Developing Guides

Developing Guides

This section is for presenting and reviewing guides which have not yet been submitted and are still being worked on.

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Adding a new Guide

Post all guides in the following format, changing only the text in red to reflect your Guide's name;

==[[Page Under Development]]==
--~~~~
===Comments===

Cycling Guides

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• Any Guide posted on Guides/Review Should be removed from this page, any comments on this page should be copied onto the Guides talk page.

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Guides:Spawning Hotspots

--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 13:16, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Comments

Discuss--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 13:16, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Interesting idea. You could also point at Eastonwood with its very large number of NTs and hospitals, and take a look at resident group Malton College of Medicine as an example of a teaching group that has become good at sucking up and educating newly arrived survivors. Practical problem with Woodgate Avenue would be that The Dead 2.0 have had a very tight grip on Dunell Hills for about two years now - a static group with a lot of freshly spawned low-levels would be a buffet, not a force to be reckoned with. -- Spiderzed▋ 14:11, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I was thinking about the dead when I added that. I'll add an explanation point about the MCM who do something on a larger scale. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 14:24, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Added --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 14:42, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Hows that spiderzed? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 19:47, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

How about presenting solutions to the problems listed. A guide should offer more guidence than it presents barriers the reader needs to overcome. Also make the section tegarding MFD less time sensetive. They may have only 21 members now but may have more or less members in the future. That could be as simple as stating "at the time of writing" or by rewriting it to be time neutral. ~ 21:26, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Added hows that Vapor? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:25, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Why so specific? There's no need to address specific groups unless it's a concrete example of what you're explaining, not where it's not being applied. I'd scrap the use of MFD as an example of anything (other than a waste of time) and just refer to how firefighting is a useful skill to start with. Perhaps also specify that it's a skill that isn't recognsied as great until the game's been played a bit so new firefighters may tend to be secondary alts of players who've already started elsewhere. 22:40, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

I think its that specific because rillie bank was what got me started on this. (Sadly its not a fire damaged building). I could probably lose the MPD bit. As for the other comment, I;ve never actually seen stats on what class people start as, so I can't really comment on secondary alts. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:45, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

It's merely educated supposition. But anecdotally, most new new characters are military, it seems. Also make it prettier. You can do it. 22:47, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Changed the first suggestion. Any idea about wording for the second bit? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 22:48, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

About Rillie Bank? Map out a free running lane to the nearest generator mine, and a suggested barricade plan for the area. 22:53, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Added anything else? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 10:18, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

One of the NTs you mention at the bottom of the guide is an active rot relief clinic. I'm not sure if The South Paynterton Aces would like it if a budding group started cading it in hoes of making a scientist baby making factory. There is another NT just 2 blocks fromnthat cemetary, though. I'd be interested to see how many of the TRP clusters are out there. The idea intrigues me and would be inclined to act on the principle. ~ 20:42, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Guides:An In Depth Guide to Forming Groups

Take a look at it and speak your mind, please. All criticism, corrections or advice are appreciated. Hopefully it won't bore too many of you unconscious. :P --Penguinpyro 07:14, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Comments

Alright, first off, drop the "full disclosure" section. You're playing down your credibility right out of the gate, which isn't a good thing. You want the opener to be a hook, make readers think, "hey, this guy knows what he's doing!"

Instead of talking about how you could be biased, play up your group experience as a resume; say, "I lead this large group, so I'm more qualified to speak about this than master sgt. Xxxj0e$hmo3xxX over there." If you're comfortable with it, you could even try to work anecdotes of your experiences in throughout the text as a framing device; it shows that certain "tactics" are more than just ideas, but actual result-givers.

So far as the content goes, it seems alright, although I confess it's an ungodly hour over here so I can't be motivated to give an overly close reading. However, while content is good, the style seems a little bland- the entire thing is essentially an oversized list. While this is does a fine job at making each of your points stand out, overusing it makes it quite a chore to read; that's not including the fact that each of the sections seems to use a different formatting. Given the size of a lot of your bullets, you may want to consider folding them into paragraphs; that way, you can cut down on page length (especially if you combine similar bullets) and adopt a more natural tone, which should increase flow and readability- just make sure you don't go tot he other extreme and write a wall of text!

For your bullet points, I'd do two things. First, pick a formatting and stick with it. use EITHER * or # and be sure to bold the main point. Second, cut the commentary down to a line or two for each; when people read a bullet, they expect a brief explanation- read the bolded idea statement, then a quick summary of what that statement means. If you're going on for three or four lines, you should stop and ask yourself, "will people actually read all this?" If it's getting long enough that you have to think about it, then you might want to cut down the commentary, split it into several bullets, or turn the bullet into a paragraph.

That's all I have for now. Hopefully I'm still lucid enough this early in the morning that that all made sense. ~ Red Hawk One ^{Talk | space for lease} 07:48, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Just a few quick notes from me as I read through the text:

• Exiting. Make that Exit, plox - I had to read it three times to get that you don't mean Exciting
• Spambots on your forum. Yes, this is pretty damn specific and out of the blue, so get rid of that paragraph or shove it into an appendix or a separate section about managing forums, dammit.
• Hierarchy. I find it odd how many (especially military-themed) groups overdo it, ending up with 24 ranks and 13 squads for their 9 members. Always found the best approach to cut down on ranks and squads as much as possible and keep just as much distinction as needed - which in most cases meant that there is no real hierarchy at all. It has worked for Cobra, South West Anarchists and Big Coffin Hunters for me, and can even work with groups as large as Feral Undead (although by merit and people skills, there will always be members whose voice holds more sway than others).
• Role in Malton. Many Pro Survivors don't define themselves by killing zombies -in fact, many of the better ones avoid to engage zombies whenever possible and prefer to work around them. Just ask The Big Prick, Malton College of Medicine or 404. (For the latter, I have killed more survivors than zombies - which was just one measly GKer at Blackmore 4(04), who absolutely couldn't be dealt with otherwise and who could do a lot of damage by attacking Blackmore's best defense, its running genny.)

-- Spiderzed▋ 09:30, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Sounds reasonable, so I made those changes or will make those changes. Seems I miss a lot of things when I'm too busy enjoying the sound of my own (writing) voice. Red Hawk, you seem like an expert on writing. Maybe you should write a guide on writing guides. That would be awesome. :P --Penguinpyro 11:58, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

I would actually punt on the Zombie/PKer/Bounty Group sections, reposition this as a Forming a Survivor Group Guide, dump all the disclaimers and just stick with what you know. Then you can really hone in on what is important to forming a survivor group, what new survivor group leaders really need to consider when starting off, and what are the tried-and-true lessions that successful survivor groups follow. Why water this down with conjecture on subjects that you admit to not really knowing, when you can speak authoritatively on Survivor groups, refocus this, and make it really shine? -MHSstaff 18:41, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

^ This. --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 19:43, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Shifted the emphasis to survivordom, jettisoned zombie/PKer advice and disclaimer and added more stuff overall.--Penguinpyro 13:19, 13 February 2011 (UTC)