User talk:Swordzman0611

Welcome to StrategyWiki!

Hello Swordzman0611! Welcome to StrategyWiki. Thank you for your contributions. If you have any questions, just contact a sysop through their talk page or post on the staff lounge, and they'd be happy to help. If you need help editing, check the StrategyWiki Guide or ask a sysop, we're usually around. On the other hand, if you have ideas for StrategyWiki, bring them up on the forums. To keep up-to-date with the goings on of the wiki, consider adding the noticeboard to your watchlist.

Please remember to sign your name when leaving comments on talk pages by clicking or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. Feel free to delete this message from your talk page if you like, or keep it for reference. Happy editing! — Procyon 13:26, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

FFV character names

Hi, I noticed your updates to the FFV characters page and I'm a bit confused as to what you consider the "official" translation. As far as I know there are at least three commonly used versions, one for the SNES, one for the PS, and one for the GBA, and they all differ from one another in terms of names. The one I was using when writing this guide was for the PS since that's the one I happen to own, and I assure you it's not a fan version; it's on an a original PS disk from the Final Fantasy Anthology series. I understand there were fan translations for the NES that appeared when the game was only released in Japan, and various other versions for emulators, but I don't think a guide needs to cover them. It's a problem to write a guide to be equally accessible to people using the various versions, when characters, items, enemies, and places all have different names depending on which one you're playing, and I haven't seen a good solution yet. What I've been doing is to use the PS version names for the walkthough and listing other names (when known) in other pages. Since I wrote about 80% of the FFV content here it seemed reasonable to make a preference for the PS version. In any case, it's going to be even more confusing if people keep changing names in the guide to whichever one they see in their version. --Zuke (talk) 18:24, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

If only character names are different, the Characters page is probably a good place to mention it. Otherwise, maybe a "version differences" page would be useful. -- Prod (talk) 23:51, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

See Final Fantasy V/Armor for what I was going for. The first column lists all names according to platform when applicable. I just noticed though that you added a section under controls for mobiles; does that mean there is yet another translation? The differences between versions seem to mostly in translation with some extra stuff added for GBA, but see Final Fantasy V#Differences between versions. --Zuke (talk) 14:37, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

@Zuke: The mobile versions had to be adapted for touch screens, before add-on gamepads seemed to take off. To adapt, they added strange buttons that aren't really self-explanatory at first glance. The translation is much the same as the GBA version. As to the topic of what's "official", I think the various releases speak to that. Personally, I find the PS1 release the most botched of the four. (Faris being a candidate for International Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day and being called Salsa (yes, the condiment!) along with enemy names like Y Burn and PaddleThru? Bleugh!) RPGe, the fan translators, were still very literal, but much better than Square EA. With three versions since the PS1 using the same translation, I think it's pretty clear where SqEnix stands. Swordzman0611 (talk) 20:40, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Guide style clashes

Hi Swordzman0611. Please understand that your contributions are welcome and valuable, but Zuke (talk · contribs) has put a considerable amount of hard work and effort into the FFV guide. While he has no more ownership over it than you do, I would really appreciate it if you could try to integrate your changes to the guide following the same standards that he's using, particularly whichever version his place/enemy/spell names come from. There are some possibilities for incorporating multi-console labels into the guide but we have to research it, and even if it works, that's a lot of work that you/Zuke/someone has to do to provide the correct names for every implementation. But please do try to blend your contributions in more smoothly, that's all I ask. Procyon 13:31, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The PS1 (EA) translation is just TERRIBLE, hence why it was superseded (though you can also argue that SqEnix is simply trying to milk these old games for what they're worth). The translation tables in the appendices aren't even 1% complete, and I barely have time to put in the programming that would be needed. I myself look at it this way: since that hack-job was completed in 1999, all of the others (all 3.5 of them, the half coming to Amazon devices) are using the official Square Enix script, and so I think the EA script needs to be demoted. Completely. No ifs, ands, or Butz.

If you're such geniuses, then figure out how to play to the majority. It's going to take a long time to dump the half-hearted blight that was the EA script if we can't get to a consensus, though I'll admit it was fun in its day. Swordzman0611 (talk) 19:18, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

You and Zuke are the main guide writers (I guess that makes you the genius?). How about you start a discussion on the guide talk page, so any other editors interested in the game can also add their comments to reach a consensus. That way the discussion is also available for future reference if someone else wants to work on the guide. Not everyone goes back and reads all the edit histories. -- Prod (talk) 20:16, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Support efforts

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. Procyon 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. Procyon 20:00, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the assist. I knew the walkthrough was his "baby" and wanted to reach out. 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. Procyon 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. --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. -- 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. Swordzman0611 (talk) 05:10, 9 July 2015 (UTC)