Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Final Fantasy/Archive/2

This discussion page is an archived page of a WikiProject Final Fantasy page, so its contents should be preserved in their current form. Please direct comments to the main discussion page.

Article templates

Character classes

Can someone please take a look at White Mage and tell me what they think about the infoboxes for character classes? Too much or how can I improve them? — Cuahl File:Black ribbon.gif 8 July 2005 00:50 (UTC)

"Also Known As" shows up on two lines for me, it's kinda annoying. Nifboy 8 July 2005 01:54 (UTC)

But that's the way Wikipedia handles boxes. Maybe you have your page text view on too high. It can't be shorter.. apart from if I used "aka" instead of "Also known as" — Cuahl File:Black ribbon.gif 8 July 2005 02:36 (UTC)

I really like it. I actually wanted to do this myself (when I was done with all the Final Fantasy IV stuff) but you beat me to it lol. They look great. --Warpedmirror 8 July 2005 03:56 (UTC)

I've thrown in a quick 'n dirty little CSS fix to stop the left column from wrapping. Check it out. – Seancdaug July 8, 2005 06:43 (UTC)

They look way much tidier now, but most character classes need info throwing in. I can put the later stuff (FFX-2 dresspheres for eg) but I'm gonna have to research the earlier ones.. unless someone can expand them? — Cuahl File:Black ribbon.gif 8 July 2005 10:26 (UTC)

The character classes need to be uniform. Anyone up to the job? Or is it mine to do tomorrow? — Cuahl 9 July 2005 04:21 (UTC) (ps. Tetra Master)

Should we move the classes from (character class) to (Final Fantasy), such as Black Mage (Final Fantasy), and make the (character class) articles disambiguous? They just seem so cluttered the way they are now, and it would make it easier to standardize them. ~ Hibana

I think so, after all, most article are called like that. A good exemple would be Weapon (Final Fantasy). I vote for it, but before moving a page, I'd wait for the approval of one more person. – DarkEvil 19:49, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Does anybody else agree that this should be done? I'm pretty anxious to begin. :) ~ Hibana

I'm not sure, myself. It seems like it would be difficult to provide full articles for some classes, and splitting up, say, Thief (character class) between thieves in the Final Fantasy series and thieves in other video games almost seems a little excessive. That being said, it would make administrating the articles easier from our perspective, except that I sort of expect that we'll be getting semi-regular merge requests.... I honestly dunno. – Seancdaug 16:32, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

We can't make the "(character classes)" Final Fantasy only because FF takes these character classes from Dungeons and Drgaons. So, if it should be anything it should be D&D related. Which sucks. But we can use the infobox on every page and make it standard (ie. every page has certain information in it). We'll need to include D&D somewhere, so how about we have a few sub-headings on the character class pages. Top paragraph - standard in all articles, minor description of the character class, but not limited to Final Fantasy games. Reference - what the class refers to. White Mage will have something like this while Beserker has ties with the history books, and some others are D&D-created. Final Fantasy - here's where the FF-status comes in (so it's the most obvious and significant section). We'll have to include how the class appears in each FF (remember Bard and Songstress is practically the same thing), what magic they use etc. Can you tell I've been thinking about this for some time? If you have any ideas on what the standard should be we should decide on something before someone starts the change. — Cuahl 16:39, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I vote to merge all FF-class related articles (back) into Final Fantasy character classes. Even Black Mage is stubby, and the "reference" section feels like fancruft (mythologycruft? Cruft in any case). The creation of articles for general RPG archetypes (demonstrated by D&D's usual warrior/thief/mage/priest setup, replicated by every damn RPG in existence) could serve as a sort of category in which FF's fighters and D&D's fighters (and popular game XYZ's fighters) could both be included. Nifboy 21:20, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree with the the part saying that articles like warrior/thief/mage/priest should be reserved to the character class in general and not only Final Fantasy. However, I have a problem with pages like black Mage, where these things invented in video games or did they exist in already elsewhere as black magic already existed outside of RPGs in occult art, I myself don't know and just wanted to make sure. If Black Mage can refer to something which is not video game and RPG related, the page should be something like Black Mage (character class). – DarkEvil 02:20, July 23, 2005 (UTC)

General templates

Can people check out THIS and tell me what they think? I designed it to go on pages which have no other template (for example slave crown) and it can be modded to encompass any FF. I thought it would be good because we can edit the text any time and it will change throughout the pages. The only thing I can't do is set the text fresh against the picture - it seems to set lower. What do you think? I thought it might be nice touch to some blander articles. I could also make a mod where the "is currently being updated" doesn't necessarily have to appear for articles which don't require update? — Cuahl File:Black ribbon.gif 8 July 2005 13:30 (UTC)

Final Fantasy title list

Can people tell me if THIS is any improvement on List of Final Fantasy titles? I intend on improving the rest of the list, put not if people diagree with the new style? — Cuahl File:Black ribbon.gif 8 July 2005 15:04 (UTC)

I like it! It looks great, and you definitely did a good job on it. You can get some of the missing release dates from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Final Fantasy/Release dates. Also, this is my opinion, but I think that Final Fantasy spinoffs should be in a separate section from the non-Final Fantasy related games. The organization would be something like this: main series (I, II, III, etc.), sequels and spin-offs (FFMQ, FFT, FFTA, FFX2, FFCC, FF7 Compilation, etc.), compilations (Anthology, Collection, Origins, etc.), other media (Legend of the Crystals, The Spirits Within, Advent Children, etc.), and related games (SaGa, Seiken Densetsu, Kingdom Hearts, Chocobo, etc.). --Cswrye July 8, 2005 16:37 (UTC)

Thanks Chad! Page is now live at Final Fantasy series and the previous version is at /old just in case the new version is wrong. — Cuahl File:Black ribbon.gif 8 July 2005 18:46 (UTC) (ps: Sorry Seancdaug!)

Wow. That's gorgeous, guys. I do have a slight problem with the title, though: the name Final Fantasy series doesn't really describe the page all that well. I think we really should try and put across that it is, in fact, a list somewhere in the title (albeit a very fancy list). But the actualy content looks really amazing. – Seancdaug July 8, 2005 21:19 (UTC)

Thanks! Took me a while to do, but once I'd started using templates it went well. I threw up some random images just to spread the colour out, but some of these need replacing. Fair point on the name, I just thought it may be better than just another list, but I see what you mean. Should we file it for moving? Sorry I destroyed your work Seancdoug but it did go to good use ;) — Cuahl File:Black ribbon.gif 8 July 2005 21:34 (UTC)

Oh, hey, no problem about my "work." It was an ugly, kludgy design and I never pretended any differently. I just threw it together several months ago as something that was slightly better than the criminal abuse of tables on the old Final Fantasy main page. This is much, much better looking. I'm duly impressed. But I do think that "List of Final Fantasy titles" is a better name. I know we're accumulating a lot of "List of..." pages, but it describes it the best, I think. Barring that, I think "Final Fantasy titles" or even the marginally incorrect "Final Fantasy games" (as they're not all games, per se) would make more sense. One of the problems with the name "Final Fantasy series" is that several other CVG series are using that format as the main overview page for the whole series (like our main Final Fantasy article; see Metroid series). – Seancdaug July 8, 2005 21:42 (UTC)

Grand! I thought there's no harm shifting the code back - there's no destruction of history/discussion. See List of Final Fantasy titles — Cuahl File:Black ribbon.gif 8 July 2005 22:01 (UTC)

Expanding game-specific templates

Most of the game-specific templates (ex. Template:FFVI, Template:FFX) have remained exclusive to links for player characters. I changed Template:FFIV to link to other articles related to the game. Since Final Fantasy IV is one of the less popular games of the series, there are few articles that pertain to it, which explains the lacking of content (once the Final Fantasy airships article, and others like it, are expanded with FFIV information, they may also be linked to). However, I think if templates for other games are changed around a bit like this one, they can be extremely useful. For instance, Template:FFVII can link to articles such as Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII), Shin-Ra, and Turks (Final Fantasy VII) - articles that currently have no place in the template, making navigation much easier. What does everyone think? --Warpedmirror 9 July 2005 05:10 (UTC)

Including Zemus in the FFIV template is a bit of a problem, because it's a spoiler. You're not supposed to know he exists until very late in the game. --Dalkaen July 9, 2005 06:17 (UTC)

I have concerns on this - There are a lot of Final Fantasy VII articles and there's soon to be a lot more. This is going to create a stupidly huge box at the bottom or every FF7 page. This is not a fan-website too, and I worry that the more of these boxes we put in, the more we're trying to convince ourselves it is. I like them, they look nice, and when it just included the characters it was nice. But adding more maybe a bit extreme. I was proposing that we make a Final Fantasy index/directory which lists all Final Fantasy related articles. This will be one page. What do people think? — Cuahl 9 July 2005 13:06 (UTC)

• Alright, I got rid of all non-PC related stuff. If everyone agrees that these should just pertain to PC's then I think title of each othese templates should just be [Insert game title here] Player characters and we should remove the Player characters: deal, since there will be no more sections in that template. I was thinking of creating a "Non-player characters of Final Fantasy IV page" - including all the major non-player characters of the game, that don't exactly have enough bulk to deserve their own article. This idea can be used for many games, if everyone likes it. Since the Zemus page was brought up in this discussion, I have a question to ask about it. Someone (not part of this project I believe) proposed that it should be merged with the Final Fantasy IV page (or with the FFIV NPC page if it is created), because Zemus is such a minor character (though he did clarify that Sephiroth was important enough). I think being a final boss in a video game qualifies as being a fairly major character. I think Zemus is just as important to FFIV as Sephiroth is to FFVII, except Sephiroth has fanboys. Does anyone else think that Zemus is too minor to have his own page? I have no problem with that, but if that is the case, Chaos (Final Fantasy), Ultimecia, and other FF bosses should be merged with their appropriate articles. By the way, I think your idea of the list of all the FF articles is a must. --Warpedmirror 9 July 2005 15:46 (UTC)
  • Cool. We could make /index into a page like List Final Fantasy articles or Final Fantasy articles (by title) or A-Z of Final Fantasy. Suggestions? — Cuahl 9 July 2005 16:10 (UTC)
    • I think List of Final Fantasy articles sounds like your best bet. — Warpedmirror 22:53, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
    • *ahem* Guys, I really hate to sound like a broken record here, but I would like, again, to point out that this is precisely the point of having Category:Final Fantasy and it's related subcategories. We have Category:Final Fantasy VII for articles dealing with FFVII errata, and we've even got Category:Final Fantasy VII characters for dealing with characters. Not every game has its own dedicated subcat, as when I embarked upon my categorization effort a couple of months ago, there weren't enough articles to justify creating one for every single game. But we can create new categories easily enough should they be deemed necessary at any time. Creating a list of articles only duplicates the information that is already stored more efficiently in the category tree, and takes a lot more time to administer: if a page is moved, or deleted, or substantively changed, those changes can be reflected automatically in the category list. If we maintain a static list, we'd need to edit it by hand, which is a very daunting prospect consider that anyone can do pretty much whatever they like to articles, while there's only a dozen or so of us actually putting in the effort needed to organize the whole shebang. – Seancdaug 00:28, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
      • As a semi-related aside, the reason for infoboxes, IMO, is to provide a quick one-link connection to closely related articles, not to impose some sort of informational connection between all articles relating to a broad topic. Having an infobox that links major playable characters makes a certain degree of sense, because it's reasonable to expect that readers will interested in jumping between two main Final Fantasy VI characters fairly regularly, and to save the hassle of the extra step of jumping into the category page (which may also be filled with a variety of non-playable characters, like Kefka, for instance). You're absolutely right that we shouldn't overdo it with the infoboxes, which should, IMO, be seen as navigational shortcuts, not a means of organizing the overall structure of information. – Seancdaug 00:35, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
• Hmm. Zemus is a borderline case, actually, mainly because he's not a major presence throughout the game, unlike, say Kefka or Sephiroth. Similar situation with Ultimecia, which I've actually mentioned over on the talk page: as it is now, the article is really rather slim on information about Ultimecia herself, and is devoted primarily to info about the R=U fan theory. All that being said, I don't really have a problem with having articles on all the end bosses, and feel a little funny having one for Sephiroth and not Zemus, even if a case can be made for that. I'd say keep 'em, even though I suspect we may have to frequently make the case against merge requests of VfDs. – Seancdaug 00:28, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
• since i created these templates, i strongly suggest, they remain for playable characters. i really don't want to see this becoming too cluttered. --ZeWrestler 01:36, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Standard "List of locations in..." format

I've been looking over the various location lists we've got, and noticed that, well, none of them seem to adhere to the same format. It seems like we should try and figure out a good generic "look" for these kind of pages. My personal preference is something like the List of Final Fantasy VI locations article: hierarchical headings with images where appropriate. But I dunno what everyone else thinks....

Oh, and while I'm on the topic, does anyone have a problem with combining the numerous FF1 location articles into a single list? Entries like Pravoka, Coneria, Castle Coneria, Gulg Volcano and Temple of Fiends are kind of "limited growth" articles, if you catch my meaning. There is, of course, the question of what to call this new article (I'm personally opposed to "List of Final Fantasy I locations," because the game's title isn't technically "Final Fantasy I," but "List of Final Fantasy (video game) locations" sounds a bit unwieldy...), but whatever.... – Seancdaug July 8, 2005 07:20 (UTC)

I think both of those are good ideas. I personally think we should just grit our teeth and call it "...Final Fantasy I locations". Heh, at least we're better off than the folks at Mega Man who have to deal with the same title for a series, game, and character. :) Also, should we do the same with "...Characters" and "...Terms" articles as in FFVII? I understand the earlier games have less of both of these, but we need a place for bare articles like slave crown. ~ Hibana

I think List of Final Fantasy I locations may have to be done. I guess if we have to reason for it, in the new remakes of the game it's referred to as FFI. — Cuahl File:Black ribbon.gif 8 July 2005 10:30 (UTC)

Is it? The only place I can remember it being named FFI is one of the two cell phone releases, and even then, it was Final Fantasy i, technically speaking (because it was on the DoCoMo 9000i series...).

I was thinking of ways to handle this, and a thought occurred to me: there's no reason not to have locations lists for every game in the series. And, if we do have individual lists, then List of Final Fantasy locations, in its current format, is redundant, being little more than an overly long article which duplicates information stored on a dozen distinct pages. So perhaps we could junk the current content of that article and use it for the FF1 list (where it would most logically belong). The only real problem I saw with that was the question of how to properly guide readers through the various different location lists. So I cobbled together a tiny little infobox navbox for just this purpose. We could stick it on each of the "List of Final Fantasy x locations" pages, and it would allow a reader to switch easily from one game's list to another, and it would free the original List of Final Fantasy locations so that we can use it for locations from FF1. The box in question is currently sitting in the sandbox, so check it out and tell me what you think of the idea. – Seancdaug July 8, 2005 21:36 (UTC)

Ah sorry about all my stupid errors in the past few minutes, all the coding and template making must have pushed my brain to far. Sounds like a good idea to me, and it would add to the nice neat style of infoboxes that are being put into the Final Fantasy articles. If you don't mind, I'm gonna work on some ideas in my sandboxes too — Cuahl File:Black ribbon.gif 8 July 2005 22:06 (UTC)

While I think a "...terms" article would be a reasonably good idea, I really, really don't like the name. "Terms" is a really vague word, and I think it's a holdover when the List of Final Fantasy VII terms article was literally a dictionary-like list of words and phrases that appeared in the game (including characters and places, which I deleted from that article when List of Final Fantasy VII characters and List of Final Fantasy VII locations were created. I would suggest something a little more concrete, like List of important Final Fantasy VII items or something along those lines. – Seancdaug July 8, 2005 21:50 (UTC)

Well, "Items" doesn't really encompass everything, especially not in a game as broad as FF7, i.e. you can't call Cetra, Lifestream, and Shin-Ra "items." Then again, a title like "Concepts" doesn't include tangible objects, like the White Materia or Bronco. Hmmm...maybe "Definitions?" ~ Hibana

True. I dunno. It just seems like such a catch-all article is problematic to begin with. Some of these things we could probably merger into other articles entirely: White, Black, and Huge Materia could be included as part of a new paragraph at Materia, and the Tiny Bronco could probably be part of the work-in-progress Final Fantasy airships article. Shin-Ra, SOLDIER, the Turks et al. could be described at either the Shin-Ra article, or perhaps even in the List of Final Fantasy VII characters article (as a descriptive introduction below each section header, or something). Such a glossary-like list seems awfully kludgy to begin with, and I can't help but feel that it would be better to try to seperate things out and find some clearer way of organizing things. – Seancdaug 00:42, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

I think you're right, so here's a thought...Ancients/Cetra, Shin-Ra, SOLDIER, AVALANCHE, and Turks can all go on the characters page with a little bit better of a description than is already on there. We might should include, Huge Materia, Black Materia (with Meteor as a note), White Materia (with Holy as a note), Lifestream, Mako, and maybe Mako poisoning in the materia article with redirects. Tiny Bronco and Highwind (which already has its own article) can up on the airships article. WEAPONS already has a nice article and can be linked from FFVII. I know some of those pages have images as well, so we could try fleshing out the characters page with headshots and sprites. That leaves Keystone and Knights of the Round... What do you think, Seacdaug? ~ Hibana

Well, we might make an exception to the "must appear in multiple games" rule over at the Summon magic (Final Fantasy) page for KOTR: it's probably one of the most famous summons of the whole series. And we could probably describe the keystone under the Temple of the Ancients subheading in List of Final Fantasy VII locations. – Seancdaug 02:12, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess if Omnislash got its own paragraph on Cloud's page, KOTR deserves equal credit. I think we've got it. ~ Hibana

List of Locations on Spira

I was looking at the articles that list places in Spira, and I believe that the majority of the articles outside of the planet itself should be merged with the spira article. I have put the merge template in a few of them, but like List of Final Fantasy VI locations, I believe that these places should be encompassed under 1 large article unless they have enough information to be in an article on their own. From what i see, most of them do not have enough information to be on their own. --ZeWrestler 16:37, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

• Agreed. The only Final Fantasy X location, I think, that can potentially hold its own is Zanarkand, even though the information in the current article is limited. — Warpedmirror 01:04, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Location article updates

Well, I went and moved the template that's been sitting in the sandbox to Template:Final Fantasy locations, and split the List of Final Fantasy locations article like I suggested a while back. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done, as most of the new pages are incomplete, and there's differing localization problems in several examples thereof, but it's a start, at least. The biggest problem I encountered was related to Final Fantasy X: the Spira article, among other things, includes the sort of content that would otherwise go in List of Final Fantasy X locations. I've modified the template (temporarily, at least) so that the FFX entry simply points to the Spira article, but part of my thinks that this is a little jarring, since it's a different format title from every other article. I was considering splitting the history of Spira and the list of locations into seperate articles, but I'm not sure that's the right solution, either. Any thoughts from the peanut gallery? ;-) – Seancdaug 06:04, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

• I think for starters a list of Locations in Spira would be a better title because Spira is used in FFX and FFX2. A history of spira article sounds like a good idea. My only question is when you seperate the two articles into seperate sections, what will be left for the main Spira article. Would that just turn into a cover article that will link to the sub articles? --ZeWrestler 12:20, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I was thinking the main Spira article could consist of the sections currently entitled "The beginning" and "Yuna's pilgrimage and the Eternal Calm," while the "Locations in..." article would consist of the "Locations" section, much like is done for the other games. But I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with that solution, for the reasons I've stated above.... :-/ – Seancdaug 17:45, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

I feel like List of Final Fantasy IV locations has too many subheadings and just clutters the menu. Does anyone agree?--John Lynch 00:13, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

I honestly think it's better to have too many subheadings than too few. If nothing else, it allows us to link a specific location via anchor linking. Since the menu can be hidden, I don't really see a problem with it, but we could also throw together a manual menu in place of the automatic one, and leave out second level subheadings (though I'd prefer not to do that, I think it's better than eliminating the subheadings altogether...). – Seancdaug 17:33, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Side note (IRC)

Just as a side note, if anyone uses mIRC and wants to idle or talk about the project - click here — Cuahl 16:23, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Featured Article

Goal 3 states "Work on perfecting existing articles and getting them accepted as featured articles." Therefore, I think we should pick a front runner to work on and make into a Featured Artical. As when this project started, I personally recommend Final Fantasy VI. I believe that that artical has got potential to be FA status. All it needs is some touchups. We should do what we can to get this into FA status. What do you guys think? -ZeWrestler 00:24, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree completely. In fact, I believe all Final Fantasy articles should be FA standard, and we should assess how each could be improved. At the moment I'm going around creating articles (Triple Triad, Tetra Master) and perfecting old ones so they soon might compare to FA standard. I also mentioned on Seancdaug's talk page about this — Cuahl 00:48, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Featured Article Drive

Come vote for the first article that we are going to focus on making into a Featured article. --ZeWrestler 20:35, 12 July 2005 (UTC) Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Final Fantasy/Featued Article Drive

Only 4 people voted. We need more votes for the featured article. so go to the link above, if you haven't voted already and vote! --ZeWrestler 12:22, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Featured Article Drive Winner

The winner of the Featured Article Drive is Final Fantasy VI. I have written a blub of what i have in mind that we should do to get the article to become FA. Suggestions welcome, and needed. Its only a start. Use [[*Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Final Fantasy/Featued Article Drive]] As a discussion page. The old votes there have been archived. That page can now be used to come up with an idea of what we need to work on with the article. Furthermore, i have gone ahead and created a [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer and video games/Peer review|CVG peer review for the game. Thats about all i can think about for now. So, feel free to comment and start working on the article. --ZeWrestler 03:27, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Good work on improving the FFVI article so far. I'm sorry i haven't been around the last couple days, but I'm back now, and I'll be contributing again. If anyone has anything else they can do to help out in the FA drive, by all means do so. The more people from here who help out, the more successful this will be. --ZeWrestler ^Talk 13:07, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

new cat

created a new category for games that exist within the final fantasy series. these include the games like Tetra Master and blitzball. the cat is Category:Final Fantasy subgames. --ZeWrestler 01:06, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

• Decent idea, probably, provided we can accrue a few more articles for it. But why "subgames"? I thought they were generally called "minigames"? – Seancdaug 02:09, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
  • At the time of me creating the category, i didn't think of it as mini-games. so that word never entered my mind. --ZeWrestler 02:12, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Per your suggestion, i put the cat up for deletion, and created a cat Category:Final Fantasy minigames. --ZeWrestler 16:05, 11 July 2005 (UTC)