Talk:Mario Kart Tour

Obstacles Table
Looking at some of the obstacles, they're starting to get quite bloated just by the sheer number of courses and their variants they appear in, in particular, the cones and pipes. I was thinking instead of having a new line for each course variant, we should have a new line for each course, and then list the variants afterward, something like: And if there's a case where it's in a bonus challenge, and then in a variant, maybe something like: Would this work? MarioComix (talk) 20:34, November 9, 2020 (EST)
 * SNES Mario Circuit 1, R, T, R/T
 * 3DS Toad Circuit, T
 * 3DS Rainbow Road R, R/T
 * GCN Dino Dino Jungle (Do Jump Boosts), T, R/T
 * I was planning to do exactly this the other day. I support the change. 20:46, November 9, 2020 (EST)
 * Maybe the variants in which they appear should be listed as (normal, R, T, R/T). Just a suggestion. I otherwise support the change as well. 21:14, November 9, 2020 (EST)
 * Agreed with putting the variants in the same line to avoid bloating. The lists will only get bigger so this kind of aggregation is useful.--Mister Wu (talk) 21:57, November 9, 2020 (EST)
 * The only issue with doing something like (N, R, T, R/T) to denote variants would be in a bonus challenge case like the Dino Dino Jungle case I posted above, or more practically, the Pipe being present in 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar (Do Jump Boosts) but also in its Trick variant by default. Is the following example not too confusing?
 * 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar (T), (N) (Do Jump Boosts) MarioComix (talk) 00:45, November 10, 2020 (EST)
 * Bonus Challenges courses are stored in the separate event folder in the internal data, so there's no need to label them as N, R, T or R/T, just name the Bonus Challenge.--Mister Wu (talk) 04:26, November 10, 2020 (EST)


 * I prefer the first format you proposed.
 * 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar, R (Ring Race), T (Do Jump Boosts)
 * In this example, it's clear which challenge pertains to which variant (Ring Race to the reverse variant, Do Jump Boosts to the trick variant), whereas putting each singular part in brackets--(R) (Ring Race), (T) (Do Jump Boosts)--would be redundant. Would semicolons make the delimitations more visible instead of commas?
 * 3DS Shy Guy Bazaar; R (Ring Race); T (Do Jump Boosts)
 * 08:29, November 10, 2020 (EST)
 * I went on to see if the format worked, and it did. I’ll see if I can update the table. --

Tour-exclusiveness
I don't find the "tour-exclusive" status we attribute to certain drivers, karts and gliders to be too helpful. It can easily become obsolete, with one of the most glaring examples being the Cheermellow, a kart that was available in three tours straight starting with the Winter one, still described as "tour-exclusive" in this page's table. I would remove this term; the instances of availability of each item are listed in the item's table entry and thus already indicate whether it is exclusive to a tour or not. 17:38, November 11, 2020 (EST)
 * While we do have special availabilities listed, I think the main reason for using "tour-exclusive" is to separate the (mainly high-end) drivers, karts, and gliders that always have a chance to be pulled from pipes, regardless of tour, compared to those that are only available in, say, the Sunset Pipes of the Sunset Tour. If we have some kind of distinguisher like that, then we could remove the "tour-exclusive" status. MarioComix (talk) 18:30, November 11, 2020 (EST)
 * Yeah, the Availability column was never implemented and as such, we absolutely need to tell which items are found in every 100 items pipe, let's not forget that the High-End items found in every pipe are also available in the All-Clear pipe and are sold in the Tier Shop. So either we implement an Availability column with, for example, the base set Daily Selects, additional set Daily Selects, every pipe and restricted values or we need at least to tell what items can be found in every pipe and what items are still event-restricted instead.--Mister Wu (talk) 18:39, November 11, 2020 (EST)
 * Some kind of "General availability" column should be implemented, and the possible availabilities could probably be Daily Selects base set, Daily Selects additional set, In every pipe, or None. And, we should assume that the driver/kart/glider debuted with that general availability except when listed, such as Pauline's general availability being "In every pipe (Holiday Tour onwards)". The elephant in the room becomes the current "Availability" column which lists dates. In my opinion, it's redundant as basically every case coincides with the start date of their debut tour, with the few exceptions of "Opponent in a bonus challenge/Playable" or "Added/Obtainable". This can easily be added to the "Tour debut" column with, in the example of Hammer Bro, "Baby Rosalina Tour (bonus challenge opponent)  Hammer Bro Tour (playable)", or Black Yoshi, with something along the lines of "Yoshi Tour (obtainable starting April 15, 2020)". MarioComix (talk) 04:31, November 21, 2020 (EST)

Galleries on tour pages
Okay, so there seems to be a bit of a difference when it comes to hosting image galleries on tour pages. I repeatedly tried creating a gallery on Mario vs. Luigi Tour's article for relevant artwork, but the edit was reverted every time, the reasons given being that it would be inconsistent with the other tour pages which do not feature a gallery and that we already have a main gallery to host the images--Gallery:Mario Kart Tour artwork. I find both of these arguments to be flawed. First, images can exist on multiple pages at once and many pieces of artwork have in fact always existed on multiple relevant pages without anyone raising it as a potential issue (see Mario's running artwork from Super Mario Bros., which is simultaneously present on both Mario's article and artwork gallery). Secondly, and as I have previously stated in a revision summary, "consistency" only regards the way we present a similar type of information between different pages, not the content itself. If that would be the case, we'd be well on our way to removing anything related to Token Shops from certain tour pages because older tours didn't feature them. I think this strife for consistency is exaggerated in this case and, besides, I doubt anyone would be thrown off by the presence of a singular image gallery in sea of pages that don't usually feature that. 19:18, November 20, 2020 (EST)
 * Well, the gallery page exists as a repository for all relevant images, in this case, all Mario Kart Tour screenshots and course icons. Though, if we parallel your example with a racecourse page instead of a tour page, like Maple Treeway, I would agree that the Maple Treeway page's gallery section should contain all images of Maple Treeway uploaded to the Wiki. What's interesting is that every tour page contains its profiles from the Mario Kart Tour Twitter, but each profile is accompanied with a screenshot. I would say that including each of those accompanying screenshots on the tour page would make for a convincing argument, and by extension, any relevant artwork. (I would even go a step further and say any screenshots referencing tour-exclusive elements like pipes or spotlight racers are also relevant, since all that information is covered on the tour page.) MarioComix (talk) 04:50, November 21, 2020 (EST)
 * Yeah, Maple Treeway's page is an even better example. If galleries don't belong to tour pages because there's already a main gallery, then why is this not the case for race course articles? Talk about inconsistency. 05:26, November 21, 2020 (EST)
 * I've gone ahead and reverted the edit because the idea of not allowing something that's worth adding and related to a subject makes zero sense to me. 05:59, November 22, 2020 (EST)
 * If I can find some free time I'll dig through the Mario Kart Tour Twitter and determine which images are relevant to each particular tour according to caption, and add those in as well. MarioComix (talk) 18:01, November 22, 2020 (EST)

Paid banners section
I’ve been adding the Paid banners section on the tour pages that didn’t have them, and I’m not sure if that would be too much for the pages. However, I still think it’ll be necessary to add them for each page. --
 * The banners are fundamental for the information on the availability (some karts are still unobtainable through means other than the commemorative banners), so thanks for adding them, definitely go on with that project of yours!--Mister Wu (talk) 12:43, November 23, 2020 (EST)

R, T and R/T courses
It has been inferred that these letters stand for "Reverse", "Trick" and "Reverse/Trick", which is apparent from the nature of the courses they define, but has Nintendo themselves capitalized these words anywhere? The only one I could source in this article is "Trick" (1, 2), which seems to have been used as an umbrella term for both T and R/T course variants, making it a vague choice. The in-game FAQs don't help the matter as far as I know. Is there anything useful in the game's newsletter or internal data regarding these terms, or may we just as well use them in their de-capitalized forms? 14:58, December 12, 2020 (EST)
 * The game uses capitalization in the text of the challenges, so I think it should be kept in this wiki as well.--Mister Wu (talk) 04:30, December 14, 2020 (EST)
 * These don't appear to refer to course types by their complete names, just their initials (Earn a score of 8,000 or higher on a T course.) I'm specifically interested in knowing if the former are formatted with a capital ("Reverse") or not ("reverse"). 05:09, December 14, 2020 (EST)
 * I don't think there has ever been an explanation of these initials except for the Trick Tour which is the explanation of the T much like the Extreme Tour in Japan is the explanation of the corresponding X, I think the safest approach would be to just use the initials instead of the full words, explaining in a single place (e.g. the main page) what they refer to.--Mister Wu (talk) 15:01, December 14, 2020 (EST)
 * This Twitter post is the closest to official terminology, I think, where there are no capitals. Looking to the Japanese twitter, this post specifically mentions "extreme" before listing the concept as "X course"; similarly, this post also says "reverse" (albeit in the sense of "the course is reversed") before listing the concept as "R course". I think that since the Japanese terminology is converging onto "reverse", and that it's intuitive, we can still call R courses as "reverse variants" (namely when on that course's page). MarioComix (talk) 20:00, December 14, 2020 (EST)

New Years 2021 Glider: New or Variant
So I'm just curious about this, but is it a little bit of a stretch to call the New Years 2021 glider a new glider? Aside from the obvious "1", the glider shares the same concept and same general shape (again, save for the one number difference) with the New Years 2020 glider, but much like other variants, it's a different color scheme. Personally, I feel like it's a variant of the New Years 2020 glider, but I'd rather not make any changes, as there could be reasons for it to qualify as a new glider over a variant. 23:32, December 16, 2020 (EST)
 * I'd heard that variants are counted because they actually share in-game files and/or are grouped into the same folder together. But I don't access the in-game data so I can't confirm anything. MarioComix (talk) 00:56, December 17, 2020 (EST)
 * We don't have access to the files yet but there's no need: the 3D model is different. In general, we don't use concept to determine variants as far as karts and gliders are concerned, because the variants in these cases share the 3D model and just change the textures applied, to the point that the variants are in the same folder as the original.--Mister Wu (talk) 16:26, December 17, 2020 (EST)
 * Alright then, thanks for the explanation. 00:11, December 18, 2020 (EST)

"Not available in the Week 1 Pipe" - Special Availability and Regular Availability
I noticed the recent edits added a lot of notes about drivers, karts, and/or gliders having special availability such as "X Tour (Week 2 spotlight)" that they are "not available in the Week 1 Pipe". While I was taking this to be assumed, that these tour-exclusive items are only obtainable from their special availabilities during certain tours, i.e. if a tour-exclusive item is available for "X Tour (Week 2 spotlight)", then we'd assume it's not available at any other time in that tour. But I'm thinking that leads to a conundrum, if I'm recalling correctly, items introduced in a tour as a spotlight item for one week, can still be obtained from the other week, e.g. Pauline (Party Time) was Week 1 spotlight for Holiday Tour, but could still be obtained in Week 2 Holiday Tour Pipe.

So I'm thinking we need to delineate these availabilities more, such as by having a "Regular availability" section that lists the "any tour" availabilities of items (including Daily Selects, the main weekly Pipes) and a "Special availability" that clearly delineates if an item has "X Tour (Week 1 non-spotlight, Week 2 spotlight)" kind of availability. MarioComix (talk) 05:05, December 18, 2020 (EST)
 * Well, I proposed this many times, so I can only agree with the column regarding the type of general availability as well as adding the non-spotlight availability. In general, the tour's spotlight items can be obtained in both 100-items pipes, but only in one pipe they are certainly obtained when emptying the pipe. There are also special cases, like the Christmas-themed spotlight items from the 2020 Winter Tour that are available also in the first 100-items pipe of the Rosalina Tour, even though they aren't spotlight in the Rosalina Tour.--Mister Wu (talk) 16:50, December 20, 2020 (EST)

Expanding the favored and favorite courses page
I’m currently thinking on how I would expand the page with the items that unlock courses at level 3 and level 6. For the indicators, I’m slightly questioned if should use astericks or footnote headers. For the locked items, should I include the the favored items to the favorite selection (with their indicators) while leaving them in the original spot? --
 * I'd add LV3 and LV6 so it should clearly show the superscript, maybe try and see if it works, I think you should add in the favored courses the ones that then become favorite, maybe if the superscript works you can add another superscript to explain that the course is then upgraded. In the courses page, it is very important to follow a similar approach - tracking which items get upgraded is quite time-consuming so this can be useful information, in my opinion.--Mister Wu (talk) 14:26, December 22, 2020 (EST)
 * I did it for 3DS Rainbow Road, and a few for 3DS Toad Circuit, but not all of the items, and it worked. I may do the same for the other courses as well. --

Use of present tense
Can somebody tell me why past tense verbs keep getting changed to present tense on course pages in sections about previous tours? It makes no sense to describe the past state of something in present terms (e.g. "Choco Island appears in the Exploration Tour"--an in-game event that ran back in July) and it's starting to get annoying with how vehemently this gets reinforced. 21:00, December 27, 2020 (EST)
 * Since present tense is most commonly used on the Wiki, I think they may be defaulting to reverting to present tense. In my opinion, until Mario Kart Tour settles on some kind of set schedule of recurring, identical tours, we should treat each tour as a one-time event and therefore they should use the past tense. (Technically the concurrent tour should use present tense too, but it makes things easier to just use past tense on that as well.) MarioComix (talk) 00:48, December 28, 2020 (EST)

Split?
So this is now the second longest non-list page on the wiki, and it loads slower than molasses at this point which makes it annoying to patrol edits and it's only going to get worse. I think it's time to start thinking about splitting this off into smaller, more manageable pages. -- 11:35, January 27, 2021 (EST)
 * I feel like we could easily split tho challenges to, as there's no immediate need to have that on the main game page. Similarly, we could split off the drivers, karts, and gliders into respective lists. However, no information should be permanently removed from the wiki. In addition, I archive the first 50 messages from this talk page to prevent it from becoming too bloated, similar to what with did with the Mario talk page. 11:40, January 27, 2021 (EST)
 * I definitely feel like there's potentially too many tables and images, such as all those tables just to explain points; they probably shouldn't be on the main page. For tables, if we set them to "collapse" (i.e. we can click to "show" or "hide"), would that decrease loading times? I also feel like we could split off several pages to house these tables specifically, such as maybe "Mario Kart Tour Shop" and "List of hazards, obstacles, and course elements in Mario Kart Tour"? MarioComix (talk) 18:51, January 27, 2021 (EST)