Talk:Myth (video game series)/Archive 1

message: Perhaps this needs to be made "Myth (video game series)", similar to the Halo article Halo (video game series), and then separate articles for the three games? What do others think?
:I think that the Myth games are close enough together in time and design that a separate article for each game would be repititious.  At this time, I think we should focus on this article and describe the details of the games as separate article "topics".  --G3pro 13:53, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed; see my post below about an impending merge and check discussion at Myth II for details. Argyrios 07:19, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think, as we have seen the content of this page expand to become quite lengthy, that this page _should_ be separated similarly to how the Halo articles are, per game, with a legend to navigate between the three games. Myrdred 20:17, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That problem has been mostly solved by making a separate article for the story of myth, and should be further helped by LordNaughty's pending summarization of the units section. I think it is much more coherent to divide the article in this way, by topic (as was done) especially since the MAIN difference between Myth and Myth II is how the story unfolds. Argyrios 22:32, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Video game series merge 

message: Sunday, May 1, 2005
I added a small bit on Homeland, a conversion whose existence more or less facilitated the creation of a new kind of Myth
conversion.  Simply put, it was the first Solo Campaign to make extensive use of new units, intricate scripting, well-thought-out 
storyline, detailed mapmaking, and a voiced-over intro.  While only 1 level, it prompted a sequel, whose units/characters were 
eventually used in The Seventh God.  Basically, it was the first real breakthrough hit in the Solo Campaign field, and remains one
of the most-downloaded solo campaigns to this day.  I like it, so I wrote it in.
It's my first edit, so feel free to fuss at me if you like! :)
:I had forgotten, but yeah Homeland did have a lot of that stuff first. It should stay, I suppose. Thanks for the contribution to wikipedia; hope it's the first of many:) Argyrios 07:11, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Homeland conversion added 

message: I believe that Myth: The Fallen Lords and Myth II should both redirect to this page; hence what little content is currently at the stub for Myth II will soon be added here, a subheading section will be made for each game here at this page, and the Myth II page will be converted into a redirect to this page. A warning to this effect has been up on the Myth II page for a couple weeks now, and relevent discussion should go to the thread I started on the talk page there (although I'll check both places). So far I have gotten no objections to this plan; if this is still the case in about ten days, I plan on doing the merge myself. If you feel that each game deserves a separate page then please speak up and make your case :). I respect the Myth series very much, but I feel that this is the best way to compile the information about it. Argyrios 07:18, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Impending merge 

message: There is an earlier computer game called Myth. It is a platform game from the early 1990s. If I were to write an article about it, what should be its title? — JIP | Talk 11:50, 1 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name for earlier Myth game 

message: OK, that section is a total mess. It's just a tedious level-by-level synopsis. First, the specific events of every level aren't particularly important compared to the bigger picture of the course of the conflict. More importantly, the casual reader has no f'kin clue who Rabican, The Watcher, etc, are AT ALL so talking about them for the first time by saying someone defeated someone else is totally meaningless to them. The backstory is missing too. It needs to be completely redone. A good place to start would be to describe the structure of the world (the comet, the light/dark cycle, etc,) and some history that occurs before the events of the game. Then describe major characters, and THEN give the larger narrative course of events, leaving out the irrelevant, tedious details of each particular level's mission objectives. Argyrios 22:22, 1 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Detailed Storyline 

message: First off, thanks for cleaning up the detailed storyline. It really needed it. Also thanks for catching some errors on the units page and adding the ones I missed. However, I had to remove a lot of your material. The idea is to give readers an overview to help them understand the game, what it's like to play it, and why it is important. Overly specific details are not encyclopedic. The exact behavior of the dispersal dream comes to mind; all the reader needs to know is that it blows shit up in a chain reaction, because that's cool, but the mathematics of how it specifically does this is of little interest to the casual reader. Wikipedia is not an in-depth game guide and there should be a cut-off point of what is relevent for the purposes of writing an encyclopedia and what is not. I could have deleted a lot more than I did and been justified, but I think there is wiggle room. 
There was also an abundance of repeated information. Experience was covered in the "gameplay" section, for example, and it was already stated that healing destroys undead units, not Dark ones, so there's no need to repetitively state exceptions to a rule that was never stated or implied. I also caught a couple innaccuracies and at least one example of opinion being stated as fact. Please discuss any plans to re-add anything I deleted, so we can discuss it. I'm a reasonable guy :) Argyrios 12:10, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent Revert Justification 

message: I recommend trimming this article considerably and removing many details from story, characters, and units sections. The alternative is to split up the article. It is too big. We could have a separate page for "story and characters of Myth" if people are against a massive summarization effort.
-Argyrios 09:03, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article size 

message: I'd suggest working to include GURPS Myth before Myth III, since its Bungie lisenced and also was a Myth III sourcebook. However, Myth III is a historical record written years after the events happened (hundreds even?) and would havebeen written by those who wanted to tell Connacht's side of the story. Therefore, Myth III I like to see as 'accurate from a point of view', not worth including.
---------
Well, I'm neutral on including the GURPS Myth (assuming we don't decide to just trim the whole shebang) because that's a book relatively few people have access to. In addition, it's one thing to summarize from the game, observing the story and reporting, but I would think that the GURPS is already a summary, and it can't just be plagarized or paraphrased. If someone wants to take the time to do it, then I would suggest that the same disambiguation regarding the source material that I suggested for Myth 3 be done.  Argyrios is right, though; the Detailed Storyline is far too large for an encyclopedic article. I wrote much of it, so it pains me to say that some of it should go, but he's right.  Adding more info probably isn't the route to take here, unless the Detailed Storyline section is going to be split off from the article.
LordNaughty 22:07, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  RE: Myth III/how to include it 

message: To do it justice, the story needs to take up a lot of space. Its as epic as LOTR.
" I'm not entirely sure why the MWC has its own section; speaking as a participant in several of them, it's really just a footnote deserving a few lines, if that (my lack of objectivity on that is the reason I've not edited it myself). A list of tournaments (minus organizers and winners and the dramatic bit about someone crying "1000 tears") seems more appropriate."
You clearly are not an active member of the Myth community if unaware who Grim is (tho that comment about him was probably a joke...probably), since he organised MWC03 and 04. If you have not participated since 01 or earlier, you have no idea how important MWC is. Number of games per day increases 10x in number and it is a huge centre of the community. 
"The release dates section should be near the bottom, and I'm not sure why Worlds, the Total Codex, and Green Berets are in that section(re-releases and third-party mods really have no place there). The Gameplay section looks good, as does the opening of the article (though that bit on Linux should be moved into the Updates section)."
Codex was the first commercial release of Chimera and many 3rd party mods included, tho it was Bungie published. Green Berets was financed by Take 2 - its not 3rd Party. Worlds allowed 56kers to play stuff like The Seventh God. Also I know people who've wanted copies of M2 and gone checking eBay. A complete release list was useful.
WWII deserves its own section. Definitely. It gets played more than regular Myth II in ranked, and its almost a seperate game. Its had a huge impact on Myth.
:Please start signing the end of your posts by typing four tildes. 
:I agree with your comments about the release dates section and the importance of MWC. However, regarding the story, I think some perspective is needed. The goal isn't to "do justice" to the story; the goal is to write an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Some things just aren't important outside of a very small circle of Myth story fans. Many elements of the story, when it is this detailed, fail the Google Test. This is primarily why I favor summarization over splitting the article. 
:Also, I take issue with your assertion that WW2 needs its own section. As a compromise, I would be in favor of reformatting the "third party mods" section. I envision a list that has the name of the mod in bold, followed by a one-sentence description. Below this, there is a separate introductory paragraph explaining the introduction and prominence of modern warfare TC's, starting with ww2, and then a shorter list of the same format listing the major modern warfare TC's. Argyrios 19:32, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: WW2 was the most popular third party mod, but it wasn't the most popular third party mod by as much as you seem to think. IIRC, at the time The Mill closed down, WW2: Recon was the most downloaded third party map with something close to 12,000 downloads, but second place had something like 10,000, and there were many many others that topped out at over 5,000. This just isn't enough of a difference. The thing is, many of the other popular downloads in the top ten were solo campaigns, so the fact that WW2 is so much more prominent is just an artifact of selection bias: You don't see games on b.net of the third party solo campaigns, because people play them offline. WW2 may have been an exceptionally popular third party mod, but fundamentally, it wasn't any different from other third party mods. It wasn't objectively more brilliant, better designed, more fun, etc... in fact a significant factor in its popularity was that people could effectively rank whore with it by playing very short games, to the extent that a normal Myth player could not attain a high rank due to the influence of WW2, which caused a lot of resentment. It should definitely not have its own section, especially when other third party mods only have one sentence each. Giving a separate introductory paragraph that explains its large impact is more than enough. Argyrios 20:41, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

text: You're right. How about now? Argyrios 01:28, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks great. Making it a footnote to the list like that was the way to go.LordNaughty 04:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  RE: Article size 

message: It definitely seems like splitting off the storyline was the right choice; the page seems much more navigable already. The Units section is still really bulky, despite the paring down. It presents something of a quandary. It doesn't merit a page of its own, it doesn't really fit in the new stoyline page (it could with significant reworking towards the story elements of the characters, away from the game elements, but that'd be a chore), but leaving it as is... well, its really more than necessary. It was always more than was necessary for Wiki, but I like it a lot and have been loathe to see it reduced. I'm not saying it should become a series of one line blurbs about each unit, but...  Well, I look at the entry on Avatara, and even though it has been cut down to a third of what I originally put there, and it just seems so long-winded. Unless there's objections, I think I'm going to write up each unit again and make the descriptions shorter.  A lot shorter. I simply put too many game features in there unnecessarily; the length of the warrior entry seems ideal. I'll hold off a few days in case there are objections or suggestions. Argyrios is a good influence. Seriously, he's kept this page from growing out of hand (something to which I would have been a large contributor). Kudos again for his efforts in that area.
LordNaughty 08:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Go for it brotha. I'll review the changes. Argyrios 21:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Heh. Thanks for actually doing this. I know I proposed it, but I got so tied up in other things that I forgot about my comittment here.  LordNaughty 02:57, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

text: Light and Dark does not necessarily denote their alignment; sometimes in the campaign the player will control Dark units or face off against Light units.
I suggest the units be divided into light, dark, and neutral, with an explanation that light and dark forces are composed of melee and artillery of different types, with various strengths and weaknesses.  The units could be listed briefly, then the section could provide some specific unit details as examples of the tradeoffs that occur in gameplay.  This would perhaps illustrate the depth and subtlety of gameplay, and be more informative to a non-player.
Also there could be a section for special or unique units.  This might clean up the line that Alric is the "only Avatara used in Myth I/II."  The player controls Deceiver, after all.  Also I don't see any of the Myth III units mentioned.  Gimmetrow 18:11, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The Units Section

message: Whats with the tiny text at the beginning of the article? I had to increase the text size in my browser three times before I could read it.--Windsok 10:29, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's tiny because it has absolutely nothing to do with the article itself. It's just some disambiguation. The large picture at the top of the article made it look like the disambiguation was a paragraph in the article. I shrank the text because I wanted it to be clear that it was less important than the rest of the article. If you had to up your text size to read it, that was an unintended side effect. I'll just put the text above the picture the way most disambiguation seems to be placed (I'd have done it initially, but I don't know how and it didn't occur to me to try). The problem will be resolved. Sorry it troubled you.
LordNaughty 12:02, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tiny Text 

message: I think the article needs a section on multiplayer in Myth, specifically bungie.net and the metaservers, since these are and have been at the heart of the Myth community. A short paragraph about the original bungie.net - perhaps with a contrast to battle.net, and also information about playmyth and mariusnet. Myrdred 06:02, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Metaservers 

message: I have completed significant revisions and cleanup. I feel that the article is now much more readable, and as a bonus, it is no longer larger than 32 kb ^_^ 
I still feel that the units section is too long. I plan to include the sentence, For the sake of brevity, some uncommon units are omitted from this list. Then I would delete the corresponding entries. Vote below on which units to delete. I'll start with these suggestions. Please vote by typing a number sign and four tildes (# ~~~~) below your position for each unit. Improperly recorded votes will be erased. If you wish to comment your vote, do so on the next line and indent with a colon.
===Forest Giants===
*Delete
# Argyrios 14:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What about combining Ghasts into the entry for Wight? "Briefly at the start of Myth II, the player faces off against much less dangerous undead units called Ghasts, which are the first step in what will become a Wight. Ghasts are faster, and stun units they touch, but do not explode." Combining entries doesn't save a lot of words, but it does cut down on white space and the perceived length of the list. Argyrios 15:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds like a good call. If they're to be combined, I change my vote to "Delete." (Vote moved accordingly)  LordNaughty 21:14, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poll for Units to be Deleted 

message: *Delete
# Argyrios 14:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Forest Giants

message: *Delete
*Keep
# Argyrios 14:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: bre'Unor

message: *Delete
# Argyrios 14:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wolves

message: *Delete
# Argyrios 14:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Mahir

message: *Merge
# Argyrios 14:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What about combining Ghasts into the entry for Wight? "Briefly at the start of Myth II, the player faces off against much less dangerous undead units called Ghasts, which are the first step in what will become a Wight. Ghasts are faster, and stun units they touch, but do not explode." Combining entries doesn't save a lot of words, but it does cut down on white space and the perceived length of the list. Argyrios 15:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That sounds like a good call. If they're to be combined, I change my vote to "Delete." (Vote moved accordingly)  LordNaughty 21:14, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge Ghasts into Wights

message: *Do it
# Argyrios 14:46, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Combine ''Brigands'' and ''Dark Archers'' into one entry

message: *Do it
# Argyrios 15:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Combine ''Myrkridia'' and ''Myrkridian Giants'' into one entry

message: *Do it
# Argyrios 15:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Combine ''Dwarves'' and ''Dwarven Mortars'' into one entry

message: *Do it
# Argyrios 15:13, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge mention of ''Shades'' into ''Avatara''

message: No offense to anyone intended, but I have a problem with Flying Flip being described as "Creators of the current main Myth III mod tool (Ballistic) as well as maintainers of Myth III."
The second part is true, and should be kept. But "Creators" of Ballistic? that's too much. It's based of open source Vengeance, more like updating and rebranding - which is still a good contribution, but I don't think merits "Creators" just like Project Magma doesn't merit to be called "Creators" of Loathing even though they updated it with new features and Carbonised to work on OS X. Myrdred 04:49, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Changed to "developers" -- better? Argyrios 05:15, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Flying Flip