Talk:Boilerplate:Regions

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Warbands and Roving Threats

The game have grown to include a warbands and roving threats. I suggest we add these as sub headers to the Creature sections of the Region template. Matthew.zellmer (talk) 12:28, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

changed the region boilerplate to match the current and past actual region pages. Better match to what people really develop and put on pages but doesn't remove something cause its hard. Added Warbands and Roving threats among other headers Matthew.zellmer (talk) 13:02, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
LOL - just to further confuse things -- Mordor has "Scourges" and "Hidden Threats" -- same idea as Roving Threats and Warbands, but with different names. It also has neither Warbands nor Roving threats. They have manifested as a Meta Deed and in a series of Allegiance System quests. As I recall, the scourges are all intended as group quests -- i.e. over 1 million Health per mob. They can also be encountered singly on the landscape, independent of the Allegiance wrapper quest.
Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 18:17, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
Great. I will add them to the template, remember if the region doesnt need the header we wont add it :) Matthew.zellmer (talk) 19:59, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Boilerplate Improvements

Back from my long hiatus I of course find changes to this and that; I would be surprised if I would not. Many are great, and I mean great! But some are suboptimal. Now I want to improve even further, and I wonder and suggest ...

Area Info

Why was the transcluded area information removed for an anonymous category-tree? (I am certain it was not done by ill will, though!) diff 99809

First off, using category-tree is great for long lists of quite uninteresting items. Such as "who is interested in landmarks on a region page"? Such changes were a great move forward, a true improvement.

However, the areas of a region is another story. Personally I think the transcluded information is imperative to have on a region page. Replacing that with an anonymous category-tree is a huge loss of information! I would like raise the subject on reverting that part, slowly but surely. With a discussion first of course.

Sure, the problem maybe was that the info became several pages long. For example, I see on older versions of the Shire that much info certainly can be compressed by simply merging some lines into one, and exclude less interesting info. We could also exclude transclude any images from transclusion but instead add a few, select images directly at the region page. Also not using any sub-heading per area. Anything to minimize the area info section but to retain important info at the region page. I mean, if size was the problem then solving it the way it was done was not the best way.

Compare e.g. oldid=1077712#Areas with The Shire#Areas. — Zimoon 14:58, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Settlements

Same as for areas, but with a difference. Only significant settlement(s) should be transcluded, and the category-tree is kept.

Minor Stuff

  1. I suggest removing tier number from Crafting: < TIER NAME > ( < TIER NUMBER > ) simply because it looks ugly. Any crafter worth their name knows the tiers, always. And for all others it is uninteresting.
  2. I suggest shortening the text for many bullets, without loosing information. Many are so wordy they spill into next line (unless you have your browser window maximized).
  3. I suggest removing redundant text. Now there are some sub-headings and then text right beneath that reads the same thing but expanded. I always consider our readers intelligent (enough) to connect the dots. And having to sift away redundant text wears on your mind.
  4. I suggest Region Reputations should use an invisible table when needed (gallery mode). Instead of stacking each image+text on top of the next.
  5. I suggest removing Crafting Location(s): because next bullet is Crafting Facilities: (which also lists locations but per facility), which makes the locations bullet redundant. Edited: I notice I was looking at a somewhat outdated version. This has been renamed to Resource Locations which is fine. Just that if all, or all but a few, areas are the same we could summarize as I did at The_Shire#Crafting. Either way, I think this is best suggested at bullet 2 and 3.

Finally

Big thanks and my best praise to User:Rogue4ever who put such an effort in this. The boilerplate looks very user friendly and I suppose it has been needed/used a lot with all new geography added to the game while i was away. Kudos! — Zimoon 13:54, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

General Comments

I don't agree there is information loss, it is just simply not on the Region page, but still available on the area page. I also don't like the Heading + category tree sections, especially with images, they take a lot of space, but only on one side of the page, making users scroll for sometimes quite long time, to get to other full width content. We could possible solve this with {{Div col}} or table. Or maybe we could replace it all with similar templates as are on the bottom page for locations, i think they are easier to use. This would however lost the ability to search trough the tree just from the Region page, so in return we could put one Region category tree on the page to make it browsable - would be pretty much the same as now without all the excess headings.
Don't have strong opinion about areas being put back on the region page (thanks for Zimoon for providing link in discord to this old revision of shire page), maybe we can also put them in table/columns - like image with short info below. --Drono (talk) 15:13, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Drono. Your comments about headings + categorytree with images is a good supplementation to this subject, I agree completely, there is a massive amount of unused space there. Do you mean "Landmarks" and their gallery? Back in the days I notice we actually used a categorytree for the region itself, which kind of works as well. I guess it depends on if we want to help people to find settlements, landmarks, etc., somewhat quicker.
Regarding areas, before deciding anything I think we'd better play with it a little, to see how it looks like with more dense info being transcluded (maybe with less images to the right), with using tables, etc. I can create Testing Shire 1, etc., which is just for testing a short while, to be deleted soon, right?
My purpose here is just to display info where readers expect to find it. And as long as the rest of the info is found elsewhere we can select just the more important parts on the region pages. — Zimoon 15:33, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
I like the approach i saw on other wikis, using /sandbox for testing, i started using it for some templates. Makes it easier for others to find later if the change wast made, finished or forgot - rather than beeing on user pages, as there are some WIP user pages that seemed nice if finished.
I agree we should test it first how it would look before applying. --Drono (talk) 15:58, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
A testing shot without anything done to densi-fying area-information is found here: [[Testing_Shire_1|'''Testing Shire 1''']]. Some parts are tricky. Getting superb vertical alignment within tables, e.g. Reputation. But overall a lot of blank space is gone. — Zimoon 17:43, 29 November 2021 (UTC)
Further improvements to how e.g. Settlements, Interiors, etc., can be done at any time. And the suggestion made visible in [[Testing Shire 1]] can be applied to this boilerplate right away I think. — Zimoon 12:21, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

How to Track Dungeons and Small Instances?

This is a question about tracking at region level.
While many location types are clearly defined at the Locations page, some are not. Actually quite a few pages per region are now kind of ambiguously tracked in the CAT:REGION Other Locations category. All of them are tracked in e.g. CAT:Caves + CAT:Public Dungeons, or CAT:Quest Instances.

  • Unfriendly interiors, caves, etc. Some of them are landmark + dungeon so they are tracked that way, but not all dungeons are also landmarks
  • Instances smaller than World Instances and Raids. Meaning private quest instances of one kind or the other, most often done just once.

To me those private quest instances are quite uninteresting from a regional tracking point of view. They could stay in CAT:REGION Other Locations so we know they exist, but certainly not on a region-nav-box.

But public dungeons are more interesting, for some players at least. Today they are usually included in the "landmarks" section of the region-nav-box. Questions are if we should have a dedicated CAT:REGION Somethings for them? Or let them stay in CAT:REGION Other Locations as-is? — Zimoon 16:19, 23 February 2022 (UTC)

Reverting Boilerplate

As with the discussion for Talk:Boilerplate:Areas I'm proposing on reverting this boilerplate back to this version: https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php?title=Boilerplate:Regions&oldid=1326404. Same reasoning as I feel the changes to language was unnecessary and the wording feels awkward.

If there are any changes that are on the current boilerplate that you like better or want to discuss please do so. I am giving people a week to respond before coming back to this. Rogue (talk) 02:05, 18 August 2022 (UTC)

See my comment on the Areas page for now. --Stargazer (talk) 16:53, 23 August 2022 (UTC)
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