Guild Wars 2 Wiki talk:Projects/Chest Rework

Maps/locations

There's quite a mixture of ways to display the exact locations of chests (as opposed to the area they are found in):

• Some pages have tables of static locations - List of basic chests.
• Some pages have only an interactive map - Chest (Cantha).
• Some pages have both - List of chests in Auric Basin.
• Some pages have only a static image map - Lost Bandit Chest.

Which style should we prefer? Only one of the above, or a certain combination?

The interactive map has the following benefits:

• Typically takes up less space in an article than a long table.
• More precise than textual descriptions.
• Often easier to view than individual map screenshots.

And (possible) downsides:

• Less accessible to some readers (old browser, mobile browser)? Requires investigation.
• Less accessible to editors (need to have a coordinate reader).

Heillos (talk) 07:41, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Guides also have a variety of ways of displaying the information, it'd be a bit hard to fully standarize without encountering any anomalies.

• Static image map vs interactive map: there is currently no general consensus on the wiki that I know of, so either we use both if possible, or whichever the editor thinks is best. In any case, I do think either of these is generally the best way to display locations.
• Lists of events that spawn chests: this honestly feel like the type of guide that fit 2012 and are not that relevant anymore in any shape or form.
• Lists of locations (the table in List of chests in Auric Basin): they work best if there are certain requirements or step by step descriptions on how to get to them. Nowadays since you can be reasonably sure that on level 80 zones players will have mounts, these often become redundant but you could make an argument for the ones before Path of Fire in case the player wants a more "authentic" experience. If they are part of an achievement, the chests on the map (interactive or static) can be numbered and a brief explanation can be added if it really does help locate the chest. For lists such as List of norn chests in Drizzlewood Coast, the only upside I can think of is easy referencing in case we do include chests in areas, but in this situation it feels like an unnecessary continuation to List of norn chests in Bjora Marches which should have been included in the chest page itself. For that matter, I don't think there should be any "lists" articles for chests and the content should instead be within the article itself, or as a subsection in case the article grows too big.

Myriada (talk) 09:46, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Merging and splitting pages

Some chests with common names have specific loot tables. For example, Magnificent Chest vs. Magnificent Chest (Retrospective Runaround). This case is an example where the split is justified, since there are a number of unique drops, a unique interaction to open the chest, and a specific achievement related to it.

We should decide on some criteria for when to split a generic-named chest into its own special article. Based on those criteria, we should split the chests that meet it, and merge any that don't back into their base name article. Some characteristics we could consider are, as implied above:

• Unique drops
• Unique interaction requirements or dialogue
• Unique achievements
• Large number of somewhat unique chest (for example, List of chests in Auric Basin) (ironically none of these have their own articles yet, only the lists of locations)

Heillos (talk) 07:41, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

This proposal and "Subpages versus parenthesised titles" should be considered simultaneously while deciding on a solution, in my opinion.

The general criteria proposed sounds good, but I personally think that if they only uniquely drop an item for a collection if active it does not need its own page. Articles such as Magnificent Chest (Spekks's Laboratory) were created to standarize the acquisition method of items, but it'd be cleaner if there could be a parameter to indicate that it refers to the one upon completing X jumping puzzle or X mini-dungeon and link directly towards it for a guide (also less clicks to get to stuff problem). This should also help reduce the amount of articles that need curating and drop rate research. For the most part anyways you can kind of infer the possible gems that will drop by pooling together what you get from other similar chests, since those are the main reason so many of these chests have stubs. Myriada (talk) 07:58, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

That's some helpful context about why some separate chests were established! It's funny you mention a parameter to specify the particular jumping puzzle: I found there's at least one for the specific collection in Template:Gather, and updated Magnificient Chest (Spekk's Laboratory) to use it.

I guess that doesn't solve the issue of indicating which particular chest drops something if we merge that back into Magnificient Chest, though.

Agree it would be nice to merge more of them to decrease the drop rate research required: it seems like they're mostly region-specific, and any Central Tyrian Magnificent Chest should be the same.

Then there's a bit of a mess of alternates like Magnificent Chest (Claw of Jormag) (name doesn't give away the fact that it's the Drizzlewood Coast Claw, not vanilla), Magnificent Chest (End of Dragons) and Magnificent Chest (Dragon's End) (probably the same drops, if we can verify Flame Serpent weapons in the Dragon's End one)...

I digress. I think the main splits should be per-region (where drops substantially differ), and agree it would be nice if we can combine the jumping puzzle/mini-dungeon chests back into their "parent" pages. Heillos (talk) 06:39, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

The template can probably be tweaked a bit to accomodate 1 location parameter. The easy fix in the chest article would be to collapse the list of collection especific items, it might be worth checking in with the template wizards if there's any issue with that besides not being the most elegant solution. As I mentioned below, we can ask for confirmation on that.

As for the Drizzlewood chest, I can't recall if there was a discussion about the name, I might have forgotten the world boss also had that same name.

In any case, before merging/splitting we should double check how similar or not the drops really are, there are quite a few chests in EoD with forgettably generic names (or without names?) that drop different amounts of stuff. Myriada (talk) 14:17, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Consistency in drop reporting

The main issue here is around Piece of Unidentified Gear and related items. Level 80 characters always receive unidentified gear from chests, however lower-level characters receive random pieces of gear (of equivalent rarity) instead. We need to decide on a consistent way to report this, and apply it to all chest drops (and arguably any other case where there's a split between regular gear for low-level/unid for level 80).

For the number of times that it will be written, it might be worth creating some templates for the boilerplate "piece of gear of X rarity, either unidentified if you're level 80 or random if you're not", however we decide to phrase it. Heillos (talk) 07:41, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

I'd put the piece of unidentified gear first and foremost, since most of the time players will probably be level 80. I think the wording in Magnificent Chest (Spekks's Laboratory) works well, for example. Myriada (talk) 08:13, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

That's a good example thank you! Agree with putting the unidentified gear first. I think the wording could still be a little tighter though, how about:

"Piece of Unidentified Gear (2) if level 80, otherwise 1-2 random weapons or armor pieces, of CFine or better rarity"

And we could template that phrasing for each rarity (or maybe one template with a rarity parameter? I'm new to that stuff), since we'd want it to be identical over a large number of pages.

(I deliberately didn't use Template:Gather in the above example, but obviously we'd keep using it in the real pages to get correct acquisition results.)

(Side note: is that article correct? Piece of Unidentified Gear is guaranteed DMasterwork, is the below-80 drop really only CFine?) Heillos (talk) 06:25, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

The wording sounds good. As for templating, I think we should poke someone with actual technical knowledge to make sure we're asking for something actually realistic. I'll ping people on Discord in a few days after the rush for the Festival of the Four Winds has settled down a bit.

About the side note, it wouldn't be a bad idea to start setting up the drop research page and get some data before making any big changes in the main space. Adeira Tasharo often uses a format like in Branded Chest/Drop rate that would work well for this. That reminds me, it would be a good opportunity to start mentioning in the actual chest article that lower level characters can drop Doubloons depending on the level range. Myriada (talk) 12:08, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Map visibility with/without Treasure Hunter Protocol 3

User:DiegoDeLaHouska raises that certain chests only appear on the compass with the Treasure Hunter Protocol jade bot module equipped. We should decide how to report this information, and then eventually test it against all chest types, starting with the most common.

For what it's worth, I don't think I've seen a chest in the world (except for boss chests) that does show up on the compass without Treasure Hunter Protocol: perhaps I'm missing something, but I think more testing is required too.

(Testing tip for boss chests: disable both autoloot options in Options#User Interface) Heillos (talk) 07:41, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Subpages versus parenthesised titles

In short: Should location-specific chests be subpages (Chest/Cantha) or parenthesised (Chest (Cantha))? So far we tend to use parenthesised titles, but User:DiegoDeLaHouska proposes converting these to subpages instead. I'm not aware of the implications of that decision: is it a technical improvement? Is there a precedent for one over the other? Heillos (talk) 07:41, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Category changes

User:DiegoDeLaHouska proposes adding more subcategories to Category:Chests, for example, one for strongboxes (although I see there is already Strongbox the page, so that may not be useful), or by location. Heillos (talk) 07:41, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

We'll inevitably find niche cases that don't fit nicely into a subcategory or that fit into multiple, so if people are up for extra categories (they do have their advantages) I'd suggest they all remain in Category:Chests as well as their respective subcategories. Myriada (talk) 08:04, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Interactive map style

Which layers in Template:Interactive map should we prefer to have on by default? Having some aids navigation, but having too many (especially for larger maps, spanning multiple zones) can slow performance on lower-end devices like phones. Heillos (talk) 07:41, 19 July 2022 (UTC)