NPCs that we are not recording. These conversations lend much insight into NPCs personalities. They should be added to the character pages to help wiki readers learn more about the nature of each of these characters. I suggest that we record these quotes, prefacing the other participants' lines in the conversation with links to their character pages followed by a colon. The question is whether they should be recorded in the quotes section (since they use the same speech bubble to display themselves as quotes when interacting with the PC), or should we have a separate section for spontaneous conversation? --Strongbeard (talk) 07:11, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Are you suggesting something like Prison Warden Zikki? I think that's a pretty good format for recording dialogue between npcs, but I don't know if the header is good. Its not exactly a quote if its a dialogue. Psycho Robot (talk) 07:24, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, something along those lines. I just didn't want to put the conversations under the dialogue header since they all use the quote boxes instead of the dialogue boxes. But, they don't seem to be appropriate for appearing under the quotes header since they are spontaneous instead of being initiated by the player character and they involve 2 or more NPCs interacting with each other. Maybe the character pages should have a "conversations" header as well? --Strongbeard (talk) 04:04, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I just wanted to forward any still interested parties in this thread to a few good semi-related conversations I've seen and/or been part of regarding similar topics. To use the Zikki example linked above, it seems like the content of Quotes on his page doesn't fit the Quotes and Dialogues Project's working definition of such -- which is "greets, combat chatter and other dialogue that appears when the NPC is interacted with" (emphasis mine). They would be Ambient Scenes. My understanding is that the Project currently endorses reproducing the scenes in full on a Location /dialogue page, and including a forwarding link from the NPC /dialogue page. And if you're interested in getting in-depth on how the /dialogue page should be formatted, I've made some space over at the Dialogue Pages Project. -Kymtastic (talk) 00:38, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Organization/affiliation not mentioned in formatting example

See title. This relates to the named parameter "organisation" of the NPC Infobox template. Since many NPCs are related to something, I propose to add it to the page template. ~ Sanna 00:25, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

GW1 Trivia

So there are a lot of interesting throwbacks to GW1 in GW2 that many players would either never know cause they didn't play it, or they might have forgotten and a reminder would connect the dots. I can understand not wanting to duplicate information on an already existing wiki, although I see value in retaining a line or two on NPCs and landmarks in GW2 when they are recognisable from GW1. A simple trivia line on the Farrah Cappo page explaining she was a trainer for warrior characters and stayed behind to defend Ascalon form the charr would help place these NPCs into context for GW2. I understand someone can just click on the GWW link and read about her in the context of her relevance to GW1, but that leaves her GW2W page a bit barren (not a reason to include all information though) and it doesn't give her context for her history or relevance on this wiki or in GW2. She comes off as just another NPC without a story. Is there a deliberate intention to not include any known GW1 information on these pages because the GWW tag exists, or is it simply a lack of interest in adding it which leaves so many of these pages without interesting lore information? 58.110.33.52 04:25, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I think it stems from a few things I think first and foremost its the gww tag, because why repeat something when its already on the other page?, and secondly I think we want this wiki to be about gw2 not gw1 and want to document what is in the game and have it be able to stand up for it self rather then what is in the first game.- Zesbeer 08:51, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

When it comes to Foefire ghosts, I think Vassar is a far better example. Farrah Cappo's article is barren - regardless of GW1 information. It lacks various sections - location, abilities, and events for starters.

This said, if it's the same lore-wise NPC, then a GWW tag is all that's needed. If it's an allusion to GW1 characters, such as a descendant - e.g., Aquila Elek, then a note of such is relevant (though I wouldn't consider such a situation, descendency that is, to be trivia). Konig/talk 16:43, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Personal storyline missions

Konig claims consensus to list personal storyline missions in the infobox. See this for an example. The location parameter is for the location of the NPC, whether or not they are involved in personal storyline missions. I prefer the approach of having a "Personal story involvement" that I've seen on pages, including the one listed. I think it's fine to list areas where the personal storyline missions take place in; we can always grab the location for the personal storyline mission and list it under the section. This provides the same connection for the area to the storyline mission that trying to list it infobox does and serves as a better approach.--Relyk ~ talk > 19:23, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I never claimed consensus – I claimed consistency. I don’t know if it was discussed or not but most – if not all – articles I’ve seen with personal story NPCs had the personal story step in the locations with the exception of when they also appear in the open world – in which case the open world zones are denoted, not the personal story instances.

Of course, I’ve seen a discussion that was consensus (I believe) to remove that parameter because it is redundant… but such hasn’t been done (I think they were meant to be removed when SMW came in, though I think Ish is the only/main person working on semantic coding). Overall, I’d go with removing the parameter – or at least able to leave it empty when the NPC doesn’t appear in the open world.

The issue with denoting the zone/area in the infobox when they don’t appear in the open world is that people may expect to see them in that location in the persistent world. Konig/talk 04:26, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Eh, I'd just be reciting an old argument then, overlooked that section. Listing the location of the NPC in a personal storyline mission is redundant because the location of the instance is described on the storyline mission page. People are looking for the PSM rather than the area the PSM occurs in anyways, same for queries. Letting "location" only refer to open world would be consistent with other templates. We can keep the location parameter for open world since NPCs usually don't appear more than a couple times.

We need a storyline parameter, for the very reason they are being listed in the location parameter. This would avoid some of the cramming like Ishmael said and we aren't displaying that extra zone line. I want to keep both because we still want to query about NPCs that exist in a particular area or PSM. The other option is to use semantic notations in the sections, which wouldn't work nearly as well as the template and not be something we want.--Relyk ~ talk > 06:13, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

"Letting "location" only refer to open world would be consistent with other templates." That sounds heavily biased. The only thing not in the open world other than NPCs are objects. Perhaps points of interests, but usually those would be the same article as an instance. As such, there's only two infobox templates that could have location refer to a non-open world case: NPC and Object. Arguably, event can refer to dungeons (and come to think of it, don't they? The bonus events in dungeon explorable modes?). But even then, they're set up differently - so its not the same situation anyways. Given current parameters, the NPC infobox is one-of-a-kind with how it can deal with placement in personal story in the infobox.

Incidentally, I thought of a storyline parameter (also for objects and whatever environmental weapons can get) before finishing reading your post. The issue, however, is what you bring up: clutter in the infobox. It doesn't matter if it's all in one parameter or ten (and god forbid having to fill out the parameters for Caithe or Logan Thackeray!). It's duplicate information nonetheless. The best solution, if you ask me, is to have an empty locations parameter mean not showing up, rather than having "Not specified" - thus, if an NPC doesn't show up in the open world or a non-story/dungeon instance, we can just leave it blank. There's no loss since it'll all be documented anyways in the Personal storyline involvement section. Konig/talk 06:24, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Referring to how the location parameter on the PSM infobox defines the area, as opposed to defining the area on the NPC page. The instances (PSM, dungeons, etc.) should be documented in the infobox, that's the purpose of the infobox. If I can say that we need to define all the instances the NPC appears in, that means we need to define a SMW property to hold the information, which means it should be handled in the infobox template. If we need to define the locations the NPC appears in the open world, we also need to take care of the special case that the NPC appears in certain instances. It's not like its worse than cramming the infobox like the {{event infobox}}, which we also need to address eventually. We always have the option to hide the list.--Relyk ~ talk > 16:51, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Abilities

We can can call this the in-game description. Way better than listing it in the combat abilities.--Relyk ~ talk > 22:56, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Infobox shows error using "Profession" trainer

If one uses "Thief trainer" or whatever profession, an error is shown. eg Rancia Plagueflower --Claret (talk) 11:09, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Drops listed with images or without?

Some creature pages have the drops listed with the item template that shows the icon of the item and a link to the item page (like Fire Imp) while there should only be a link without any icon according to the template. Should I convert pages with icons to the layout of the template or should we make the icon layout the standard one? I would personally prefer seeing the icons of the items rather than just a text link. -Tulen elementti (talk) 13:48, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

These formatting pages notoriously lag behind consensus. Feel free to update them. —Dr Ishmael 14:00, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Multiple and separate NPCs with same name

For situations where there are multiple NPCs with their own purpose and dialogue, but having the same name, I began documenting them like this: Festivalgoer and Refugee Blacksmith. I think this works really well for these NPCs, and I'd like to propose making this, or something like it, standard formatting for these situations and added here as a formatting guide. Basically it's a single page with the single name, and some sort of identifier if the name is also generic (such as Lionguard), with line separators. Each separator has the dialogue and an image of that NPC (if different models), and perhaps can have specific information if that NPC is anything more than just an NPC that talks. Any thoughts? Vahkris (talk) 15:42, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, the seperators section it nicely. I'd add a locations section though. Manifold 17:07, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Good idea. Vahkris (talk) 19:23, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

New NPC types

I ran into an asura named Motwitt (making this page as we speak), who seems to be an instructor for new players. If he's here, I reckon he has counterparts for each other race too. How shall we name them, instructor, new player guide, teacher? ~ Sanna 21:28, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Are you referring to the service or the race? For race, use "various", for service you can use "Instructor", since we already have a PvP Instructor. --Ventriloquist 21:30, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

No, this is definitely a new kind of NPC. He has an icon above his head which resembles a yellow ball/flame/something with the image of a dodging or falling character in it (it's easier if you check him out in-game) and his sole purpose seems to be to teach (new) players about dodging. ~ Sanna 21:44, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

NPC infobox name: with or without title?

I was alerted to the following change made to Crusader Aliyana: revision diff. In the infobox, her title (Crusader), which is always part of her name when you see her in-game, is stripped off her name in the infobox. It is slightly confusing because we're handling a different name than in-game, but as a canonical name using only "Aliyana" is actually a good idea. So changes like these: yay or nay? ~ Sanna 10:33, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree - we've always held to the practice that the name of a thing should match its in-game name, and NPCs should be no different. This has a visible impact on Template:Vendor table, because the displayed name in the output will be the shortened form of the name, instead of the actual in-game name, which will more than likely cause some confusion. —Dr Ishmael 12:23, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

In other words, I'll reverse that edit I showed you and we're keeping in-game names the way they are. The few times NPCs use different names we can have ourselves a redirect. [TL;DR: nay!] ~ Sanna 15:12, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Location on minimap

NPCs like Cenedra and Warmaster Grayson are situated in "Vigil Keep", near southern bridge. However the minimap says "Vigilant Hills", because they stand inside Vigilant Hills territory. Even the "Vigil Keep Waypoint" is inside Vigilant Hills (checked by taking the waypoint and looking at location text on the minimap). How do we handle this? This also affects location formatting. --BryghtShadow (talk) 10:38, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

NPC Infobox: Description

This page suggest to document the abilities of a NPC (what appears beneath the health bar) as part of "Combat abilities" and particularly then under "Abilities". I just came across a page where these abilities stated in quotation as "in-game decription". So I realised for the first time that the NPC Infobox has a parameter called "description" used for "The description of the abilites of the NPC, listed under the health bar.". So is that the new way to document these abilities? If so, then this page is outdated :). On the other hand, it seems that this parameter exists for some times now (since May 2013) and is normally just not used. If the intended way to document these abilities the way it is layout here, maybe that parameter should be removed from the infobox template? So what is right and what is wrong? Or maybe I just fail to understand something about it? Balwin (talk) 11:24, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

There are 34 NPCs that uses this parameter right now. What I see from the brief suggestion/discussion in May 2013 is that it kinda just fizzled out: [1]. --BryghtShadow (talk) 14:48, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Skills for NPC pages are rather messy, but they should be using the format documented here. —Ventriloquist 10:34, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Ordering Drops

The guide says to alphabetize drops, but wouldn't it be clearer and more logical to put all tiers of the same item together? For example, I'd put Tiny Claw, then Small Claw, until Vicious Claw, and then move on to Fangs, instead of having Small Claw, Small Fang, Tiny Claw, Vicious Claw. This applies to crafting materials but also to bags, salvage items, junk items... That would be especially helpful at de-cluttering drops from monsters you can find everywhere in Tyria, like elementals. --Faelys (talk) 22:38, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Since it looks like this is already being done (see most loot boxes, as well as containers using tables or these mobs -- but these counter-examples) and there wasn't any objection here, I'm going to go ahead and change the guide. I'm using containers as an example because I think we should use the same template for all drops, from mobs or bags alike, and drops from containers look like they've been more thoroughly documented and formatted (lots of mobs don't follow any particular order). Feel free to revert and discuss here if you don't agree. --Faelys 03:40, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

Headers for combat abilities

Old discussion

→ moved from User_talk:Konig_Des_Todes#Section_headers

Well, have to say I disagree. It's pretty evident that combat abilites can get quite large (see this page for an example), and moving them to L3 headers isn't really a drastic change. —Ventriloquist 20:04, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

That's not all that large, TBH, and even the larger ones still look fine with the semicolon heading rather than L3 headers; that page also shows not using L3 headers... Plus, formatting guideline does have it as such, and that is how most pages are structured as. Konig 20:30, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Well yeah, my example wasn't showing the usage of L3 headers, but the amount of information 'combat abilities' sections may have. The problem is semicolons almost get lost in the crowd of information, having Behavior (which is bolded) above other bolded text isn't visually pleasing, and if anything, raid bosses and their skills require distinction.

I changed it on the formatting page because the change (imo) isn't that dramatic, and if anything, it improves readability on large articles. It's more of a 'why not' thing, honestly. —Ventriloquist 20:36, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

"having Behavior (which is bolded) above other bolded text isn't visually pleasing" Two things. First, behaviors are not bold - only skills are. And those are not lost because they have a line of non-bold text following them (or rather, are supposed to - lacking such is a lack of the article), while the ;Skills header is just that, no non-bold text involved. Second, L3 headers are still bold, but they're unsightly larger. I see no improvement personally but an aesthetically downgrade, and it's a lot of work to make this change for little to no improvement regardless of one's opinion.

"I changed it on the formatting page because the change (imo) isn't that dramatic" It is dramatic because it will affects hundreds of thousands of articles and not everyone agrees - as shown by the very fact we're having this discussion. When there is disagreement known, you have a discussion not keep on going with the changes that may end up having to be reverted back. Konig 20:42, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Current discussion

The current formatting for 'Combat abilities' sections uses level 2 headers along with semicolons. My proposal is using level 3 headers for anything related to the aforementined section - abilities, skills, effects etc. This was (quite briefly) discussed here, where I pointed out the benefits of the change, to which Konig expressed his dissatisfaction with the formatting.

In my opinion, it definitely doesn't hurt articles, reduces clutter and creates distinction for sections (because semicolons don't do a good enough job). —Ventriloquist 20:42, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Moved short discussion from my talk page here. TL;DR of my stance:

1. Lots of work for little to no gain.
2. Enlarged font looks unsightly.
3. There is no "blending in" as Vent brings up, as the only section which should have bold is skills, and they should all be followed by non-bold text describing the skill. Konig 20:45, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Note, my replies are relevant to Konig's reply in the 'old discussion'.

"First, behaviors are not bold - only skills are."

Well, the page you just edited, Slothasor#Combat abilities, has both "Poisoned ground" and "Imbued Mushrooms and Slubling transformation " bolded. I assumed you were good with that change, since you didn't edit that part out.

"...while the ;Skills header is just that, no non-bold text involved"

But semicolons are bolded text? Semicolons (for c.abilities) are always used at the start of a newline, which bolds them. There is absolutely no distinction between a semicolon start to a sentence, and a bolded sentence.

"I see no improvement personally but an aesthetically downgrade..."

To be fair, NPC formatting has been changed dozens of times during the wiki's existance. I still run into "Abilities" sections every now and then. Aesthetically speaking, distinction between text and sections is rather important - let's take Slothasor's page (again) as an example.

You have the effects section, with a variety of icons. After that you have a tiny 'skills' section which would be almost completely lost, if it wasn't for the whitespace above and below, followed by a list of bolded text about which skills the enemy uses. There's no 'real' separation which would improve the reader's ability to (at a glance) tell which piece of text belongs to which section.

"...and it's a lot of work to make this change for little to no improvement regardless of one's opinion."

Any change to formatting is 'a lot of work'. Changing 'events' to 'event involvement' was a big change too, definitely bigger than this. It's not something you have to get a bot to quickly change for the entirety of the wiki, it's something that (if a consensus is reached) would change future articles and, eventually, change the past articles.

"When there is disagreement known, you have a discussion not keep on going with the changes that may end up having to be reverted back."

Exactly, which is why I did not edit any article after you reverted me; I wouldn't edit something in/out if I knew somebody could potentially revert it due to disagreement, so I'm not sure what you're implying here. —Ventriloquist 21:00, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Hope I'm not intruding here. I went ahead and compared both of your proposals, and I prefer the level 3 headers. It's easier to maneuver under them, which is a problem I've run into before (dealing with different sets of skills for land or water, for exemple). --Faelys 21:32, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Oh no, you're definitely not intruding. It's a discussion about a possible change, so anyone who has an opinion about it can chip in. I also agree with what you commented, so I thank you for the feedback! —Ventriloquist 21:39, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

(Reset indent) If no one else is going to object this change, I'll implement it, seeing as it didn't get any more negative feedback. —Ventriloquist 11:48, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

I accidentally spilled water on my laptop(I hope it's okay, bf is trying to save it currently, I can't believe I did the same thing twice arrgghhh ;__; ) but I meant to respond to this last night. I don't like using === for skills, and I've been removing it if I found it, as it made the ToC twice as large for an npc that sometimes had sometimes just one skill and a stolen skill. Maybe sure if it's like a raid boss with tons of stuff, but for the most part, I really prefer using ; instead, it's simpler to do. - Do_odleplex

Yeah, my sample size was limited to Scarlet and Slothasor, and I've just noticed this. I think I'll keep it to just bosses with a lot of mechanics/combat abilities. —Ventriloquist 18:40, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

In Scarlet's case - as well as NPCs with one name but multiple builds/models like Son of Svanir - the different builds are separated by L3 headers which to me is enough separation. Raid bosses are... unique because people are insistent on listing stuff that is normally left on walkthroughs on the NPC page because what ultimately feels like 'QQ this is how I did it don't change my pages' (yes, bitter). I feel that in Scarlet's case especially, using L3 headers would just make the situation even more horrendous then her lack of skills (or rather, lack of knowledge of her skills) results in. Same with other pages with multiple builds like aforementioned Sons of Svanir. It would also mean having to change some of those to be L4 headers and how to do it and bleeeeeeeh lots to refigure out when it's decent-but-hard-as-balls-to-improve already. Konig (talk) 23:08, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Edit: This is what the Son of Svanir page would look like implementing that suggestion. And just holy hell that table of contents. It's a full page scroll worth. And all those edit tags... Good luck finding the specific one you want. Konig (talk) 23:17, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

I despise level 4 headers. However, I will admit that I wasn't happy with the changes after implementing them, it just doesn't look good or functional. As for the different weapons/skillset, I formatted the Ascalonian Citizen page (stubs galore) in a similar fashion, it looks clean, and I'm quite happy with it. —Ventriloquist 23:37, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

NPC titles

For allies the formatting guide says:

== Combat abilities ==
;Abilities
* <!--List of what appears beneath the health bar; remove if empty-->

Which is consistent with what we do for enemies who usually have stuff like "Stuns • Blocks" under their health bar. But allied NPCs have stuff that seems much more like a player's title than a combat ability. Currently they just don't seem to be documented at all but should I actually list things like "Lunar New Year Vendor" as combat abilities? —Azurem 23:51, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I think you just add that as it's description, for example Rikka. I could be wrong though. - Do_odleplex 23:57, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I think whatever it says under an NPC's name should be listed in the abilities section, even if it isn't one per say. I just don't think it makes sense to put it at the top since it's not that much of a priority in relation to the overall page. || Louise || 00:34, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Those things are to be put under Abilities too, regardless of what's said. Not all foes actually say stuff that makes sense. Konig (talk) 01:45, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Agreed with Konig and Louise. Consistency! —Ventriloquist 08:58, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Feedback 02/15/2017

I just noticed that most raid bosses in Wing 4 (Bastion of the Penitent) actually have skills dedicated to them, that are hoverable and list the info for the skill. What should we do in this case; make a new article dedicated to the attack and then link the attack/attack description onto the NPC page? Or type it all out into plain text on the boss page? Sythe 03:09, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I think it's worthwhile to make an infobox for the attacks, since we do so for things like boss effects. There is a decent amount of info for each attack (range, target number, descriptive text, effect on target) which doesn't fit nicely in one simple line. In order to do this though, I think we would need a new skill infobox, or tweak the current version to support this new format (unless it already can?).

Also, I'm told that this might eventually be implemented into the previous wings and will probably be implemented into the next wings to come, so it doesn't seem like we'd be doing this for a single isolated case. -Darqam 03:48, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree that they should be handled like the effects before them. It also wouldn't be surprising if they kept this way of showing attacks in the damage log going forwards. The only problem I'm wondering is if we can somehow pull ids from these; though, I doubt it matters too much. Sythe 12:53, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

50 px

So on the top we have: "For consistency, crop margins of high-res screenshots to 50 px." If that's saying "leave 50px of space on all of the sides from the object", it should be reworded, as if it means/could be misread to mean "all NPC pictures need to be 50px by 50px", that wouldn't be a good idea to have like that as we certainly don't keep all images to that small size. - Do_odleplex 18:39, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Template field order

Is there any specific reason for the template fields to be sorted the way they are? It's not alphabetical, it's not based on default fields, and it doesn't match the order of the output either.--Lon-ami (talk) 15:33, 25 November 2017 (UTC)

Piggybacking on this topic, I just noticed that the template lines have a fixed order. So far I always put coordinates after location as that seemed the most intuitive. Should I go back and reorder the lines in my edits? -- kazerniel (talk) 02:08, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

No, if the template has named parameters (for example name = ), then it does not matter in which order do you put them. Only time order matters is if the parameters do not have name (they do not use "="). DJemba (talk) 08:12, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the information! -- kazerniel (talk) 10:45, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

At least for me the parameters are in an order that make sense filling them out sequentially. While the order does not matter for the function, I moved the coordinates parameter up under location so it can be filled out in one go. —Kvothe (talk) 10:45, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I believe the order is to follow how it is on the NPC template. I kinda prefer the coordinates on the bottom like they are for all other templates that use coordinates. - Do_odleplex 15:16, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Always felt out of place at the bottom for me. Feel free to revert it. —Kvothe (talk) 19:58, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

When to list involved events

The Event involvement is included in all copy-paste layouts, but which NPCs should actually have all events they are involved in listed? Many generic Core-Tyria NPCs don't (Bandit Highwayman or Wasp for example). Should only individually named NPCs have the section? Is it tied to them being guaranteed to appear during an event as opposed to being part of an array of potential spawns? Is the list dependant on the NPC appearing outside of or only during specific event/-s? --Skrittbrains (talk) 15:44, 22 April 2022 (UTC)