Walkthrough Mode Cleanup

@Tabs, The issue doesn't have to be that the text is too long, but that the example is written with extra information that a reader who hasn't played a game before doesn't need to understand why the example is justified. Long text is just a good indication that there's probably Walkthrough Mode present. Taking this That One Level example from YMMV.Demons Souls,

The structure isn't bad overall despite being long and the examples help explain why the level is a pain to work through, but it's riddled with language that's informal and difficult to follow while having unnecessary details like a tangent about item carry limit. It could be cleaned up to this:

• World 2-2 is one of those areas where having the right gear can help quite a bit, but it still offers a duo of NPC Black Phantoms set up to ambush and slaughter the unwary, hard-to-kill giant insects that explode on death, treasures that are placed on narrow ledges over deadly pits and in lava, tight corridors that are hard to fight in, highly damaging explosives, and it tops it all off with a maze of tunnels and Flamelurker, who's considered one of the harder bosses in the game. Even the level's one mercy, a shortcut to the boss near the start of the area, still involves very carefully jumping down from platform to platform or else plummet to your death. The level having a lot of useful loot can also be problematic due to the item carry limit.

Having played Demon's Souls, I think some of the claims may be dubious (the giant insects that explode have a very generous window of time to back off for example) but much of this helps describe why the level is hard without trying to tell a reader how to take a particular path.

Edited by YourIdeas on May 14th 2021 at 8:59:04 AM

Bit of a bump, but also moving through a different page, specifically YMMV.Persona 5. I've reduced a few things down but wanted to check to make sure I wasn't going overboard.

I found the following lengthy entry under Tier Induced Scrappy which goes into painstaking detail about the differences between two characters that occupy the same general role.

I've reduced it down to the following:

• Ryuji and Yusuke are both physical powerhouses, but Ryuji tends to be used far more than Yusuke for the party's physical hitter because Yusuke lacks Ryuji's optimization for physical attacks. Where Ryuji has a number of direct damage bonuses like Charge and Matarukaja to amp up his physical area-of-effect damage, Yusuke only has Masukukaja to buff critical strikes and evasion, and his focus on extra single target damage from Baton Passes isn't strong enough to justify use over Ryuji. While Royal helped close the gap by overhauling the Baton Pass mechanic to greatly benefit Yusuke and the Jazz Club gives him potential access to Charge and Matarukaja, he's still largely redundant with Joker who can't be removed from the party and Ryuji also received unique benefits like a full-party Charge skill and a passive that randomly boosted the party's physical damage.

Does this seem like a decent enough summary?

That looks better.

At a glance to the original and a full read of the new version, the new looks like a significant improvement!

Coming back to Guide Dang It Pokemon again, the Game Mechanics section is huge and disorganized. Given that many of the examples are specific to certain generations, I'm thinking it should be split into two folders, one for General Game Mechanics across most generations, and another for generation specific mechanics that didn't get included in newer generations. If there's no objections, I'll probably start trying to hack away at that.

No objections.

Just found this deletion of information, I assume due to Walkthrough Mode reasons.

But replacing clear information "Use Thief Dressphere" with the vague "use a certain strategy", seems to violate the conversational maxim of quantity, leaving the reader wanting?

Don't see how vaguely saying "a certain strategy" is better than specifying "a Thief Dressphere", assuming that possession of the dressphere is in fact all it takes to steal items competently in this context.

Recently cleaned up the Mass Effect folder on GuideDangIt.Western RPG. Still not sure if it's fully free of Walkthrough Mode and natter in general, so putting the entries here, separated each game by folder (except Mass Effect: Andromeda because that section looks ok):

Side note: do we have a cleanup thread for the validity of Guide Dang It! examples themselves? Because there are a few in the above folder (like the Tuchanka bomb mission: if NP Cs warn you about it and it's common sense, then it really shouldn't be Guide Dang It! at all) and some other entries where it feels like "oh this isn't clearly explained, so it must be Guide Dang It!"

The first Mass Effect example looks fine, but for the Ashley one, the timing of the conversation seems redundant.

Edited by Malady on Aug 11th 2022 at 7:04:04 AM

Yeah, ME 1 seems fine (might do a rewrite on that to make clearer that it's about "arbitrary dialogue options means it's way too easy to flirt with people and get locked onto their romance path," which is a common complaint across the trilogy), the one I'm really concerned about is ME 3 because there's so much in that section and not all of it reads as valid to me.

Edited by delayedboom on Aug 11th 2022 at 7:23:32 AM

Edited by Malady on Aug 11th 2022 at 7:32:55 AM

looks okay. I read up on the Grissom Academy mission and there's not really a three mission time limit, it's just "the quest expires after doing Priority: Citadel II" (meaning you get the bad outcome) nor are there any effects for doing it immediately or within a couple of sidequests. The three mission time limit only applies to Tuchanka: Bomb and it's just a flat "once you get past three missions without doing it it's over," it doesn't get worse over time. (Though, like I said before, I question whether Tuchanka: Bomb counts as Guide Dang It! at all considering your squadmates and the people who give you the mission say that it's a bad idea to not resolve it ASAP)

Well, there's no clear difference between Continue Your Mission, Dammit! vs. a real Timed Mission, and not everyone talks to the squadmates, I think I barely did in my very first ME 1 run. Totally missed how romance works and stuff.

Good point, I hardly considered that. I'll put the new section up in a moment.

edit: done.

Edited by delayedboom on Aug 11th 2022 at 8:46:22 AM

Bumping this thread for some examples on YMMV.Kingdom Hearts II. I didn’t think Anti-Climax Boss entries could be afflicted with Walkthrough Mode, but yeah:

• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Jafar puts up a pretty poor showing in his boss battle. To start, Sora fights him on the magic carpet, which means you're alone and can't use Drive Forms, Limits, or Summons, so your only options are normal attacks and magic. Jafar can be briefly stunned by attacking his midsection, which has very low HP and doesn't even require a finisher to defeat. Once it's beaten you can use a Reaction Command to stun Jafar even longer, giving you plenty of time to attack his head. To make him look even more pathetic, said Reaction Command has Sora grab his genie tail, wrap him up in it, and spin him around to make him dizzy. The fight boils down to taking out his midsection's HP bar (during which time Jafar may not even be able to get an attack off), stunning and embarrassing him with his Reaction Command, then comboing his head without resistance.
  • Ursula. Aside from Atlantica's shift to being a Rhythm Game, "Ursula's Revenge" is the song that introduces Button Mashing notes, which give so many points that you could ignore literally every other mechanic and still clear the song. For that matter, in-story Ursula loses when Sora lands a single Keyblade hit on her hand, sending Triton's trident flying into Eric's boat, and he hurls it through her torso. In the meantime Ursula's shows of power with the trident during "Ursula's Revenge" amounts to just waving it back and forth as the heroes duck under the water to avoid it.
  • Saïx. His presence in the story is menacing enough, as Xemnas's right-hand man and the last boss fight before him. However, fighting him is fairly straightforward, unlike with all the other members of Organization XIII, and his unique gimmick seems to only make him weak when he's not using it, rather than strong when he is. In his normal form, he can be disarmed easily with a well-timed attack, guard, or reflect, and even in Berserk form, he only has a few attacks which are predictable and simple to avoid until he calms down, especially if you've been leveling up Final Form and can glide out of his way fast enough. And that's if you don't abuse the reaction command on the claymores that Saïx keeps throwing around, which does massive damage on his normal form and drops him out of Berserk immediately.
  • The first Xemnas fight fought one on one with just Sora is considered by many to be a massive disappointment, as the fight plays out like an incredibly toned down version of the famously brutal Superboss he was in KHI Final Mix, but with a few select attacks removed and his aggressiveness turned way down. It's not hard for a player who came in from Final Mix to this game to feel more than a bit let down. Thankfully, Xemnas's other forms more than make up for it, as does the data version of this battle in KHII Final Mix.

First and third examples are plagued with Walkthrough Mode, I’m already going to delete the fourth example since it admits his other forms are more climatic, and just difficulty scaling. The only one that seems fine is the second example.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Jan 11th 2024 at 1:39:41 AM

I found this under Cheese Strategy on YMMV.Persona 3 Reload

• The Reaper fight proper can be farmed to hell and back. If you fight it on the lowest difficulty setting, your HP and SP will be restored whenever you re-enter the battle, and all the damage is maintained. Run out of SP? Throw the battle and retry, and continue on until the Reaper is defeated. Suddenly the formidable boss has become piñata of EXP to bust open, and you can revert back to Normal once you've thoroughly grinded your levels out.
• The Hermit boss can be defeated easily by casting Elec Break on it, setting up Makarakarn on the party, and simply waiting for it to annihilate itself with its own charged electric attacks.

Found this on YMMV.Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes (under That One Sidequest)

• While not as bad as everyone else, Celia can take a long time to recruit as she can only be recruited by playing the cooking minigame at the base that only refreshes every 10 real-world minutes. Players have to go through at least ten chefs and after the eleventh unwinnable boss fight, players have to find a scroll and nowhere is it hinted as to where to find said scroll (good luck finding it without a guide). After finding said scroll, the player then has to fight five more chefs and only then will Celia show up and challenge Kurtz for one more round before she finally joins the group.