Forums: Yew Grove > Skill guides brainstorm

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This thread was archived on 28 April 2014 by Please do not edit the contents of this page.This thread was archived on 28 April 2014 by Suppa chuppa

Another brainstorm for another important topic. Forum:Strategy pages brainstorm did not get the amount of response or attention that I had hoped it would, but maybe this will go better! I'm putting what remaining faith I have into this. :ɔ

So to start: Our skill guides suck. Perhaps the only exceptions to this are Divination training, and Fletching training. Those are good at the best, so they can still do with being better.

As this is another brainstorm, I have no proposal, but I will make some points and cast some ideas:

I don't want any mention of bonus experience or other boosts to be mentioned in the article. They should get their own section and stay in that section. I really don't care that "Oak planks are 60 experience (or 120 with bonus experience, up to 126 with bonus experience and a full outfit) while teak planks are 90 experience (or 180 with bonus experience, up to 189 with bonus experience and a full outfit." Can you see how messy that'd get? The focus of everything should be base experience and experience rates. I'd like to leave most experience boosts exclusively in their own section(s). It will certainly make updating rates much easier later. There will be exceptions. For example, you get bonus experience in artisans workshop for listening to Suak. This doesn't apply anywhere else, like when smithing mithril bolts, so it's certainly worthy of its own mention in the relevant section. Basically, if an experience boost isn't exclusive to a particular method, don't mention it. Even then, focus on base experience more than anything else. Extensive testing should be done. This will be a problem with how many people actually try to help out and how much they really end up contributing, but at the same time, it's one of the most important parts of any skill guide. Right now, every experience rate should probably be taken with an entire handful of salt. That's not a good trait. I want our numbers to be the best and most accurate. I want less focus on the extremes. As much as some people want the best experience per hour or the least cost per experience, these points shouldn't drive the writing of the articles. We should certainly give these methods attention and write about them in greater detail than the other methods, but I think it'd do great to cover as much as we can without going overboard. For example, if we suggest grade i mithril ingots as the best training, I'd expect to see a table that breaks down the experience rates of other ingots. At the same time, not everything needs to be compared to everything else. If something else has its own section, it shouldn't be compared to. Also, don't compare methods that aren't within a certain degree of similarity. Ingots are all similar enough to compare, but don't add gold smelting into the mix.

We're doing literally nothing else of important. I think a new project to focus our efforts on will be a great change of pace for any useful wikian. Give a hoot; fucking help. MolMan 16:48, February 22, 2014 (UTC)

Discussion

Comment - About bonus xp: many of our pages still haven't even been updated to the new bonus XP model. There's a lot of them that still mention sacred clay tools for instance. I agree that having an XP rate (and then another one) (and another one) is confusing and ugly and unnecessary and things. The good thing about the BXP update is that it made everything much simpler - you can now get double xp from bonus xp, up to 6% from a skill-specific outfit, and 3 or 6% from clan avatar. That's it. Oil4 Talk 18:12, February 22, 2014 (UTC)

Also I strongly agree with point 3. We have a habit of explaining every single little detail. This is good for general articles but for guides I think most people just want a couple of good options based on xp/hr and gp/xp. There is no need to go into extreme details about every single thing. Oil4 Talk

I'm on my iPod right now, so forgive me for errors. I think a good way to layout the guides would be to have a chart at the top showing every method (with appropriate data such as xp/hr, cost/hr, and level required) so you can easily compare methods. You may want to consider putting Efficiency into it with a user-defined variable for what they value their time at or something. Then, under the chart can go the detailed explanations. --AnthonyEcon (talk) 09:09, February 23, 2014 (UTC)

A bit like this? Oil4 Talk Something like that, especially if it's toggle-able like this one is (without a specific calculator, of course) would be quite nice for people just generally looking for the XP. Then discussing what each general method can offer would be quite nice. I like the way each level's best options are discussed now, but they feel very opinionated at times, and are just messy, thus this project of course. Amascut Ia Morte After seeing it, I change my mind. That chart looks a little too big and complicated to feature on the skill guides. A simplified version could possibly be better. The reason the Fletching guide is so good is because there aren't really a lot of options when it comes to fletching, you just progress up the levels, so the guide is nice and neat. Also, it just so happens that the efficiency of the methods works perfectly with the level requirements from what I could see. This isn't the case with other skills. If you look at the Firemaking training page, there is the section that shows you "Players that value their time between x and y should burn z." Now, if we can somehow incorporate that into other skill guides, I think that would be great. I don't exactly have a proposed solution, but I'm sure it can be done somehow. I think I'll try to tinker with the Hunter page, or maybe make a prototype on my user page before making it official, just to get some ideas. --AnthonyEcon (talk) 18:33, February 23, 2014 (UTC)

I just made a version of Hunter training on my user page. It excludes a lot of information that is in the current Hunter training article, but is instead simpler and easier to see which methods should be done. The goal of the training articles should be, in my opinion, to tell players what to do at what level, not tell them every single training method whether or not it's bad. I feel that I accomplished that with my version of the guide. I would like to hear other people's opinions on this, as well as hear some ways I could improve the guide. --AnthonyEcon (talk) 23:24, February 23, 2014 (UTC)

Comment - Some ideas mainly based on the Agility guide because that's what I'm training right now.

I like your ideas about the bonus xp section. I think it might be possible to arrange this part into a table. It could have columns to say how the bonus is obtained, whether it stacks with other bonuses, whether its an item that needs to be equipped etc. For Agility, there is an equipment section. I like this section but I think it could be cut down. It may be relevant to other skills to have this section e.g. Prayer - bonecrusher. I think the bonus xp & equipment sections would be at the beginning of the guide, before the training methods, so the information contained in them would not need to be repeated later in the guide. I think some training guides mention methods that are not useful to anyone. E.g. the Agility training guide mentions repeatedly crossing obstacles when there is no reason anyone would do this as an alternative to doing an agility training course. In my opinion training guides should mention methods that are the best xp/hr. There should be some range e.g. covering methods that are less xp/hr but are cheaper to do; but nothing that is completely inefficient. Maybe there could be a "money making section" at the end of the guide linking to sections of the money making guide that use the skill. This would be good for people who like to profit when training regardless of how slow it is gaining xp. I like the summary table "Experience per hour" at the end of the Fletching training guide. I think all guides should have this at the beginning so users can identify which methods they would be interested in. It would be helpful to have the minimum level required in the table too. Training methods should be organised by level ranges and the their names as on the Fletching guide. I think people are right in saying that training guides sometimes have unnecessary information and I'd like that information to be cut down. At the same time I want the guide to contain all the information I need to do a training method well. I'd like to see more pictures/diagrams/videos to help reduce the amount of text in a guide while keeping the information there. E.g. in the level 90-99 section of the Agility guide there's a large block of text explaining how to do perfect laps. I think this information would be much better presented in a video of a player doing a perfect lap. IsobelJ

For point 4 I was thinking of something like like the "Hourly Profit" table on Money making guide. IsobelJ

Comment - So... Oil4 Talk 14:43, April 9, 2014 (UTC)

Comment - I agree entirely with the first 2 points, and am prepared to help with any testing needed. However, as for the third point, I don't think it's necessary to lay any emphasis on the 'bad' methods. If the best way of training Smithing with Mithril bars is making Platebodies, then I don't think it's necessary to list the xp/h of every, or in fact, any other item that can be made from Mithril.

"But Bloo, it doesn't matter what the item is, it matters how many bars it needs!" You know what I meant. If the best XP rate comes from making items that require 5 bars, then, IMO, it's not necessary to also list how much XP/h one gets from items that need 4, 3, 2 or 1 bar.

"But Bloo, maybe some methods will become faster in the future!" That's no reason to document the inferior methods. The chances are that when they do become faster, their XP rates will change, so we'll have to update the numbers anyway; might as well update the method while we're at it. Secondly, for some items, this will never happen. We know for a fact that an item that uses 5 bars will always give more Smithing XP than one that uses 4. [1] Pink Floyd Talk page • Vandalize my sig

Guestbook • My blatant violations of AGF Oil4 I made this 15:25, April 9, 2014 (UTC)

Closed - No comments in a few weeks. Suppa chuppa Talk 02:18, April 28, 2014 (UTC)