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User talk:Swordzman0611: Difference between revisions
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I saw your post on the talk page, and I just thought I'd give you some advice. Your post will largely only be seen by editors who are aware of the site, aware of the guide, and have an interest in its development, which will be an extremely small number. If you really want to help make a dent in what's left to cover, you should do your best to promote the guide ''outside'' of the site, and increase peoples' awareness of it so that you can attract more editors to it. Whether you do that through social media, or on FF fan site forums, or reddit, you will accomplish your goal much faster advertising outside the site than within. '''[[User:Procyon|<span style="color:red">Pro</span>]][[User talk:Procyon|<span style="color:grey">cyon</span>]]''' 04:38, 1 July 2015 (UTC) | I saw your post on the talk page, and I just thought I'd give you some advice. Your post will largely only be seen by editors who are aware of the site, aware of the guide, and have an interest in its development, which will be an extremely small number. If you really want to help make a dent in what's left to cover, you should do your best to promote the guide ''outside'' of the site, and increase peoples' awareness of it so that you can attract more editors to it. Whether you do that through social media, or on FF fan site forums, or reddit, you will accomplish your goal much faster advertising outside the site than within. '''[[User:Procyon|<span style="color:red">Pro</span>]][[User talk:Procyon|<span style="color:grey">cyon</span>]]''' 04:38, 1 July 2015 (UTC) | ||
== Discussion belong on talk pages == | |||
Hi SM. Please remember to put comments and questions to other users on their talk page, and not on their user page. I moved your question for Zuke from [[User:Zuke]] to [[User_talk:Zuke]]. Thanks. '''[[User:Procyon|<span style="color:red">Pro</span>]][[User talk:Procyon|<span style="color:grey">cyon</span>]]''' 20:00, 6 July 2015 (UTC) | |||
:Thanks for the assist. I knew the walkthrough was his "baby" and wanted to reach out. [[User:Swordzman0611|Swordzman0611]] ([[User talk:Swordzman0611|talk]]) 20:13, 6 July 2015 (UTC) | |||
== Guide writing style == | |||
Hi SM. Think of the following purely as constructive criticism; you are free to ignore it if you disagree. | |||
The great thing about writing guides on a wiki instead of in print, is that you have all the space in the world to describe as much as you want. The problem with writing guides on a wiki instead of in print, is that you have all the space in the world to describe as much as you want. | |||
In other words, you are not limited by how much you can fit on the page. You can say as much as you want. However, it's important to always consider your audience. Specifically, be conscious of how much patience the average reader has. Typically, a reader wants to jump onto the site, find the information that they're looking for, and continue on with their game. This is becoming increasingly true in the age of video walkthroughs; visitors don't want to wade through large blocks of text to find what they came for. You can lead a reader to useful information by filtering out information that they can find out on their own. For example, spelling out everything that some NPCs say isn't very useful because players can find that out on their own with little effort. They don't need a guide for that. (Summarizing the highlights can still be helpful.) Another example is letting players know to cure Poison before continuing. Hopefully that is explained in the guide where statuses are described, and players learn to correct that problem early on. | |||
It's always difficult to determine just the right level of detail that will satisfy the most readers. I struggle with finding the right balance in all of my guides, so I am by no means an expert at this, but I'm continuously working to improve at it. '''[[User:Procyon|<span style="color:red">Pro</span>]][[User talk:Procyon|<span style="color:grey">cyon</span>]]''' 14:05, 7 July 2015 (UTC) | |||
:How much detail to put in is kind of a delicate balance. Personally, I hate it when a guide says something like "Enter the code XWR7 into the control panel to open the gate," instead of "Talk to Bill at the pub who accidentally lets slip the code (XWR7). Then enter the code into the control panel to open the gate." To me it's not enough to know what to do next, I want to know how to find out in the game what to do next. As for how much of the story to put in, many guides just say something like "watch the cutscene" and leave out everything including the five important plot points you need to understand what's going on in the story. But to me much of the enjoyment you get from a game, a role-playing game in particular, is because it's like an interactive drama, so part of the point of a guide is to summarize the plot. Once a cutscene happens it's rare to be able to watch it over, and maybe you missed something and don't want to have to refight a boss in order to see it again. I've probably been putting too much detail of the story with the idea that you're retelling in text form what happens on the screen, for people people who just want to find out what happens without spending however many hours it takes to actually play it through to the end. Wikipedia will typically summarize a 90 min. movie in one screen page; not sure if that standard can or should be applied here but maybe it's something to think about. --[[User:Zuke|Zuke]] ([[User talk:Zuke|talk]]) 17:56, 8 July 2015 (UTC) | |||
::That would suggest a 3 minute cutscene would have to be summarized in 5-6 words :P. I usually figure that leaving out most plot details is better, since it avoids having spoilers in the guide. Another side is that we shouldn't have so much content in the guide that we take away from playing the game. -- [[User:Prod|Prod]] ([[User talk:Prod|talk]]) 04:05, 9 July 2015 (UTC) | |||
:::Let's make this simple, folks. I know you can't have too much plot reveal, nor too little. A guide gets uninteresting, though, if you make it using what I'll call "Neanderthal logic". That is to say, no good guide gets as simple as "go here, talk this guy, then go here, here, here, here, and here; fight bad thing, go on...". With a deep game like FF V or VI, you really can't get away from revealing the plot. The trick is using the plot points to get people to go where you want them to go, or to get what you want them to get. We either have to plaster a big, giant "spoiler alert" tag across the guide, or figure out how we're going to "tell the story without telling the story". The fun aspect of a game like FF V is figuring out which job combinations work best for the player given where he might be. | |||
:::That said, every player is going to have a different experience reading the same story. What we shouldn't do is waste time describing every possible strategy there could ever be while playing. [[User:Swordzman0611|Swordzman0611]] ([[User talk:Swordzman0611|talk]]) 05:10, 9 July 2015 (UTC) | |||
