StrategyWiki:Staff lounge

__NEWSECTIONLINK__

Welcome to all users! This page is where you can ask StrategyWiki-related questions to the staff and senior community figures, and they will do their best to answer. New issues are entered here, with the most recent at the bottom of the page. If your question does not pertain to editing StrategyWiki (e.g. asking for hints or game-specific information), please ask on the guide's talk page or on the forums.

Please review the Table of Contents to see if your issue has already been raised; also check the archives (to the right) in case it was discussed some time ago.

To facilitate ease of browsing and replying, please:
 * 1) Place your question at the bottom of the list.
 * 2) Title the question (by placing the title between equals signs: ==Title==).
 * 3) Sign your name and date (by adding four tildes: ~ ).

Mega Man ZX
Mega Man ZX has always been considered its own series, not part of the Mega Man Zero series. It may have some similar gameplay mechanics and a similar art style, but it has a different setting, time period, premise, and cast of characters. It's intended as a spinoff series. The fact that the two series got a shared collection doesn't make them the same series. The Mega Man ZX games should be split back into their own series.Wanderer (talk) 06:48, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Having too many categories makes it more difficult for users to navigate around and find the specific series/category they're looking for. I don't remember where it's documented, but the two main rules are that we avoid deep nesting of series ( -> ->  -> ), and a child series should have at least 3 games before it can have a series cat/template on its own. I'm open to suggestions on a better organization, but ZX having only 2 games makes it a pretty "minor" series. One possibility would be putting X/Zero/ZX all in one category, but I'm not sure if that would be overloading it. @ also worked on filling in some of the category pages, so maybe you have some input as well? -- Prod (talk) 23:43, 14 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Bayonetta has only two games and we don't count it as part of the Devil May Cry series. Wanderer (talk) 08:05, 15 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Different developers/publishers, and it's unclear if their stories are in the same universe. WP also says there's a 3rd game coming out soon. They have a lot of similarities due to shared director (designer?), but they still seem to fall under separate series. -- Prod (talk) 17:16, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Prod, but I also have another reason. If you only have two related games, the "preceded by"/"followed by" cells in the infobox are all you need to display all (both) the related games, and a series template becomes redundant. --Abacos (talk) 20:51, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

I think ZX should be listed as part of the overall Mega Man series until it meets the requirements to be its own sub-series. I'm more likely to go to the Mega Man series to try to find links to X, Zero, and ZX than I am to go to the Zero series to find ZX. This seems like an example of the deep nesting you don't want. To display it in the series TOC I'd probably add a ZX or Spinoffs (ZX) section above Sub-series and list both games. -- flagrama (talk) 02:44, 19 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Now that there's a compilation, there's a easier justification for it having its own series page. You're correct that it isn't really a subseries of the zero series, it's a continuation. I've split it off and migrated everything to the new layout. Please take a look to see if anything still needs to be fixed. -- Prod (talk) 00:26, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Backward compatibility
Currently, there is a consideration to add all platforms that a game is playable on to its infobox. This includes platforms that offer backward compatibility (for example, all PS4 games can be purchased on the PS5's digital storefront, even though those games were not made for the PS5). The question then becomes how to handle this for platforms that offer limited backward compatibility (for example, the original DS and DS Lite models could play all GBA games, but this feature was discontinued with the DSi). Any thoughts? -- Wario Talk 19:01, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I think we should cover this information, but with BC being inconsistent, we would need some kind of clarification. I think the easiest solution is a template like ps5 in the infobox, which links to the  section on the relevant system's page, which can go into how BC is supported on that system. The infobox could look something like this:
 * |systems=PlayStation 2,
 * A related question would be purpose-built backwards compatibility like Super Game Boy, which allows you to play GB games on SNES. I think it supports everything that Game Boy supports, but some games have "special features", like special borders and colour schemes. Would these count as supported systems, or BC? -- Prod (talk) 19:42, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Still hoping to get more feedback on this one. -- Prod (talk) 00:22, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

cade
Please add these to template:cade− CDf, CF, CUf, CU, CUb -BrownDerby (talk) 17:10, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Done. -- Prod (talk) 02:32, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Episodic games
Should we merge these episodic video games into one guide? Potentially not even having separate main pages. They all have the same gameplay, and could be treated more like the games, even though they were separate "releases". Half-Life 2 also had episodic releases, and maybe the episodes should be split off to a separate guide, but it seems to work OK as-is.
 * Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People - Episode 1: Homestar Ruiner (and the other episodes)
 * Sam & Max Save the World
 * On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One (and the other episodes)

There's apparently lots of episodic games that we may cover, so there are a lot more instances of this that we would need to address in the future. -- Prod (talk) 00:18, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll vote for combining them. We have pages for some episodic games that are already combined anyway (The Wolf Among Us, Resident Evil: Revelations 2, etc.), so might as well be consistent. -- Wario Talk 04:09, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Main page reorg
Continuing the discussion from May, a number of guides have been migrated to the new format. I'll be implementing the re-organized inboxes later this month, and then look into setting up a bot to do a migration of the simpler guides to the new format. Any feedback on the changes so far would be appreciated. -- Prod (talk) 00:37, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Complete versions
One point I'm not sure the best way to handle is "complete editions", where the game is bundled with it's expansions. Having a separate main page seems unnecessary, even though we classify it as a compilation. Looking at the number of "complete versions" for Neverwinter Nights (2002) suggests doing this would be a lot of bloat. I'm thinking these types of bundles should just go on the main game page as sub-releases. -- Prod (talk) 01:01, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

Category sorting
With the new Game structure, I'm preparing a bot to migrate all the pages to the new format. At the same time, my bot will update all the categories to make sure none are missing. I'd like to propose we have a policy for the order that (manually added) categories at the end of the main guide pages should be sorted in. Alphabetical is the easiest, but doesn't really have any benefits. Does anyone have other suggested sorting orders that wouldn't be too complicated for editors to follow? -- Prod (talk) 23:49, 21 September 2021 (UTC)


 * I do not see any reason to have an order for categories. I do not think it truly matters that much. Most pages have no more than four--easily readable on their own, and those with more categories may take only a few seconds if that to identify a category. Corrections to the order would just end up being needless edits, especially if the terms are too subjective. There's no real advantage to alphabetizing categories that I can think of. Trig - 00:21, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * As my bot works through the pages, with a non-deterministic order, it'll potentially randomize the categories every time, potentially without other changes. We don't have to have a "policy" order, but we could have a "suggested" order. There's actually only a few sets of categories that we manually add:, , , , and a few other niche categories like and . The rest are automatically added by templates and can't be "sorted". -- Prod (talk) 01:08, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I'll be following the same order as Game for the main categories: developers, publishers, systems, genres, modes. Any one-off categories beyond that (achievements) will go at the end. There is still possibility for churn with this ordering (within each section) but hopefully it's not a lot. -- Prod (talk) 18:10, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Category:Games for Windows
Has this category outlived it's usefulness? PCGW probably covers this information as well. Is there value in keeping it? It was just branding at the time, and doesn't really suggest anything about the game. -- Prod (talk) 16:32, 23 September 2021 (UTC)