Talk:Item stacking

Should this info be merged into to the main item article? It was definitely not appropriate for it to remain in the same article as skill/armor effect stacking. Thoughts? --Belker 00:29, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't seem like a bad idea. Will tag for you. Backsword 20:20, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I also approve the merge —ZerphaThe Improver 17:53, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Is this an 'official' term?

That is, is it a term that appears in any game text and has this meaning?

If not, can it be replaced by the term 'fungible'?  That term means that one thing of a particular kind is interchangeable with other things of the same kind.  For example gold is fungible.

This would remove the ambiguity between effect stacking limits and storage stacking limits.      mtew 07:42, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

lol? -Auron 07:47, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

The term "stack" is used plenty in-game. "WTS stack of steel pst" and "I need another stack of shards for some fissure armor" are both reasonable examples.

That said, perhaps a more appropriate page name would be Stack (Item).

69.109.118.108 14:04, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

In game, the word stack has two meanings, referring to inventory items, and affects (usually pertaining to armor buffs) i.e. rune affects generally are non stacking meaning they only apply one time. The fact that absolutely no one but you would understand a term like fungible and the definition you provided would not make it an appropriate substitution anyway, since these items are not interchangeable with other items, they are simply items that stack in your inventory when you have more than one. -- Wyn 14:20, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I would recognice it. It's a term from a (faulty) ecenomic theory. It dosen't mean the same thing in ecenomics as item stacks do in the game. Backsword 14:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Right, you recognize that it doesn't have anything to do with item stacking then. -Auron 14:31, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Seriously? You can't spell "recognize," "economic," or "doesn't" - but you know all about fungibility?? Nice try. --Ninjatek 14:38, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I believe it is an accounting or legal term, but I could be wrong. Further, the items have to be the same type to be interchangeable. As commodities, an apple and an ear of corn are both fungible, but they can neither replace the other.

However, I do understand that the word is not commonly understood, so it is a bad choice. Still an alternative is needed. How about something like 'bundlable'. (I understand that 'stackable' is used commonly by players this way, but does the game itself use the term with this meaning?)      mtew 21:00, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

If the game doesn't define it, does it matter what we define it as? --JonTheMon 21:08, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

That is exactly why I asked if it was an 'official' term. If it is, then there is very little that can be done to make things clearer. If not, it might be worth considering a change to what we call that item property here.      mtew 21:52, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

As there isn't an official term, I would say just use what is most commonly used in-game. --JonTheMon 21:59, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

If you are sure it is not an official term when it comes items, I feel it is our responsibility to be clear and unambiguous. To take care of the point you implicitly raise, there should also be a note that the term 'stackable' is often used to refer to this property even though it causes confusion with the effect property. The disambiguation page for 'stackable' should continue to exist, but the item branch would point to the new term, whatever it is.      mtew 23:00, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Personally, I would prefer something that was slightly less exact, but leagues more intuitive and understandable. "Stack" fulfills that. --JonTheMon 01:34, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't find 'stack' to be more intuitive than 'bundle', but that could just be me. What I did find unpleasant was trying to sort the different meanings of 'stackable' for upgrade items. There is this very obvious notation in the upper right-hand corner that blares 'stackable no' (or something similar) while the text a little further down is trying to distinguish between stackable and un-stackable effects. I may be a little slow, but it took a visit to the disambiguation page to assure myself that the two identical words were being used in different contexts and that un-stackable items could have stackable effects. (I know I don't always understand things properly, which was why I took the time to look the word up in the WIKI.) At that point I started to mentally substitute 'fungible' for 'stackable' in the infobox and I was able to track the discussion better.       mtew 04:17, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Bundle. Stackable generally means "it piles on top of each other." Stackable items pile onto each other in the same inventory space (until the quantity of 250, at which point you have to start another stack), while certain armor upgrades stack together (runes of vitae). I'm not going to say how "stacks" found their way to the GW vernacular, but it's not an isolated incident in the English Language ("Janie took a dive to get her parent's attention." "The Olympic athlete is going to dive into the pool.") --Riddle 04:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I think these are the accepted terms in the game, and trying to change them as part of what you see as our responsibility would actually be irresponsible to the community that is coming here for answers... how would you direct someone's search for stackable items to something like fungibility? Once again, you are over thinking things. -- Wyn 05:04, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Wyn: I'll agree that some of my suggested solutions are not particularly good, but I do have sense enough to usually recognize when to ask others opinions rather than simply diving in and making changes. Recognizing potential problems is not 'overthinking' however. The confusion from the ambiguity needs to be fixed. I see now that changing the term would be difficult and not a particulary helpful thing to do, but something still should be done. Maybe the infobox label is all that needs to be clarified. Maybe some article contents need to be clarified. Maybe further discussion belongs somewhere else.

Suggestions?      mtew 13:32, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not trying to sound harsh mtew, and I appreciate you are trying to fix a perceived problem, however, the ambiguity exists in game as the term does cover both instances and is used in this way by the vast majority of people who play the game. Sometimes the best solution is just to leave the diambig and explain it in both contexts. -- Wyn 13:36, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

(grin) I'll take that as "I'm trying to not sound harsh...". I also think 'minor' is a better adjective than 'perceived' in this context. And I just admitted that I had made a mistake suggesting that the term should be changed by saying that the process would be difficult and not particularly helpful.

I'm asking where the explanations could be improved.      mtew 14:00, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you need to give some examples of where you had confusion for us to help you at all. --JonTheMon 14:44, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I didn't get what you were referring to at first, but I think I see what you mean now. As an example, the Survivor Insignia has a stackable effect, but the actual item in the inventory is not stackable. The stackable link in the infobox points to Stack, a disambiguation page, rather than Item stacking. That's a subtle ambiguity I didn't notice, but I can see how that could be confusing for someone who didn't know that "stackable no" was about the inventory case. Changing the link in the infobox to point to Item stacking should clear some confusion when someone clicks on the link. Tedium 01:37, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

After reading this discussion, it looks like the word 'stack' is right up there with the word 'thing'. It's more or less a case of 'stack (verb)' and 'stack (noun)'. In terms of separating the two meanings, stack (verb) and stack (noun) both apply to item stacking, while stack (noun) wouldn't apply to effect stacking since it's not considered a stack on its own. To clarify, stackable is technically not a word, but it is used to express stack as an adjective - which doesn't help since adjectives link nouns and verbs together. So I'm just gonna say....parlay? Nah actually I agree with Wyn. Once you get to the disambig page there would be enough information to provide clarification. Both terms of the word are used in popularity, so I would probably leave it as it is. (Terra Xin 15:51, 17 March 2009 (UTC))

Breaking up stacks

Hah, it took me 5 years to learn that they could be broken up with the shift key :D File:User Chieftain Alex Chieftain Signature.pngChieftain Alex 20:45, 28 November 2011 (UTC)