Board Thread:Dark Assembly/@comment-653063-20150303021112

In Feb 2015, I had some conversations with Otherarrow (talk) on the user talk page regarding the Tier-to-Class project. I know this concept had been mentioned several times previously on the site, and now that the new Forums are in place, I want to move the relevant parts of our discussion to somewhere a bit more visible, so that future editors on the site can more easily see, if they so wish.

This conversation picks up after several days of us discussing using Unified/non-game-specific templates, such as a 'unified Map template' so that all Map pages look the same, a 'unified Character template' for all the story/dlc/etc characters, and a 'unified Classes template', where the same template could be used for all classes, all tiers, humanoid and monster, all games. I had already done some of the work on what would eventually become Template:TierStats and had read the other threads in the old forums and the other pages, where OA specifically had (at least a year or more ago) said "no, we will keep separate Tier pages." I had resigned myself to that plan, and was thinking the proto-TierStats was ready to be rolled out.... and then...

Class/Tier layout/consolidation

Oh mannnnnnnnn. I was all ready to sit down and be like LES'DO'DISS and start with Job Stats... and then some anonymous edited Prinny (Disgaea 4) with the doods. I went and looked at the page and... now there's a reasonably-sized wrench in my plans. I mean, look at the beautiful tabber-ness going on. I read some talk page that you and some other person were on like 3 years ago, and the other person was like 'all tiers on one page' and you were like 'no, the multiple templates in close proximity are being a butt', and that's... ok yeah, I totes get that b/c when I was sandboxing the Job Stats fragment, it was doing weird stacking things when I had several too close together. But I was plotting a way around that, using basically a one-column table with invisible borders.... but this is so much better. This way, everything about a single class (per game) can be on a single page and not take ten screen-heights of space to show, haha. Instead of Celestial Host (Disgaea) linking to six separate pages, all those pages can be on a single page. Look at that Celestial Host page, and imagine this layout: under 'Tiers' would be a float-right tabber with all 6 tier's Job Stats (six callings for the template, one in each tab). The part where the chart with 'tier name | requirement' is now would hold series of 'reincarnation cost' charts (probably in the table cell where the 'requirement' is now). The 'requirement for next tier' data could get moved into the tabber, or maybe even stay where it is. A user goes to one page to get all the data about that Class that they want. Yeahhh streamlined \o/.

The one drawback I can see (and in my opinion it's not a drawback, but I mean in regards to established site style) is that, any given game's bottom-include Classes template (ie Template:Disgaea Classes ) would not really have individual links (ie, "Male Brawler - Male Pugilist - Male Fighter - Male Black Belt - Male Wushu Master - Male Eternal Fist", all would go to 'Male Brawler (Disgaea)' -- or be disambigs? in the case of like the Mage and Skulls and the monsters etc, where things with those names appear in multiple games). If nothing else, this makes the bottom-include not useful as a measuring stick for what tiers don't have inputted data -- i mean, i guess technically we just don't edit the template:dis_class for 'given tier' to make it link to 'game's-class as a whole' until given-tier's data has been input on game's-class page, and then temp:dis_class will still show the red links for what hasn't been done....

So ok, that's my pitch for 'consolidating all these individual tier pages into their game's-class page'. Pros: Streamlined user experience; we can keep the individual ones either as disambigs where necessary, and REDIRs for the others if we don't want to delete them. Cons... ohs nos the bottom-include template will be a tiny bit different. I mean, yeah ok I'm biased, so I'm having a hard time thinking of a really valid Con. So what do you think? Consolidation, yeah yeah?

Except... this anonymous editing the Prinny page and me looking at it... and the way the Haru template is laid out and /what/ data it includes and presents (and what data that's currently in JobStats that it doesn't)... makes me wonder just how different D3 and D4 and any other offshoot game is. I haven't played D4 yet, and I'm only like one hour into D3. I know D3 dispensed with Weapon Mastery, but I haven't even looked at how D4 is different. A unified table needs to be flexible enough to correctly display anything for any game; and I believe I can make it be so... I'm just trying to figure out how screwed I am that I didn't look up how stats work for anything beyond what I've played. The relevant question is: do I research more about the 'job stats' in D3/4/etc before we start editing everything? Or do we say, 'at the very least, the current incarnation of new-Job-Stats is good enough for D1&2&probably3 and therefore the remakes of those games, so let's just keep going with that for now and cross other bridges when we come to them'?

Also: now is a great opportunity to rename 'Job Stats' to something more relatedly descriptive, like maybe 'TierStats' (lack of spacebar intentional). I don't recall D1, but I don't think the word 'Job' is used in any game in relation to what this site is using it for. (The page that is currently 'Template:Disgaea Job Stats' could be renamed Template:TierStats, since the code in T:DJS is exactly what would go into T:TS.)

In less finicky news, I'm pretty confident that the unified Characters template is ready to be used (ie, to replace everything that says 'characters' in Category:Infobox_templates ). I'm unsure if we should overwrite 'Disgaea Characters' and input that into 2,3,4,d2,etc, or make a new page, maybe Template:DisgaeaStoryCharacters? But they're not all, strictly speaking, 'story' characters (unlockables/dlc =/= story?). Maybe I'm thinking about 'character' too literally (to me, if I make a 'male brawler,' now that's a 'character' in my game too -- but again, in my head vs site usage... site usage ought to win from time to time, lol). Template:DisgaeaUnifiedCharacter? That makes sense from a 'we're coding it now' point of view, not really for a year down the line when editors go 'what does 'unified' mean here...' Anyway - Characters is much less finicky than Job Stats, so is that worth doing and getting done? Unified Maps would also take me maybe an hour tops to set up and check.

So yeah, lots of questions... I'm sorry I keep critting you with walls of text : x. I just tend to err on the side of 'be really specific', rather than be too brief and allow uncertainties to creep in. 1 - Can we pretty please streamline all the individual tiers up into the game-class pages? I have a way to code it if you want each incarnation of the template to be visible at the same time, or I can go learn how to tabber-ize things. (Individual tier pages would be turned either into disambigs (prinny dis4 has some links that go to prinny tier pages for other games, and that's probably a somewhat-widespread issue) or REDIRs.) 2 - Can we rename T:DJS into Template:TierStats? (Vaguely related: if I were to put some text in Talk:Temp:DJS, and T:DJS gets renamed, does the talk get renamed too? ie, does anything in the talk 'stay put', or does it get lost?) 3 - Do we hold off on the Job/TierStats until I make sure it is correct for D4&etc? Or go ahead and do what we know it handles (d1, dd2, d2, pretty sure d3 is fine enough) and if D4&etc are really that different, I can put in some #ifs, later. 4 - Do we do Characters now? Rename Characters, or no? Shall I get a unified Maps template done before messing with Job/TierStats?

Well, I'll start working on unified Maps anyway while you... read all of this ;_; sorry again for so many words. SannaSK (talk) 17:38, February 15, 2015 (UTC)


 * OK, lotta stuff.
 * You make a good argument for streamline the tiers into the game-class pages. Tabber will do for showing the templates, in that case. As for the class nav template....yeah, we can just change it, no biggy. I am really proud of the work we did for individual tier pages for D1, but none of the other pages have anywhere near that level of completion, and multiple unrelated folks have suggested just merging tiers into that game's class page, and...I don't really see the cons? I think, at most, certain Evilities require you to unlock up to a certain tier, but that's not much. With the tiers no longer needing their own page, I dunno if we should delete or redirect them though. I can see pros and cons to both options.
 * TierStats or maybe ClassStats, since there are classes that use it that don't have tiers. I think we have to manually move the talk pages too, but it's no problem. (As for the use of the term "Job", I think it's a carry over from the Final Fantasy Wiki, since Yuan did, and still does, edit there more prominently.)
 * I think holding off may not be nessicary. While D3 and D4 getting rid of Weapon Ranks, there is a loose equivalent, abit hidden, which determines how far up a weapon's skill list a chosen class can learn.
 * We can do characters now. I think, since most of the character templates have most of the same info, it'd be changing the template names at most. No need for "unified" since yeah, it'd only make sense to us.
 * (If we get this all done, I wonder what Yuan will think if she decides to randomly check in and see how much we've changed things. ^^;;)--Otherarrow (talk) 22:38, February 15, 2015 (UTC)


 * Yayyy streamlining Tiers \o/. Ok, many thoughts: 1 - since 'Class' (ie 'Celestial Host') and 'Tier' (ie 'Angel') have separate meanings... even though some Classes may not have Tiers, I think we should call it TierStats anyway. A Class with 'no' Tiers can be viewed as a Class with 'one' Tier. And ClassStats... "is it the stats of the Celestial Host? All 6 of them?" Ehh, I still vote for TierStats.
 * 2 - the more I look at, like you mention, D:HOD pages... there's a lot more in those Tier pages than just Stats: there's Reincarnation templates, Spell tables, 'unlocked at__' data. Tiers-into-Class-pages, yes, in the long run it can be done, Tabber can do it, and I can design it all templatey and visually unified. But... not right this second. In a literal sense, at best I could start that part tomorrow morning. In a slightly less literal sense, while I quite enjoy making these templates and everything, I'm itching to impliment SOMEthing X D rather than just keep templating, testing, googling, what's broken now, more testing, etc etc. Lol. I've done so much planning, now I want to DO!
 * Can you please hit up my User:SannaSK/wikia.css and do the replace-the-css again? Everything starting with slash-asterick over the .D1a block. I added more disver variables, to handle the spinoff/remake/whatever-else games.
 * Ok, you mentioned Characters, so I will rename the Character template to be not temporary, and start inputting it, so we can see what this looks like live ^_^. Of course... if I've done my job correctly, it won't truly look any different at all.... (The primary benefit of all this will come when making new pages, for D3,4,5, etc... less frustration at that time for someone inputting new-to-this-site data.)
 * I hope Yuan would be happy that we're shining everything up, what with a new game coming out sometime this year ^__^.
 * Yaaaaaaaaay progress organization everything will be shiny yaaay
 * SannaSK (talk) 23:00, February 15, 2015 (UTC)


 * Good point on the distinction between Class and Tier. So yeah, TierStat it is.
 * Yeah, it's something that could be done...later. For now, yeah, let's get implimenting. One thing at a time, we don't want to get burnt out trying to do everything at once (I say, despite not doing any of the actual work. >_>)
 * Yeah, we can get started! Not bad if I do say! Thank you for all the help, and sorry that I've been lazy with keeping up with this Wiki. ^^;;--Otherarrow (talk) 23:40, February 15, 2015 (UTC)

I stopped here; we exchanged several messages regarding the Unified Maps Template and our progress in implementing it.

There was a section I am cutting wherein I talked-'out-loud' about trying to get Reincarnation Costs folded into TierStats. In my opinion, it's not relevant to this thread as the point of me pasting into this thread is to record us talking about the 'why's and the 'what-do's of Tier-to-Class, not me fiddling around with the specifics of the template. A relevant piece of the conversation, picked out from lots (lots) of irrelevant pieces, follows:

In a section titled Tier-to-Class: the Classening

(as part of a bulleted to-do list) SannaSK (talk) 17:15, February 17, 2015 (UTC)
 * have discussion on what to do with the 'old' Tier pages (tldr: i vote delete them; but yeah, more on that later) and what to do with the links in the bottom-include templates..... but yeah, later.


 * Still percolating what to do with indivTier pages. But truthfully...... once we've scraped all the necessary parts and T2C'd it all: we should just delete them all, and recreate what's necessary as REDIR/disambig. I think in the long run, that may be less headachy than trying to redir/disambig now. Trying to keep up with what's covered and what has holes.... ugh. There's already random orphany pages all over the place here, why leave more mess to be cleaned later? Wipe the board and start over.
 * SannaSK (talk) 20:28, February 17, 2015 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I guess deleting them all and redirecting as nessicary should work. I want to say most of the recurring ones are already disambiged, and if not, we can make them so?
 * --Otherarrow (talk) 22:25, February 17, 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion, that's the relevant part of the previous conversations. A lot of other nitty-gritty back-and-forth has happened, but none of it really pertains to the 'why's. 