Talk:Dressing For Success

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Archive 1	—	August 2005 - March 2012

Underwater Page

I'm thinking about doing some underwater adventuring soon and I love these Dressing For Success pages, so I thought one for Underwater things might be helpful. I started a rough draft at Maximizing Your Underwater Success. I've only included pressure reduction so far, but it's kinda empty so I'm thinking adding equipment/effects that has other underwater-only effects (+meat, +items, familiar weight, etc.). I think this page would be nice to have, but do others think it's unnecessary? --RttlesnkeWhiskey 01:42, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Not right now, given that just about everything on that page is on Underwater adventuring. It's just not that complex yet.--Toffile 02:08, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Uncle Hobo Gear

The Uncle Hobo gear doesn't fit into the established color categories. It is both no longer obtainable and untradable. Right now it's in the same category as the standard Hobopolis gear, which is potentially confusing. Do we want to add a new color just for those 6 items? --Tainted Food Product 20:58, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

• How about

Legend
Ultra rares and Raffle House/Radio prizes	Tradable and still obtainable, but rare
Semi-rares and war hero drops
Mr. Store items	Tradable, but no longer obtainable
Other limited time content
Clan Dungeon non-tradables	Untradable, but still obtainable
Other non-tradables
Uncle Hobo drops	Untradable, and no longer obtainable
*	Single-equip accessory or two-handed weapon

this. ----Icon315♕ (☎|♤) 21:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

That shows up pretty light on my screen, at first I thought you had just left it white. Maybe closer to #FFFF80?

Uncle Hobo drops

Untradable, and no longer obtainable

--Tainted Food Product 21:57, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

BHY-Equipment

So meanwhile we learned that the option to do BHY-runs didn't disappear after August 14. Now the question is: Should honeybritches, honeycap and honey dipper marked as untradable? Since the actual source (handful of honey) is tradable I propose to mark them as tradable for Maximizing Your... purposes. After all players who look into this item-lists are interested mainly on the availability to them right now. While a BHY ascension would be necessary for someone to make the items available, it's not comparable to stainless steel or brimstone items. Items made from paperclips are untradable as well, but can still be bought in high numbers from the mall and thus were suitably marked as Other limited time content. I propose we mark the honey-equipment white/blank, as the regular obtainable items that they actually are. --Yatsufusa 09:23, 10 September 2011 (CEST)

• They're marked as untradable, but still available, because they are untradeable, but still available. Paperclip and Bark outfits were marked Other Limited Time Content, not because of their availability in the mall, but because it was part of other limited time content (you can't get it in-run). Moonthril, Double-Ice, Sugar, Game Grid, and Pen Pal items are marked Mr. Store, because they're Mr. Store derivatives. Despite the Mr. Store category saying "no longer available", the parts that make them are being created every day, and will be available even after bark and paperclips disappear from the mall. Point is, the honey outfit is fine in that category--Erich 11:06, 10 September 2011 (CEST)

Page categorization

Is there a reason why this and all "Maximizing Your ..." pages are categorized as world events? --Octagon8 12:39, 3 March 2012 (CET)

Thanks for pointing that out. Someone accidentally categorized the Legend template as an event when trying to link to it, and that in turn categorized any page it appeared on. Fixed! --timrem 00:40, 8 March 2012 (CET)

Standards?

Over the years I added my fair share to the Maximizing Your ... pages. Maybe it might have been a little too much. While I think the buffs are fine that way, certain equipment-slots have grown to a degree where I don't know if it's still reasonable to list some of the lower ranks. I for one have always tried to keep all kinds of players in all game-modes in mind, including those without big chunks of meat to just buy rarer drops or iotm-summons. While I would readily cut those lists to take into account today's more powerful items, I wanted to ask around for some ideas and general suggestions on where to draw the line. So far, as a rule of thumb, I listed nothing under plus eleven or under 5%, except when there wasn't much else around. Exceptions were buffs or non-buff skills. --Yatsufusa 22:59, 18 August 2012 (CEST)

• Thanks for de-cluttering those pages. I noticed that you also removed stuff at a 5-9% bonus where you felt there were sufficient alternatives. Banzai! --Bale (talk) 22:52, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the feedback; you're welcome. Hopefully the majority of wiki-users share your reaction. (I half expected getting skinned alive...) It's something I've delayed for long enough, but if anybody actually has a problem with the removal of certain items, he can always return to an older revision and copy&paste it back in. --Yatsufusa (talk) 16:53, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

Papier-mâché

How should we categorize items made from papier-mâché globs? Coming from a KoL Con-item, I would add them as other limited time content, since you can't buy them for Mr. As and the source item fits/will fit the definition "Tradable, but no longer obtainable". Any objections? --Yatsufusa 08:05, 26 September 2012 (CEST)

• Honestly, I think they're closer to "Tradable and still obtainable, but rare", as the source book will be available yearly, and the rad libs themselves are (or will be once demand settles a bit) readily available in the mall. It doesn't fit either of the two reddish categories, but it's still be available. --Valliant 08:46, 26 September 2012 (CEST)
  • Thanks. I somehow missed the whole available yearly thing, because it's not on the respective item pages and I failed to read the KoL Con article. I agree that under these circumstances, Papier-mâché items belong with Radio prizes, which have an unconventional obtaining method, but are available on a somewhat regular basis. --Yatsufusa 10:08, 26 September 2012 (CEST)
• None of the current categories fits precisely. It's an untradable item, but it's produced by multi-using tradable items. Said tradable items come from a KoL Con tome, which is similar to a Mr. Store tome (both of them are bought for money donated to Asymmetric, directly or indirectly), but somewhat different in the manner of acquisition (money has to be taken to KoL Con instead of sent by Paypal et al.). It's definitely not an ultra-rare or raffle house or radio prize, which aren't bought, but are instead found or won.
  
  I think it might be best to expand the "Mr. Store items" color to "Mr. Store/KoL Con items", and use that. (If ultra-rares and raffle house prizes can be lumped together, these can!) --Greycat 14:43, 22 October 2012 (CEST)
  • Yeah, that makes the most sense, I just added it in. Other folks can change the individual maximizing pages because I don't know where the glob stuffs are off hand. ~Erich ^t/_c 15:36, 22 October 2012 (CEST)

Mr. Store derivate

I've wanted to propose this for quite some time but constantly forget about it: In my mind equipment that is merely created by an iotm in a continuous manner, like summoned items and items created from those, should get their own color. Over the years the number of these pieces of equipment has grown so big that marking them as iotm isn't as helpful anymore as it used to be. I'm also afraid that newer players might get the page wrong and miss out on equipment like the sugar shorts, because they think it would be an iotm. "Tradable, but source no longer obtainable" would sound about right for a description. I would update those items myself, but I'd like to see some suggestions on the color first, because choosing one on my own would take me longer than all that updating combined. --Yatsufusa (talk) 04:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

The original reason for classing them as such was because you need the IotM if you wanted access to it in hardcore. Of course these pages aren't necessarily super useful when under ascension restrictions anyway, so I think your proposal makes sense. These days there are quite a lot of IotMs that are merely just generate tradable items and as such those items are actually pretty easily accessible in aftercore. --Melon (talk) 17:37, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I've thought the same on a couple of occasions. You could use a less saturated tone of the teal used for Mr. Store items, like:

Limited time content	Tradable, but no longer obtainable
Mr. Store/KoL Con items
Mr. Store/KoL Con item derivates	Tradeable, source no longer obtainable

Maybe the differences between the colors are a bit too subtle though? The other thing that springs to mind is to get rid of the kind of silly "Semi-rares and war hero" category, and recycle that color. --Darkcodelagsniper (talk) 18:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

While I agree that the "Semi-rares and war hero" category is silly most of the time, in my experience this has become most interesting when these pages get consulted because of some world event. While the mall is quite well stocked with plenty of affordable semi-rares them most of the time, even the SPF 451 lip balm has had its time in the spotlight. For those occasions I'd like to keep it. (Sorry if this makes me sound like some kind of old veteran or something.)
As for your suggested color, it is distinguishable when the colors are right next to each other, but when the items are all over the place, I would have some kind of a problem telling which is which by color alone. I'm not hung up on keeping the old iotm color scheme since it already gets updated. (Then again, I have a terrible taste in colors – so I would probably select fifty shades of orange.) When I'm moving through all the tables, updating the former iotm color wouldn't be much of a deal (Crtl+H). --Yatsufusa (talk) 20:49, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Colors all suck if you are colorblind (or have a lousy monitor). Ideally we define styles for all these things and use that. Default could be colors but someone could override a stylesheet for different options (eg putting symbols before or after). Personally, I'd love to see a stylesheet solution because (a) it would make it easy to keep one standard across all pages and (b) using meaningful names instead of hex-coded colors makes it easier to edit. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 07:24, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I personally like the idea of an "Obtained indirectly from Mr. Store but an actual donation or equivalent is not required" quite a bit. (Coming from a Metroplexity background, that is something that we do distinguish on our wiki.) Aelfinn (talk) 03:05, 4 December 2013 (UTC) Perhaps:

Legend
Ultra rares and Raffle House/Radio prizes	Tradable and still obtainable, but rare
Semi-rares and war hero drops
Mr. Store items	Tradable, but no longer obtainable
Mr. Store derivatives (non-Mr. Store item required)
Limited time content
Clan Dungeon non-tradables	Untradable, but still obtainable
Other non-tradables
Single-equip accessory or two-handed weapon

Your proposed color shift looks good to me. Since that has come up: Does anybody know someone who's actually colorblind who could approve this? Maybe we should change Tradable and still obtainable and Untradable, but still obtainable as well. --Yatsufusa (talk) 03:42, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

See Discussion: Color-blindness. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 04:13, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Well I'm fairly colorblind, though not the worst of the range, and those are decent. It isn't possible to have perfect choices, due to the multiple kinds of color vision problem people have. The important thing is having the colors be as distinct and few as possible. --FrodoBatman (talk) 05:46, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi, partially color-blind person here. The challenge for me isn't in telling apart the colors in the key; it's identifying a color without context (For example, without referring to the chart, I couldn't tell you which category that falls in). It's like seeing an unlabeled crayon by itself, and calling it blurple. As a result, I'm generally opposed to relying on colors to convey information, but that's not what's being discussed here. In my eyes, color scheme is mostly okay, with exception of Limited time content - it could be mistaken for Mr. Store items or Mr. Store derivatives; perhaps change it out for a yellow of some flavor? Overall, I'd also maybe suggest making the Mr. Store and Clan Dungeon colors a little darker, and maybe use something like italics to indicate untradableness and bold to indicate obtainableness. --Parse (talk) 16:07, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Those tables are very compact by design. I tried your proposal in the preview and while I think you're on to something with the mix and match system, the list gets much harder to read using italics and bold (more on that down below in my answer to Diabolico).
When it comes to identifying which color is which, the only additional (color focused) aid I can think of right now, would be adding an additional legend to the bottom of the table. Unfortunately, using the darker backgrounds for the Mr. Store and Clan Dungeon items makes them harder to read as well, once link-coloring gets involved. Yellow is currently reserved for the smallest category: Untradable, and no longer obtainable – and personally I think yellow shouldn't be used that much on a white page, though that might be only me. --Yatsufusa (talk) 07:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

I see the problem with colors, but symbols seem to have the same problems. Icon315's signature near the top of the page is a good example "♕ (☎|♤)" When I look at that from a little bit farther away, I see: "fortress, companion cube, tree/pyramid", instead of... Is that a...? I have to zoom in quite a bit to recognize the crown. The symbols we choose had to be rather small, yet easy to read. Using both colors and symbols would just double the work to edit the tables and most likely make it to information-laden for any party. Having certain colors added to the wiki css (similar to navy and such) sounds pretty sweet, though. Once we settled for a certain setting, I'll ask for that in Discussion. --Yatsufusa (talk) 03:42, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

there's also the problem that my handheld (android/opera classic) displays different symbols than this browser (xp/IE8). and in ie at default zoom i can sort of differentiate the symbols but can't see what they are. can we add presbyopia as well as colourblindness as a criterion? --Evilkolbot (talk) 13:37, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

One of the talk or archived talk pages suggests using superscript footnote indicators. I don't think there was any reason to reject that, it just didn't get adopted. The example of hobo code binder was given. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 17:04, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

(reply follows below) --Yatsufusa (talk) 21:20, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Having just recently been misunderstood on the topic of monitor sizes, this ahead: I don't discriminate against any size of monitors, no matter how big or small – or being victim of any visual hardships (like being nearsighted). If any symbols get used, I'll have an eye on them being as un-exotic as possible (maybe symbols clickable via this wiki's interface), but since you'd be using the same device to view legend and table, they would at least stay the same while using that particular device. --Yatsufusa (talk) 07:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

The information that is important to mark in the chart is that which directly affects optimal choices (2-handedness and exclusive-equippable accessories, marked with a *). I also think that the tradability of items needs to be noted in a more reliable channel than color-coding. A person who is simply referencing the chart, swapping tabs, and typing names into the mall search form will get some irritation when hitting on untradables (doubly so untradables that are trivially purchasable in a different form, like honey items or paperclip gear). I suggest marking all untradables with a dagger (†), regardless of attainability, to signal that this category of user should click through to the appropriate wiki page rather than attempting to do a mall search straight off. This should provide the most important bit of information in a format that is accessible to everyone, regardless of colorblindness. The rest of the color discussion, then, is low-stakes and need not get bogged down over usability. --Diabolico (talk) 03:54, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Having a single marker simply to state "untradable" sounds good. It would also be relatively easy to do in one go with the other update, although, after giving it some thought, I'd prefer to use a symbol that could be typed rather than copied and pasted by future editors, like "²"... Which Wikipedia tells me you guys don't actually have on your keyboard... Bummer. I'd still like to use something only half the size of a character, like "^" or "°", so it's easier for the eye to tell it apart from actual item names. Admittedly I'm not sure how those would actually look on handheld devices. Any insights or suggestions? --Yatsufusa (talk) 07:51, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

(further ideas down below) --Yatsufusa (talk) 21:20, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Experiments:

Limited time content	Tradable, but no longer obtainableS
Mr. Store/KoL Con itemsR
Mr. Store/KoL Con item derivates	Tradeable, source no longer obtainable

Border color can be used to indicate something. Border type (solid, dashed, dotted) can mean something. Sub and superscript tags work. Abbreviation tag works. (Work = allowed by wiki software.) Probably best to imagine these being invoked by template, eg my subscript R: {{dfsrt}}: flag an item that can't be traded, but can be trivially made from tradable parts (think paperclip pants). How do these ideas strike people? How well do the abbr tags work on tablets / phones? --Club (#66669) (Talk) 19:30, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

• The borders don't work as good as the background coloring for me and in combination with the background coloring they make everything more confusing. The ^sup and _sub tagging brings the words out of alignment inside their table cells. In lack of a better word: It would make these pages look unprofessional. The same would be true for Melon's suggestion from years ago that you pointed out above. I would also like to keep the table easily serviceable by players who edit the wiki only occasionally. The title on the other hand could be used, should we agree on an "untradable" icon that can't be typed that easily. If we vote on something like Ω, we could create a template like {{maxyour_notrade}} to be copied and pasted. That being said, I would rather see something simple making the race. --Yatsufusa (talk) 21:20, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Status Report

This is getting a little cluttered, so I'd like to recap: Right now...

1. Most seem to be in agreement with Aelfinn's color scheme. If there's nothing on that within the next 24 hours, I'll add a request for css colors to the general discussion.
   1. Not all forms of colorblindness work the same, but Aelfinn's color scheme seems to be decent for most – that's good enough for now. Should there be issues, we can change all the colors at once by changing them in the css file.
2. There might or might not be an additional legend to the bottom of the table after the next update – depending on the upcoming arguments.
3. There won't be additional symbols in addition to the colors.
   1. There will be however a symbol for untradable items in general, partially relieving issues for colorblind and blind users. What that symbol will be is still undecided.

Feel free to express your disagreement with these assessments here. I'm only human. --Yatsufusa (talk) 21:20, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

• Sorry, I just realized I almost forgot to give someone else a say in choosing the actual nametags for the new standardized colors.
  Ultra Rares (#FF8585): my_ur
  Semi-rares (#FFBBBB): my_sr
  Mr. Store (#90BBBB): my_iotm
  Mr. Store derivatives (#90EEEE): my_iotmder
  limited time content (#EE90EE): my_limit
  Clan Dungeon non-tradables (#77FF77): my_clandung
  Other non-tradables (#BBFFBB): my_notrade
  Uncle Hobo (#FFFF22): my_limitnotrade
  The prefix "my" stands for "Maximizing Your ...". Limitnotrade is a little long, but I figured it's justifiable, since that category would stay rather small, even if TPTB added more untradable limited time content that actually qualified for these pages. --Yatsufusa (talk) 01:22, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
• How about something like {{my|ur}} or {{my|clandung}} so we don't need a ton of templates? — Cool12309 (talk) 04:25, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
  • These are not names of templates, but rather (soon to be) standardized variables for the wiki's css file. For instance: <span style="background-color:olive">Yay, Color!</span> results in Yay, Color!
    Olive is one of 140(?) pre-defined colors that make it easier for editors to use colors in an HTML environment when #808000 isn't their idea of readable code. Now using similar variables like my_notrade would (hopefully) result in more readable wiki source code, encourage editing and give us a much easier way of changing colors for these pages in the future.
    We could make a color template, but I would expect users to get confused by this way of nesting things and so far we focused on making things more user friendly. --Yatsufusa (talk) 04:57, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I find the abbreviation tags a nice solution on a computer, but I've not seen what they do when on a mobile device. Longer than one letter might be necessary, but it seems fairly compact even having several two or three letter abbreviation tags and does not require any exotic characters. I've only played with MediaWiki a little, is it possible for a tag to add arbitrary text, so that semantically meaningful tags would add a standardized abbreviation code? Whoops, forgot signature --FrodoBatman (talk) 06:54, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

• You can ANYTHING. It is a simple <abbr title="hope that helps">HTH</abbr>. --Club (#66669) (Talk) 07:20, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Removing low bonuses

Given the number of items, equipment and effects being added to the game, it seems like a lot of minor bonuses are too weak to be realistically considered for maximizing purposes at this point, especially for stats that have a lot of possible sources (e.g. muscle, moxie, mysticality). Perhaps a minimum threshold be enacted for certain bonuses, since very low / meager bonuses are unlikely to make a difference at this point.

An immediate example that comes to mind are the flat substat bonuses from candy hearts, which only offer +3 to a given stat, yet have six entries dedicated to them. Hell, I'd say that any flat stat bonus under 5 (maybe even 10) isn't worth noting, since it just ends up being clutter at this point.--Volc (talk) 21:30, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

Are wishable effects derivatives?

The iotm/kol con derivative/unobtainable derivatives difference makes sense for equippable items on most of these pages, but buffs are in a weird grey area because most effects are wishable from pocket wishes. For example, effects from Model Train Set are wishable but are otherwise unobtainable without the item: should this be marked as derivative (pink) because of pocket wish or derivative (blue-green) because it's inaccessible without it?

If it comes down to a vote, I would omit wishable as a derivative, otherwise every iotm-related buff will be marked as pink, confusing the situation. --Zicter (talk) 18:23, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Language update?

"most people don't have piles of Mafia Raffle Prize gear stacked up in their closet" has been in the text for a long, long time, and Mafia Raffle Prize gear is now underwhelming compared to standard IotMs, Dreadsylvania equipment, and trivially available advanced Sauceror potions (unless you only play when Grimace is maxed out). Should this be updated to reflect the modern Kingdom? --BaronessRatsworth (talk) 12:05, 26 August 2024 (UTC)