Talk:Boilerplate:Item

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"Create new item" broken

Seems like "Create new item" is broken. You don't get to see the boilerplate after you have filled in the name of the item you want to create. Anyone any ideas about what's going on? --Ravanel (talk) 06:09, 24 November 2011 (EST)

I know it worked some days ago but would rather think it is something with item-tooltip that breaks somewhere so the verbatim inclusion breaks prematurely. I have not fiddled with those parts so cannot tell. I tried a long-shot fix with the Template:Item Tooltip/Preload but as it technically looked OK already beforehand, which was confirmed, I rolled back my own test. Zimoon (talk) 06:54, 24 November 2011 (EST)
It seems to work here (FF 9.0, Windows 7). What precisely is your the problem you encounter? Was it Zimoon's fault? --EoD (talk) 11:10, 6 December 2011 (EST)
Could be. I have no idea what was going on. I've been trying to make items through "Create new item" for a week now and it didn't show the boilerplate text (it only pasted in the template), but now it all of a sudden works again! Thanks or looking into it both, anyway. --Ravanel (talk) 12:35, 6 December 2011 (EST)
Hah, I fixed it yesterday, but forgot to post about it, oops! There was an issue with the includes on here that was causing only part of the Boilerplate to get read by Create new item. Sethladan 13:50, 6 December 2011 (EST)
"Was it Zimoon's fault?"
Yes, judging from the fix and comparing with diff 366681 it seems to be my fault. Zimoon (talk) 16:02, 6 December 2011 (EST)

Suggestion: Barter Item Table

(First, my apologies if this is posted in the wrong place; this discussion or these comments pertain, but as they're at different locations I felt centralizing things on the affected page might be better.)

Looking at the "Reputation and/or Barter Details" section of this boilerplate page I find 1 reputation and 4 item formats with minimal differences between them - mostly in the labeling. I believe, with minor editing, the existing barter table (as seen in Fall Festival Trader) can be used for all five situations. By standardizing the display of this content we add clarity and consistentcy to the page displays.

The first change would be for Barterer info. Specifically,

 Barterer: [<NPC Name> <NPC Type>] [<Location>] [<condition>]. 

One of these two items are mandatory. Including both is optional, but preferable.

 NPC Name: The specific name of the NPC
 NPC Type: The general class that the NPC falls into

Optional, used as needed:

 Location: Where the NPC can be found, specifically or genericly. Ex, Skirmish Camp
 Condition: If there are certain requirements to access or use the NPC. 
   Ex, only during a Festival, within the rep locked settlement of Caras Galadhon.
 

Thereafter the standard barter table appears. I would suggest including the number of items to trade be superimposed on the icon as is normally seen in-game. So, "3 Fall Festival Tokens" in the example below, would just be "Fall Festival Tokens" without a number. I believe I mentioned this to Sethladen somewhere, but I cannot currently locate that discussion. I believe his comment was something like, "might be a good idea, but the programmer's got more important stuff to implement".

Completely made up worst case example covering all material:
Barterer: Rosa Hornblower a Fall Festival Trader, seen at Thorin's Hall, Duillond, the Festival Grounds, or the The Party Tree but only during a LOTRO Anniversary Celebration

Item to Receive Items to Trade
5 Potent Bird Seed 3 Fall Festival Tokens

-- DoIHaveTo (talk) 16:23, 9 December 2011 (EST)

Quick response because I saw my name: I could get behind using
3 Fall Festival Tokens
in the example above. Icons have traditionally been set up on opposite ends of the table because it was sometimes not immediately clear which icon belonged to which item. With the relatively recent advance of {{Reward}}, we can cut down four columns (icon/item/item/icon) into two and use Reward for each.
My main concern with this would be cross-browser support, but I just checked on IE8 and the number overlay was quite visible on the table above, so that sorts that.
Regarding what was a "good idea, but programmer too busy" topic, DIHT, are you talking about being able to change the text that's displayed when using {{Reward}}? I notice in your table you have "Fall Festival Tokens," but I can only show the item's actual name with Reward - "Fall Festival Token." If this is what you meant and it WAS me that said "too busy," sorry! I can probably take a look at Template:Reward and see about working this in.
And in response to your actual point, I would support a simplification in the examples, but I defer in this case to Magill, Adelas, Zimoon, you, and anyone else actively adding items: There's a delicate balance between simplicity/cleanliness and comprehensiveness/clarity - as long as you maintain that, I'm happy. :) Sethladan 17:07, 9 December 2011 (EST)
P.S. I am reconsidering my comment at the end of Item talk:Festival Skill: Potent Bird Seed and could also happily get behind using the one-line table for barter situations. (Okay, so it wasn't such a quick response.)
Addendum/correction: Turns out we actually can add trailing 's' to a reward link, modified my example above. This wouldn't work for things like Item:Medallion of the North-men, but it's better than nothing. Oops. Sethladan 10:05, 10 December 2011 (EST)
Actually the "too busy" was the recent change made to {{Reward}} - so we're good. The plural form was done via a link alias. (On a side note, what is DIHT?) -- -- 01:05, 10 December 2011 (EST)
DIHT == short for your username, often used for the longer names, or of the acronym falls naturally.
I responded something on the Item talk:Festival Skill: Potent Bird Seed page.
I am not so much into items as I am most of all doing locations. If you see me elsewhere I this comment may apply, but I sure add or update a few items here and there. I have no comments on the boilerplate really, I just copy what I need.
I think the template is what makes me grumble the more, sometimes it does not do what I need it to. There are issues with quest items .. not starting but "used in" and it reads at the item, this is not supported. At least at my screen some pieces are not located the same and colours are off or unavailable. But that is out-of-topic so I can wait ;)
Comments on this topic: I'd put some dashes between the different parts. That is a usability issue since it tells the links apart and the visitor easily reads them as discrete items. Your worst-case scenario was indeed a good one and it puts the finger at a sore spot with the best of our suggestions: long lines may break wherever and makes whatever to become ugly and/or harder to read. However, it must be up to the editor to use common sense and for example make it become:
Barterer: Rosa Hornblower - Fall Festival Trader
Seen at Thorin's Hall, Duillond, the Festival Grounds, or the Party Tree
Available only during a LOTRO Anniversary Celebration
And, we cannot assume all users have their browsers full screen and 2000 pixels wide or more 8-)
As mentioned, more comments at the Item talk:Festival Skill: Potent Bird Seed page. I do not think it is a great idea to have a one-line table as it makes the page less user friendly, it simply does not justify itself being a table when the same info can be expressed as a one-liner in a dotted list.
Zimoon (talk) 05:09, 10 December 2011 (EST)

Scaling Items

I have created a new section for Scaling Items to try to provide a standard way of displaying their information.
Please review and modify as needed.
I don't know how or if it is worth the effort to return to old items, which should actually be classed as Scalling Items. One question would be -- is a new category needed?
The technique in use creates items in Category: Item Level ... Which is probably sufficient.
User: Steppenwolf has begun collecting related information at: Loot Items Scaling
Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 16:23, 14 May 2016 (UTC)
Seems a neat solution to process the items with different levels to me! Nice job. :) --Ravanel (talk) 13:58, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

Gallery

Following a discussion on User talk:Whirr#Images I have created a new section for items with images depicting them. I personally love having it here, because I always forget what the gallery codes are when I'm adding an item image! Please review and add your input here in the discussion. :)
Basically every gallery type you can think of is currently being used. Examples:

Putting all the codes in the boilerplate seems a bit pointless, and creates even more diversity in what item pages look like. It's probably best to pick one or two modes to put in the boilerplate. Thoughts? --Ravanel (talk) 14:29, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

I think you have too much free time - you came up with examples for all of the possible cases. :p
Mogafi (talk) 16:07, 15 July 2016 (UTC)
Haha, not really. I was just investigating how things were done so far, and stumbled into these organically. I went for "gallery patch mode" because it looks most like no gallery and it doesn't need size parameters filled in - something that people are bound to forget (and different sizes would look better on different images), ending up with ugly small images as in example 2.
As nobody apart from you has replied here, I'm assuming people are okay with this and I'll start editing accordingly when I see item pages that need fixing. --Ravanel (talk) 20:13, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Mordor crafted items with identical names

So it looks like the Mordor expansion has left us with a new fun problem to tackle. Several crafted items have identical names, despite having different item levels and stats. They are the standard and critted versions of items. This might be an oversight or a bug, but it's very confusing to players.
The scaled item part of this boilerplate comes in handy for a solution; however, the preset text should not be used, since the items do not come from instances. That's why I have adapted that text on pages like Polished Helm of the Doomfold and Gilded Cap of the Alliance Renewed. It would probably be a good idea if the item boilerplate reflects this to help out future contributors who bump into this problem. Thoughts? --Ravanel (talk) 11:48, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Huh, they even have the same quality whether critted or not? That is confusing. I agree with your suggestion. It would be all too easy to copy-paste that text without reading carefully to notice it doesn't all apply. I like the line you wrote, though I'm not sure how best to display that on the boilerplate - maybe present multiple options and the editor can delete all but the right one for that item? The creature boilerplate does it that way with things that wander/flit/crawl/whatever, and I've found that usable in the past. -- Elinnea (talk) 13:05, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
Yes, same quality, same name... they look identical apart from the item level and stats. (If you think that's better, we can also add the part about quality in the sentence above the table.) In-game the item level is the easiest way to distinguish, unless you want to learn all the stats by heart. I don't think everyone has caught up on this. I sold the uncritted version of the helm for 350 gold on the auction house...
Thanks for the reply; I'll see if I have time later today to fiddle around with the boilerplate a bit. :) --Ravanel (talk) 09:49, 17 August 2017 (UTC)
I've added something to the boilerplate. I hope I didn't make things unclear; it's challenging to keep a good overview. --Ravanel (talk) 08:56, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Looks good to me! -- Elinnea (talk) 13:35, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
Confusing indeed! If I understand correctly, for crafting recipe indexes, I guess I'll link the outputs to the same item page, but with "(item level __)" added to the name, like here: scholar pockets. How's that look? -Laineth (talk) 06:18, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Just to confuse things even more - there are a number of quest rewards which have IDENTICAL names and Item levels, but different stats. I.e one has Might as the top stat and another Agility. I've just taken to labeling them V1 and V2 - Example: Quest: A Sneak Among the Leavings which rewards:  Expeditionary Camail  Expeditionary Camail

As for the normal vs crit issue -- it appears that SSG is "fixing that. Frome the 21.1 release notes under: ITEMS
  • Appearances for Trousers and leggings found in Mordor have been updated with new art.
  • Tooltips in the Crafting Panel now properly reflect the increased item level on critical results for Doomfold tier Armour, Jewellery, and Weapons.
  • All Doomfold armour, Weapons, and Jewellery now Bind on Equip as they always should have.
  • The recipe for Black Adamant Brooch now requires a Polished Black Adamant instead of a Black Adamant.
Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 15:08, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

Scaling Items revisited

It appears that we are in need of some sort of standarized definition of a "Scaling Item."
There is only a brief reference to it on the Item Help page: Boilerplate:Item#Scaling_Item_details and above on this talk page (Scaling Items).
Why do people think items in the range of "Item Level 300+" (i.e. typically for Player levels above 105) are Scaled? I have seen no evidence for such a generalization.
So far I have only found one version for most of the different items in Mordor marked on the WIKI as "scaled."
  • Do the values for the item, actually change as your player level changes? - one version of scaling.
  • Or are there simply multiple versions of the same item at different "Item Levels" as was the case in the past?
  • Is there actually a differnce in these two situations?
  • How can we tell if an item actualy has multiple instanciations with different values controlled by the Item Level parameter.
I don't understand the comment: "attributes values are the same, only different level".
Steppenwolf made the comment elseware: "Pocket items around level 100 are scaled, Item:Silver Web of Vigour (Level 110) for example, but it seems attributes values are the same, only different level..."
I don't understand the end of the comment: "attributes values are the same, only different level".
The example cited above, "Silver web of Vigor," at leat on the WIKI, does have multiple versions at different Item Levels. However, only the first 3 Item Levels - 12/20/28 have the same attribute but with different values - which does imply scaling. The remaining versions all hve different attributes as well as different values --
And the WIKI page doesn't use the table format (I know, it's an old page.)
The "suggested line" -- "...The exact reward of the item received is dependent on the level of the instance." - implies something which is not necessarily true. In fact, the example item "Greater Dextrous Axe of Prowess" I have had drop from Mobs in Quest areas, and I haven't done instances for aeons!
  • Do we have any idea what the controlling "level" is -- the player character, the defeated Mob, the specific quest level, the instance level, RANDU?
I suspect that what we are seeing with Mordor is the fact that since SSG has many fewer resources (employuees) currently working on LOTRO, they therefore are doing their utmost to re-use old assets. You see this especially with Art Assets for Icons and the like.
I also suspect that we need to make better use of the "Item Level" parameter, as it appears to directly tie to varoius stat numbers - witness the current round of identical crafting items, where the normal and crit item differe only in the Item Level and consequentl values applied to attributes.
The Item Level parameter was only exposed with the release of Helm's Deep, but had apparently been used internally all along.
Judging from the way Cash rewards for quests appear to be mathmatically incremented based on the Quest Level, I'm wondering if we can somehow predict what Item Level means?
Thoughts?
Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 16:47, 23 August 2017 (UTC)
Scaling means that an item can appear at any level in a level range, with the same attributes and those attributes will go up with every level... First 3 items of Silver Web of Vigour are not scaled and that's not because of attributes, but because there are no items at level 13, 14, etc.
Scaled item is that Greater Dextrous Axe of Prowess, you mentioned, or those incomparable set armour pieces... Item:Silver Web of Vigour (Level 110) appears to have the same attributes at level 100, 101, 102, etc., so only minimum and item level increase... Go to auction and find two pocket items of the same kind, but different level, at high levels...
Those Lesser, Potent and Greater items can drop from any humanoids on the world map, but very rarely, and minimum level of the item is the level of the mob... This items mainly drop in scaled instances and minimum level is the instance level...
There are different item levels, but many item levels are scaled this way - minimum level 105 = item level 217, 104 = 212, 103 = 207, etc... There is another pattern for those Mathom armour set pieces - minimum level 105 = item level 207, etc... We need tables for item levels... I tried with Loot Items Scaling, but with every new update a lot of changes will be needed...
Steppenwolf (talk) 20:43, 23 August 2017 (UTC)Steppenwolf
I think people have used the term 'scaling items' to mean a couple different things. There are items that scale their values to match any given level, like the Mathom armor or level-scaled instance rewards, and there are also items with the same name that just happen to appear at different item levels or with different values. Personally, I think it's fine to lump those concepts together. From a wiki functional standpoint, what I think of as scaling items are things of various levels with the same name that we would prefer to keep together on one page (often with details listed out in tables) rather than create a separate page for every possible iteration. Having an individual page for every variation would obviously be nonsense for those items that vary only slightly with every level over a wide range, but may be more debatable for those items that only appear at a couple discrete level options.
I guess I'm basically repeating what you two have already said, but my point is that I'd rather not fuss too much about the exact terminology unless it's an official in-game term or it makes a practical difference in how to handle them on the wiki.
The item level parameter is clearly related on the back end to what values present on an item, and it would be wonderful to have direct access to the behind-the-scenes algorithms that surface as the statistics on an item of a given level. Then we could just program that into the wiki and not have to manually update every item individually when something changes. But it sounds incredibly daunting to try to reverse-engineer those algorithms and then keep up with them as things change, often without warning or explicit mention in any patch notes. My mind balks at the prospect. -- Elinnea (talk) 04:18, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
P.S. I mostly stay out of items on the wiki because I don't like having to deal with issues like these. But I definitely appreciate the folks who do want to work on such things. I take full advantage of the results as a reader. That scaling items page is impressive, Steppenwolf, and it'd be nice to find a way to make it practical. :) -- Elinnea (talk) 04:24, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
As Magill asked me to look at this discussion (sorry for being slow), I'll just quickly add here that I wholeheartedly support Elinnea's wise words. There are lots of possible wonky items in LOTRO that we can discuss semantics over, but they all have in common that the name is the same, while the stats and/or item level varies. The Scaling Items part of the item template seems useful for most if not all of these items, so let's just use that when it makes sense. --Ravanel (talk) 13:44, 1 September 2017 (UTC)
Scaling items page is just too much work for one person... I don't have instant access to all values for all levels, all I did on that page was manual work... If I get an item from drop, or find it on auction... If every column or a pair of columns (minimum and item level, or 1st and 2nd attribute) could be done separately and then inserted into a bigger table, then it would make sense... Generally, for those lesser, potent and greater items, minimum and item levels have the same values for all three quality tiers... Similar is with 1st and 2nd attribute values, they differ only with quality change, but within the same quality, they are the same for all items... 3rd and 4th attributes are pain, because the same attribute can have different values on the same level, depending if they are placed as 3rd of 4th attribute (Physical Mastery Rating, for example, in  Potent Dextrous Jacket of Prowess and  Potent Dextrous Jacket of Penetration).
Steppenwolf (talk) 04:45, 25 August 2017 (UTC)Steppenwolf
These are the pocket items in the database:
Silver Web of Vigour 192 ID: 1879218755
Silver Web of Vigour 60 ID: 1879114798
Silver Web of Vigour 52 ID: 1879114794
Silver Web of Vigour 46 ID: 1879095963
Silver Web of Vigour 32 ID: 1879095956
Silver Web of Vigour 28 ID: 1879095954
Silver Web of Vigour 20 ID: 1879095950
Silver Web of Vigour 12 ID: 1879095946
As you can see from the ID, item levels 12-46 were made for the same expansion: Angmar I guess. Same for item levels 52 and 60: Mordor/Lothlorien? (it's before I started playing..) The item with item level 192 is the "scaling" one, which was introduced with Rohan I guess.
Likely the non-scalable are still dropping in the quest areas of their expansions. The scalable version probably from Rohan and up.
  • Scalable: I think that before Mirkwood, nothing scaled with item level (I should test/examine this). Multiple item entries were made in the database for the same kind of item, same name, but with different level and with semi-random static stats.
  • Programmaticaly scaling: every "modern" item has the ability to scale. Item level can be set to 192, 176, whatever, and stats are calculated from this.
  • Scalable items: it seems like these items need to have some "flag set" in the database. If not set then items only appear with the item level set in the database, like with crafted items or skirmish items (however these items still have the programmatically scaling ability like mentioned before). Scalable items get their item level like this: source level (character/instance/etc) -> conversion "table" -> item level. The conversion "table" used depends on specific item groups; it's not globally the same for all. Programmatically "table" can be a table, but more likely also a set of linear formulas. Like: item level for 97 = 97 * 3 - 100 (level * factor + offset). With factor and offset values specified for each source level segment.
  • Stats on modern items work with "slices". A slice value is the result of a linear formula: again like item level * factor + offset and split in segments again for factor+offset by item level. Stats on items are composed from these slices. The amount of slices depends on two things: item quality and item level.
    • Item quality: in general (until Mordor and unless item was wrongly entered or decided upon by developer) legendary/gold receives a total 8, incomparable 7, rare 6, uncommon 5.
    • Item level: the total number of 8/7/6/5 from quality are the final amounts (from item level 65 I think..). On lower levels they are less in general. An incomparable item (final 7) might have only 5 at item level 50. I don't know if all items use the same algorithm for this or if this is programmed uniquely in each item.
It's complex and a lot of work to figure out. Stat for a scaling item follows: source level (character/instance/etc) -> conversion "table" -> item level. item quality + item level -> algorithm -> slice amount. Slice amount + item level + stat type -> value calculation -> stat value.
I have the means to examine everything, but I'm afraid that you need to examine the scalable item at every level 1-350 (whatever) to see how it behaves. That takes a lot of time to do, even for a single item. If the algorithm for lower item level slice amounts is always the same then it might be doable. As input you then get:
  • the stat type + (final) slice amount for each stat
  • item quality for algorithm?
  • conversion "table" selection
--Gisel Avaleazar (talk) 09:38, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

A resource to condider using.

Gulhad has a LUA plugin called "Item Treasury" which he just updated for Mordor --

Over 4,500 new items for Mordor!
Game Version: Update 21.1
Items: 101,619
http://www.lotrointerface.com/downloads/info870-ItemTreasury.html

I haven't used it, but it would appear to be quite useful.

Wm Magill - Valamar - OTG/OTC - talk 17:28, 27 August 2017 (UTC)