Talk:Zaishen Challenge Quest

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1. Archive 1

retaining daily quest lists

We've been maintaining and archiving a list of the ZQuests availabe every single day, and I'd like to bring that up for re-evaluation. Is there really any value to it? Why would anyone ever want to look back and find out which quests were available on, say, October 3 2009? Or how many ZCoins you could get from them? I've never understood the point of the Total ZCoin column in any case, especially since they made the ZCombats repeatable.

I'm not saying that archiving historical information is bad, but this seems to be a case of overzealous data retention. —Dr Ishmael 22:27, February 14, 2010 (UTC)

I've said something to that regard back when people first started doing it, and the response was along the lines of "if people do it, then someone finds it useful" or something like that. I guess now it's a bit more obvious, with the sheer size of the lists, and the recurring lapses in updates, especially with the availability of automated tables to show recent and predicted ones. RoseOfKali 03:43, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

Inded, I had no complaints while we had Callisto taking care of it every day, but since she seems to have disappeared, we've had lapses of over a week at some points. It seems obvious that no one else cares about it very much, otherwise someone would've picked up the slack by now. —Dr Ishmael 04:03, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

I noticed her IP updated the coin totals for a few days, but other than that, she and her IP have had no recent edits on the wiki. I find it marginally useful when looking at "which of these quests should I dump first as it will come up again soon" or "when is X coming up" (find the last, add roughly 2 months plus a week or two) and could just as easily be served by automatically projecting the future further, or by having the "past history" be automatically generated for the previous 2-3 months, rather than a manual process. (p.s. I see from the page history that you started this discussion before I updated the main page (without seeing the discussion). I think it's funny that we both had similar thoughts at the same time. 205.209.190.118 21:59, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

For those situations ("which should I drop"/"when will X come up again"), we have /Schedule pages for all three ZQuest types, e.g. Zaishen Bounty/Schedule. ...Actually, we don't have it for that one. Guess I'll get that done right quick.

AFAIK, there isn't any way to make pages automatically add content to themselves, which is what would be required for this (add a new row each day, or add a whole table each month), so it's going to require manual updates if we decide to keep it. —Dr Ishmael 22:33, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

Can't we do like a dynamic history for the last 7 days using the same method the forecast page uses? Just in the other direction of time. The monthly histories can be maintained separately after the month passes, but I don't see why they should be included on this page, a link would be enough. The 7-day history "at a glance" would update itself like the forecast and wouldn't need manual edits on this page. Personally, I'd even like to see the 7-day forecast included here, as that's the only thing I ever check, and I use the link from the main page, so I have to click twice to get there. RoseOfKali 23:12, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

That's along the lines of what I was thinking. When I added the forecasts to the page, I left it at the 3 days because with the history, it was getting to be rather long and busy. If the month's history wasn't there, I'd totally support a 7-day forecast on there. If we had a Forecast of 7 days in the future on the main page, and a link to a /Forecast of 30, and a /History that went back 90 days, I'm think that would cover 99% of the uses. That sortable table on Zaishen*/Schedule would suit my needs as well (but as Rose points out, is a few extra clicks away ;)) 205.209.190.118 02:48, February 16, 2010 (UTC)

Converted to a 7-day prediction and added direct links to the /Schedule pages. Are there any compelling reasons left for keeping the history around at all? —Dr Ishmael 05:01, February 16, 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind seeing a short 7-day "recent quests" a-la-forecast style, but don't see a reason for having more than that on this page. Also, monthly history is ok to keep as a linked archive if anyone cares, but drop the totals column in it. RoseOfKali 05:53, February 16, 2010 (UTC)

(Reset indent) I've completely removed the manually-updated history tables, and placed 7-day prediction and history tables on the article along with links to the full schedules for each ZQuest. Are the longer /Forecast and /History pages really necessary? What function do they serve that the /Schedule pages don't? They're all 1 click away from this page now, so there's no reason to keep them if they're redundant. —Dr Ishmael 18:56, February 16, 2010 (UTC)

Me likey. Longer forecast is redundant with the schedule pages. Longer history only serves the curious eyes that want to see the last time a quest appeared, but I personally don't see a use for it. A manual history is useful for researching the pattern when it's not known, but the automated version is based on the known pattern, and becomes worthless if the pattern changes anyway (like if they add Pogahn Passage maybe ever ffs...) RoseOfKali 13:55, February 17, 2010 (UTC)

If we ever need to consult the history again, it's been moved to User:M.mendel/Zaishen Challenge Quest/archive for safekeeping. --◄mendel► 22:08, February 23, 2010 (UTC)

I stopped doing the manual pages mostly because I haven't been playing much anymore, and was frustrated by me being the only one doing it at this point. Also, like Rose of Kali, I didn't see why it couldn't be automated somehow, so if anyone actually looked at the table, they wouldn't be depending on someone running in to update. By the way, I'm NOT male, I don't know how a female name like Callisto comes off as male, but I'm not, and I corrected the posts referring to me as such. Thanks Callisto Von Drake 16:59, March 10, 2010

Unless proven otherwise, everyone on the internet is male. I thought Callisto refered to a character or somesuch. --- -- (contribs) (talk) 15:22, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

You chauvinistic pig! :O RoseOfKali 15:58, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

Hahahaha! Jink 16:51, March 10, 2010 (UTC)

LOLOLOL it does refer to a character, who is also female... the name came from the series Xena, and Callisto was definitely female. Sorry about the other day, was in a bad mood and when everyone referred to me as male, it pissed me off royally.Callisto Von Drake 07:00, March 17, 2010

Wasn't she kind of... ahem? And yeah, I kind of cringe when people call me "dude," which happens surprisingly often - how do you get a dude out of Rose? o_O RoseOfKali 13:10, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

I agree fully with Viper. Except with Entropy. We all believe Entropy is a female, and have willful amnesia of any evidence otherwise :P --Gimmethegepgun 13:52, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

My apologies Callisto... to my unknowing ear, Callisto sounds male... and Callista sounds female. I am grateful for your work in maintaining the lists. You usually beat me to it, but I tried to help keep it up to date whenever possible. I think it lost much of its value once we had the auto-predictor (which I guess shows what part it was other people actually cared about). It was a lot of work to maintain, (which is why I'd tried to at least auto-generate the stuff to copy/paste) and I wanted to say thank you for your effort on it these last few months. 205.209.190.118 04:50, April 7, 2010 (UTC)

p.s. I'm going to hide behind the "when gender is not known, use the masculine pronouns" defense. yea... that's it.... 205.209.190.118 04:57, April 7, 2010 (UTC)

you would be amazed how many people think that the internet is only male....I too am female! Cosyfiep 12:53, March 30, 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps to set things back on track: maybe wiki pages can't add content to themselves, but bots can. All it would take is a simple set of numbered cases based on the date offset, set on top of an existing wikibot, set to run daily. That'd keep the current quest info nice and current. --64.146.135.21 21:35, April 7, 2010 (UTC)

4th quest mini-bug

So the old HB quests don't count for the quest limit of 3, but they're still in the logs of some of my chars. :P Anet did something right! :O RoseOfKali 15:27, March 21, 2010 (UTC)

Can't repeat quests in some cases

I have a 12th level character working towards Survivor that I only occasionally play, and found that she wasn't able to repeat either of the quests she has done (Chabek Village Mission and Fenrir Bounty). My other characters repeated without problems, so I know I'm not doing anything wrong.

It looks like there's some unknown condition that can prevent repeating... perhaps you can only do each quest once until you hit 20th level? It's also possible that it only happens when you're working towards the Survivor title since otherwise you could farm easy missions (which was, in fact, exactly what I was trying to do). Tomanak 03:44, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and now that I see the actual post, I want it to be known that in my time zone (PST) it is NOT April 1st yet! This did really happen. Tomanak 03:47, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

Did you turn the quest in on the same day that it was available again? You can't take the quest again on the same day if it was in your quest log when the turnover occurred. —Dr Ishmael 04:18, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed this behavior too, because I have a lot of characters that I barely ever play anymore. It has been my experience that, if you do a zaishen quest on a character, turn it in, and then log off and don't log back onto that character until the same zaishen quest is available again, you will not be able to receive it. It happened to several of my characters that I did not play at all between two occurrences of the Tihark Orchard z-quest. 06:32, April 1, 2010 (UTC)

The login idea makes a lot of sense. I knew better than to turn in the quest the same day, but I'm generally trying not to accept quest rewards with this character until I make level 20... I'm sure I turned in the quest at most a few days before it came up again. I'll keep an eye out for quests and characters I'm willing to experiment with to figure out the details. Tomanak 05:04, April 2, 2010 (UTC)