Forum:Overhaul for Equipment

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Project: Overhaul for Equipment Page

A complete revision of the Equipment page, which is a major article for both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 weapons, armor, upgrades, and other applicable forms of equipment.

Currently developed by: FoxtrotZero

Developer(s) notes: Considered complete in it's sandbox and awaiting review.

Status last updated: January 15, 2012

Page location: [[Equipment]]
Page should contain: Information about forms of equipment available in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 (i.e., weapons, armor, upgrades, omni-tools, etc.)
Supporting links or images:
Discussion on:

Other Notes

The Equipment page is marked for cleanup, but I'm not entirely sure what that entails. However, I noticed the page seems rather poorly structured. The sections are all assumed to pertain to Mass Effect, with sub-sections for Mass Effect 2. The information in the article also just seems poorly written in general - not to offend anyone. I was willing to singlehandedly restructure the article, which would comprise of reorganizing the sections and filling the sections with a basic/summary amount of information, with links to the main/relevant articles. I think this would also really help with the aforementioned problem about this page being linked to from a number of other pages and search results, and not always having the information people are looking for. My proposed structure for the article is as such:

Mass Effect: Armor; Weaponry; Upgrades; Biotic Amps; Omni-tools; Crate Glitch

Mass Effect 2: Armor; Weaponry; Upgrades

I was hesitant about making such a major overhaul to the page, so I posted about it in the relevant talk page, and Lancer suggested that I perform such an undertaking in a sandbox, and post it in the projects forum for reviewal. Well, I have done so, and because of my poor understanding of the Wiki sandbox system, it's located at User:FoxtrotZero/Sandbox/Equipment#Mass_Effect_2 where it awaits reviewal and, hopefully, acceptance. --FoxtrotZero 23:42, January 15, 2012 (UTC)

Voting

The voting period has concluded and the project has been approved.

Support

1. FoxtrotZero 03:43, January 21, 2012 (UTC)
2. -- Commdor (Talk) 03:54, January 21, 2012 (UTC)
3. Support. JakePT 07:16, January 26, 2012 (UTC)
4. Support. Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem 13:22, January 26, 2012 (UTC)
5. Support. Bluegear93 13:25, January 26, 2012 (UTC)
6. Me. — Teugene (Talk) 15:20, January 26, 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

Looking good. That gave me an idea to finally make a proper Weapons article. It's been a redirect for the longest time (I think due to ME's system where there weren't any individual weapons with unique characteristics, only models with varying firepower levels), and with the advent of ME2 (and ME3 poised to follow ME2's example) there's no excuse to not expand it.
If I could, I'd like to go over your proposed Equipment page revamp and add main article links ({{main|Weapons}}) to the weapon-related sections there, and also reduce any wording that may be redundant (I did base the Weapons article on the content of the Equipment article; with a separate article for them now, the sections in Equipment can afford to be trimmed down). -- Commdor (Talk) 00:44, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

I find you worded that strange; I'm not sure if you're asking me to do that, or if you're asking permission to do that. Either of which is acceptable. I can add the {{Main|Weapons}} tags, if you'd like, but if it's redundancies you want to eliminate, you might be better suited to the task than I. Let me know who you want to do it. --FoxtrotZero 03:49, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

I went in and added the tags for the Weapons sections. The thing is, I'm not entirely sure what you mean by redundancy. I tried to put the bare minimum of content into the sections, describing them, giving a little background, and providing links to the most relevant pages. If what you mean by redundancy is to not say in the Equipment article anything said in the articles it links to, you'll probably find that more than most of the article is 'redundant'. --FoxtrotZero 03:58, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

Fixed my previous comment, my bad. I was asking if I could edit your sandbox, but that's moot now. I also realized that it's difficult to change the weapon sections because they're compact enough already, so I'm fine with them as they are. I support implementing this article overhaul. -- Commdor (Talk) 04:06, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

Your sandbox proposal shows much more clarity compared to the current article setup. I prefer this edit anytime. — Teugene (Talk) 04:25, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

I really like it, much better organised. This is exactly the sort if thing I wanted to tackle when I proposed a complete reorganisation of many of the wiki's articles. I'm sure there'll be tiny disagreements about wording etc. in places, but I don't see anything on there that would stop me from supporting it.

Some observations though:

• I see that Mass Effect has a Weaponry section, and ME2 has a Weapons section. Is there a reason for the difference. If not they should be the same. Weapons being my preference.
• I think that Heavy Weapons in ME2 should probably get a Level 3 heading under Weapons, due to the different mechanics that could require explanation.
• I think when breaking down the different categories of Armor (ME1) and Weapons (both), these should be presented in a list, just so they're given more prominence and not lost in the prose. That way when scanning the article it's easier to jump from game, to weapons to each kind of weapon, if the reader knows what they're looking for.

Overall good job, and an important step in organising the wiki. JakePT 11:39, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

Also noticed that Mass Effect 2 Upgrades leads to the Upgrade Guide. It should link to Research which is a proper list of ME2 upgrades, rather than a guide. Additionally the ME1 upgrades should be more prominent. In your version links to Weapon and Armor upgrades are hidden in the body of the text. I'd prefer bringing back an Upgrades section for ME1. JakePT 11:44, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

I think Jake's points about the titles and list are very good points as I had to look to find the links. I also find myself agreeing that the link should go to the Research article, rather than the upgrade guide for aforementioned reasons. Heavy Weapons I also find myself having to agree with because they are a major gameplay change from ME to ME2 and because of how they work, compared to other weapons, they need more explanation and their own section.

One of my own observations is that the article, both revised and current, seem to be in a state of flux about which person they are talking from. We need to come to an agreement on that. My personal opinion here is that it need to be written in third person, using "Shepard" rather than "you". The page really isn't a guide, nor it is a walkthrough, but rather it is describing equipment that Shepard, the squad, and well everyone else uses, and because of that, I feel that third person is more appropriate, like other in-universe articles. Lancer1289 14:08, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

Good point, I didn't catch that one. I'd add to that by saying that referring to 'Characters' can be misleading, since the characters listed on that page don't necessarily carry any equipment. I'd argue that Shepard should be used when only talking about Shepard and Squad Members for when talking about anyone else, with 'Shepard and Squad Members' when talking about both. This becomes more important with ME2 and 3, where the distinction between Shepard and Squad members is more pronounced.

This actually makes me think that there should be an article for 'Squad' or something like that to talk about the mechanics etc. which this article could link to (instead of Characters). I vaguely recall a page like that, but couldn't find it when doing a quick search. Might've been deleted during my absence.

Lastly, again somewhat off-topic, but just while I think of it, we should set in stone a proper style for describing the squad wiki-wide. We seem to swing between squadmates and squad members far to often.JakePT 15:00, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

Yeah there was a squad article, but it's now a redirect to the Characters article. See Talk:Squad for that one, not my favorite decision but there wasn't much else to do at the time with the lack of an alternate decision so I regrettably went with it. I was working on a revamp of it, was being the operative word, and I plan to get back to it, and probably sooner rather than later. I'm currently addicted to TOR, and that isn't helping, but this will give me an excuse to get off later.

As to the misleading link, that is something that I think is a good idea. We need to make that distinction, and sooner rather than later.

As to the last point, I really can't see why as they both mean the same thing, but that's me. And a topic for another place. Lancer1289 15:05, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

I have a thing for consistency when it comes to that stuff. Main thing being that 'squadmate' isn't really a word. Hell, Google results #5 & #6 for the term are from this very wiki (3 of the first 4 are also basically spam gibberish, the other one from BioWare Social). For what it's worth Manveer Heir just told me over Twitter – He's confirmed isn't he? ;) – that they call them Henchmen internally. But I digress...

JakePT 15:14, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

"Henchmen"? Really? Wow that's not what I expected, but that probably isn't a good title name. Lancer1289 15:17, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

You're right, it isn't, at least not for our purposes. Doesn't draw a connection with the 'Squad' as a concept. Can't go calling it the 'Hench'.JakePT 15:26, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

Mac Walters chips in with "And... We refer to henchmen as Squad Mates when they are in your "squad", on mission.".JakePT 15:58, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

This is good. I'm getting alot of feedback. And this is one of the reasons I wanted alot of people to go over it; Alot of this stuff is a combination of my lack of oversight, and the fact that some parts of that content were left over from the original article. I agree with everything that's been said here, and I'll go through and make the necessary modifications. --FoxtrotZero 19:21, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

Alright, I copied your guys' conversation, boiled it down into buttons, put on my headphones, and got to work. I went through and made all the modifications, and I think everyone will find it now conforms to an even higher standard of quality. --FoxtrotZero 20:13, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

I suppose I want to get to the point. Does anyone else know of any outstanding things that need to be addressed on the sandbox page? If not, perhaps there should be voting taking place? I'm not sure what the protocol for such things are, so I'm treading lightly on that request. --FoxtrotZero 21:58, January 16, 2012 (UTC)

This is literally a bump, as discussion seems to have died. I think my proposed page is superior both to the current article and to it's former self. I'd like either to have more constructive criticism, or else to go ahead and vote in the page - the proceedure for which I am unfamiliar. --FoxtrotZero 00:14, January 21, 2012 (UTC)

Start a section above Discussion for Voting, with three subsections titled Support, Neutral, and Oppose. After a week, the votes will be tallied and if the majority are in favor of the project you can implement your changes. -- Commdor (Talk) 01:45, January 21, 2012 (UTC)

The voting period has concluded. The project has been approved 6-0-0. -- Commdor (Talk) 21:19, January 29, 2012 (UTC)