Bulbapedia talk:Project TCG

This is the talk page for the Bulbapedia's TCG Project.

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Regarding illustrators

Wouldn't it be more useful to include a gallery section for each illustrators' article instead of simply listing their cards or linking to a category? Considering those are text-based only. --Gabo 2oo (talk) 03:42, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Page/Category for Cards that have a narrative?

Recently I've noticed many cards are part of certain narratives. However, there is no section that lists all these cards in one place. Would it be useful to create a page on this subject that links to each of these cards? Brawlersinthezone (talk) 20:19, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

TCGO and "Battle Simulator"

Notes from my one-man mission to get those Trainer Challenge decklists from TCG Online:

• The game's code is a mess. Not in the poorly made sense, it's just too full of classes and references to other code for an easy analysis. I have no idea how and if the game ever stores TC decklists in your computer or a way to extract info from the servers, so playing against them keeps the only avaliable opition. Most npcs have their current decklists on Bulbapedia, but this could automate the process for the future.
• The game's cache has assets for each npc's cards (not their quantity), but it seems unreliable. For example, Venusaur-EX is in Logan's assets but he does not use it in his only appearance, regardless of difficulty setting.
• Old decks are another can of worms. The "Early BW era" only applies to City Championship and Diamond League as they got introduced ater BW, while Gold and Platinum League Trainers kept using HGSS lists up until Plasma Storm came out. The "BW era" decks presented in each Trainer's article were actually "Early XY" decks that did more than replace Trainer cards, some got outright nerfed and/or their Pokémon changed. Plus somehow Mick had three copypasted decks from another npc in his article for five years.
• Daniel's decklists having a single different card (-1 energy, +1 Professor's Letter) makes me wonder about other subtle differences in other Trainer's appaearances that might've been skipped over.

Also worth pointing to a series of short TCG games from the Japanese website not avaliale in Pokémon.com; I'm not sure if these should be on their own article, or an article about Japanese-exclusive minigames. Pipefan (talk) 00:15, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Rotation marks

Since rotation is going to be based on the rotation mark (aka the D, E, etc. printed at the bottom of a card) to determine which cards are legal, it would probably be worth updating {{TCGExpansionInfobox}} to include a section for the set's rotation marker (which would apply to all Sword and Shield era sets and the Asian releases of the Sun and Moon era sets. Mr. Daikon (talk) 09:37, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

That's on my to-do list. Currently getting new setlists made to have regulation marks noted on expansion pages. glik^glak 12:31, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Competitive Usage Info on Card Pages

I would like to begin on a project that adds information related to the actual use of a card in competitive play to every single card page. Considering that the cards are playable pieces to a larger game instead of just collectibles, explaining how they are used within the game, while providing important context to the game's meta at the time, feels like a natural inclusion to their pages. I have put together a draft for Hitmonchan (Base Set 7) on Google Docs showing a mockup of its Bulbapedia page and the kind of information I would like to add. Here's the link to it. Some notes about my draft:

• The three full paragraphs of information I wrote are all directly related to the card itself and its specific impact and history, as well as important synergies necessary to understand the strength of the card. I tried to avoid including extraneous information that would be better suited for other pages. Electabuzz, for example, is a notable omission from this page, as it doesn't actually have any direct synergy with Hitmonchan, but saw play because it covers Hitmonchan's weaknesses. That particular synergy feels best explained on Haymaker's page.
• Notable deck archetypes: this section is intended to link to every deck archetype page that features the page's card. For Hitmonchan, there's only one archetype, Haymaker, but for other cards (e.g. Computer Search) there's going to be several. Keeping them a simple list that links to their deck archetype pages makes the most sense to me.
• Notable synergies/counters: These sections are intended to be a simple summary of notable interactions with the card, which is useful for readers looking for quick information. I wrote the draft detailing everything featured here, but in retrospect I think these too should just be simple lists, and each respective card's page will have the information that explains why they're a good counter/synergy. This would remove redundant information on the page, while still providing the quick information and easy linking I intend to give with these sections.

My intention with this project is to make Bulbapedia a better resource for competitive history than it currently is. I would like to get started as quickly as possible, but I was advised to make a Talk post about it first.Alice Voltaire (talk) 17:32, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

I think you explain the utility of Hitmonchan well but the tone needs a second pass to make it more encyclopedic. For instance "Super Energy Removal’s cost of discarding an attached Energy is often trivial for Hitmonchan"; instead of the subjective term "trivial", it'd be better to say that SER's cost is effectively nullified. And in "It still remained a serious competitive threat until Neo Genesis’s Sneasel came out", "serious threat" is very hype-ish. It maintained viability or it continued to see play.

Your first paragraph has a couple factual errors. Onix has the second highest HP for a Base Set Basic at 90 and Hitmonchan's Jab isn't the most damage for one Energy, it's the most consistent highest damaging one Energy attack. Farfetch'd's one use of Leek Slap and Magikarp with two damage counters both do 30. Flipping it around goes farther: "Hitmonchan's Jab attack had the highest damage of a single Energy attack that did not have drawbacks. And of all the Basic Pokémon with access to such moves, Hitmonchan had the highest HP".

Outlining the timeframe should be done at the beginning of a section like this. Additionally, recorded uses at official tournaments should be referenced where possible.

Finally, an objective statement like "most efficient attacker" needs a good amount of hard data to back it up, exactly how many Basic Pokémon it can KO in a hit or two, how many of those are due to Hitmonchan's typing in comparison to the other single Energy 20 attackers, etc. It really needs a full breakdown of the meta of the time. And that's a bit too much to stick on one card page just to justify saying "most efficient" over "very efficient". glik^glak 21:01, 29 May 2021 (UTC)

This is very useful critique, I very much appreciate it and will try my best to apply it for future edits. I do have one issue with this, though, and that's with the "outlining the timeframe" part. I feel that it best flows with having that portion of the section at the end, as the history of the usage of a card is best understood if you have an understanding of how a card functions within a meta first. Additionally, if a card sees less play later on in its history, then something happened within the meta itself (e.g. a good counter came out), and it is impossible to understand that change without first knowing basic information on the card's function first. If it would be preferable, I could divide these three paragraphs into "Overview" and "History of Competitive Play" to help define each section. I have updated the draft with these changes in mind.

Also, important to note that there is unfortunately very little tournament data in the early years of the game's history, particularly in the first year as there were no major tournaments at all then. I will do my best to find good, significant tournament placings, but 1999 only had small card shop tournaments. Alice Voltaire (talk) 18:03, 31 May 2021 (UTC)

A timeframe is necessary so readers not already familiar with the meta of the time have a reference for what is and isn't usable at the time. For the Base Set it isn't paramount since there weren't any previous cards, but for future formats it's very important. There are even cards that only saw significant usage when they were in the Expanded format and a synergy card was introduced later. A thing I forgot to mention, these sections should entirely be in the past tense given that we're talking about the past; Hitmonchan certainly doesn't have the highest single Energy attack nowadays. And avoid using "you" or referring directly to the reader in other ways.

Separating the overview and history is fine but the other three sections need to be merged into overview. glik^glak 23:24, 31 May 2021 (UTC)