Talk:Ronza's Satchel

Order

Not trying to edit war on the order. I just added description of them related to their difficulty level, and so I sorted them according to that (instead of alphabetical order). --Metal 16:53, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

As this is a reference site, alphabetical order is much more likely to be how people will be looking for them. I'm going to change them back. --B.Rossow · talk 17:02, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

I came here to find out what is in the Green satchels. I'm already aware that these correspond to the higher levels, and so immediately looked at the last entry, expecting them to be in difficulty order. I don't think it would ever occur to me to look them up an alphabetic order (but that doesn't mean that other people wouldn't, of course). --Winelight 18:27, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Wow. That's like going to the Stephen King section at the library and expecting to find "The Stand" on the shelf before "Cujo" because it has more pages, or "Salem's Lot" before "Christine" because it was published first. Not trying to create an argument, but reference materials are virtually always alphabetized. --B.Rossow · talk 18:44, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually I'd expect the Stephen King novels in the library not to be in any order at all, they never are, in reality. But you're right, of course, in any catalogue they would be in alphabetic order - it is normal. But alphabetic order of colours seems contextually meaningless in this case, not that it really matters, I think people will be able to find what they need on this page. --Winelight 20:37, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia lists Stephen King's novels in order of publication, but that's normal for bibliographies. --Winelight 20:47, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

...which would make it darn difficult to find a specific book you were looking for unless you were already somewhat of an expert on Stephen King. Perhaps we should revisit the Mice page and relist them all in the order they were released? Or by ID number, which doesn't always correspond to release order? ;-) --B.Rossow · talk 20:56, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Alphabetic makes sense absent some other natural ordering, as there is here. Note that pages like Locations are also sorted by difficulty, not alphabetic order, both in the region and location within the region. Hence, unless there is some compelling reason to switch all such pages to alphabetic ordering, I think we should change this one to the more natural ordering. --Metal 12:53, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

How about sorting it after the colour-coding for screens R-G-B ?!? ... jk ... I propose leaving it in ABC and colouring the headlines in the respective colour.... _____m. 15:59, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

"Alphabetic makes sense absent some other natural ordering" Exactly so. --Winelight 16:20, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Location 'difficulty level' is misleading in the sense that as players progress, they get better traps, so locations are not necessarily more difficult from one location to the next. For example, most would rate the Training Grounds as an easier location compared to the Mousoleum, but again it depends on the traps available to players at the time they enter the location. Hence sorting by any form of 'difficulty' is not a safe choice.

To clarify also, the Location article is not sorted by difficulty, but rather by the order in which players will typically encounter the regions and locations. As above, the word 'difficulty' itself is difficult to quantify with the wide variety of traps and location paths available.

Regarding natural order, the paths that can be taken throughout the game is no longer linear, so it has become ambiguous as it would depend on how players choose to play the game.

As for whether to sort it by rank accessibility order, we'll need to look at what leads players to look at the article, as well as their existing knowledge of the item. A quick look at the What links here link, shows 3 major pages, Rockstar Mouse, Crafting Items, and Loot. Barring the somewhat redundant difficulty remark on Rockstar Mouse, there is no further information other than the item name to be found. Hence I would assume that most players will come to this article without a good idea of the item (as it should be).

Thus I find M.'s suggestion quite appealing, since alphabetical order remains the most neutral way of presenting the information, especially to players without existing knowledge of the item, while color coding helps recognition (although I personally prefer RGB ;)). Furthermore, regardless of a final decision, any mention of the satchel colours should direct to the respective section using internal links, which will further aid navigation. -- Grexx 17:45, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your replies. To me, text colors look hokey.

Regarding the Location article sort: it is sorted by the rank required to enter the area (the "Other" section being the natural exception for obvious reasons). The TG is "more difficult" than the Moz in the sense that it requires a higher level to enter. That's the difficulty scale I'm referring to. My only point here was that not all articles follow an alphabetic scheme when there is a good reason not to, as there is here.

You suggest that "alphabetical order remains the most neutral way of presenting the information." First, the Locations article for one fails your test. Second, I think you're confusing this with something factually controversial. This isn't a political or religious article on Wikipedia; neutrality is not at issue. It's rather a question of which ordering is the most natural and accessible to most readers. "What links here" is a helpful data point but can by no means be decisive. The content of the article itself is much more important.

In that respect, RBG is the easy winner for me. The article rightly mentions that getting the RBG satchels requires access to increasingly advanced areas and in turn that they yield items more useful to hunters at those levels. The satchels are already closely tied to hunter level. Hence, it seems entirely appropriate and natural to follow the level ordering rather than a generic alphabetic or RGB ordering.

This is all I have to say about the issue. My opinion is clear, and I leave it to others to judge the outcome of this discussion. --Metal 16:05, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The neutral that I was referring to, is that alphabetical order compared to other ways of presenting the information, does not assume players have prior knowledge of the items. RGB order was just a joke actually, something that users with some technical knowledge would understand (so it's not a recommendation). RBG assumes that players who come to the article will read from top to bottom and understand each satchel clearly.

Of course I do agree that some players might come in with knowledge that the satchels are dropped based on the "difficulty" of the location, but even then they are unlikely to have any idea how many "difficulty" levels there are (with regards to satchel drop distribution). Also, color coding doesn't necessarily have to be on text, but can be contained within other presentational elements. I'm working on a quick table code based on a similar idea as the main page right now, since it doesn't have a bearing on ordering. -- Grexx 08:35, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

Based upon the following quote from the News from the developers "The Satchels come in three colours: Red, Blue and Green and their contents range widely" - I think that it would be better to order the article in RBG order instead of the current alphabetical. The introduction mentions an "order of difficulty" with an RBG order - so the current flow of the article of jaring. -- Ralphminer 09:04, 24 October 2009 (UTC)