Difference between revisions of "Talk:Drops"

Revision as of 06:55, 24 November 2006

• Humm, is it appropriate to add in what we get from boxes? My apologies if this isn't interesting.

--JPD002 16:24, 7 September 2006 (PDT)

• Sure it is. On a sidenote, I've been wondering lately if the drop system wouldn't be more like WoW's; having a number of drops manually set for all monsters, rather than just randomly distributing all but 'rare' drops. By the way, I've also heard rumours that the drops would be different for online and offline modes. - Tycho
• I'm pretty sure drops are completely different between Offline and Online Modes. Try playing them and see, even non-rare drops are COMPLETELY different. In offline, you cannot find elemental photons (or they're very rare!), Photon Chargers are pretty plentiful, Meseta is through the roof. Just a few of the differences I found. Mewn 08:26, 8 September 2006 (PDT)
• I concur about the drops differing in offline and online modes. I think some rares in offline mode might be dropping always at the same place because they drop at a very convenient place (dead-end room with a box protected by a laser fence for example). In chapter 7, I found the "Real Handgun" in such a room and I saw some more instances of that in chapter 12. I didn't try replaying these chapters though, so it's just a theory... JPD002 22:10, 8 September 2006 (PDT)
• I found in Chapter, um, 10 I think (the one with frozen Kokura Temple) that a group of boxes always seem to drop rare boards - I found Board/Death Dancer, Board/Bullet Master, and Board/Gran Rodou from them. Mewn 12:24, 9 September 2006 (PDT)
  • I think drops from some boxes in the online missions might work the same way too. There's only one set of boxes in the Relics (ruins) mission that will drop Nano Silica and Nano Carbon, one set of boxes in the dragon mission that will often drop Sunflowers, a set of boxes that will drop the lantern thing often in the shrine mission almost at the end, etc. Might be interesting to have the maps of the missions blocks and point out where you can find some specific items. JPD002 16:39, 16 September 2006 (PDT)
• I've gotten enough staves from Polavolha to be convinced that he pretty much only drops that weapon. Gotten 5 in total from this mob and he has never dropped any other weapon.
  • I agree. I've got a couple of Staves from him too. Mewn
  • Yup, found a plenty from him too. JPD002 16:39, 16 September 2006 (PDT)
  • Hm, does this mean each monster only has a few set drops? Tycho
• Are we trying to catalog everything that a creature drops, or just the less-common items? --Major error 21:04, 21 November 2006 (PST)
  • Ultimately, it should be our goal to be able to be able to know of and predict each and every possible drop. - Tycho 22:16, 21 November 2006 (PST)
  • Noted. That being the case, then the section text for Drops needs to be amended to reflect that we're building a comprehensive guide--right now it implies that it is a guide for uncommon & rare items. I'm not trying to be a nit-picker, but going forward, a comprehensive drop-list is going to become unwieldy rather fast. To save on load times, I suggest breaking the page into sections by world (and mission, should the need arise), each with a separate page... If I can find enough time, I'll try to take care of it, so long as it's agreed to be necessary. --Major error 06:28, 22 November 2006 (PST)
    • No, of course; you're right. The Japanese also split up their drops actually. They used one page for the Story Missions, one for the Party Missions, and a few for the Free Missions (split up by planet), and were probably going to have one for the Offline Missions as well. I really really need to [s]plagiarize[/s] get some inspirement from their versions some time soonish, but my schedule is sort of strangling me here. Moreover, to get ahead of myself a bit, I'd also be interested in trying to set up some sort of project similar to the Thottbot tool used for WoW. Not quite there yet though, and without anything such as file decryption it doesn't even seem to be possible to mine for drop data of the offline game, so for now manually adding the data to PSU-related sites will probably have to do. DX - Tycho 10:49, 22 November 2006 (PST)
      • Took a look at the JP stuff, and while all I see are mainly ?s, it does help with formatting ideas. The two hurdles I have right now are 1) how to create a new page as an average contributor, then 2) how to work everything in so that there is some synergy with the general planet & mission sections, which includes naming conventions... Getting a crash-course on all the wiki-workings now. As for the to-do list, there's something to be said about trying to do too much, too fast. ;) --Major error 12:31, 22 November 2006 (PST)
        • Ok. Now that I understand just how simple the page creation process is, it seems this little redesign idea has already sufferd from a major case of feature- and scope-creep: Reorganizing all of the mission information all at once would be a pretty big undertaking, but would result in a leaner and easier-to-edit category. What I had in mind was breaking all the mission-related pages up into smaller bits to fit into a URL scheme: title=Missions:(planet)/(mission area)/(mission name)/(drops) Thoughts? --Major error 13:01, 22 November 2006 (PST)
• Breaking the asterisk chain, lolz. But yeah, I understand it's a bit of a hassle to figure out how the whole wiki thing works initially; took me a while as well, especially concerning the templates and the like. In any case, I think that Wikimedia's is the best 'wiki crash course' out there. As for adding new pages, there's not really any difference between regular editors (whether or not logged in) and sysops even; you get to a page either by following a red link or by manually entering the URL to a non-existant article, then just hit edit. Then you could add links on relevant pages, or just have them added to menu-like boxes like the templates used on the frontpage (which you could see/edit/vandalize at Template:Gameplay and the like).

  As for naming conventions, we probably really need to have all of the Japanese as well as English names of items and monsters added to their respective relevant articles, so as to have some functional look-up lists. The To Do page is quite outdated by the way, especially because noone but me really bothered to use it, and a lot of stuff has happened since then. As for the conventions to break up the info, I'd say we might as well go by the Japanese conventions for now, since dividing this in a handful of sub-pages would probably give the branches plenty of space for growth for a while. The Japanese conventions to split up the drop pages seem to make sense at least, in that the drops for Story/Party Missions actually appear to use a different system from the one for Story Mode. Personally, I think splitting up the page into separate sections for each Mission might be a bit overkill. Even now, all Missions do have separate edit buttons, allow for people to edit one section at a time. Having to unnecessarily click around all that much to navigate is probably too much of a hassle for regular visitors. In any case, when the time is considered to be ripe to definitely split up this article, perhaps they could be interlinked using a menu box such as is used for the Weapons article and its members. - Tycho 14:53, 22 November 2006 (PST)

  • I actually looked at the Wikipedia help to figure things out... It seems there's a minor misunderstanding of my intensions; I suppose I didn't articulate well enough, so my bad. When I mentioned naming conventions, I was referring only to the URL. I only recently started paying attention to how everything was arranged, and it doesnt look like categorization was considered at such a high level. Add to that my dislike of huge, monolithic pages. In my opinion, they're ok for search engines and e-stores, but for reference sites like this, it's just information overload. Breaking things up could also help balance server/network load--a lot of little requests are easier to churn through than really big ones. But then I'm not the brewmaster here, I only bring the ingredients ;) [When I told Ahzi I was interested in helping, this is what I had in mind.] --Major error 08:27, 23 November 2006 (PST)
• Hm. It's not like I'd mind splitting things up by Mission (although, you should realize that a lot of drops seem to be pretty much consistent throughout the Missions as if dependent only on the monster they drop off and their levels), but before that, it'd probably be best to get a flowchart with embedded links for easy navigation first (which kind of sucks to make without using images). In any case, I really don't think this site should be conservative and should only have one or two people decide about things or anything -- I mean, I try to help out, but I couldn't possibly represent the public's opinion on my own, and moreover, I don't even have time left to actually play this game. So yeah. Anyway, I'll check if I could translate these articles to English soon. - Tycho 14:23, 23 November 2006 (PST)

Table Organization

• I was wondering, in the mission tables, how are the enemies ordered, if at all? I was going to go through and re-order all the enemy rows alphabetically, because I'm anal like that. Unless there is some pattern I'm missing, or if anyone has any objections to alphabetization. --Segaholic2 15:07, 23 November 2006 (PST)
  • At first glance, the more-established tables appear to be arranged by relative creature hitpoints. I noticed a couple creatures were missing from the newer mission tables and quickly inserted them while I was playing, so I didn't take this into consideration at the time... --Major error 18:01, 23 November 2006 (PST)
  • IMO, it should be ordered from the weakest grunts to the bigger mini-mini-boss mobs through to the bosses. --JubeiSaotome 21:16, 23 November 2006 (PST)
    • The thing is with that method is that it's quite arbitrary. I myself would prefer a constant such as alphabetization, but if nobody else agrees with me then that's okay. It would just be a bit more difficult to order enemies from weakest to strongest. --Segaholic2 22:17, 23 November 2006 (PST)
      • Well, smallest to largest also determines the greater risk or the better the drops. Seeing as bigger enemies drop better items. --JubeiSaotome 22:24, 23 November 2006 (PST)
• Another random thing, the crappier materials & items that drop and are found in boxes. If they drop commonly amongst the enemies, maybe it'd be better to have a row for common items that drop in the areas? Unless they ARE specific to enemies or boxes, but it doesn't seem like it. --JubeiSaotome 22:24, 23 November 2006 (PST)
• If possible I'd prefer some sort of 'natural' order as implied by hex values or the like, but eh, I don't know them, so. Alphabetized or using order of JP drop tables seems fine to me. @Jubei: Yeah, probably. When/if we're sure. o_O - Tycho 22:55, 23 November 2006 (PST)