Template talk:Weapon skill table row format

Page cost

Would it be possible to add page cost column to the Firebrand skill similarly to how it's done for Thief? • Genie 13:35, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Possible yes, but we would need:

• a page cost icon
• a page cost property
• three page cost skill infobox parameters (one for each game mode)

Lot's of effort for something that is a minor game mechanic of one elite specialization and applies to only 15 skills.

Alternatively, we could simply query the skill fact "Page Cost" and print it out nicely in an extra table. For example, without the nice format though:

{{#ask: [[Is for skill.Has skill type::Tome]][[Has fact::Page Cost]] | ?Is for skill | ?Has fact number | ?Is for game mode | sort = Is for skill.Has weapon type sort order, Is for skill.Has skill slot sort order, Is for skill.Has chain sequence position | mainlabel = - }}

--Tolkyria (talk) 20:34, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Appreciate the answer, I was hoping it could be done with relatively little effort. The whole semantic query thing is really cool, but obviously can't be used instead of the existing template for skills table just for one article. That's like the whole point of having a template. --Genie (talk) 22:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Okay, maybe the effort isn't the whole story. It's also how does this extra piece of code affect all the other pages that are using this template but do not need it, especially large weapon skill tables like Sequence skill or Chain (I might run some tests later).

Also, at which points are we adding too much columns such that the readability suffers. There is/was a discussion on the Community Portal page about recharge column overload (basically at one point we had recharge, count recharge and inititative in one column; I'm against this complicated overload, one column should display exactly the value from one source), so three columns are totally fine: 1. energy/initiative/page cost column, 2. recharge column and 3. activation column. But what about a forth column, e.g. count recharge and maximum count (in which format), or even what about a fifth column? At one point it will get too much for the wiki users, we can't just add all skill facts in the weapon skill table. For example, I'm exaggerating a bit, next we are going to add the range of skill, the radius, the amount of targets, if a skill is unblockable, etc...

Beside that (going a bit offtopic above), you are slowly convincing me, indeed, having a seperate table isn't quite the same (see my sandbox for a nicely formatted table). Also since the profession mechanic bar representation is similar to the initiative, sure, we can definitely think about it (it's weird that Anet haven't implemented an page cost icon on the top right of the skill tooltip).

So, regarding my requirements:

• Icon: I extracted the icon from this files, modified it slightly and uploaded it, see File:page cost.png.
• Property: The property Has page cost can be created easily, overall there are similar properties that are worst, e.g. the property Has health cost for one skill.
• Infobox: Might be a bit tricky to decide what to do with the parameters, display the icon in the skill statistics row (next to recharge, ...) or not, the property declaration however is straight forward.

I'll look into it later. --Tolkyria (talk) 12:34, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

Woah, thank you. I fully agree we need a good cut off point in terms of how many skill facts are included in the tables. Though, it feels like the resource cost is important to see the relative 'weight' of the skills at a glance, for the lack of a better word. --Genie (talk) 14:57, 4 March 2023 (UTC)

I added the parameter showPageCost. --Tolkyria (talk) 13:56, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Awesome, huge thanks. Although I think the page icon is not aligned properly compared to other icons, check Firebrand#Tome_of_Justice. :D --Genie (talk) 21:17, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Long ago we aligned the icons with the numbers individually to somehow place them perfectly, then additional columns got added without taking the alignment into account which messed everything up. In the skill/trait table rework (e.g. giving all tables the same description column width) I simply right-aligned the icons and their values.

So I guess this is just an optical illusion, a round icon with two digits below (e.g. round recharge icon with 30 seconds below) looks different than a rotated square with single digits (e.g. rotated square page/inititative cost icon with 1 page/inititative below) although both share the same format.

We might also want to show the page cost on the tome overview page as well as all tome skill pages. --Tolkyria (talk) 22:05, 6 March 2023 (UTC)