Forum:Sortable Quest List

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I don't know if someone is working on this, but if NOT, is it OK if I start on a sortable quest list? It would be sortable by name, level req, level recommended, timer, patch added, and year added. Actually, I've kind of already started on it, just working on inputting the quests in order by patch (I'm probably 50% done with Release), because I didn't see it mentioned. However, I can stop, if I'm walking on someones toes here. Thanks :)

I don't think anyone else has done anything like this, so go for it. I see you started at Quests (Sortable). As you can see, though, there are already problems with the level restrictions. When you sort by level, 8+ is listed as the highest one. There is also the issue of quests with various levels - olthoi pincers, moarsman forts, gaerlan, black mire temples, etc. Does each level of the quest get it's own line? Suggestions: Use 3 digits for all levels, so they are sorted correctly. A level 35+ quest should be listed as level 035+, etc. Use only even 5s for level suggestions. Ice tachi looks odd at suggested level 11+, it should just be 10+ (and really, probably 5+, its really easy). The only time going by something other than 5s would be useful is at the lowest levels, 5-20, and people go by those levels so fast it is hardly worth giving the quests difficulties other than 5, 10, 15, and 20. Combine patch and year. No one wants to be able to sort patches alphabetically, its of no use. Display patches as YYYY/MM - [[Patch]] So release is 1999/11 - Release. This way patches are sorted by date, but still display the name and link to the article. Remove the timer column, for simplicity and because we may soon have a better option: NoWorries posted that they will be standardizing quest timers. This means that once they implement this, we can edit the Quest Summary template to automatically add the timer as a category, and people will be able to browse automatically generated timer listings. When it comes to maintaining lists, having done for us will obviously be much easier. http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=482030#post482030 Also we will be standardizing our quest timers. A month will become the longest time frame, the times will be as follows: 1 month = 27 days 3 weeks = 20 days 2 weeks = 13 days 1 week = 6 days 3 days = 2 days 20 hours 1 day = 20 hours --An Adventurer 20:46, December 22, 2009 (UTC)

And actually, you might just do away with the patch/date column all together, since the Quests page is a listing of quests by the patch they were added. In which case, the only info left on the table is level restrictions/suggestions, and I would suggest moving the page to either Quests by Level or Quests/By Level. --An Adventurer 20:55, December 22, 2009 (UTC)

I had another idea entirely that you may want to consider: Since, if you decide to go with my suggestions above, the only info on the table is level related, maybe a sortable table is not the best way to go. So I have two possible ideas: 1) Create a page or series of pages that list quests by their restrictions/suggestions combined. That is, if a quest is 0+ in restriction but 100+ in difficulty, it is placed under the 100+ quests. You could create a single page (Quests by Level or Quests/By Level) where each level range is its own header (== Level 5+ quests ==, etc) or, if you want the page to be easier to load, make multiple sub pages. For example: Quests/By Level - links to all the sub pages Quests/By Level/5+ Quests/By Level/10+ Quests/By Level/15+ ... 2) Create categories and add them to all quests. This would work well with my post at Forum:New quest categories Category:5+ Quest Category:10+ Quest Category:15+ Quest ... Both ways, you'll have to simplify restrictions and suggestions to even 5s, but I think that'll be more manageable anyway. --An Adventurer 21:07, December 22, 2009 (UTC)

Right - I realized that the Patch and Year were largely irrelevent, so I did take those out. It now just lists Quest, Level Req, Level Recommended. I've stolen both just from each individual quest page so that is why there is the wierdness with 11+ level recommendation, etc. However, your categories idea seems like a good one. Right now I am just going through, patch-by-patch, and adding quests to the table. So I think I will finish this general table, then break it down afterwards into Quests > By Level > 5+ like you suggested. Can we think of this as just a rough draft? ;) I've only edited pages a small amount before, so I'm still trying to figure out what all I can do, and the proper ways to do things. Thank you so much for the input. --Ruhelosseele 21:25, December 22, 2009 (UTC)ruhelosseele

I like the idea of quest-by-level categories and have been thinking about it a bit myself (I'm tired of keeping a spreadsheet of them). I looked at a couple of other wikis and one had quest level categories such as QL01-10, QL11-15, QL16-20, etc. The "QL" was kind of cryptic and looked stupid when auto-sorted in a category list though. I like Quests/By Level, but maybe the categories shouldn't be like 5+, but instead 5-10, 11-15, etc. (whatever looks best when sorted, you may need preceeding zeros which does look stupid). You'll want to figure out if you're going with minimum level or suggested level, or some combination (both can be handy in different situations). I'm not sure how the auto-sorting category pages work exactly but user experience of the final display page should be taken into consideration. Plus what you don't want is a manually-maintained page - it should be auto-generated via the quest template categories. -- Dr Doom HG (talk) 18:52, December 23, 2009 (UTC)

The reason I suggested using categories like Category:5+ Quest, etc instead of Category:5 - 10 Quest is because AC has so many odd restrictions in quests, and I want to keep the categories as simple as possible. Giving a range implies that the quest is restricted to those ranges, or only useful during those ranges. Minor Atlan stones may be 15 - 20 in difficulty range, but I run them with higher levels all the time for the writs. So 15+ is a more accurate description. There are also a few quests with odd restrictions. Some of the starter quests are level 1-20 only. Would they get categorized as 5 - 10, 10 - 15, and 15 - 20? What about the various level brackets of Gaerlan, BM quests, Grael, etc? The way I see the categories working is like this: If a quest is level restricted at 40+, the quest gets Category:40+ Quest If a quest is level restricted at 38+, 39+, 41+, or 42+, the quest gets Category:40+ Quest (restrictions are rounded to nearest 5) If a quest is not level restricted, but is 40+ in Difficulty, the quest gets Category:40+ Quest If a quest is restricted to level 40 - 69, the quest gets Category:40+ Quest The only difficult part of this is when a quest has no restrictions and we have to make a call on how hard it is. For that, I'd suggest basing difficulty on a hypothetical base line character - one that is not using bots and is using level appropriate gear. This is not because this is the "correct" play style, but because a non-bot user is always going to have a harder time than a bot user, so we should base difficulty on that. On every one of these new quest category pages, we would stress that not every quest is exactly at the level, and to be sure to check the full guide for accurate level restrictions and suggestions. --An Adventurer 20:01, December 23, 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good! What would the layout of the quests-by-level page look like then? Can we add some category tags to some pages and see how the auto-generated page will look? Also are we going to manually add the category to each quest page, or can we change the quest template so the level restrictions / level suggestions fields auto-generate the categories? (and then we go in and change the values to correspond to the buckets we want them to fit in?) -- Dr Doom HG (talk) 21:44, December 23, 2009 (UTC)

I am kind of curious how an auto-generated quest-by-level page would look too. Here is what my intention is: You are new to the game, returning, or have a newb that you want to level differently. In any case, you don't remember level restrictions or whatever. You can go to the table I made, sort by level required, and find something with an appropriate level suggestion that you want to do. It's just...for reference. In one place, easily sortable (even though it looks funny sometimes). However, if there were some sort of auto way to do this, that would be pretty awesome. When they change the quest timers, the category thing that you suggested would have to be manually input into each quest, right? Either way, leg work is going to have to be done. Maybe I should just be leaving this up to the experts and back off. --Ruhelosseele 04:38, December 24, 2009 (UTC)Ruhelosseele

Once you've decided on the level ranges you'd like for the categories I can add code that will automatically categorize the quest (just for req or also for recommendation as you decide). It probably doesn't need to be too fine grain at the higher levels. --Tlosk  talk  contr 09:41, December 25, 2009 (UTC)

I would put it by level requirement instead of level recommendation since that is pretty subjective, and in increments of 5+. All quests with no level req would be put under 5+, quests with specific level ranges would be under the starting level (so a level req of 1 - 10 would go under 5+ quests). Can you delete the page I was working on? It is Quests/By Level. --Ruhelosseele 21:18, December 28, 2009 (UTC)Ruhelosseele

It would still be a useful page, I'm making a script that can populate the table automatically (which I'll do once we've finished updating the timer information next month). I was thinking it might also be useful to have a complementary category of quests below as well (so all quests would be binned by 5 level increments, and each quest would also be binned together with all quests at that level or below). This way both people looking for new quests as they level, and for returning players looking for quests they could do would be able to find pertinent lists. Also looking at a level histogram chart of quests show's 5 might be too fine grained, 10 might be better (partly because of the bias towards reqs that are a multiple of 10), though it's hard to know for sure since there's a lot of quests that don't have level req information recorded. On a general note, for updating templates to include automatically generated information, the wiki software propagates those changes automatically with one exception, that being categorization. It requires a Null Edit to update the category information. So once we've nailed down all the changes we want to make I'll send a bot through the Quest pages to do null edits so the new info shows up. --Tlosk  talk  contr 23:01, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

I thought about it by 10s as well. Either way, SOMETHING that gives a quest list by level is useful. How would you do it in 10+ increments? 1+, 10+, etc? Or, starting at 5+, 15+... I'm glad that you're making a script which will do the table automatically - and that it is even possible :) I am very ignorant of this whole wiki thing, and what you can and can't do. It's magic! --Ruhelosseele 19:53, December 29, 2009 (UTC)Ruhelosseele

I used 5s here because there are numerous quests with level restrictions ending in 5s. They are mostly sub level 100 quests, but there are a few above there as well, like the 125 eater jaw. With 10s only, what do you do with those quests? Is the Hea Bone and Hide Shirt Quest listed 30+ or 40+? I'd agree though that certainly after level 130, level restrictions are almost always 10s. Would that work? 5s, from 5+ to 125+, then 10s from 130+ to... maybe 180+, not sure if there are any restrictions higher than that currently. --An Adventurer 20:45, January 1, 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, I'll add it in. --Tlosk  talk  contr 21:04, January 1, 2010 (UTC)