Talk:Tracer (Overwatch)/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Maplestrip (talk · contribs) 11:50, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

To celebrate the GAN of my own Overwatch-related article, I figured I would review this one. Reading through it, the article looks alright, but I have a lot of minor comments I'd like to see fixed:

Lead section

 * I'd change the first line of the second paragraph to "... is known by her call sign "Tracer", although her real name is ..." myself.
 * "her character design is noted for being one of the fastest in terms of speed, but weakest in terms of health." – "Character design" usually refers to appearance rather than balancing/game design. A different word has to be used here.
 * I would change the wording of "rooted in" in the lead section to something like "was caused by". The whole paragraph is very confusing in general. It's hard to get a good grasp of what exactly her powers are, or even what kind of accident caused them.
 * "Tracer is arguably one of ..." doesn't imply that she is a 'mascot' character at all. She's just one of the more notable characters. If this paragraph stated that she is arguably the most notable (or 'recognizable'?) character, then the following sentence would make sense. Right now, it's unclear why mascot characters are brought up. After all, Princess Peach is "arguably one of" the most iconic characters of the Mario franchise. (see also my comment on the Reception section)

Development and design

 * BlizzCon should be wikilinked.
 * "her character was noted to be wearing yellow and have an English accent" sounds a bit ridiculous. I like that the article uses sources for everything, but 'wearing yellow' and having an English accent isn't exactly a controversial statement to make. the English accent in particular is covered just fine in the next paragraph.
 * Was her health pool nerfed during the open or closed beta stage?
 * I'm loving the 'peppy character' paragraph. Nice job :)
 * Is the Japanese dub worth mentioning?

Gameplay

 * "rapid-fire damage dealers but only at short range." - I wouldn't make this a quote. You could replace this with "deals damage rapidly on short range" or something along those lines.
 * cool down (or cooldown) can be wikilinked.
 * A period is 'short', not 'quick'.
 * Does the sticky deal damage first and explode later?
 * As a reader, I have no idea what a "Heroic" or an "ultimate" is by the time I reach the Destructoid quote.
 * How long after her introduction to Heroes of the Storm was Tracer nerfed?

Appearances

 * In the first line of appearances, I see an unusual string of punctuation. I'd try to get rid of at least one of those three colons, to make the sentence a bit more conventional.
 * The reader may not know that, in-universe, "Overwatch" is an organization. Because of this, "former Overwatch agent" is fairly vague.
 * "Scientist named Winston" – Shouldn't that be wikilinked to Winston, or is this a different Winston?
 * "To right wrongs and ..." – it would be meaningful to attribute this quote to whoever said it.
 * "These events take place ..." – this sentence is currently grammatically incorrect, and I wonder if it's even useful to have. Does it give any information about Tracer? Does the entire game take place during this period, or is this referring to when Tracer 'got her powers'?
 * Overwatch animated media should be wikilinked in some way.
 * Tracer's appearance in the animations doesn't seem to be different from those in the game. What is the purpose of the image exactly?
 * I would personally remove most of the description of "Recall" and replace the whole paragraph with the following:
 * I'd change "Thursten" in the Heroes of the Storm section to "PC Gamer's Thursten", as, by this time, I had long forgotten who Thursten was.
 * I just noticed "Recall" is written in italics on the Overwatch animated media article, as is common for short films.

Reception

 * I wonder if you give undue weight to Blizzard never "officially" announcing Tracer as the game's mascot. Is there even a source that points this out? I wonder if this is even really relevant. To compare, the word "mascot" is never used in the article on Street Fighter's Ryu, but the article still goes in depth about how iconic the character is according to journalists.
 * I think the reception section is otherwise very nicely done, so I have no other comments on it.

Other comments

 * I see one bare link in the reference list, which needs to be fixed.
 * Most sources seem to be reliable. The worst offender seems to be Cinema Blend and Lazygamer, which are not considered reliable sources. Lazygamer can be removed if you trim out the animation section as I suggested.
 * Categories and portals look good. Fair use rationale of images is good too (though as I stated, the animation screenshot can probably go).

I think that because of how many comments I had, I can't let it pass just yet. In particular, the two unreliable sources should be trimmed out and the lead section needs to become clearer. However, I do think the article is looking pretty good already. I'll put it on hold for now to allow you to fix some issues. ~ Mable ( chat ) 11:50, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
 * For archival purposes, Soulburst responded to all of my comments here.
 * The article looks great! You improved nearly all of my comments, and I don't believe I have any nitpicks left. Congratulations on your GA! I'll go through all of the steps in the next few minutes :) ~ Mable ( chat ) 11:22, 13 October 2016 (UTC)