Forum:Quest and chapter pages

Forums: Index > Rin's Travel Agency > Archive > Quest and chapter pages

		07:58, March 7, 2020 (UTC) Technobliterator Talk
		Hey all, I would like to propose the creation of pages for quests and chapters for the new game, specifically starting with Final Fantasy VII Remake. tl;dr: Making quest/chapter pages allows us to cover guide content in mainspace in a way better than we could before. This helps us keep up with other wikis that do this. The page layouts are simple: for chapter content, an infobox, with a story/chapter overview image, a Story header for story content, and a Quest header listing all quests and sidequests in. For the quest pages, an infobox with a gameplay image, then all content under Walkthrough. Layout may differ for other games; for instance, with FFXIII where there are no quests, it would have a Walkthrough section. MoS will be very similar to the Strategy sections on enemy pages; don't say "you", but avoid repetitive use of "the player must". A page would be made for every quest and sidequest. However, in cases where there are quests that are extremely short but closely related to another quest, the pages can be merged and redirected. This is not intended to make Walkthrough namespace redundant. Users can still write user-written walkthroughs that they can inject personality into. In the past, we would usually relegate quests to sections on a single quest page, and game guide content previously only really existed in the Walkthrough namespace. I believe this can change, however, and that there is room for guide content in the mainspace as well. My motivation for this is twofold. Firstly, for games with named quests such as VII Remake and XV, or games with named chapters such as X-2 and XIII, I feel like it is definitely beneficial to move as much guide content to the quest pages as possible in order to reduce clutter on the location pages. Secondly, right now, I feel like we are behind a lot of other wikis or sites when it comes to guide content, as well our boss content is very good, standard guide content is not. It seems logical that if the player is stuck on a quest, they will search for the name of the quest; if they are stuck on a boss, they will search for the boss name (and in games with no named quests, they will just have to search for the location page). My proposed layouts for these will be as follows: For chapter pages An infobox with overview details on the chapter. Any locations explored, playable/guest characters, etc. Within the infobox, a story-related image of the quest itself. The image name would be the name of the cutscene (if applicable) or just be the chapter name, i.e. "File:The Destruction of Mako Reactor 1.png". This is to give an overview. Abridged story and gameplay information in lede. A Story section that covers everything that happens in the chapter. If the game has quests: Quests section linking to the quest pages, followed by an abridged overview of the gameplay in all of them and the ordering of the quests. If the game has chapters but not quests: a Walkthrough section detailing how to play. For quest pages An infobox with overview details on the quest, and crucial links to the next and previous quests. Within the infobox, a gameplay screenshot of the chapter. As before, this screenshot would just be the quest name followed by "gameplay", i.e. "File:Infiltrate the Reactor gameplay.png". In the lede, abridged story information with as few spoilers as possible, to provide context as to where in the game it takes place. This is just so readers know they're on the right page, to help them differentiate between similar-named quests. A Walkthrough section as the bulk of the content, where we write how to beat this. The Manual of Style for these walkthrough sections would not be too different from how we write Gameplay sections. In my example pages below, I explained how I want to write them: essentially, as new enemies or new abilities are introduced, give a brief explanation, but not too long as a link to that page will exist. Likewise, strategy on boss battles should be limited, as we can use context-links to boss page strategy sections that contain the in-depth guide. The other minor thing is that though we should keep the MoS standard of not using "you" in pages, I want to avoid repetition of "the player must". To be clear, the proposal is a new page for every quest/sidequest in the game. However (as seen in my example below), in cases where some quests are extremely short, but have a closely related quest, they can be merged and redirected onto one page. The goal for this is not to replace walkthrough namespace. Walkthrough namespace still has a place for those who wish to inject more personality into it than mainspace can allow. Additionally, Walkthrough namespace is still very much a sequential thing, and writers in that namespace can make assumptions as to what the player has done if they included it on a previous page. i.e. If the quest is about defeating Ruby Weapon or something, than a walkthrough would be able to say "Use the Ultima Weapon I told you to get three pages ago and Cloud's ultimate Limit Break that I told you about last page", whereas a quest article would be "Good strategies to defeat Ruby Weapon include the use of Ultima Weapon (Final Fantasy VII), or <link to Cloud's ultimate limit break>. Written example pages below: (update: these have gone live) "The Destruction of Mako Reactor 1", the first chapter in the game, from the demo. "Infiltrate the Reactor", comprising the first three missions. "Reach Mako Storage", comprising the middle four. Scorpion Sentinel is mentioned here, but I kept it brief to one paragraph, with a link suggesting the Scorpion Sentinel#Strategy page. "Escape from the Reactor", the last three. Since two missions are really short, I didn't bother to separate the Walkthrough header by subheaders. For my inspiration on this, w:c:ratchetandclank:Get to the palace and w:c:uncharted:Ambushed were my model (basically, what my team and I had done on other wikis), and also gives an idea on the images used. That said, you can find this layout on similar wikis; w:c:witcher:The Nilfgaardian Connection as one example for a wiki I used regularly. If these pages are good, I will push them to mainspace, and on Mako Reactor 1, replace existing quests content with a "Quests" subheader, that is just a bullet point list of the quests in that location. For other locations, it would be a table, where the right column is the chapter the quest is in. Hope this works for everyone, and let me know if you have any thoughts!

		Hexedmagica - Rathalos: World Tour/All Ass Sword TALK - My companions' feelings have been etched upon this body. I'll change this eternal darkness into light! Heaven and Earth! One who matches the gods! CHOUGINGA GURREN-LAGANN! 08:09, March 7, 2020 (UTC)
		like i said on the discord, i've wanted something like this for a while, as it's a very logical way of laying out information about certain parts of games. i also generally like techno's format he's laid out, so i have less than zero objections, tbh.

The character names in the infobox don't need the surnames. Also the use of "Assigned by" kinda irks me when the quest is literally given from advancing the story. "Escape from the Reactor" is assigned by completing "Set the Charge". Writing "Cloud" seems like trying to fit a story-shaped peg into a gameplay-shaped hole.

For games that don't have main quests and/or chapters, I suggest we make them up. Sometimes we don't even have to do that: The FFVII Ultimania Omega divides the game into Acts/Chapters. Act 1 is Midgar and had nine chapters. Act 2 has 17 and goes up to summoning Meteor (although one is Gongaga, one is Wutai). Act 3 has four and goes up to saving Cloud. Act 4 has six and is the remainder of the story. For reference, Act. 1-1 is 壱番魔晄炉爆破 and goes all the way up to getting offa that train at Sector 7.

Most games don't seem to have a perfect analogue to quests, at least as they are in FFVIIR. Each main quest in FFVIIR is an in-game instruction. The FFVIII Ultimania has "'Tutorial' in the Study Panel" followed by "Bump into transfer student on 2F corridor" followed by "Join Quistis at the main gate". After doing the first, your instruction is the third, but it's interjected by the second event. It'll probably be easier to just use our own based on dialogue instruction, but the Ultimanias are probably worth referencing.

FFXII is simple and has 10(+1) chapters that are named as seen on the sidebar here. (The BradyGames guide is also convenient for sidequests. Example: Chapter 10 has the single Objective "Stop Vayne!", and the Actions "Get to the lift platform in the central hub.", "Defeat Judge Gabranth." and "Defeat Vayne Solidor three times!". Chapter 9 has three objectives (Seek Reddas in Balfonheim Port [3 actions], Enter the Pharos lighthouse [1 action], and Seek the Sun-Cryst Atop the Pharos at Ridorana (6+3+4+1 actions). (technically between these chapters they have the "Prepare for the Final Confrontation" objective, but we can ignore that))

Anyway, yeah. I like the idea of quests pages. And I guess Chapter pages make sense too, although sometimes it seems arbitrary because each game probably handles Chapter length differently. Question: If a Chapter is short enough where it seems most logical to merge its main quests into a single a page (think the chapter that's going to cover Cloud's Subconscious), would we just not make a quests page and fuse it into the Chapter page? JBed (talk) 11:49, March 7, 2020 (UTC)

Surnames were included in the infobox because of how VIIR always lists full names in gameplay text. i.e. listing the full names in the menu, in the HUD, and the full name is listed when joining the party. I wouldn't do full names for the other games though.

When the quest is circumstantial, the idea is to use the party leader as the one who assigned it (in future parts, that may be Aerith of Cid). "Assigned by" may not be necessary for these, but is crucial for a lot of later quests, particularly sidequests, where the player has to talk to a certain character to get the quests.

The only problem I have with using made-up names for quests is just that readers wouldn't know to search for it. This may not be a problem if we just list the quests on the location pages though. And I absolutely agree with using Ultimania names for chapters (any chance you could transcribe what those act/chapter names are? They'd be really helpful for the script page too). FFXII and FFVIII could definitely make use of the chapter and quest names listed there.

I thought about what to do with chapters that are really short. I currently lean towards just keeping the chapter page barebones and linking to the few quests there are. This is mainly because I prefer to avoid having redirects in one category lead to another entirely, but also because chapter pages have full story sections that quest pages don't. I'm open to just using the chapter page in cases like that, though.-- Technobliterator ^T_C 14:02, March 7, 2020 (UTC)

I checked a video before I made the comment: The on-screen party list just had "Cloud", but more importantly the speaker line just said "Cloud". If it uses the surname prominently in gameplay contexts then I guess it's not as significant as I thought, but I would still side with speaker name (since that's what NPC-given quests are going to use). Assigned by is definitely a good parameter in general though, yeah -- but when it's not an NPC quest it just looks like the result of having to put something in a required field.

I agree that readers wouldn't know to search for made-up names (and also because they wouldn't even know to search for them). But you've made clear the utility of having a series of story articles. And instead of saying "after obtaining the Highwind", "during Meteorfall", or "after the events at the Nothern Cave in Part 2", we can finally have "after [EVENT PAGE LINK]" consistently on all pages. Also if we're making up the names, we're more likely to use a self-evident name, and less likely to name something like "Out of the Frying Pan".

FFVIII and FFIX don't have chapter names as such. So FFIX divides its story into sections but names them after the location (e.g. "Ice Cavern"), or like "M.S. Prima Vista (after crash) ~ Evil Forest". FFVIII Ultimania is actually the same, although it basically has a new chapter every turn of the page, so you can't tell how much the "chapters" are informed by space limitations. The cuts aren't totally arbitrary though. The 20th Anniversary Ultimania has the same kind of thing all of the games up to XII, favouring frequent divisions.

I'll look through what I have and transcribe everything I think might be relevant. JBed (talk) 14:52, March 7, 2020 (UTC)

When someone joins the party, on-screen it says "Barret Wallace joins the party", using the full name. I basically used the surname here to reflect this.

I'm ok with removing "assigned by" when it's circumstantial or unclear.

You made a really good point on the "after [event link]" here, actually. Being able to say "during Raid on Midgar" was a godsend when writing Sector 8. Being able to do that elsewhere would be really convenient, so I'm good with us just making up names of events if the Ultimania does not provide it.-- Technobliterator ^T_C 16:55, March 7, 2020 (UTC)

Can we make a "List of Final Fantasy Z quests" that just has all the quests in chronological order? Would make searching easier for sure. Cat (meow ∙ hunt) 07:36, March 8, 2020 (UTC)

		03:21, March 8, 2020 (UTC) Technobliterator Talk
		The pages have now gone live. I'll leave the forum up for any more feedback or comments per usual, and adapt as needed.

Other content that should be viewed as in the same class as Quests: FFXIV Duty pages, such as Eden's Verse: Fulmination, and FFT(A,2,S) battle content. Both are extremely bare-bones at the moment; I have been working on the former. Actually, in the case of FFT, War of the Lions gives battles names; for example the first fight at Lionel Castle is called "The Chill of Defeat". I don't think we mention this anywhere on the wiki other than maybe in the FFT journal pages. So those battles could be potentially moved off of the location page and into the page with their name, but then the location page would have basically nothing on it, so this may or may not be prudent. Cat (meow ∙ hunt) 07:25, March 8, 2020 (UTC)

FFXIV is a great candidate for quest pages, but the only problem is that there's a huge amount of content to cover. Same goes for XI.

The location pages for FFT can still have a Geography section, with the goal being to describe said locations as lived-in places in lore, and could still have Story content if the goal is that the battle pages are gameplay-focused while the location pages are lore-focused. In this case, I would say including guide content on the FFT battle names makes more sense than on the location pages, because they can be listed sequentially.-- Technobliterator ^T_C 07:40, March 8, 2020 (UTC)