Sunsetting of Maximization Calculators

Happy holidays Warframe community! I want to make an official blog post on the current state of our Maximization calculators on the wiki. For those who are not familiar with this, these calculators are client-side scripts that give readers an interactable understanding of how certain ability modifiers (e.g. Ability Duration) affect ability stats (as well as their augments). These are/were present on many Warframe, Ability, and Warframe Augment Mods articles, but newer content has not been added since Update 25.7 (2019-08-29) ( Gauss was the latest Warframe added).

Because of how the current calculators are implemented and the absence of regular updates by us wiki administrators, this feature has been in a "sunsetted" state for over two years.

Last updated: Thu, 15 Dec 2022 18:03:45 +0000 (UTC) by User:Cephalon Scientia

Calculator Example[]

This is what a maximization calculator looks like for  Ash and  Ash Prime abilities. As you can see, it is currently outdated, missing Update 31.2 (2022-03-16) buffs for  Smoke Shadow.

Wikitext/HTML to add the calculator element on articles:

{{WFmax|main|ash}}

or

<div style="position: absolute; right: 0px;" id="maximization_table_main">Input table not loaded. Javascript not loaded</div>
<div id="maximization_ash"> Result table not loaded. Javascript not loaded</div>

Can also create a calculator for just  Shuriken and its  Seeking Shuriken augment, but this won't work properly here because the source code currently only supports one calculator element per page.

This calculator feature is sunsetted on the wiki. It may not see further updates, but will be present on articles for the time being since some people still find use for them. See User blog:Cephalon Scientia/Sunsetting of Maximization Calculators for more details.

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Screenshot of calculator for posterity

User Poll[]

Do you guys even use the interactive ability/augment Maximization stuff? Want to see current community's thoughts on this feature. Feel free to leave a comment on this blog post for feedback.

• Record your response in this poll, starts at 2022-12-07 15:00 EST and ends at 2022-12-14 15:00 EST (1 week duration): https://strawpoll.com/polls/w4nWDaaolgA

Results[]

Thank you to all that answered! The poll had 2,164 visitors with 500 responses which puts it at a 23.1% response rate.

While geolocation is not the main concern of this poll, it's generally good to know where visitors come from for a scale of audience and to cross-reference with known data on wiki visitors and WARFRAME players. Although this wiki is in English, it serves an international audience.

Analysis[]

Conclusions[]

There is likely more people who would value a "maximization calculator" feature on the wiki if more people knew about it. Despite being behind almost 2 years of updates, people still see value in this feature. I don't think a full removal is necessary if we (as admins) can delegate the maintenance to the greater editing community like we already do with weapon data on Module:Weapons/data (main business logic of calculator will still be closed off from public edits because of the nature of site-wide scripts). What the next evolution or step with this feature is still unknown at this time however, but we'll keep existing calculators as is on articles for now. Luckily, there is no information that is locked/hidden behind this feature to readers; all the information that the calculator is based on is still on articles (e.g. what stats scale off Ability Strength and the formulas that it uses if not standard percent increases/decreases).

Why Sunsetting?[]

Low Reader Usage/Engagement[]

User:FINNER made a quick poll on the topic in the wiki's Discussions back in July 2021 with these results (sample size 111):^[1]

• Note that Fandom's poll doesn't give raw numbers, only vote percentage, so actual vote count per option is derived.

It seems like most people don't often use or don't even know about this calculator feature on the wiki. This might be because of multiple reasons:

• Mobile readers (which make up almost 50% of the wiki's traffic) will probably not see these calculators since the mobile view of Fandom wikis does not allow loading of custom client-side scripts in the MediaWiki namespace.
  • Calculator scripts on desktop view on mobile will load, but won't be optimized for mobile experience (small viewport and touch screen).
• These calculators were hidden behind collapsible elements on individual Warframe and ability articles (not so much on Warframe augment articles however).
• There are already Warframe fansites/tools with min/max features that arguably are more useful, easier to use, and/or more up-to-date with the game than the wiki (https://overframe.gg comes to mind).

Personally, I've seen almost no comments mentioning the absence of the maximization calculator on newer content. Occasionally, like once every few weeks, someone comments that a calculator has inaccurate calculations on one of the ability augment articles.

Feel free to take the #User Poll and post your experiences down in the comments so us wiki admins and editors have a better gauge on what the community wants regarding the future of this feature.

Anti-Open Data Implementation[]

Currently, the ability stat formula data is stored within the actual script itself, locking out contributions from non-admin editors. This is not ideal compared to how we store structured data around the wiki (see Template:ModuleNav and WARFRAME Wiki:Updating Databases for a list). The wiki should practice and be a model for open data principles as an open repository of knowledge of all things Warframe:

1. Data should be viewable and accessible regardless of user type
2. Data should be editable and modified by any one regardless of user type (with some exceptions; few databases are protected against anonymous edits)
3. Data should be sharable under an free license for whatever use cases

Because only wiki admins can edit site-wide JavaScript pages on the wiki, any updates to the calculator source code and data has to go through them. This is generally good for enforcing some sort of data integrity, but the nature of Warframe updates as a live-service game demands regular maintenance. We have a few volunteer wiki admins that are familiar with JavaScript, but not all of them are currently active on the wiki or the game. For a game as large as Warframe, it is often difficult for a few individuals to keep up with all the changes, so it's best to open editing to the greater community and provide ample documentation to do so for long-term support of the feature (if we ever continue with the calculator project).

Not Scalable[]

The current implementation of the calculator logic, presentation, and the way how data is stored is not scalable on multiple fronts:

• UI doesn't follow responsive design; elements don't really adapt to fit different viewports
• Lack of documentation, harder for developers to update source code in response to game system changes
• As per #Anti-Open Data Implementation, wiki editors cannot readily update formulas or stat strings
• No support for message localization (source code is not internationalized)
• Only one calculator element per page (cannot create multiple calculators, each with their own separate number input)

Project History[]

This project was spearheaded by our (now inactive) moderator User:TunaInABottle who had been developing this calculator for quite a while and it was officially used on articles in March 2019 as per User blog:TunaInABottle/Interactive Ability Maximization. It is implemented purely in vanilla JavaScript and resides in the MediaWiki namespace as MediaWiki:Maximization.js (source code) and MediaWiki:Maximization.css (styling) which means that only wiki administrators and bureaucrats are able to edit these scripts. A helper template Template:WFmax is used to add the required HTML elements for the calculator on articles.

There was an attempt to move ability calculation data into a Lua module Module:Maximization/data so that wiki editors have access to it, but this project died out as there is no straightforward way in the current MediaWiki environment for the JS script to execute a Lua script and parse the Lua tables as JSON.

We recently Luafied Template:AbilityU10.3 (ability horizontal infobox) to Module:Ability/infobox to take advantage of ability structured data stored on the wiki (Module:Ability/data). This also resulted in the removal of the "Maximization" tab from the infobox (not for technical reasons, but because this feature has already been left in the dust by maintainers). Maximization tab will still be present in ability infoboxes, but won't work for newer Warframes. Many augment mods will still have the calculator however.

Going Forward[]

I'm hesitant to give any hard deadlines for the full removal of this feature because I believe there is some possibility to reimplement the calculator in a more wiki editor-friendly way (i.e. decoupling data from business logic) so wiki admins do not have to update the calculator's source code every time a new Warframe is added or when DE reworks/changes a Warframe and/or their augments. This isn't a priority so I wouldn't expect this to happen anytime in the near future, but if you want to contribute to this project, feel free to read WARFRAME Wiki:Maximization Calculator for an initial design document I've written on improving this feature. I am open to any ideas or development help from the community!

As of now, reader should expect very infrequent updates to the current source code because of how complicated some Warframe ability interactions are. Some calculators may be outdated with missing stats or inaccurate stat calculations. Because of this, editors are free to remove these "Maximization" sections from articles until further notice. However, if you are willing to make some edit suggestions like with https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Message_Wall:Cephalon_Scientia?threadId=4400000000003653979, I am more than happy to persist those to the source code, just don't expect major bug fixes or feature updates from the admin team.

For alternative solutions, I suggest to use https://overframe.gg for maximization theory-crafting because they seem to be more responsive to recent Warframe updates as well as having a more practical user interface inline with the in-game modding experience. There might be other player-made resources that I'm not aware of so please feel free to comment them down below!

Armor Calculator[]

The wiki has an even niche calculator that is only present on the Armor article. This is worth mentioning because it also shares the same fate as ability maximization calculators.

References[]

See Also[]

• WARFRAME Wiki:Maximization Calculator, design document for the feature
• User blog:TunaInABottle/Interactive Ability Maximization (March 2019), original 2019 blog post on the release of the feature
• User blog:TunaInABottle/Ability Strength and Maximization: which is the proper value? (June 2018), User:TunaInABottle also created a spreadsheet for ability min/max calculations
• User blog:TunaInABottle/Interactive Warframe maximization (December 2017), prototype of maximization calculator in spreadsheet format
• User blog:TunaInABottle/Calculators: Armor and more? (May 2019), related armor maximization calculator
• Module:Maximization/data, attempt to decouple ability calculation data from calculator business logic