Suggestion: Video Game.Prestige Tree

This is a thread for VideoGame.Prestige Tree, but also all of its mods due to their similarities.

When I first made the PT page, I used the standard tree, because I thought it looked fine normally, and only kept the first three rows to not make the pic too high, and kept doing so with the game's mods. Now that it's been almost a year and the amount of pages has grown (you can find the list on UsefulNotes.The Modding Tree), I'm considering whether it was really the right decision, and if the High-Quality Tree option should be on for page images as I'm not sure if people think they look better.

Examples:

VideoGame.Prestige Tree

Current:

HQ:

VideoGame.The Game Dev Tree

Current:

HQ:

VideoGame.The Milestone Tree

Current:

HQ:

I'd like to establish three things moving forward:

1. Should the "High-Quality Tree" option be on for page images when possible?
2. If a tree gets updated and its first three rows change, is it fine to update it without an IP thread? (For instance, VideoGame.The Leveling Tree)
3. Should we change the caption format? Most of them follow "The tree (not shown: lower rows)" or "The tree (yes, in its entirety)". I feel like it may be possible to tell if there are other layers in rows by seeing paths, and considering there's sixteen of these mods with pages now, it's probably getting repetitive. Maybe use the full names of the things (so for instance "Shown: prestige points, boosters, generators, time capsules, enhance points, space energy")?

Edited by Piterpicher on Jan 4th 2022 at 5:08:56 PM

Opening

Honestly, I think these pages could be merged.

Really? Most of these are made by different fans. I worked to give each one at least five tropes (though ngl, some of these I wasn't sure about some of them now). And the inbounds are pretty high. I'd say there's a reason why they exist, but that's not really the point of this thread.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jan 4th 2022 at 5:32:37 PM

Anyone? I'd just like answers to those three questions I asked earlier, they probably aren't too hard...

I think the intricacies of this concept might be going over the regulars' heads (including mine), but I'll try...

1. Yes, I think the "HQ" versions, when available, can reasonably be swapped in as quality upgrades.
2. I'm not sure what this means. There's no singular image that can represent it?
3. Ideally the caption shouldn't need to be constantly updated. I would prefer no caption over something like "The tree (XYZ)" since from the page's context it should be obvious it's a tree.

Edited by Synchronicity on Jan 4th 2022 at 5:25:22 AM

What I mean with my second question is that when a tree gets updated and more nods get added/something is changed, would it be fine to change the image without an IP thread? Like on VideoGame.The Leveling Tree, the image is this:

And now there's a third row with a white T node and an orange S node at the bottom. Should we be able to upload an image with it uncontroversially?

Maybe we should have a crowner for these three points in the OP...

Edited by Piterpicher on Jan 7th 2022 at 3:34:13 PM

I think it would? It's just three buttons for "yes" and "no", surely even people not familiar with something can click it easily enough... And this is mostly to help save threads in the future.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jan 10th 2022 at 4:03:55 PM

I think you'll need to present a stronger case for the options, then. The last thing we want is people voting yes on an option they're not sure of the ramifications of.

Consider these questions for people unfamiliar with this subgenre, including myself:

1. If the trees are updated, do the current first rows really stop being representative?
2. Will there ever be a point where the changes will stop?
3. Will there be a point where the trees will not look good at wiki size, and will the changes continue then?
4. Is there any reason we should give these pages precedence over our other work pages for that policy? (To put it another way, is it any different from changing the image of the next Marvel film from the teaser poster without a thread? If that option is upvoted, is that precedence for cases like the latter?)

Edited by Synchronicity on Jan 10th 2022 at 9:10:47 AM

Alright, here's my best shot.

1. Not generally, unless the game somehow drastically changes to the point it's a whole new experience, but there were threads where a work image has been changed simply when there's an option that is just as illustrative and looks nicer.
2. No, unless 1. the engine dies, 2. the community dies, or 3. humanity dies. If we want a 99.9% certain case, when a tree is complete or its creator dies/quits the community. But then the page/image can just be updated. It's not something that hard, and some people like changing images as needed (on Characters.Super Smash Bros we had no issue), I or other fans would likely have no problem with it.
3. That's unlikely to cause problems. VideoGame.Prestige Tree has its row 3 contain super-boosters and super-generators, and I only included TES because otherwise it would exceed wiki size. Now I haven't run into a case when a row had six layers, then I'd probably just keep the middle four and shrink a little, and if there were somehow seven or more (unlikely due to screen size limits), then I'd go for either three or four, depending on if it's odd or even. There are some special cases like VideoGame.The Prestreestuck where the first phase instead has a ring with thirteen layers, but it's good enough in wiki size.
4. The difference is that teaser posters can change drastically in terms of composition, structure, characters shown, etc., so it's not such a cut-and-dry change. This is just a different placement of colored balls with letters and lines. Serious Business for someone who plays this like me, but likely nothing special for your average troper. It's pretty hard for me to really apply where an image had something like this, at most with character pages like Characters.Super Smash Bros when we had it updated when a new character was added and it was mostly agreed upon in an IP thread.

TL;DR: I or anyone else who's into these trees can change them. It's really not that hard or affecting, just an objective improvement in my eyes.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jan 10th 2022 at 4:58:07 PM

There, I explained everything. Is there anything else I have left to do?

1. I could go either way on this
2. How often does this happen?
3. I don't think a simple "The tree" caption adds much, but I also wouldn't want them to get too wordy by naming a lot of nodes. Something like the one on The Prestreestuck is good in my book. I think a "in its entirety" comment is probably fine if the tree is unusually small, like 3 or 4 nodes.

Thank you. For 2, I think it's rather rare, the only case that comes to mind is VideoGame.The Leveling Tree which had a third row added after the page was published.

My two cents, but I say it as someone who had like an hour of experience with them just to be able to argue:

1. I don't really think there's a significant difference, but I'd go with HQ images for the sake of it.
2. I recommend just sticking with the current format, showing just the beginning area and explaining the "not shown" in the caption, maybe explaining what the letters stand for.
3. There would have to be like a very significant update to the design to justify updating the image again. If it still looks relatively the same there's no need to update the images all the time.
4. I know some works have discussion pages agreeing how to update images without going though the IP. If there's a need for it, you can just talk it out with other editors about the image updates.
5. I've wanted to suggest sandboxing all the games on The Modding Tree into one page to see how it'll look, mainly because there's a lot of shared examples because they are mods of the same game, but it would kinda be against There Is No Such Thing as Notability.
6. Consider adding The Modding Tree to Game Engine and Game Mod Index if it's appropriate.

Votes bump, all three in the green.

The nodes themselves =/= the resources, so technically it would be "Shown: Prestige, Boosters, Generators, Time, Enhance, Space"

Yeah, you're right. I'll likely need to do some .js file digging to find most of those names, but I can handle that.

This is overdue for one more bump, since that last option's kinda teetering.

Thank you, we're good here. I'll take care of the trees when I can. The Communitree in particular will take a while, considering getting the second modder would need me to replay four whole sections.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jan 21st 2022 at 5:11:36 PM