Talk:Traps

Archives: Archive 1, Archive 2

High resolution images

When, or if, we're permitted to upload files, it'd be good to have each image properly prepared. For the sake of formality, we should save base images with the Tacky Glue Trap, weapon images with the Wooden Base, and all images without baited cheese. Keeping them as original PNG files would be nice, too. Here's a checklist; links are ones I've already saved. Revengeance 20:19, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Bases

• Wooden Base
• Wooden Base with Target
• Stone Base
• Polar Base
• Dehydration Base
• Explosive Base
• Birthday Cake Base

Weapons

• Tacky Glue Trap
• High Tension Spring
• 500 Pound Spiked Crusher
• Mouse Mary O'Nette
• Mouse Trebuchet
• Mouse Rocketine
• Ambrosial Portal
• Sinister Portal
• Swiss Army Mouse Trap
• Snow Barrage
• Bottomless Grave
• Obelisk of Slumber
• Obelisk of Incineration
• Zugzwang's Last Move
• NVMRC Forcefield Trap
• Mouse DeathBot
• DeathBot (Chrome Edition)
• Ambush
• Digby DrillBot
• Arcane Capturing Rod Of Never Yielding Mystery
• HitGrab Horsey
• PartyBot

Freshness Chart

Please feel free to edit the code below directly if it can be further improved.
Quick list of freshness span tags below:

• <span style="display:none;">-5</span>Ultimately Stale
• <span style="display:none;">-6</span>Insanely Stale
• <span style="display:none;">-7</span>Extremely Stale
• <span style="display:none;">-8</span>Very Stale
• <span style="display:none;">-9</span>Stale
• <span style="display:none;">0</span>No Effect
• <span style="display:none;">1</span>Fresh
• <span style="display:none;">2</span>Very Fresh
• <span style="display:none;">3</span>Extremely Fresh
• <span style="display:none;">4</span>Insanely Fresh
• <span style="display:none;">5</span>Ultimately Fresh
• <span style="display:none;">6</span>Über Fresh

Staleness levels are ranked with most stale as -1, since wiki reads the '-' as just another character rather than minus. Current starting value of -5 is to allow for future addition if any more staleness levels are added in-game.
-- Grexx 18:10, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Just an additional note, if you're sorting just numbers, a '-' sign should sort properly. As the numbers for the freshness chart is mixed with text, it is read as text, thus necessitating the reversal of negative numbering. -- Grexx 16:51, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorting negative number in string is ambiguous. Please check here. Pus 04:11, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed it so that this page matches the values found in the individual weapon and base pages. Ultimately Stale to Über Fresh is -5 to 6. Then take that number, multiply by 3, and add 48. I think this was done to handle weapon/base combinations that exceed Über Fresh, but can be applied here as well. Probably more complicated than it needs to be, but it is consistent and deals with the minus sign issue. In short,

• <span style="display:none;">33</span>Ultimately Stale
• <span style="display:none;">36</span>Insanely Stale
• <span style="display:none;">39</span>Extremely Stale
• <span style="display:none;">42</span>Very Stale
• <span style="display:none;">45</span>Stale
• <span style="display:none;">48</span>No Effect
• <span style="display:none;">51</span>Fresh
• <span style="display:none;">54</span>Very Fresh
• <span style="display:none;">57</span>Extremely Fresh
• <span style="display:none;">60</span>Insanely Fresh
• <span style="display:none;">63</span>Ultimately Fresh
• <span style="display:none;">66</span>Über Fresh

--Hyperchao 22:22, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

That's a reasonable solution, although possibly a bit hard to follow for non Mathematically inclined editors, but as long as this section is here, it should be fine. How hard can copy and paste be ;) -- Grexx 15:59, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Trap Attributes

The information here is lifted almost directly from the in-game text. However I've noticed that it has been slightly touched up over time. In this case some of the changes are quite important, namely:

• a change from "accuracy bonus to attraction bonus" under Attraction Bonus
• changing "positive" cheese effect to "fresh" cheese effect
• the addition of "very" effective to Shadow description

These are changes which the developers have missed out or did not make clear enough. Normally we would revert all changes back to the in-game description, but seeing that it is a section talking about a very important aspect of MH game play, I think it should be left as is, since the changes serve to clarify the terms.

I also plan to compile a list of incorrect game descriptions that the developers can refer to easily. -- Grexx 15:14, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Trap Ranking

Regarding the short 1 or 2 liners at the introduction of a number of trap/base pages ranking the various trap attributes, I think it is wholly unnecessary since the Trap page contains the full list for comparison, and the individual base and weapon pages also contain further information for those interested in the full picture. The ranking by itself serves no purpose due to the adjustments based on different combinations, and add work in maintaining accuracy each time a new base/weapon is introduced, so I'll be putting it up as a task in MHWiki:Articles needing attention. -- Grexx 07:46, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd be willing to take on the cleaning up of the bases' pages, as I saw is still needed on MHWiki:Articles needing attention. But before claiming the task and adding edits, I have a question about what we would like to see on those pages. I wholeheartedly agree that the "this is better than that, but not as lucky as that other one that you can't even buy anymore" descriptions need to go. But should any characterization of a base's properties be given? For example, the Aqua. It has relatively high luck (8) and power (230) for a non-LE trap, but no other advantages. It's currently described as not being very versatile. Would we want something like "The Aqua Base, available at … , is a relatively strong and lucky base, but its lack of attraction or power bonuses limits its versatility"? Or just stick with the purchase, history, trivia, etc info and stay out of assessing the base altogether? --GoBecky 01:08, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that's a good description to have that you wrote. -- camomiletea 02:13, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

One thing that I have been debating about (with myself, pooflinger, and others) is whether the MHWiki is purely out here for informational purposes, or for guidance purposes. That is, whether we should include subjective content like trap/base/stratagem analysis or just keep it like the wiki is right now, just chock-full of information and information only. If we include "characterizations" as GoBecky put it, then I fear that we will intrude into the job that MH guides are supposed to be doing (eg. Sean's awesome guide). If GoBecky should include subjectivities, then I don't see why we should not include it in other parts of the wiki (which would incorporate major rewrites of most of the wiki). Admittedly, we already have a sort of "mini-guide" on our Location Quick Reference page but I think that is as far as we should go. In summary, I would like to say that we should make up our mind on whether we should include subjective information, which would require major major rewriting, or keep it out entirely. -- Victor.Song^talk 02:28, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

When you put it this way, well, I would rather keep the subjectivity out of the Wiki. To me actually, the current writeup seems less subjective than the proposed one, because the items compared are identified, rather than just saying "relatively lucky" (relative to what?). I think it's a pretty objective statement to say that "Aqua base has a higher luck factor than any other base except the limited edition Candy Cane (with which it's tied) or Magma". You can objectively compare the luck and say that this is true -- no subjective judgement involved. The problem is that sometime we are going to get another base and it might make this statement no longer true.

It's hard to come up with a good comparison-based description for the bases, since you can pretty much use them interchangeably. For weapons you can compare the related traps; traps that can be used in a particular area (e.g. Zugzwang's Last Move can be compared with Venus Mouse Trap and Mutated Venus Mouse Trap); traps that are the natural upgrades from other traps (e.g. Ancient Spear Gun can be compared with Net Cannon and Harpoon Gun), etc. But for bases there is no "natural" roughly equivalent bases to compare to.

Is the comparison between the bases necessary? -- camomiletea 02:55, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Ummm...are we fighting for the same side here? I am perfectly OK about quantitative statements like "The Aqua Base along with the Candy Cane Base has the second highest luck of all the bases, after the Magma Base" but what I worry about are qualitative statements like "The aqua base should be used in the Lagoon region because of its high luck and relatively low cost" because trap preference is highly customizable and there are tons of popular hunting strategies in which a single wiki page cannot cover. The quantitative statement, however, can be used and applied to fit a hunter's hunting strategy needs without bias.

For example, if a hunter wants the highest luck setup available, then they can just sort traps by luck on the Traps page without having to be hindered by opinions. -- Victor.Song^talk 05:19, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I think we lost Grexx' initial thought a little bit... I believe he meant to remove the ranking altogether. Don't know about the comparison part though since in my opinion it helps the players to see the trap components in a wider concept. So leaving the ranking out but trying to fit the respective base into the whole picture could sound like this:

The Aqua Base is a non Limited Edition Base that comes with the same high Luck as the Candy Cane Base though it is not quite as powerfull and fresh as the latter. However, this base's complete lack of power and attraction bonuses make it less versatile than other bases.

Please feel free to make adjustments and/or suggestions for other/better ways. ____m. 10:52, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I think it is important to call out what attribute - power, luck, attraction, or cheese effect is important for this base. For limited edition bases - I think it is good to compare them to standard bases - but I would not compare standard bases to limited edition bases. I also don't like the language of "non Limited Edition" - too close to a double negative.

The Aqua Base has the highest Luck of standard bases. This base is commonly paired with high luck weapons when the hunter needs a lucky setup.

Typically one of the attributes for a trap is more important - so calling that out would be useful in my opinion -- Ralphminer 12:20, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

M. is correct in identifying the original intent of my post, is to remove all mention of any form of rankings altogether from the main writeup for both Bases and Weapons. The reason is as stated earlier, that a comparison has always been readily available in both the Traps article as separate components, and also in the individual weapon or base articles. This will avoid redundant remarks about certain aspects of a trap component(ie Luck, Power etc), as well as reduce chances of inaccuracy as more components are introduced in-game. However, a subjective comparison of component attributes compared with sister components, such as Sinister/Ambrosial, Trebuchet/Rocketine etc in the "Related Weapons" subsection would be good as it gives players some background info on the respective trap without clicking on the link. -- Grexx 16:05, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Availability

I'm planning on doing away with all bloat from the small notes beside many of the weapons and bases such as ^{1 2 3}. The information is always easily available a click away in the respective item page. The only thing that will be retained will be a note stating if an item is always available or is time limited. Will probably be naming it 'Limited' or something similar. So it'll be a simple superscript # or *, followed by a single line at the bottom stating that the item is limited edition or limited to certain events in the past. If there's any issues with the change, now is a good time to voice it out. If not I will be implementing it in due time. The change is meant to reduce the clutter on the article and bring it back to the original purpose, a table informing players of the traps available (or not), and the prices (and possible variations). -- Grexx 12:50, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Finally got to it. Let me know if there's any further possible improvements that can be made. -- Grexx 16:12, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Limited Edition vs. Event

I just noticed that the Nannybot had the "E" (event) notation, but it does carry a Limited Edition badge, so I changed it to "LE".

That leaves only two components listed as "E." I suspect that they should also be "LE" but I don't have them so can't personally check. So would someone mind loading up the Gingerbread House Surprise weapon and Gingerbread Base — separately, of course, and each with a non-LE other component — to see if the Limited Edition badge is there? Is so, we can get rid of the "E' designation altogether. --GoBecky 03:15, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

No, neither of these has a shield per User:Pakaran. And verified personally! -- camomiletea 18:00, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

How to Sort Tables

We need a little "how-to" section on sorting by multiple criteria... If people want to compare weapons of a certain power type, they need to first sort by the criterion they are interested in, then by power type. For example to get the table sorted by luck within power types, first sort by luck, then by power type. We get suggestions to split the table every now and then. -- camomiletea 03:25, 15 July 2010 (UTC)