Oblivion talk:Custom Classes

My personal favorite class creation: Battlemage Hybrid

• A semi-hybrid class focused on damage, stat building, and all around play. Play any role: Sneak in the shadows, come out swinging claymores, or use destruction spells to devastate your opponent.

Specialization:

• Magic

Attributes:

• Endurance
• Luck

Skills:

• Blade/Blunt
• Block ( Could be easily replaced with your choice. I would suggest a school of magic for better all around play )
• Destruction
• Light Armor
• Heavy Armor
• Sneak
• Marksman

Birthsign:

• Mage ( 50 Magicka )

Race:

• Breton ( 50% Magicka Resistance and 50 Magicka )

The idea behind this class is early advancement of Luck and Endurance so you can have increased health in the endgame and you won't have to spend as much time leveling Luck. Also, you gain a 50% magic resist ( Breton ability ) and 100 magicka ( Breton and Mage ability ). You could become incredibly powerful simply by getting the Mundane Ring, Ring of the Iron Fist, Necklace of Swords/Amulet of Axes, and the Escutcheon of Chorrol ( 100% magic resist, 101% reflect damage ), then you can leave the rest of your gear for whatever you want, such as 5 +50 magicka enchants ( a total of 350 addition magicka without sacrificing magic resistances! ). This is how I play my level 52 character. I cut through the game on the hardest setting like it was nothing.

Note: Doing this makes you nearly invincible and, in some ways, takes some of the fun away from the game.

Cleanup Required

One way of improving this page might be to split it into Combat-, Magic- or Stealth-based classes so at least there's some kind of order! At the moment there could be several duplicates and there's almost no way of telling. I'd probably keep it all in one page, but does anybody else have any better ideas? --Rpeh^Talk 08:17, 4 July 2007 (EDT)

Thats a good idea, but before we get to doing that i think the spelling should be sorted out and that links should be added.--Willyhead 09:46, 4 July 2007 (EDT)

It would probably be best to do it all at once. Trying to keep the spelling in good order on this page is like trying to fill up a bath when the plug's out. --Rpeh^Talk 10:04, 4 July 2007 (EDT)

Personally, I'm of the opinion that this page should just be summarily deleted. It's just a magnet for junk. There's a near infinite number of combinations of skills and such that you could choose, and many of the examples on this page are nearly identical except for a few. A better alternative would be a page discussing the individual skills and the benefits and drawbacks of having each of them as a Major. As it is, it basically just boils down to a page full of "This is my character, isn't it cool?" That sort of thing really belongs on people's individual User pages, rather than on a page like this. I imagine that's not the most popular opinion, but we'll see... --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 11:06, 4 July 2007 (EDT)

I basically agree with Lurlock that I don't think the page is providing much useful information, but I also doubt that we're going to be able to get everyone agree with that opinion. Short of that, I'd say there are a few things that could be done to really help this page:

• Introduce some standards for what needs to be provided with the custom class.
• Provide some way of organizing the classes, as suggested by Rpeh
• Create a template for displaying the information. If there are any editors out there who have wanted to learn how to create a template, this could be a really good opportunity to learn how to set one up, especially since I don't imagine it will be anywhere near as complicated as some of the other new templates that have been introduced lately (such as the NPC Summary template).

Hmmm.... now that I've gotten this far, I'm starting to reconsider things. Maybe we could really get this information moved onto user pages, in particular if someone was willing to set up some templates for people to use on their user pages (and while we're at it, creating an official template for the userbox that Rpeh has set up would be nice, too!). The template would help to standardize the appearance and also make it something "pretty" that editors would want to add to their user page. Also, the template could automatically put the user pages into a category, and then someone who really needs ideas about custom classes could pull up the category, maybe "Category:Oblivion-Classes-Custom", and browse through what's been posted.

So, any volunteers to make some templates?? I could definitely help anyone who wants to learn the process, but I think it would make more sense all around if someone else did the work here, especially since I think it would really help if some other community members got a chance to learn a bit more about how to write templates. --Nephele^Talk 13:21, 4 July 2007 (EDT)

Can I firstly agree with Lurlock by saying "YES!!! I thought it was just me! I'm sick and tired of seeing ill-spelled nonsense spouted here without regard for quality or anything else", and then calm down and say that, whilst we seem to share one opinion, the magnitude of information on the page suggests we're outnumbered.

Nephele's first suggestion would be great if anybody read that sort of thing. Unfortunately that turns out not to be the case. The second option... well I came up with that as a desperate attempt to keep the page maintainable. Admittedly, it will just take three times longer for each page to fill up with rubbish, but at least that's some breathing space. The third option plus associated musing seems to be where we all end up. It's not just me with the hacked NPC Template userbox - Kementari and Xandamere have matched templates too (isn't love sweet? :) ) so it might just be something that'll catch on if it's easy to do. It'd need an image option so people could upload their pictures, but Jim, it might just work! Incidentally, I accidentally skipped over the category idea and came up with it on my own: if two of us come up with it, it must be a good 'un.

I'd be happy to take a stab at a template, but we should probably agree in advance what needs to go on it. The templates look like perl - not too bad to write, but impossible to debug! --Rpeh^Talk 15:01, 4 July 2007 (EDT)

I'd be willing to learn, too. I think it's a really great idea. Every time I go to the Custom Classes page I have mild seizures. In fact, I was just about to alphabetize the whole thing (it makes me feel better, don't judge!) when I came here to see if anybody had better ideas. I think it'll work really well, especially since it seems that people like to let others know which ideas were theirs. And hopefully with a template a lot of the grammar problems will go away. --Eshe 16:46, 5 July 2007 (EDT)

OK, sounds like it's time for a pretty new template :) There are a few ways to go about it, but I usually find it easiest to start by creating the table without worrying about the template part of things... kind of like Rpeh's already done for a user-summary type box. Although to readers it looks the same as the Template:NPC Summary template used on NPC pages, when you open his page in edit mode, you see that it's just the table layout, without a {{NPC Summary}} tag and without the template commands.

To start putting together a new infobox for custom classes, you can copy an existing infobox or table into a sandbox page and then start experimenting with it (to understand how the table is designed) and modifying it (to fill it with information appropriate for a custom class). There are a couple easy places you could grab a starting infobox from: there's the user box on User:Rpeh's page; or, there's an infobox at User:GuildKnight/Sandbox/2 from when GuildKnight was doing this kind of thing a few months back. Try to find some attractive way to arrange the type of information that people are putting into each of their custom classes.

Once the layout is done, then I can show you how to convert it into a template. The basics of a template are pretty straightforward. The problem is that a lot of the commonly used templates on the site use a lot of advanced stuff that makes them really ugly. Much, much uglier than my beloved perl ;) (Yep, I do 90% of my programming in perl). The NPC Summary is a great example of an overly complicated template. In other words, don't be intimidated if some of the existing templates look completely unintelligible: we're not aiming for anything like that here!

So I'd say step one is the infobox layout. Whoever wants to dive in and start putting something together, go for it. And just ask whenever there's something you need help figuring out! --Nephele^Talk 18:44, 5 July 2007 (EDT)

It looks like we're going to need two templates - one for the User/NPC thing and one for characters. I'm going to take a stab at the character one, since that was the reason I brought this up. A very, very preliminary stab is up in my sandbox. I won't have a chance to do anything else on it today but you should get the general idea. Am I on the right track or shall I stop and give it to someone competent? :) Oh, and Eshe, take a deep breath before clicking that link. The spelling is suitably sarcastic. --Rpeh^Talk 09:26, 6 July 2007 (EDT)

Yep, I think we'll need at least two, and perhaps even three: one for the user/NPC box, one for custom classes, one for characters. I think trying to embed the custom class information into the character box might be getting a bit too complicated, at least for starting out :) Also, I've noticed Eshe's been playing with some ideas at User:Eshe/Sandbox. I'll let you two negotiate the details of the layouts!

I started putting together some notes on what comes next, then realized I might as well put the info into a help page for easier access in future... and then got perhaps a bit carried away. In any case, the resulting information is at Help:Writing Templates. So basically, the next step is to start replacing chunks of text with parameters: replace "Nord" and "Breton" with {{{race}}}, for example. Or to be fancier, {{{race|Any}}}. At that point, your table becomes a template! You probably want to copy one of the example tables over to a new page first (if you're ready to officially call it a template, create a page in the template namespace; if you're not quite ready to take that jump yet, you can create another sandbox page). As you plug in parameters, start using the template to see whether it's actually coming out the way you want at the other end! Hopefully that's enough info to get a working template going, at least until either of you decide you want to start pushing for fancy, ambitious features :) --Nephele^Talk 20:27, 6 July 2007 (EDT)

HA! Rpeh, that was hilarious. That embedding is pretty snazzy...glad I didn't have to work through it. If you go to my sandbox, you'll see all I did was the custom class table. I messed around with a few different arrangements of it, but the version there is what I'm happiest with. I even color-coded it by specialization, because I'm lame like that.

I have no idea what would work best...it's nice to have all the information in one box like Rpeh did it, but I kind of agree that it's a little complicated. We could keep playing around with the arrangement of it, or combine ours somehow, or just do separate ones. I think if I had to vote right now, I'd vote for separate ones, if only because it seems easier. Let me know what you think! --Eshe 21:50, 6 July 2007 (EDT)

Yes. I like Eshe's design. Once it's up as a template I might have a stab at transcluding it into my character box, although not before I've had more practice with templates! One thing to add still is the Categories. Then we need somewhere to put the classes already in existence. That's probably the trickiest part. If we put them on one page, people are just going to edit that page rather than hosting their own. Ideas, anyone? --Rpeh^Talk 08:55, 9 July 2007 (EDT)

Alright, well, I've gone and done...something. There's a semi-completed template [[Template:Custom Class|here]]. I tested it a little in my sandbox and it seems to work, for now. What I'd like to do is make another template along the lines of the race color template so the color-coding thingy I did will work. Hopfeully I can get that going without too much trouble.

As far as the existing classes...would it be at all effective to post some kind of notice to let them all know that the classes should be moved to their user pages? Then after a set period, just delete them all? I dunno, that's the first thing I came up with. My inner grammar nazi just wants the whole page to go away :). --Eshe 16:20, 9 July 2007 (EDT)

One option is to try to figure out which editors posted the custom class, then move it to their talk page with a note explaining the reorg and suggesting that they add the custom class to their user page. It's a bit less unilaterally destructive than deleting the page. My guess is that you'll be lucky if even one editor actually responds to a notice asking them to do it themselves, so I think you'll end up needing to delete most of the page. I did something similar a while back when I was trying to eliminate some "fan review" pages and get those merged into user pages (see General:Reviews and its talk page). On the other hand, 4 months later none of those editors have actually moved the info to their user pages or even, as far as I know, made any other edits to the site. Also, this is problematic for the entries created by anonymous IPs... you can move the class onto the IP's talk page, but there's no guarantee that the editor will ever use that same IP again. In other words, it's far from perfect, but perhaps better than nothing.

One other random bit of crazy thinking is that it might be useful to keep this page and have it contain just a very select handful of custom classes. I think readers looking through Oblivion:Character Creation, for example, probably would find it useful to have some complete examples to look at that demonstrate what's being described. Being told "pick one major skill from each attribute" isn't quite the same as being shown a class that has been set up that way. The classes shown in this article would be picked so that they really highlight concepts described in the Character Creation article. They would be accompanied by much more thorough explanations than any of the existing classes, in particular focussing on why the class was set up that way and how a character using that class would take advantage of the class.

For anything like that to work, I'm sure the page would have to be semi-protected. Also, there would probably need to be some pretty clear and easy-to-enforce rules about the page. For example, tell editors that if they have any new ideas about custom classes, the class must be added to their user page (any classes added directly to the article or talk page will be immediately deleted). If they think their custom class warrants being added to the main article, they would first set it up completely (including all descriptions/explanations) on their user page. Once it is complete, they would add a request on the talk page; the request would then be subject to community discussion. The class would only get copied from the user page if/when the community approves it. These rules would apply to anyone who wants to add a custom class (probably to set a good example, even the classes initially placed on the page should go through that process).

I think it might be possible with a system like this to create a useful article containing examples of custom classes, while avoiding problems like those created by Oblivion:Glitches/Proposed, for example. To some extent, I'd be interested in trying it just to see if such a system really could be made to work. In various ways, this is a recurring problem on the site: how to create a page that provides examples without having it turn into a laundry list of every possible combination. If it's possible to find some solution that works here, then I think there are many other articles that could benefit. Or else it will fail, and it's back to the drawing board ;) --Nephele^Talk 00:34, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

Well, I was going to start this back to the left, but somebody beat me to it ;). The [[Template:Custom Class|template]] is done, I've made a category (Oblivion-Classes-Custom), and the template automatically adds the page to the category. Right now, they're being added by page name, which should probably be fixed. An unfortunate side effect of this project is that my brain is currently mush...so, if someone feels like fixing this little problem, go right ahead; if not, give me about a day to recover and I'll figure it out.

As far as what to do with the Custom Classes page as it stands, I think the process outlined above would be complicated, but I bet we could make it work. It'll take forever to hunt down who posted each class, especially since there are so many of them, but it could certainly be done. A nice lengthy copy-paste project will be nice for a change :). --Eshe 00:46, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

Hmmm. Now the category alphabetizes by custom class name, but the links are still listed as page names. Right now there's a test template in my sandbox; it's listed under "P" for "Pirate" but the link says "User:Eshe/Sandbox." Any thoughts? --Eshe 13:17, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

As far as I know, pages listed on a category page always display the article name, no matter what you specify as the sort key. I'll do some more rummaging on Wikipedia to see whether perhaps they've added some new features to categories, but otherwise you've probably just hit a glitch that can't be fixed :| --Nephele^Talk 13:36, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

Our resident cloud goddess beat me to the punch. The main help page here doesn't give me much hope that this can be fixed. I guess we're back to the drawing board. :-( --Rpeh^Talk 13:45, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

The only other thing I can think of is having them put the template on a subpage that is named for the custom class, like User:Eshe/Pirate or something. At least then you'd be able to see which class the link was going to. However, I doubt we could get everybody to do that, since the point of the template was to be able to display it on your main user page. And it would be kind of a hassle to have all those new pages anyway.

I'm probably biased because I spent so much time on the blasted thing, but I say a functioning template with a slightly functional category page is better than what we have now. But that's just me ;). --Eshe 13:55, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

People could transclude the sub pages into their main ones, but that's probably asking too much given that even basic spelling is beyond many of our contributors... Great work on the template in any case. If I hadn't just given you a cookie you'd definitely be getting one now, but I don't want to encourage a bad diet :-p --Rpeh^Talk 14:26, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

Right, ive finally sorted out quite a bit of the incorrect spelling, though i'm sure there is some more of it left....--Willyhead 15:09, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

I'm not sure exactly what this "transcluding" jazz means...but would it be at all feasible to somehow get people's permission to do it ourselves? Or is this getting too complicated? Is it acceptable to just allow the pages to be listed by their names? And thanks, by the way--it's nice to be rewarded for geekiness :). --Eshe 15:28, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

Creating subpages would work, and I'm not aware of anybody being sensitive about having subpages created for them. So I think you could safely jump in and create tons of pages like User:ILoveClasses/Pirate, User:ILoveClasses/Blademage, and User:ILoveClasses/Viking. The transcluding jazz is that then, if ILoveClasses wanted to he could on his user page have a section like:

==My Custom Classes!==
 {{User:ILoveClasses/Pirate}}
 {{User:ILoveClasses/Blademage}}
 {{User:ILoveClasses/Viking}}

And all of his favorite classes would be displayed on his user page, basically just the same as if he'd used the Custom Class template on his page to start with and not created all the subpages.

But because nothing ever really works the way you want it to, we're still not really where we want to be. First there's the issue of whether most editors would be able to figure out how to add a chunk of code like that, or whether it's starting to get much too complicated. But the other problem is that you'll still end up with the page User:ILoveClasses listed in the custom class category, without any info on what the classes are on that page. This would be in addition to the listings for User:ILoveClasses/Pirate, User:ILoveClasses/Blademage, and User:ILoveClasses/Viking. My experiments just now were to try to find a way around it, but they didn't work.

It's not completely hopeless. I can still think of one more way to fiddle everything that would work, but it would require adding some rules about what names are valid for the custom class pages. For example, you could make it so that a "Pirate" class would have a category if displayed on a page named "Pirate" (e.g., User:ILoveClasses/Pirate), but otherwise wouldn't have a category. Basically the name of the class would have to match the page name for the category to get added. The rest of the stuff would show up completely normally wherever/however you want to use the template. I realize, though, that this is just getting more and more complicated, so I'm not sure at what point to declare "good enough" and just move on, even if there are some quirky problems. --Nephele^Talk 21:55, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

Sounds like we've hit one beast of a roadblock. The page naming guidelines sound like a good idea, though. A very low-tech option would be to make a list of which user pages contain which classes. So when they use the template, they would also go to the list and add their username and class. It would be a little inconvenient to have to use a separate list to figure out which user page to go to though. And the list would be long, and probably messy. You know, on second thought, forget that. I think I'm sill brain dead ;). One thing I would like to do is track down whoever made this software and beg them to make this change for us. Surely others are having the same problem. Revolt! Or something. --Eshe 22:14, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

There's a line of people in front of you already begging ;) There are a couple bug reports that have been made with fairly long discussions about what to do: 491, 1755. It even looks like some preliminary code has been written. But that was six months ago, and nothing has happened since then.... --Nephele^Talk 23:26, 10 July 2007 (EDT)

I think this is a neat page, personally, and I went and did the categorization of it. More could be done with it, maybe even giving each class it's own custom class page. It gave me some ideas for my own custom class, which I found helpful as a new player.

Thanks for that...arranging the classes by category makes me feel slightly better, for now. But I still think more needs to be done. I took a look at those discussions Nephele posted, and it seems to me like maybe we shouldn't get our hopes up about that. Still, a slightly functioning category certainly isn't any less organized than what we have right now. Even with the minor sorting, you still have to pick through the whole page to find something that fits what you're looking for. At least with the template/category system, there won't be a massive, grammatically evil lump of a page sitting around, and people will have something shiny to stick on their user pages. Am I repeating myself a lot? I'm sure I am. Anyway, that's my two cents, opinionated minion over and out ;). --Eshe 03:53, 11 July 2007 (EDT)

It's definitely better, but it's still a long rambling page and will continue to fill up with nearly identical classes replete with bad spelling. The best thing to do here may be to go and sleep on it for a while. Good ideas sometimes come after a break. --Rpeh^Talk 04:12, 11 July 2007 (EDT)

Another alternative is to add a manually created table that lists the available custom classes and just bypass the categories and their flaws. So at the bottom of the article there could be a table containing perhaps the name of each class and a one sentence description, organized by specialization. I personally hate doing things manually when a computer should be able to do it for me, but on the other hand it's basically what Wikipedia does in comparable situations (and therefore why modifying the categories isn't considered critical).

Creating such a table isn't necessarily something that would have to be done by whomever chooses to reorganize the article. It could be left up to the individual editors who added the custom classes in the first place, or else to other editors who are actively making use of the article. Similarly, editors who are benefitting from the table can take care of maintaining it as necessary, especially if the table is set up so that advanced wiki skills are not required.

In this case, I think having some type of category in the template would still be useful, if for no other reason than to provide a backup listing of the available classes. If in future categories are revamped in the wiki software, then the category could be improved and made more useful. As with anything done almost entirely with volunteer labour, it's pretty hard to predict when/if the wiki software will get changed. But in the past, they have introduced other features that I'd already written off. --Nephele^Talk 14:37, 11 July 2007 (EDT)

Hey, works for me! I think the mass population should be able to handle a name, description, and a link to their user page. Hooray! --Eshe 14:52, 11 July 2007 (EDT)

Cleaning up - Another Attempt

I've posted a section over at the Community Portal on one possible idea for cleanup up this page. Please take a look and let me have your feedback or ideas. Apologies for spamming this around but I felt it should appear on the talk pages of all the articles I mentioned in the post. --Rpeh^Talk 06:30, 19 July 2007 (EDT)

Just a suggestion

ok Wikis are not meant for this kind of thing this is what forums/ chat rooms are for. this page is turning into more of a creative names for essentially the same thing over and over again. I am just wondering exactly how this can offer any useful information as long as it is as open as it is. Possibly something like "the Top 10 custom classes" 3 for steal base, 3 for combat base, and 3 for magic base, and then one mixed hybrid class (like magic stealth for example.)

How could anyone define what's the 'top 10' custom class? How would you determine if a class was eligible to be in the 'top 10'? How would you determine how effective, playable, practical, useful or creative a class is? In fact, how would placing a 'top 10' listing be useful in itself? Be honest with yourself; would you use ANY of the classes listed? I like to think that people have enough intelligence to create their own classes without needing to consult a Wiki for something this basic. You should really just give up on this page; you're really only asking for a lot of stress or you'll die of exhaustion trying to fight off the spam.

In all honesty, there seems like there is no useful information to be gleaned from pages that allow 'user experience' to be added. (roleplaying, glitches, custom spells/enchantments, easter eggs, etc) All of these pages seem to have more value allowing people too incompetent to edit a Wiki properly to 'contribute' to the site. No one needs a wiki to tell them how to use a class, or how to role play, or how to enchant an item, or about an easter egg that when spelt backwards and with a half a dozen letters replaced forms an oronym of the middle name of a 60's era rockband member's cousin twice removed.

--Saruuk 03:56, 3 August 2007 (EDT)

In honesty I do think this page should be deleted. I was simply offering a compromise for any users that may for some reason think that this page has useful information. I own the Oblivion Guide put out by Prima, and it lists about 10 different suggested "custom classes" and how they might be useful. This makes me realize that all a custom class is is a way for the player to tailer the game to his/her play style and this is the kind of thing that should be kept off the wiki altogether. This is like listing what your favorite topping on ice cream is on a page about ice cream. If you see what I am saying this page is useless. I am sorry if it seems like I just turned the other direction but like I said before I just wanted to offer a compromise, which I now see is in fact probably also a bad idea.--Most Honored Listener 04:15, 3 August 2007 (EDT)

I tend to dissagre(refer to me as anno 359)

I tend to disagree that your build is the best,because it is common knowledege that mages are to frail to cary a whole damned set of heavy armor and I fail to see the reason why you chose marksmanship since you already have destruction for range damage(I due realize that you need a substitute for range damage when you run out of magicka,but puting marks as a major seems a bit overkill to me.