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Re: Ability Numbers/Testing

What's the protocol for getting additional testing for an ability's description, specifically pertaining to numbers? Because Hanzo's Scatter Arrow in particularly is definitely not fully fleshed out - current description says 75/arrow, but that's only with full pullback; as much as people are 9/10 times going to do it that way, the current description implies that firing at the ground with no pullback doesn't decrease the damage of it. SirBread (talk) 21:35, 5 July 2016 (UTC)

For cases like this one, do it like it's done for any other charged weapon; just give the value at no charge and at fully charged. See Symmetra's orbs or Hanzo's regular attack.

As for actually finding the exact value, that you'll have to figure out yourself. Myself I take data from OverSheet, so whatever isn't in there I usually can't fill in. --Krupam (talk)--

Map pages

Currently we have a tendency for map pages such as Numbani to first of all be about the lore location, and secondly about the game map, with info related to the game map confined to a sub-section. My feeling is that the existence of the location as game map should be the primary focus of the pages.

While the setting is relevant and of interest, background lore is always going to be secondary to actual gameplay. When the beta and later full release progress, these pages will fill up with information about the game maps themselves, their layout and levels, where the healing packs are, what are good strategies, what are dangerous choke points/good sniping points, good heroes and comps for the map, and so on. It is my opinion that the majority of players searching for the page will be seeking this kind of information. The current design means all of this information would be confined to a single subsection, a fair ways down the page (especially as we get more lore information to fill in above it). By placing all game map info within a single subsection, this also prevents us from having level 2 headers for game map subsections such as "strategy", "heroes", "key locations", etc; these will only have level 3 headers, which are far weaker.

While the lore is definitely valuable, it should fit perfectly well within its own subsection rather than as the primary focus of the page. I would suggest having the lead section contain mention of the location as both a game map and a lore location, and then having lore information below that. This matches the layout for all our hero pages, e.g., Junkrat, Tracer, Soldier: 76, as well as that for pages on other Gamepedia wikis such as Wowpedia, Hearthstone Wiki and Leaguepedia, and works fine. -- Taohinton (talk) 21:13, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

While I'm aware that most people are interested in gameplay first, I'd argue that it's better to have lore at the start of an article rather than gameplay for a few reasons:

In the long run, the amount of gameplay information will generally outstrip the amount of lore information. Lore, by its nature, is limited to what the developer/author/whatever gives out, and is inherantly finite in its nature. The Numbani lore info begins and ends with what's been doled out, and any expansion can only come when new material is released. Gameplay, on the other hand, doesn't really have the same limit. While official info gets passed out, gameplay material is far more player-driven. There's no right or wrong strategy for instance, so in theory, gameplay info can expand ad infinitum.

This is a more subjective point, but I'd contend that lore compliments gameplay far more than gameplay compliments lore, at least in article structure. If anything, the Swain link makes this point, as do other gamepedia articles. Lore provides the intro, gameplay provides the meat. In contrast, per the Malygos link, lore coming after gameplay feels like more of an afterthought. It can't enrich the experience at this point, and in Hearthstone, lore is academic anyway, since far more detailed info is available on WoWpedia anyway. Now granted, the LoL and Strife examples are in the position of not trying to do anything with the lore or correlating it, but are simply repeating blurbs (part of why I prefer(ed) the wikia versions of both games), but the principle remains the same.

In terms of structure, it's a fair point that the heroes pags are in the position of gameplay>lore, but even then I feel the same way. The gameplay section is liable to increase substantially over time, and with the same potential for information that lore can't match. Also, concerning points about design, I don't think that's necessarily an issue. As it currently stands, both the lore and gameplay sections get a level 2 header each. I'd imagine that it would be a case of "game map," with level 3 headings for sub-elements of gameplay. At the end of the day, if it's consensus that lore should come after gameplay I won't fight it, but I'll let the above points speak for themselves.--Hawki (talk) 23:15, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

Re: the first (and second?) point/s, I agree. I wasn't necessarily suggesting moving the lore down to the bottom of the page, although maybe I didn't make that clear. That's what I meant when I said "I would suggest having the lead section contain mention of the location as both a game map and a lore location, and then having lore information below that." Then gameplay info, below that. This ensures readers browse past the lore before hitting the gameplay, which is generally a desirable thing. I do think it's a somewhat subjective point, though, and does depend on the game, but in this case I can see that working fine. I don't agree that the lore will necessarily stay tiny though, especially with claims that they will be fleshing out the lore... this could lead to a lot of notes and details far beyond the official blurb.

The point I was making was concerning the lead section emphasis and the headers. The first is mostly a matter of wiki priorities and approach to articles. A page like Numbani is about both a lore city and a game map. My feeling is the map has to trump the lore city in terms of priority. I really don't think you'll get a fraction as many people looking up the page searching for the lore as you do searching for map details; we could certainly compare hits for non-map city pages with those for map city pages. Partly because of this, and partly because of the nature of the game itself - the the maps are at the end of the day for playing on; the lore is backstory for flavor - it feels right to describe them as maps set in cities, rather than cities which also feature as maps. For me, this should be the priority for the wiki in general. That is for instance why the front page features a list of playable maps and heroes, and not a list of known lore locations and key figures in the Overwatch universe. Gameplay is the priority, not backstory.

Regarding the headers, I have to disagree that it's not an issue. If the gameplay info does get as sprawling as we both seem to expect it to, the lack of level 2 headers will make the page a lot less clear. Dividing the bulk of the entire page's content into a single sub-header might pass while it's small, but when it gets larger my experience tells me the page will be the poorer for it, in terms of presentation and readability. Intellectually it might be correct to break it down that way, but mediawiki can only match that so far before it gets silly, and we run out of header sizes. Conceptually, this isn't a problem if we consider the page to primarily be about the game map rather than the lore city, which was my original point. -- Taohinton (talk) 01:23, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm okay with the idea of "map first, city second." Since we're on Numbani, I'd be fine with "Numbani is a (map type) map in Overwatch" as the opening blurb, and moving the current intro blurb into a lore section. As in, "story" (or I'd argue, "overview" is preferable in this case) would be a level 2 heading, then make "history" a level 3 heading.--Hawki (talk) 01:55, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Edit: I've edited the King's Row page as an example. Start with the map blurb, move all in-universe info to a single section, then move onto gameplay.--Hawki (talk) 01:58, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Looks good! I was going to say we could either do it as in your example, or keep a brief intro to the setting in the lead section; this can get a little clumsy with phrasing like "The city of X itself is..." but if done right brings the setting into things a little more. The former is fine, though, and is certainly easier to write.

I'm not sure if 'Overview' is the best title for the header; I feel this might be better for official blurb which will probably appear before too long. The section also comprises an overview of the map's lore, not an overview of the map itself (or map + lore), which makes the header feel a little misleading. 'Background' more clearly defines the purpose of the section, or I would say 'Lore' but I'm not sure that sounds very Overwatch-y. I've changed it to 'Background' in the example - let me know what you think. -- Taohinton (talk) 00:54, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

I know I'm a bit late to the discussion, but I do agree with the style proposed here. I think having a generic lead that describes what the map is like is still a good idea though. I've edited King's Row as an example as well. Let me know what you think of this change. -LastTalon (talk) • (contribs) 20:03, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Abilities and images

General status update and image questions. I went through the recent livestream hero screen images and copied all the official tips that appear there; I've added them to pages as "Official tips". Probably in the future they'll either be able to complement (or get merged into) a larger official summary of the hero and its play style, but in the meanwhile it's very nice succinct info on what each hero is like to play, so it's good to have it up on the pages.

In doing this I noticed that some of the abilities have been renamed, and more importantly a new category of passive abilities has emerged since whenever the abilities were previously done. This includes several new abilities not extant on the site until now. I've therefore created new pages for these abilities, as well as Passive ability itself, and added them to hero pages. However, I don't have any images to go with these abilities, and I don't really know how I might go about getting them. I've gone through the official press content (much of which could do with finding its way onto the wiki at some point) but there are no ability icons there, predictably enough. A couple have also changed their images; this is far less of a concern, although obviously at some point we'll want to correct them to the modern versions.

This brings up the whole question of obtaining high quality assets; is there a source we editors can access ourselves, or are we limited to asking the Curse admins for assistance? Obviously it's best to do as much as we can ourselves, and this also allows a lot more customisation and perfectionism. However, it's a great-looking wiki at present, and we should aim to keep the same high standard (and matching style) for new assets. Either way, we need some icons. -- Taohinton (talk) 22:40, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion: New infobox just for animations

Currently the animated shorts are using the infobox game template. The infobox game template is, obviously, made with games in mind and not animated shorts. I think that the shorts need their own infobox template, with more animation-specific parameters like running time and a link to the transcripts (which aren't linked from anything at the moment). --TheModster (talk) 17:33, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

Now that The Last Bastion has been announced, I'm bringing this up again. I was thinking of something like this:

{{Infobox video
| name = 
| image = 
| date =
| runtime =
| transcript =
}}

I'm also considering making transcript work similarly to the Quotation page link in the character infobox template. --TheModster (talk) 17:43, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

I could probably work on this. I'm alright with making templates. Feel free to suggest other templates as well. -LastTalon (talk) • (contribs) 01:10, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Created Template:Infobox video for this purpose in case anyone decides to help. Please tag with {{In use}} (see also {{Under construction}}) if you intend to actively work on it for the time being. -LastTalon (talk) • (contribs) 01:25, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, LastTalon, but Fuzzlepuzzle made a template for the shorts a while back (see here). I never marked this discussion as resolved, however. Sorry about that. - TheModster (talk) 01:27, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I just discovered after digging around a bit. Removing the newly created template. -LastTalon (talk) • (contribs) 01:33, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Achievements on hero pages

I'd like to propose adding hero-specific achievements to character's hero pages. I think it might be a useful section to have. --Stevoisiak (talk) 16:16, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Should be no problem. I say just go for it, no need to ask. -LastTalon (talk) • (contribs) 01:11, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

In-Game tips on each hero page.

Hi, I want to know if I can add the official "In-Game" tips that shows up when you die in Overwatch. I recently dumped the game's text files and I was thinking to add each tip for each hero here, on this wiki. I was thinking on creating a new section for accommodate each set of tips, or, since the majority of the tips are "counter" tips, such as: "Be wary of moving close to McCree while his Flashbang is available.", maybe add something below or inside the counters topic would be better, I suppose.

For the more hero-centered tips, something below the "Official tips", probably "In-Game tips", or something.

Thanks. Gabrielwoj (talk) 01:32, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

I think adding a separate section to articles for tips is a good idea. I'm just not sure what to do about other tips. Some tips are related to maps or gamemodes if I recall correctly. Perhaps Tips could be an article with organization by hero, map, gamemode, etc.? Then each hero/map/whatever page could link to the Tips page with an anchor to the appropriate section in its infobox. -LastTalon (talk) • (contribs) 01:45, 23 September 2016 (UTC) Edit: I didn't check before, but it appears Tips exists. -LastTalon (talk) • (contribs) 01:47, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Alright. I don't remember seeing game modes or maps tips, only for heroes, except for the Skirmish mode, that shows about the mode. I'll wait other users response, until that, I'll check in-game if there's any tips that aren't related to heroes. Thanks. EDIT: Yep. I saw when you linked the first Tips, it's incomplete, though. I may add the rest there, but it would be cool if these tips were somewhere on the heroes page (both for countering a specific hero or the hero itself) Gabrielwoj (talk) 01:55, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. Even using the tips page, I think having tips on hero (or other realted) pages would be useful. -LastTalon (talk) • (contribs) 02:18, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, I just got in-game and there's really "loading" tips, about the maps, game modes, etc. I totally forgot it, haha. Gabrielwoj (talk) 02:47, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Heroes and Patch Notes

Currently, the Patch Notes page is an Orphan article, which is weird considering almost every other wiki about games have linked articles about gameplay on characters, locations etc. to Patch Notes. I suggest having a separate sections on each Hero and locations dealing with their difference overtime for each Patch Notes. It would also be convenient for fans of each heroes visit this page to know about their gameplay overtime without having to visit the long Patch Notes page. Shatterstar1998, 24th December 2016

Help requested

I've tried to update one of Genji's Voice lines with the Overwatch version (as I grabbed it) and it has lower volume than the Heroes of the Storm version (current), but when I uploaded it, it remained the same, and it didn't changed to its new version. What can I do about it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheGamer765 (talk • contribs) 19:30, 31 May 2017‎ (UTC)

Passive Ult Charge Help

Hey everyone!

I noticed that each hero generates ult charge passively, and each hero does that at different rates. So, I decided to find out exactly how much time it takes to passively generate 1% of Ultimate Charge by using a stopwatch and then waiting for the Ultimate Charge to reach 100%. I then divide my time by 100 and I'm fairly accurate to 3 significant figures.

What I would really like to do is add one of those little yellow bars underneath the "Stats" of the Ultimate of each Hero, that says, "Passive Ult Charge" and then I would fill it in with for example, "3 seconds for 1%". At the moment, I'm just adding this information underneath the "Details" section of the Ultimate part, but it would be nicer if it had its own little yellow bar instead. How do I do this? Or can someone do it for me? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trxt3r (talk • contribs) 03:13, 16 September 2017‎ (UTC)

Time to passively fill ultimate charge has been added to the visual redesign of abilities on the wiki. Time to gain 1% could be calculated/displayed in a similar way if that is more/equally useful as time to 100% MomoRuns (talk) 14:56, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion: Can we start listing primary weapon damage-per-second?

The number one reasons I come to this wiki half the time is to figure out how much damage a hero's primary weapon does per second. And none of the hero wiki pages list damage-per-second (except for beam-heroes), they merely list damage-per-shot and rate of fire, forcing the end-user to do the math every time. It would make a world of convenience if the wiki started listing damage-per-second on primary weapons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TThor (talk • contribs) 20:14, 6 September 2019‎ (UTC)

If the damage values are standard enough DPS can be calculated in the ability details template itself. MomoRuns (talk) 14:57, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Translation

Looking at other wiki's they have all translations done with either completely different pages Dota2 in Português or using a dictionary template Team Fortress 2 Wiki Dictionary

As I'm editing pages there are a lot of instances of english and non-english text mixed on the same page, making it hard to maintain both for english and other languages.

What can we do to simplify supporting multiple languages?

MomoRuns (talk) 15:14, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Site style

I'm noticing a lot of CSS is included in various Templates, what is the process to get CSS added site wide? It could certainly help our consistency. MomoRuns (talk) 19:57, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Overwatch Wiki Editing Help

I am working on expanding the Overwatch Wiki Category:Help to give more direction to those wishing to contribute their time to the wiki. I've created a Template:WikiHelpNav linking to some common help pages (based on the Dota2 Wiki) and Category:Help as a reference for any guidelines, information, or guides on how to correctly contribute to the wiki. Also see Category:Articles marked for open review for articles looking for community feedback. MomoRuns (talk) 16:27, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Ease of discoverability for information.

For years I've regarded this wiki as usually out of date and lacking in gameplay related information. After being heavily involved with editing and improving multiple articles I'm seeing that the information exists, but is generally spread out over multiple pages. The most recent example for me is Defense Matrix. We have the page Projectile that lists things that Defense Matrix can/cannot eat but until today the projectile page wasn't linked from the Defense Matrix ability.

What I would like to discuss here is this question:

How can we as a community increase the discoverability of information and therefore the usefulness of the Overwatch wiki?

MomoRuns (talk) 02:08, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Well I've been trying to fix that stigma for the past 2 or so years. I'm surprised you considered it "out of date" though. The projectile mishap is purely my fault though, but other "lists" should be fairly accessible. All of the damage boosts link to damage amplification which has the list of abilities that cannot be damage boosted. Sombra's hack links to passive ability which has the list of the ones that are disabled by hack. The barrier page has multiple lists. The ultimate ability page also has an in-depth explanation of how they work. Etc. Since this is the most "recent example," what are the others? Lightning laxus (talk) 04:39, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I think the biggest reason for feeling out of date is most information is manually typed everywhere. Today someone updated Objects with correct values for Sombra's translocator cooldown. How long was it out of date? (15 Oct 2019 patch maybe?) Now we have abilities in a cargo table we can use that to reference ability values and have them be always up to date. I also think some sort of "gameplay links" section on the homepage, linking to the pages you mentioned, could improve discoverability drastically. Even if its a rare occurance to have incorrect/outdated information users simply don't know what is up to date and what is not, so most will assume nothing is up to date if they find one outdated piece of information. MomoRuns (talk) 18:30, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

You got me there. Some pages don't get maintained, mainly the ones I don't particularly care about, and no one else seems to be updating them. Well, at least there's a surge of new editors now. If you want to add something to the front page, you should message one of the administrators of this wiki. Lightning laxus (talk) 22:23, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

The abilities on hero pages seem to be consistently up to date. With (most of) that data in cargo I can make a template to insert a value into a page. I've been toying with a redesign of the ability details template, that may be able to incorporate data to have some lists be completely automated (like a list of barriers). I find the current ability details to have all the numbers, but it's easy see it as a wall of text. I've been looking at other game wikis for some inspirations but haven't thought of anything that really jumps out at me. MomoRuns (talk) 00:52, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

I have made {{Show}} to insert data that is defined either in the Character infobox or in the Abilities infobox. I've updated Barriers#List of barriers to use {{show}} and {{al}} so that list should only need to be manually updated if a new barrier is added to the game.

I've also updated Ultimate ability#Ultimate cost to be 100% automated, any ability that has an ult_req > 0 will be put into that list. Its possible to have the list 100% automated because all the needed data is stored as part of {{Ability details}}. If we define "works under hack" as part of {{Ability details}} we can automate 100% of Passive ability. Its a similar situation with the sections of Barriers, those lists can be generated automatically if the data is part of {{Ability details}}. Ultimate_ability#Ultimate_abilities can be 100% automated if we define the voice lines in a structured way. MomoRuns (talk) 23:35, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Scope of wiki information

There are quite a few pages for previous tournaments, teams, and players. (Such as Phi Mu Alpha Overwatch League). In the case linked, the pages have not been updated since ~2018 and are generally not of interest to any significant portion of the fanbase. Should this wiki keep such information? MomoRuns (talk) 02:54, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Possible merge with the Overwatch Fandom wiki

Domain migrations are around the corner, and this wiki will soon be moved to overwatch.fandom.com. The wiki currently at that address will be moved to overwatch-archive.fandom.com, or something else depending on how their discussion goes. With that in mind, it's time to re-open the discussion of whether the two wikis should be merged into one, to collaborate on one wiki instead of splitting their efforts between two. There is a discussion currently open on the other wiki about this, and I'd recommend you read that as well. For the reasons listed there, it can be expected that if there is a merging, it will be from that wiki into this one, though it's not entirely out of the question that it could go the other way.

So there's a few questions to be asked on our side.

Are there any objections to such a merge?
If the merge is agreed to, what content would we want to merge? Take a quick look through some of their pages and see if anything stands out as "hey that's a good idea, we should do that".
Would we want Discussions and/or article comments enabled once that becomes available?

Any other questions you may have about the situation, please feel free to ask.
--Mr Pie 5 (talk) 22:40, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Missing Hanzo skin

While i was looking through the Hanzo skins i realised its missing the lone wolf skin, please add it as it would finish the page, if u need a picture for it i have one or you could (obviously) get one off the internet yourself

Heroes Skins

I'm not sure if anyone will ever read this, but something needs to change with the heroes skin page. As I understand, up to 70 templates can be shown in a single page, but with 37 heroes as of today, and 2 Overwatch League skins templates per hero (excluding Overwatch 2 heroes), the page links to 107 different templates.

Since only 70 can be shown, some heroes skins cannot be seen, starting from Reinhardt to Zenyatta...

A solution could be to create a completely different page for Overwatch League skins so that everything could show up correctly ? —Ana's second daughter (talk) 21:24, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Splitting the OWL skins to their own page sounds like a good idea, and it is rather easy to do. It may not however be enough on the long term, because the issue is not the template count but the size. OWL skins make up for 75-80% of the each hero skin template size, so when the OW2 heroes' skins are added the OWL skins page would in turn probably soon hit the template size limit.

Anyways, splitting the OWL skins should probably be the first step, but we will need to figure out a better way for storing the skins. —taQtaQ (talk) 09:55, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I see, how about making a page for OW1 OWL skins and another for OW2 OWL skins? That would make a lot of different pages but that would solve the problem I think. —Ana's second daughter (talk) 12:56, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I guess that would work if no one comes up with a better suggestion. —taQtaQ (talk) 11:46, 26 March 2023 (UTC)