Template talk:Npcbox

Previous archived discussions:
 * /Archive 1 - June 2007 - May 2008 (from Template:mobbox)
 * /Archive 2 - January 2007 - May 2019

Wealth
Anyone opposed to removing the  parameter? If no one is opposed: the person who does remove it, please add Category:Articles using obsolete parameters if the parameter is used so it can be removed easily with a bot. 22:18, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
 * No complaints from me. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 22:58, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Fine with me. PeterWind (talk) 00:20, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Not opposed. -- 09:23, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Removed. 13:46, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Getting rid of numerical stats
At this point, I don't see any value in recording health, mana, and energy for NPCs, and think it would be better to remove these parameters from the template entirely.
 * 1) I sincerely doubt it's of any interest to anyone. When has it ever been important to know the exact health of an NPC (or even a boss)? When you're actually playing, the only thing that really matters is what level you are relative to the mob (a non-issue in most cases thanks to scaling) and what percentage their health is at (because of abilities that trigger below a certain %). Even if it was important to know that stuff, I think it's much more likely people would just go to Wowhead or WoWDB to get that information. In the rare cases where Blizzard intentionally includes a joke in the stats (like Hogger having 666 health), we can make a manual note pointing it out.
 * 2) It takes unreasonable amounts of work for editors to handle this manually. In order to accurately list, say, the health range of a Hinterlands mob, you would have to view that mob in-game on both a level 30 character and a level 60 character (which you would have to freeze the XP on so your level 30 character doesn't accidentally turn into a level 31 character while you're running around the zone). Now repeat that for every single NPC in the zone and it quickly gets out of hand. And if an editor doesn't know for sure that the stats they're adding are accurate because they're just copying them from Wowhead or something, then what's the point of adding them in the first place?
 * 3) It quickly becomes outdated and in need of constant updating due to Blizzard's repeated stat squishes and leveling revamps. 9.0's leveling revamp will hopefully be the last major change to the existing leveling content (what's currently in the level 1-120 range), but there's a strong possibility that the Shadowlands will be moved from the level 50-60 range into the 10-50 bracket in 10.0, making all of the Shadowlands NPC pages we've made by then outdated as well. Even if that doesn't happen, we'll have enough work updating level ranges for almost every NPC page on the wiki when 9.0 drops without worrying about updating health and mana values as well.

It might make sense to keep this for Classic pages specifically, since Classic's levels and stats are static and the gameplay is more unforgiving, but I think my first 2 points apply to Classic as well, to the point where I don't think it'd be justified to make an exception for those pages. (Also, in the cases where a character exists in both Classic and retail, it'd probably look strange to exclusively list their Classic health and mana.)

I'd also prefer cutting this stuff from item pages (removing stats and only listing things like rarity and flavor text) and quest pages (removing listings of XP and money rewards), but for now let's focus on the Npcbox. -- 21:30, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Personally I am against removing these. I'd agree that in the majority of cases, this info may not be too interesting, but I don't have a problem with these parameters being available. PeterWind (talk) 21:43, 3 July 2020 (UTC)


 * since I pretty much pointed out all of these points on discord as well, I'm obviously in favor. there's absolutely no reason that we have these values anymore other than to clutter up pages and to make it harder on editors. I have never met anyone who says they come to the wiki looking for this sort of information. With the upcoming number crunch, we are going to be faced with pretty much every numerical value we have across the site being inaccurate. That is a Herculean task to attempt at tackling to fix, and frankly, it's not worth it. It's really pointless information that doesn't add anything to the pages. once again, if people are looking for stuff like that, wowhead has this information, and the wiki should be a repository for knowledge and general context for creatures such as this, not useless numerical information that ultimately just makes things clunky for us. It was barely relevant back when everything was static, it is exceedingly not relevant now especially considering fights are determined by percentage value not numerical, so ultimately knowing the amount of health of some random gnoll adds nothing to the page. if there's anything noteworthy about their health or mana pool, we can notate that in the notes section. That's what it's there for. Right now, all it serves is to just clunk up the page and also gunk the editor's log which makes it harder to look for actual edits on the wiki. I'd also like to point out, it may become soon impossible to actually determine. With the scaling health values coming out alongside the new leveling system, you would expect that we need to basically see every single mob across every single expansion from every level from 11 to 50. That is absolutely unrealistic and also exceedingly clunky on the page. I don't even know how we would manage to upkeep that. I think it's time to retire this part of the info box simply based on that alone, while all other points are still notable and valid, it just seems like it's going to literally become impossible once shadowlands drops.--Berenal (talk) 22:09, 3 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I have been thinking about it as well. I deal with in-game numbers, and I don't mind cataloging them obviously, but I gotta agree that nowadays, numbers matter less than in first expansions. Due to scaling it is so much harder... not only they scale based on level, but they scale depending on item level as well so every number added is true only at a certain moment of gameplay (having a certain level and item level), which in the end may not have any informative value. Almost every expansion makes changes to them. Not even Wowhead is helpful in this case (I was hoping for them extracting like minimum number for 110 and maximum for 120, but alas). I imagine watching the recent changes page here with updating nothing but health / mana numbers for thousands of pages can definitely be horrifying :-P so to avoid that when Shadowlands comes, I lean towards a yes for retail, but I'm not sure about Classic just yet. And to be clear, the level param stays? -- 21:51, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, levels should stay IMO, but there could be more effective ways of listing it. I think Dark T Zeratul is working on a template for it so we don't have to manually update level ranges every time Blizzard changes a zone's scaling. -- 22:40, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Good. Now thinking about it more, I think there should be some indication what resource NPCs have. So while we wouldn't list the number, what about just indicating if a certain NPC has mana / energy by producing a blue tick next to the level for mana and yellow one for energy? This may be a bit useful to show in relation to classes and lore, and we would still reference in-game gameplay. It was discussed above when I asked about energy and xporc said "When you see an NPC having rogue-like gear, and an energy bar, it helps confirming they are actually rogues". Worth considering and maybe making this? -- 23:02, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * That's a good point. I'm not sure what the best way of showing it is, but I agree that we should keep some indicator of what resource an NPC uses. -- 23:43, 3 July 2020 (UTC)


 * 100% agreed with points 2 and 3. i tried to update health values and levels after 7.3.5, and over several months i made it through... probably a couple hundred mobs across four or five starting zones. now, aside from the more general updates i did at the same time (screenshots, summaries, etc.), that work will have been for nothing once shadowlands hits.
 * health values just aren't worth the ridiculous amount of effort it would take to keep them accurate.
 * (i feel less strongly about mana & energy, since i found that for most mobs, they weren't affected by scaling at all. they're whatever to me) —Eithris (talk) 22:13, 3 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I just have to agree with this, even though I never dared to touch any of the numbers. Of course, if you can find any way to also improve the infobox, then go for it. --Ryon21 (talk) 23:13, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

Template:Npchealth is also related to this then. -- 00:00, 4 July 2020 (UTC)
 * I've long thought that that template is pretty outdated due to only allowing 10 locations to be listed and for placing so much emphasis on the health when (IMO) it's the location part that's actually useful on lore character pages. I've been thinking that it could maybe be replaced with a more general "NPClocations" template that puts more emphasis on, well, the location, and allows for a bit more information to be added. So for Thrall it might look something like:
 * {|class="darktable zebra"

!Location!!Level range!!Reaction!!Notes
 * Garadar, Nagrand
 * Appears after completing Hero of the Mag'har.
 * Old Hillsbrad Foothills
 * 67 - 81
 * Is escorted through the dungeon by players; see Escape from Durnholde Keep.
 * Argent Tournament Grounds, Icecrown
 * 80 Elite
 * Spawns at 10-past every hour. See Argent Tournament Grounds.
 * Vengeance Wake, Lost Isles
 * Warchief's Lookout, Lost Isles
 * Den and Echo Isles, Durotar
 * ?? Elite
 * Only during Find Thrall!, The Horde Is Family, and De-Subjugation.
 * }
 * Or something like that. The layout obviously still needs some refining, and replacing Npchealth would be a pretty big undertaking since it's currently used on over 500 pages, but I don't think we need to be in a hurry to phase it out all at once. -- 12:48, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Love it! -- 15:39, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks good! A definite improvement. 22:45, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Also add a Resource column between Level range and Reaction?-- 18:01, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Made the template: Npclocations. Any reason why a resource column would be needed if it is the same NPC that usually has the same resource no matter? Surafbrov (talk) 19:06, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Warchief's Lookout, Lost Isles
 * Den and Echo Isles, Durotar
 * ?? Elite
 * Only during Find Thrall!, The Horde Is Family, and De-Subjugation.
 * }
 * Or something like that. The layout obviously still needs some refining, and replacing Npchealth would be a pretty big undertaking since it's currently used on over 500 pages, but I don't think we need to be in a hurry to phase it out all at once. -- 12:48, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Love it! -- 15:39, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks good! A definite improvement. 22:45, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Also add a Resource column between Level range and Reaction?-- 18:01, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Made the template: Npclocations. Any reason why a resource column would be needed if it is the same NPC that usually has the same resource no matter? Surafbrov (talk) 19:06, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
 * }
 * Or something like that. The layout obviously still needs some refining, and replacing Npchealth would be a pretty big undertaking since it's currently used on over 500 pages, but I don't think we need to be in a hurry to phase it out all at once. -- 12:48, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Love it! -- 15:39, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Looks good! A definite improvement. 22:45, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Also add a Resource column between Level range and Reaction?-- 18:01, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Made the template: Npclocations. Any reason why a resource column would be needed if it is the same NPC that usually has the same resource no matter? Surafbrov (talk) 19:06, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Removing health and mana
Health and Mana and Energy stats are too hard to keep up to date and scale to boot, making them fairly useless. I move that we remove them from NPCbox entirely. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 00:05, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

✅

Votes

 * Yes :


 * No :

Comments
re: mana and energy, i really liked mordy's idea above of indicating what resource an NPC has, but not saying how much. Eithris (talk) 00:15, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I think including a indicator for mana, energy and rage would be a good idea. Not sure what way though. 00:50, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * As far as I'm aware most mobs have mana by default, even if they don't use it. Energy and rage are the only special ones, and those are unlikely to change with scaling since mobs that have them generally use them in fixed values for mechanics. I'll restrict this to just health and mana. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 01:04, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * That's true, if there is no indicator for energy/rage then yea it is safe to assume mana. 04:49, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * While mana is definitely the prevailing resource, I don't think mobs having mana by default is correct. There are mobs that don't have resource. Generally speaking, caster NPCs and mobs have mana, and melee ones often don't have resource. May be some exceptions, ofc, but lots don't have mana. Race bloodelf male.jpg  Mordecay  (talk) 08:48, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with Mordecay. I guess the simplest solution would be to add a "|resource" parameter and have it be written out as "Resource: " in the infobox. -- 17:41, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * that makes sense. it could probably even be done so that, say, “|resource=mana” and “|mana=(any input—like we do with doc)” will both return “Resource: Mana.” having the latter as an option would remove the need to bot out existing parameters Eithris (talk) 18:10, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Sounds reasonable. Should we color code them? 19:45, 15 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not opposed to that. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 01:10, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

The vote has passed. For now I'm just going to comment out the health and mana fields, and we can continue the discussion about resource displays further. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 19:34, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Resource display
Continuing from the previous two discussions, there's a proposal of showing, what resource NPCs and mobs have. The current ones are from DeludedTroll and Eithris:

"a |resource" parameter and have it be written out as "Resource: " and "“|resource=mana” and “|mana=(any input—like we do with doc)” will both return “Resource: Mana.” having the latter as an option would remove the need to bot out existing parameters".

Colors are probably fine too, blue for mana, yellow for energy (and red or something for rage, if it is used by NPCs/mobs?) Any other comments on the topic? -- 19:53, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
 * and  parameters should still be phased out, but having the backwards compatibility would help for the time being.  20:17, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
 * To be clear, the energy / and mana param should be phased out afterward (if/when the resource param is added) or right now? I've seen them getting removed now, but this would mean that there would be no compatibility that eithris proposed, and it would simply get lost. -- 20:50, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
 * They shouldn't be getting removed unless  was already added to replace them. The categories were set so a bot can run through and update them to the new parameter.  19:12, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I commented out the code so they're not displayed in the infobox, but the data is still there. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 19:17, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I've added  as an option (replaced , though category still available to bot run that parameter). Didn't color code it yet but the option is now available since most agreed on this.  19:24, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Cool! -- 19:41, 26 October 2020 (UTC)