taihou_(forbidden_feast)_(azur_lane) - A new character or just a skin?

@Klaudandus: given how crazy the name of the skins are in...

2019-02-12T23:11:19-05:00

given how crazy the name of the skins are in azur lane, i doubt they would ever overlap. just 1 character has 3 skins called "Sacred Bush Lily", "Everlasting Killing Stone" and "White Fox's New Years Greetings" -- i honestly doubt there's other games where a skin would have such names.

but if (property name) must be added to the tag, then I also suggest (skin) is added because some people might not realize that such tag is because a particular skin.

@Rampardos: instead of (skin), it would be (property name)....

2019-02-12T22:40:01-05:00

instead of (skin), it would be (property name). it's way less likely for there to be overlap within a property than for two properties to share a name for an outfit.

@Klaudandus: > Rampardos said: > > The property name should...

2019-02-12T22:05:31-05:00

Rampardos said:

The property name should be fine for the qualifier.

care to create an example?

@Rampardos: The property name should be fine for the...

2019-02-12T21:36:17-05:00

The property name should be fine for the qualifier.

@Klaudandus: > Elfaleon said: > > I agree with this...

2019-02-12T20:45:44-05:00

Elfaleon said:

I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. I have definitely fallen for flowing_dress more than once since it just sounds so generic.

So maybe make something like forbidden_feast_(skin) and so on?

@Elfaleon: > iridescent_slime said: > > I'm glad someone...

2019-02-12T08:49:03-05:00

iridescent_slime said:

I'm glad someone brought this up. It's incredibly frustrating to see posts with utterly misleading tags like water shine or royal icing and have to constantly check the wiki to make sure that someone isn't just making up new gentags we don't need. Every general tag pertaining to a copyright-specific costume or skin should have a qualifier to make it immediately obvious what the tag is meant for.

I agree with this sentiment wholeheartedly. I have definitely fallen for flowing_dress more than once since it just sounds so generic.

@Klaudandus: > albert said: > figuring out a canonical...

2019-02-12T07:53:26-05:00

albert said:
figuring out a canonical name

The main AL wiki lists the actual names of each and every single skin in the game, so at least there's that.

@albert: > feline_lump said: > > * Move...

2019-02-11T21:00:21-05:00

feline_lump said:

Move single-character costumes to general tags along with the multiple-character ones. Because a lot of outfit names don't make sense out of context, this also necessitates qualifying any name that might not be immediately clear. Alternatively: Create a single general tag that encompasses a category of designs, like remodel (kantai collection).

I like this idea. If I want to search for a particular skin of laffey_(azur_lane) then I can at least easily filter out her default outfit. When it gets to a point where I have to sift through multiple pages of alternative outfits, then it makes sense to start pulling the most common outfits into their own tag.

As for what that tag should be, if this is something that's going to happen often, then there should be a straightforward process anyone can follow for figuring out a canonical name. Even if the name is fully qualified it doesn't necessarily have to be typed as a character tag. In my mind (and there are some exceptions in FGO as there always are) these variants are not so much alternative identities as they are just different costumes. Even with battleship Kaga there's no straightforward way to distinguish her from the carrier version aside from clothing. This makes it marginally more useful for things like autocomplete.

@evazion: > Alternatively: Create a single general tag...

2019-02-11T20:44:00-05:00

Alternatively: Create a single general tag that encompasses a category of designs, like remodel (kantai collection).

The issue then becomes that you have to memorize things like "this skin was part of the summer 2016 skins, but this skin was part of the summer 2017 skins." That's not necessarily easier than memorizing that "olympian bloomers is that one Nero skin".

We do this with heroic spirit traveling outfit in F/GO and it's messy. This tag consists of several dozen characters crammed together under one tag, even though in reality, the tag is almost all Abigail Williams. It also messes up the related tags when a bunch of different skins are under the same tag.

I recognize that "one tag per skin" has issues of its own. I think it depends on the copyright whether individual tags or group tags are feasible.

Part of me wishes we could create a new tag type for costumes/skins just to standardize all of this nonsense and stop having forum spats. But that would be a huge ordeal on its own.

It's been suggested before to have a tag type for unique named entities that aren't characters. Tanks, ships, cars, named weapons, so forth. It wouldn't be that big of a deal, technically speaking. I think the main concern would be deciding where to draw the lines.

@Klaudandus: > evazion said: > > I think people are getting...

2019-02-11T20:12:09-05:00

evazion said:

I think people are getting too hung up on comparing this to Kantai Collection or Touhou. Azur Lane is a gacha game. Fate/Grand Order is a gacha game. It's not a fair comparison to say "oh, we don't tag outfits for Touhou or Kancolle, so we shouldn't do it for other games". Gacha games today go much further with having dozens of alternate skins/outfits/whatever than past games ever did. Our tagging has to adapt to that.

Once again, I point out that we have literally hundreds of tags for Overwatch and League of Legends skins and it's not a problem. Look at characters like D.Va or Ahri and imagine how you would find their skins using gentags. Nuking these tags would make searching infinitely harder.

I think it's completely backwards that we spend 30 or 40 tags describing every detail of a character's appearance, but then balk at adding 1 tag for the character design as a whole. Distinctive character designs are more interesting and useful to search for than the buttons on someone's shirt, or the color of someone's socks.

Even Pixiv tags Azur Lane skins. That's part of the motivation for this. It's a problem when it's easier to search for something on Pixiv than it is on Danbooru.

And I'm not interested in splitting hairs over what is considered to be a separate character by the game's lore and what isn't. I'm interested in what's useful for searching. Is Verniy a separate character from Hibiki, or is she just Hibiki with a white hat? It's beside the point - Verniy is a popular alternate version, and that makes it useful enough to have a tag for her.

I guess I can see your point. But... conversely, that would also imply having to retag all the Yuudachi posts in KC, given that pre-retrofit and post-retrofit are distinctively different and post-retrofit is way more popular than pre-retrofit... and there's not a character tag to distinguish between the two.

@Klaudandus: > feline_lump said: > > OK, I'm seeing the...

2019-02-11T20:10:53-05:00

feline_lump said:

OK, I'm seeing the issues with keeping these as character tags now. To weigh our best options at the moment:

Don't tag named costumes at all and revert to using descriptors.

I prefer this. And I know I'm guilty of using this: taihou_(forbidden_feast)_(azur_lane) once or twice (if I count that time I uploaded Prinz Eugen in a particular skin with its own tag)

But yeah, I'd prefer skins not to have their own character tag, at least for this title.

@evazion: I think people are getting too hung up on...

2019-02-11T20:08:47-05:00

I think people are getting too hung up on comparing this to Kantai Collection or Touhou. Azur Lane is a gacha game. Fate/Grand Order is a gacha game. It's not a fair comparison to say "oh, we don't tag outfits for Touhou or Kancolle, so we shouldn't do it for other games". Gacha games today go much further with having dozens of alternate skins/outfits/whatever than past games ever did. Our tagging has to adapt to that.

Once again, I point out that we have literally hundreds of tags for Overwatch and League of Legends skins and it's not a problem. Look at characters like D.Va or Ahri and imagine how you would find their skins using gentags. Nuking these tags would make searching infinitely harder.

I think it's completely backwards that we spend 30 or 40 tags describing every detail of a character's appearance, but then balk at adding 1 tag for the character design as a whole. Distinctive character designs are more interesting and useful to search for than the buttons on someone's shirt, or the color of someone's socks.

Even Pixiv tags Azur Lane skins. That's part of the motivation for this. It's a problem when it's easier to search for something on Pixiv than it is on Danbooru.

And I'm not interested in splitting hairs over what is considered to be a separate character by the game's lore and what isn't. I'm interested in what's useful for searching. Is Verniy a separate character from Hibiki, or is she just Hibiki with a white hat? It's beside the point - Verniy is a popular alternate version, and that makes it useful enough to have a tag for her.

@Klaudandus: > ampzz said: > > They are treated as entirely...

2019-02-11T20:04:05-05:00

ampzz said:

They are treated as entirely separate characters in Azur Lane though?
If you get one of them you don't automatically get them both since their classifications are completely different.

Gameplay-wise, they're mechanically different as it is a gacha, but storywise, they're the same character.

The story in one of the game events shows flashbacks, this includes BB!Kaga as the events take place at the time before her conversion to Aircraft Carrier, and the events make it clear that at the end of the event, she goes thru the conversion, which is how we get the Kaga most people are familiar with.

If the event had been an alternate timeline where both can coexist at the same time, storywise, then I'd say yeah, they're completely different characters, instead, they're the same character, just at a different time in their lives.

The equivalent would be to have two different tags for Son Goku, one as a child and one as an adult.

Not saying Kaga_(battleship)_(azur_lane) should disappear as a tag, but instead that such tag implies Kaga_(azur_lane) as well

But that's just me.

@feline_lump: OK, I'm seeing the issues with keeping these as...

2019-02-11T18:58:23-05:00

OK, I'm seeing the issues with keeping these as character tags now. To weigh our best options at the moment:

Don't tag named costumes at all and revert to using descriptors. OK when an outfit has a single defining feature that practically never appears elsewhere. Not so much when it doesn't. artoria pendragon (swimsuit rider alter) is not saber alter + swimsuit. Also, generally inconvenient.
Use character tags. This has the least potential for misuse, but severely bloats character count searches and search suggestions.
Move single-character costumes to general tags along with the multiple-character ones. Because a lot of outfit names don't make sense out of context, this also necessitates qualifying any name that might not be immediately clear. Alternatively: Create a single general tag that encompasses a category of designs, like remodel (kantai collection).

Also, it's worth considering that virtually all of the highest-volume copyrights are affected by this:

Touhou gives characters revamped outfits every time they appear in a new game, and frequently in spinoff media. Current practice is to tag specific copyrights, except for tanned cirno, who is named and would flood her copyright tag.
Kantai Collection has remodels, tagged as remodel (kantai collection), and seasonal skins, which are not apparently tagged.
Fate (series) not only has a massive amount of alternate timeline versions of the same characters, they also share status with a small number of alternate skins. Others are variously tagged as either character tags or general tags.
Idolmaster began with a limited number of costumes shared across all characters, and ended up with an average of 20+ unique costumes for 200+ characters. The idolmaster (classic) costumes are general tags, and only a small number of newer ones are tagged at all.
Vocaloid has a large number of legitimized fanmade designs. Ones attached to songs use copyright tags, and ones originating from Pixiv/Piapro/other art platforms get character tags.
Pokemon has issues with multiple designs and interpretations of human characters. The anime, manga, and game versions of the player characters get separate character tags, while the other humans are searched by copyright. The creatures use alternate form and alolan form.
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica would represent the "preferred" case of a series sticking to consistent designs and having a modest amount of alternate forms, outside of spinoffs. It is in the minority.
Love Live! has numerous alternate costumes as general tags, including both school uniforms and costumes for songs.
Precure uses the Cures' names as character tags on top of the character name. In practice, this means that transformed Cures have two times the character tags they need, which is not especially practical for a series heavy on group shots.

Part of me wishes we could create a new tag type for costumes/skins just to standardize all of this nonsense and stop having forum spats. But that would be a huge ordeal on its own.

@iridescent_slime: > evazion said: > > We use gentags for certain...

2019-02-11T17:28:56-05:00

evazion said:

We use gentags for certain Fate skins. It's terrible. See the craft essence list in the Fate/Grand Order wiki. You get incredibly generic tags like olympian bloomers, show time, water shine or tropical summer. They're highly ambiguous and highly confusing. You have no idea what these tags are when you see them in a tag list.

I'm glad someone brought this up. It's incredibly frustrating to see posts with utterly misleading tags like water shine or royal icing and have to constantly check the wiki to make sure that someone isn't just making up new gentags we don't need. Every general tag pertaining to a copyright-specific costume or skin should have a qualifier to make it immediately obvious what the tag is meant for.

@NNescio: I do agree that specialized tags would help in...

2019-02-11T13:47:33-05:00

I do agree that specialized tags would help in trying to find specific variants of outfits, and I do appreciate on some level the sheer effort that went into tagging them, but...

Fundamentally I don't feel separate chartags are necessary. Or at least not worth the cost of cluttering up chartags. This complicates chartag number searches even more, and more annoyingly, CLUTTERS UP autocomplete tags seriously, spilling over to Kancolle (and Warship Girls and other related games) since all the characters share the same ship namesakes.

With the rate of skins coming up, the list will be filled full with Azur Lane charskins, making it highly annoying to use autocomplete tags.

Most of the specific skins can be searched for by using character + several outfit-related gentags. Dress or maybe cocktail_dress for Taihou's forbidden feast outfit, and black_bikini for whatever-Eugen-swimsuit-wear-is-I-don't-remember. Now, this isn't perfect due to mistaggings and false positives, but this is the same for other copyrights like Touhou (like trying to look for Remi's 'popehat' CoLA outfit).

A lot of the skin's names are also non-descriptive and hard to remember. They are named to draw attention when marketing them to player, not to aid description. This makes it even more highly frustrating for the average user to remember the 3 or so extra skin tags (which may soon balloon to 10+ the way they release new skins to generate revenue), never mind the sheer potential amount.

For the above two reasons (outfit tag + char being good for most purposes like in other copyrights, and the idiosyncratic hard to remember names), I'm also against having it as a gentag except for some particularly notable outfits on a case-by-case basis (and the skin is named in a descriptive enough and unique enough manner to avoid confusion).

Otherwise, chartags are going to be filled with things like Remilia_Scarlet_(Curiosities_of_Lotus_Asia), Sado_(Setsubun)_(Kantai_Collection), Venom_Snake_(tuxedo) (that one's even a named DLC skin!), Makarov_(Pumpkin_Mishka)_(Girls_Frontline), Vittorio_Veneto_(qipao)_(Warship_Girls_R), Enterprise_(Starlight_Oath)_(Azur_Lane), Leon_S_Kennedy_(pirate)_(Resident_Evil_6), etc. etc. and all the tens to hundreds possible outfits/skins, PER character.

Enjoy scrolling the list (and accidentally misclicking unless you squint through the multiple similar lines) when you type out tags for autocomplete.

feline_lump said:

My (somewhat weak) preference is to keep them as character tags. We're dealing with designs that are going to be applied to 1 character 99% of the time, so I think it only makes sense to link them together. Is the current wiki documentation, such as the lists on saber or list of vocaloid derivatives, not enough to clear up confusion?

There's a third option — no chartag, no specific gentag, just tag the clothes.

feline_lump said:

If we do convert them to general tags, qualifiers are inevitably going to be necessary. I clean up the punkish gothic tag from time to time because people keep assuming it's punk + gothic and not a copyright-specific tag.

This here would seem to indicate that the tag is poorly-named. Maybe it should be renamed to punkish_gothic_(idolmaster) instead.

Now to sum it up, chartags are used to tag characters. Alternate persona(e) of a character may have sufficient weight to stand as separate characters in of themselves, such as when they're performing another role under disguise (all the superhero/alter-ego tags including magical girls), an alternate self from an alternate timeline (code_g_(azur_lane)), a clone with a distinct personality (misaka_imouto), an alternate version of the character from a separate continuity (alice_margatroid_(pc-98). Fan-versions of characters may also be given separate chartags (usually when they are tagged consistently on Pixiv/Nico/etc, have different personalities from their canon selves, and/or are drawn in a specific way, like plasma-chan_(kantai_collection).) In any case, having different names for the alternate versions of the characters adds additional weight to term being considered for separate chartags.

Same character in a different outfit, no, not even if the outfit is named.

@feline_lump: > Lacrimosa said: > > I just don't see why we...

2019-02-11T12:44:16-05:00

Lacrimosa said:

I just don't see why we should create one more uneccessary *_(cosplay) tags.
This already works well with royal icing or dangerous beast. They are just costumes applied to Fate characters and it was once decided to turn dangerous beast into a gentag when it was a chartag.

We haven't created any *_(cosplay) tags as a result of this decision. post #3263714 uses taihou (forbidden feast) (azur lane) and taihou (azur lane) (cosplay).

@Lacrimosa: I just don't see why we should create one more...

2019-02-11T12:30:46-05:00

I just don't see why we should create one more uneccessary *_(cosplay) tags.
This already works well with royal icing or dangerous beast. They are just costumes applied to Fate characters and it was once decided to turn dangerous beast into a gentag when it was a chartag.

@Unbreakable: > feline_lump said: > > If we do convert them...

2019-02-11T12:19:49-05:00

feline_lump said:

If we do convert them to general tags, qualifiers are inevitably going to be necessary. I clean up the punkish gothic tag from time to time because people keep assuming it's punk + gothic and not a copyright-specific tag.

Sounds like that tag could benefit from having an (idolmaster) qualifier.

As for keeping these tags as character tags I don't care much either way but I'm leaning towards character for the reasons evazion brought up.

@feline_lump: My (somewhat weak) preference is to keep them...

2019-02-11T11:19:05-05:00

My (somewhat weak) preference is to keep them as character tags. We're dealing with designs that are going to be applied to 1 character 99% of the time, so I think it only makes sense to link them together. Is the current wiki documentation, such as the lists on saber or list of vocaloid derivatives, not enough to clear up confusion?

If we do convert them to general tags, qualifiers are inevitably going to be necessary. I clean up the punkish gothic tag from time to time because people keep assuming it's punk + gothic and not a copyright-specific tag.

The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls franchise also has named alternate costumes for its characters, and I've considered adding them, but I suspect dealing with 12+ new tags per character would make taggers suicidal.