User talk:Zarevak/Redesign/ProgressionTables

Designs
I think the horizontal style is easier to read... but it might be more space-efficient to only mention what that tier adds to the default power and the previous pump(s), rather than relisting everything over again for each pump.

--Arcalane 07:17, 3 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The horizontal idea was the reason for creating this page in the first place. The problem is that English uses horizontal writing system and thus all cells need to be wide enough to contain the texts. If we create too many columns the table becomes wider then the page and scrolling becomes necessary which lowers readability of the table.
 * I chose Lightning as a skill to test things on, because it is one of the most complicated abilities in the game. On the other hand with each pump, Lightning just gets more effects and or changes existing ones. Some abilities - Rage, Fire Support, ... - change their behavior with each pump and this makes creating one general design solution tough problem.
 * I've managed to create parser of the new D13 tooltips and automatically create vertical tables based on them. There are still few abilities which need more attention, because they change their behavior based on if used in PvE or in PVP (Tactical Evasion, Mind Control).
 * → Zarevak 17:00, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * References:
 * User:Zarevak/Skills/Descriptions - main tooltips of all skills
 * User:Zarevak/Skills/Tooltips - tooltips of all skill pumps


 * The horizontal table is great for reading off all information about a particular pump as it's natural to read from left to right. On the other hand, the vertical table is great for comparing the pump levels for the same reason.  The majority of the time I suspect that the reason for people to look at a Wiki page on a particular skill is to decide what level they should pump it to, so for that reason I'd definitely say that in my opinion the vertical table is the best method of displaying the data.
 * The automatically generated table is very impressive and would certainly simplify updates.
 * One question I have is on the base damage - since this increases with each level, what's the best way to display it? Saying that pump 5 Lightning has a base damage of 240-300 at level 1 when you can't possibly gain pump 5 until you're at a much higher level doesn't make much sense.  Should there be a separate "level progression" table giving the damage at each level for each pump?
 * CommandoXXX 11:10, 6 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your feedback. I've tested automatic tables for all the skills and found only a few that needs more fiddling around. The biggest hurdle in updating the current skill articles is creating the basic table structure and this is accomplished by the script very well. Other tweaks will be probably done by hand like the current "Manual" version which tries to group effects together. In the upcoming days I'll post tables of these problematic skills and if everything works out I'll update all the skills articles (even when the tables are based on D13, the values are the same as in current D12)
 * There are two reasons for using level 1 values:
 * The game data contains values for level 1 recruit and I haven't found a formula to calculate higher level values yet.
 * From the game data it seems many of the damage values are based on Mind attribute, but I haven't seen any change in the tooltips when raising my Mind attribute. It seems the Tooltips reflect only character level or are not updated when Mind attribute value is changed. This needs more testing.
 * The values are just for comparison and using the same level for all the pumps enables you to compare the effectiveness of each pump. For instance, you can see the pump 3 has much lower Arc damage then pump 2 (personally I think this is bug) so you can plan to use pump 2 to save 33% of Power costs to get similar damage output when used against 2 enemies.
 * → Zarevak 12:05, 6 October 2008 (UTC)