Antonio_salieri_(fate/grand_order) Forms

EB said:

I think in the cases where two ascensions are very similar and the third is unique, I'd agree that just the third should be tagged.

Yes, indeed. It would be a nightmare even for us Fate fans to try and tag all of them otherwise.

I'm a bit more ambivalent on the the pre-FGO form thing. Some (myself definitely) are not going to be aware if a form may or may not have appeared in a previous Fate incarnation. If it's something that looks really different and as of now doesn't actually have a separate tag, I feel like it could still be worthwhile.

Well, my stance comes from being more familiar with the series, so my perspective is limited. If there is a demand from non-fans to retroactively include them, then I will gladly consider it for their sake.

And yeah, cross-pollination is unavoidable. Though I'm not sure it will be to the extent that it dilutes searches too much.

I suppose that’s just a “wait and see” thing then. Artists do like to mix up characters and their Ascensions though, especially with lore-relevant pairings/groupings, so we’ll see how it goes.

My stance is this:

• If a character has multiple distinct versions, then each version should get its own tag.

• These tags should be in the form character_name_(version_name), and they should be character tags. It doesn't matter if they're skins, or alternate class summons, or costume dresses, or craft essences, or mystic codes, or ascension levels, or whatever the fuck else Fate/Grand Order wants to call it to sell more gacha rolls this week, visually they're all the same thing.

• Most Fate characters should be qualified with just *_(fate), not with *_(fate/grand_order), or with the game they originally appeared in. The exception is when the tag is for a specific version of a character from a specific game. For example, Saber really should be Saber (Fate/Stay Night), because it's specifically for the original Saber, not just for any random Artoria.

• For many Fate characters, we could get away with not qualifying them at all if we really wanted to. If you're searching a tag like Astolfo or Nero Claudius on Danbooru, then you're looking for the Fate character, not the historical figure. Notice how we don't qualify Fate/Stay Night characters (Saber, Archer, Rider, Lancer, Caster) despite how ambiguous they are.

• When a Fate character first appears in one game, but later appears in Fate/Grand Order, then we don't really need to keep tagging which game they originally appeared in. Characters like Astolfo and Mordred get tagged as Fate/Apocrypha or Fate/Grand Order or both, pretty much at random. Other characters like Hassan of Serenity or Suzuka Gozen get 4 or 5 copyright tags per post for a single character, just because they originally appeared in some spinoff of a spinoff of a spinoff. This is pointless, at a certain point it stops mattering where a character originally appeared, especially when they're only popular because of Fate/Grand Order.

• *_(all) tags should only be used for major characters that have many different appearances across multiple games, like Saber. They're shouldn't be used just because a character shows up in Fate/Grand Order with a new skin or two. Tags like Mordred (Fate) (all) are overkill, all she has is two different versions, a regular version and a swimsuit version.

Benit149 said:

Seriously, guys. That's what the general tags are for. Suggesting that all of the characters' forms should be tagged separately is a sign of laziness, and would be a massive headache for non-fans of the Fate series to keep straight when the franchise is enough of a disaster with character overload as it is. Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to keep track of alternate costumes and forms in series like Kantai Collection or Azur Lane? I'm not into those series, but I do the best I can to look things up, or see if others can help me. Granted those titles are nowhere near as ridiculous with the alternate form pollution like Fate is, but you get the idea. If you guys really want to keep the various forms easier to search, then consider gardening posts so that they include more specific tags.

I couldn't disagree more. I'm not a Fate fan and I don't play Fate/Grand Order. The most confusing thing about Fate is that we don't have tags for each unique version of a character. I look at a tag like BB (Swimsuit Mooncancer) and I'm left utterly confused about why three totally different versions of BB - baseball cap BB, gyaru BB, and vampire cape BB - are all under the same tag. Then I see BB shot! and I'm wondering why the hell nurse BB is a general tag when her other outfits are character tags. Are there more versions of BB? I don't know, maybe there's some other general tag for some other outfit that I'm missing, or maybe there's some other ascension level that I don't know about. With tagging like this, I can't trust anything.

Compare this to things like Azur Lane, Overwatch, or League of Legends, where each character has a list of their skins on their wiki, and they're all consistently named, so even if you don't know anything about the character, it's relatively straightforward to figure everything out. You know what your options are. You can go to a character's wiki, click on each skin to see what it looks like, and see how many posts it has. Even if a character has 10 different skins, you can look at them all and figure it out.

Kantai Collection is the worst of them all. I look up a character like Yuudachi and see that her wiki says she has a remodel and five different seasonal costumes. But fuck me if I want to actually see any of these different versions. I'm left trying to cobble together some kind of general tag search to find a costume I've never actually seen, based solely on a written description in a wiki. It's like we're deliberately trying to make this as hard as possible. And that's the best case scenario, often alternate costumes aren't mentioned at all, or the list is outdated, so you don't even know what you're missing.

EB said:

I think given the discussion, it should be OK (but since no one has followed up on this in a week, I'd wait a few more days to see where it's going) to start applying general tags to Salieri or any other Servant:

first ascension (fate grand order)
second ascension (fate grand order)
third ascension (fate grand order)

Separate character tags for each character, since there are plenty of Servants in FGO with wildly different ascensions (pretty much any non-welfare Summer servant for instance), would eventually add up to a ton of new tags that some may find excessive, and there would be confusion over whether the differences in a Servant's ascensions are considered enough to have a separate tag. I think things can sort of naturally be tagged (in the case of big differences) or not tagged (in the case of minute differences) with the freedom to use a gen tag.

This may be heretical of me to say, but I think the remodel approach is bad even for Kantai Collection. It makes no sense why characters like Verniy and Italia get unique tags, even though they're just palette swaps, while characters like Yuudachi Kai Ni or Shigure Kai Ni don't get tags, even though their remodels are more popular than their unremodeled versions. Even back in topic #9920 when the remodel tag was created, there was some dissent over the idea for these very reasons.

My problem with the first ascension approach is twofold:

• It's confusing that some skins are treated as general tags and others as character tags. I hate that Nero-in-a-swimsuit is a character tag (Nero Claudius (Swimsuit Caster)) but Nero-in-a-gym-uniform is a general tag (olympian bloomers). They're the same thing, but olympian bloomers is a lot easier to miss in the tag list, and even when you see it, it's not at all obvious what it means. First ascension adds to the confusion, now we're saying that some skins are character tags, others are general tags, and still others are ascension tags that are shared between multiple characters.
• It doesn't really make tagging simpler. If you're uploading a Fate character, you still have to know their ascension levels. You still have to tag them, you're just tagging them in a different way, a way that's less precise and easier to forget about. Look at Kantai Collection, where people routinely forget to tag remodel on Yuudachi Kai Ni, but don't normally forget to tag Verniy on Hibiki. Remodel tags are easy to forget about when they're treated as tag that's separate from the character.

evazion said:

Then I see BB shot! and I'm wondering why the hell nurse BB is a general tag when her other outfits are character tags. Are there more versions of BB? I don't know, maybe there's some other general tag for some other outfit that I'm missing, or maybe there's some other ascension level that I don't know about. With tagging like this, I can't trust anything.

BB Shot! is the name of a Craft Essence, which is card you equip to Servants in the game to strengthen them and have illustrations that sometimes depict characters in unique outfits. A tag named after a Craft Essence is usually used to designate such outfits. They're usually general tags, and in previous discussions users were against having a separate cosplay tag in the case of Dangerous Beast since it made it a character tag (topic #13928, topic #14540). But as has been mentioned in those threads there are the trio of CEs (Formalcraft, Limited/Zero Over, Imaginary Around) that are still currently considered character tags despite not really being different from any other CE tag in any particularly meaningful way since they're not meant to be the names of characters.

There is also Spiritron Dress, which is an unlockable battle sprite costume for a Servant which in-game visually at least is the exact same kind of thing as the different Ascension levels. That is what Olympian Bloomers is an example of.

I'm not against a different character tag for every ascension form, as long as after we agree on it, it can be freely tagged without others questioning there are too many character tags around and having the tag gardening work undone.

Would a new tag category be useful in this case, regarding specific outfit sets (eg. cosplays, uniforms, ...)?

I think Fate character tagging is already a mess as it is, largely due to F/GO and its handling of events, costumes and character variants.

A lot of the versions that get chartags (swimsuit variants, Halloween variants, so on) really shouldn't get a full-on chartag in my opinion considering they're pretty literally the same character with a different dress on (or a swimsuit on, or a robe like Cu Caster, or whatever). Alternate chartags should to me be for alternate versions that bring actual changes to who the character is.
For example: Saber/Saber Alter/Saber Lily/Artoria Pendragon (lancer) all get different chartags, but Artoria Pendragon (swimsuit archer) shouldn't get a chartag because she really is just.. Saber, in a bikini, and with a watergun. If we tag this as a chartag, then why isn't suited-up Saber in Fate/Zero a chartag?

To my knowledge, I could be wrong but we usually don't tag alt. outfits with new chartags in other franchises. Nearl (Arknights) is Nearl (Arknights) whether she's in full armour or in a summer swimsuit. Amagi (Azur Lane) is Amagi (Azur Lane) whether in a costume or in her original outfit. NTW-20 (Girls Frontline) is NTW-20 (Girls Frontline) whether in a full maid get-up, in Mod 3, or in original outfit. So on, so forth. The only difference Fate has in this case is that it markets and releases these alternate outfits as new Servants which is fucking stupid and only done so that people spend gacha money on them instead of just making them a costume like they actually are

But well this ship has sailed and this is how we tag Fate things now. Either way, adding ascensions as full-on chartags would just make it even more of a mess to work with but I suppose is the easiest way to tag it, if only for characters that actually have big changes between ascensions like Salieri. eg. A tag for the ascension version and a "catch-all" for the character in general. Fate/Grand Order was a mistake

Astolfo said:

To my knowledge, I could be wrong but we usually don't tag alt. outfits with new chartags in other franchises.

We do. Azur Lane and Girls Frontline both have been making character tags for alt skins for a long time now, other franchises have probably been doing it, too. Arknights is only exempt from this because no one has bothered to do the same for them, not because anyone decided it shouldn't be done. It's funny that you mention Amagi, because Amagi (wending waters serene lotus) (azur lane) exists.

I don't think there's anything wrong with giving alt skins their own tags, many of them aren't as simple as just adding a gen tag or two to a character search. Even for the skins that are just swimsuits, it should be all or nothing. Doing it for some skins but not others would be completely arbitrary.

Astolfo said:
To my knowledge, I could be wrong but we usually don't tag alt. outfits with new chartags in other franchises. Nearl (Arknights) is Nearl (Arknights) whether she's in full armour or in a summer swimsuit. Amagi (Azur Lane) is Amagi (Azur Lane) whether in a costume or in her original outfit. NTW-20 (Girls Frontline) is NTW-20 (Girls Frontline) whether in a full maid get-up, in Mod 3, or in original outfit. So on, so forth. The only difference Fate has in this case is that it markets and releases these alternate outfits as new Servants which is fucking stupid and only done so that people spend gacha money on them instead of just making them a costume like they actually are

Azur Lane, to my knowledge, does have some costume tags, whether it be for swimsuits (ex. zara_(poolside_coincidence)_(azur_lane)), dresses (ex. st._louis_(luxurious_wheels)_(azur_lane), workout attire (ex. bremerton_(scorching-hot_training)_(azur_lane), or more. 15 of the 20 newest character tags that use *(azur_lane)* are costume tags.

Arknights, as you say, doesn't tag its alt. outfits, and for Girls' Frontline, we only have one instance of it, with the Dark Fantasy Labyrinth of the Dark tags (originally just this general tag, before someone decided to make individual character tags for the outfits in the set, which I had to correct to the English version). AK and GFL, however, both have similar instances to KanColle's remodel tag, those being Elite II on Arknights' side (and for Amiya, Elite I as well), and MOD3 on Girls' Frontline's side (not to mention Azur Lane's Retrofit).

To bring another game into the mix, the girls in Honkai Impact 3rd have various forms, all of which have received their own character tags, and based on what you said, only some of them would qualify to keep said tags.

Really, the biggest issue in all this is just the mess of tags' F/GO has birthed, whether it be based on servant names/classes/units, craft essences, spiritron dresses, mystic codes, now the proposed ascensions, and what have you. At least with KanColle, sorting out its mess is slightly easier, comparatively just being time-consuming, since it lacks costume tags, and, in the case of remodels, does have some specific guidelines that can be followed for tag gardening (which, as evazion pointed, is probably still the most contentious part of KanColle tagging). And in turn, other gachas with costumes are easy enough to tag without having to layer on another tag for context. Even the closest example to F/GO, of the ones I named at least, Honkai 3rd, doesn't really have this issue. And another gacha game example, Sid Story, which also has different art for each of the three forms a unit can achieve, are not tagged (but are at minimum, parent/child'd).

Damian0358 said:

[...]

Fire Emblem Heroes also does not tag it's alts, but i was thinking about making character tags for them ala AL/FGO since some characters have over 2k artworks and no way to easily distinguish designs. I'm going to wait until this thread's resolution though.

blindVigil said:

We do. Azur Lane and Girls Frontline both have been making character tags for alt skins for a long time now, other franchises have probably been doing it, too. Arknights is only exempt from this because no one has bothered to do the same for them, not because anyone decided it shouldn't be done. It's funny that you mention Amagi, because Amagi (wending waters serene lotus) (azur lane) exists.

Oop, that's entirely on me indeed, I typed "Amagi" and didn't see any other chartag in the suggestions so I completely assumed, but typing "amagi_" instead does make it appear. Ah! GFL however I didn't see any for the two or three skins I checked so I assumed it was the same as Arknights, eg. none of them are tagged.

Most Fate characters should be qualified with just *_(fate), not with *_(fate/grand_order), or with the game they originally appeared in. The exception is when the tag is for a specific version of a character from a specific game. For example, Saber really should be Saber (Fate/Stay Night), because it's specifically for the original Saber, not just for any random Artoria. Notice how we don't qualify Fate/Stay Night characters (Saber, Archer, Rider, Lancer, Caster) despite how ambiguous they are.

@evazion Thank GOD someone agrees with me on this case. I had mentioned it previously in this thread but I feel it got ignored, which is absolutely frustrating because I believe fixing the qualifiers is an essential building block that the Fate series totally needs if we're going to take tag gardening seriously for the Fate series now. I just sort of don't agree with replacing Saber with Saber_(Fate/Stay_Night) since almost every other tag related to her uses Artoria Pendragon, so I believe it should be Artoria_Pendragon_(Fate/Stay_Night) to keep it consistent. Then you could do the same with other characters like Cu_Chulainn_(Fate/Stay_Night) instead of Lancer, Medusa_(Fate/Stay_Night) instead of Rider, Medea_(Fate/Stay_Night) instead of Caster, and so on for the non-qualified FSN characters that had chartags made ages ago when the rules were different for this site.

Archer would be a different case since his real identity is considered a spoiler for FSN. In his case, I'd go with Archer_(Fate/Stay_Night). Yeah, everyone and their grandma knows who he is 16 years after FSN came out, but to my understanding, a spoiler stays a spoiler forever on Danbooru.

I am practically on my hands and knees begging for a huge gardening endeavor into at least fixing the qualifiers. It'll be a chore to deimply everything, make the changes, reimply everything, and adjust the wikis, but at the end of the day, I think it'll be worth it. I'd even do it myself and meticulously go through everything, although life would be so much simpler for me if I could just fix a chartag directly instead of going through this whole rigamarole.

For many Fate characters, we could get away with not qualifying them at all if we really wanted to. If you're searching a tag like Astolfo or Nero Claudius on Danbooru, then you're looking for the Fate character, not the historical figure.

I don't know about that. There's always the potential of some future gacha game using historical figures to copy off of FGO's success. Using a *_(fate) qualifier for characters may be useless in the present, but who knows what will happen down the line? Better to avoid that mess when we can.

*_(all) tags should only be used for major characters that have many different appearances across multiple games, like Saber. They're shouldn't be used just because a character shows up in Fate/Grand Order with a new skin or two. Tags like Mordred (Fate) (all) are overkill, all she has is two different versions, a regular version and a swimsuit version.

I may be wrong, but I believe it was agreed upon that if a character has at least three variants, then a *_(fate)_(all) umbrella tag would be justifiable. I think it came up in a previous discussion when I made a BUR for medb (swimsuit saber) (fate) -> medb (fate) (all), who is another character like Mordred who only has two forms but has an umbrella tag. Since then it's been dialed back, but these few instances were never fixed, which is but one more source of confusion.

I couldn't disagree more. I'm not a Fate fan and I don't play Fate/Grand Order. The most confusing thing about Fate is that we don't have tags for each unique version of a character. I look at a tag like BB (Swimsuit Mooncancer) and I'm left utterly confused about why three totally different versions of BB - baseball cap BB, gyaru BB, and vampire cape BB - are all under the same tag. Then I see BB shot! and I'm wondering why the hell nurse BB is a general tag when her other outfits are character tags. Are there more versions of BB? I don't know, maybe there's some other general tag for some other outfit that I'm missing, or maybe there's some other ascension level that I don't know about. With tagging like this, I can't trust anything.

BB Shot! is the name of a Craft Essence, which is card you equip to Servants in the game to strengthen them and have illustrations that sometimes depict characters in unique outfits. A tag named after a Craft Essence is usually used to designate such outfits. They're usually general tags, and in previous discussions users were against having a separate cosplay tag in the case of Dangerous Beast since it made it a character tag (topic #13928, topic #14540). But as has been mentioned in those threads there are the trio of CEs (Formalcraft, Limited/Zero Over, Imaginary Around) that are still currently considered character tags despite not really being different from any other CE tag in any particularly meaningful way since they're not meant to be the names of characters.

There is also Spiritron Dress, which is an unlockable battle sprite costume for a Servant which in-game visually at least is the exact same kind of thing as the different Ascension levels. That is what Olympian Bloomers is an example of.

I'm not against a different character tag for every ascension form, as long as after we agree on it, it can be freely tagged without others questioning there are too many character tags around and having the tag gardening work undone.

Perhaps there needs to be a brief explanation for the various ways costumes are introduced in FGO;

Ascension: The mechanic for leveling up Servants, which unlocks new illustrations and outfits throughout the character's Ascension tree. First Ascension is their starting outfit, then Second Ascension is unlocked, then Third Ascension, then a special illustration of the character in the "Final Ascension", but their outfit is just one of the previous three so that's why it's never been brought up in this topic. Ascension outfits thus comprise the bulk of the various outfits seen in FGO due to the number of Servants available. The only characters that don't have their outfits change are Welfare Servants, or four-star characters who are given for free after clearing a limited-time event's storyline.

Spiritron Dress: A character skin for a Servant that can be acquired by spending QP and materials. It can take the place of an Ascension costume and provides new voice lines in battle.

Mystic Code: An outfit for the Master (player character) to equip, which allows for use of three Commands on a party of Servants. The Commands will vary depending on the Mystic Code, which then changes strategies on how to play the game. Both this and Spiritron Dress have the fewest number of costumes for tagging purposes.

Craft Essence: As @EB said, CEs are basically bromides that Servants equip as an 'accessory' to give them various benefits. Some of them depict characters in a costume that is not seen anywhere else, and are the second-most prevalent source of alternate costumes for tagging. Limited/Zero Over is the one glaring exception (because what's the Fate franchise without exceptions at this point? *eyeroll*) because that design has transcended its origin and become a full-fledged character in Sengo Muramasa (Fate). Seriously, I still don't understand why Limited/Zero Over exists as a tag when that and the Sengo Muramasa tag are exactly the same thing. You might as well be making a red rose and a crimson rose mess with all this redundancy. I've also been getting worried about how the FGO wiki is getting absolutely clogged with the growing list of CEs when it would function better as a separate list like the List of Fate Series Characters.

Anyway, I'm not gung-ho on making a chartag for every Ascension form, but if there is a major consensus for it, then I'll accept that I'm on the losing end of an argument and go with it.

Would a new tag category be useful in this case, regarding specific outfit sets (eg. cosplays, uniforms, ...)?

@Mysterious_Uploader I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean umbrella tags like mystic_code_(fate), spiritron_dress_(fate), ascension_(fate) and craft essence?

I think Fate character tagging is already a mess as it is, largely due to F/GO and its handling of events, costumes and character variants.

A lot of the versions that get chartags (swimsuit variants, Halloween variants, so on) really shouldn't get a full-on chartag in my opinion considering they're pretty literally the same character with a different dress on (or a swimsuit on, or a robe like Cu Caster, or whatever). Alternate chartags should to me be for alternate versions that bring actual changes to who the character is.

@Astolfo I believe the trouble with this is, as mentioned before, newer Danbooru users can only search up to two or three tags (I can't remember off the top of my head), so the large number of chartags facilitates this. I believe this whole discussion started so that users have a way to look up a character's specific Ascension form without resorting to a ton of gentags for filtering. I figured the discussion would be settled with a CHARACTER_(fate) + *_ASCENSION search, but I guess I was wrong. *sigh*

For example: Saber/Saber Alter/Saber Lily/Artoria Pendragon (lancer) all get different chartags, but Artoria Pendragon (swimsuit archer) shouldn't get a chartag because she really is just.. Saber, in a bikini, and with a watergun. If we tag this as a chartag, then why isn't suited-up Saber in Fate/Zero a chartag?

Because Suited Saber was not defined as a wholly separate character back then. Fate/Zero came out in 2011, while FGO came out in 2015. If the official sources didn't define Suited Saber as a separate character in 2011, then we had no reason to make a chartag for her then. Of course now, in 2020 terms, that particular costume has been released as the Royal Brand Mystic Code for FGO, so... yeah. :/

To my knowledge, I could be wrong but we usually don't tag alt. outfits with new chartags in other franchises. Nearl (Arknights) is Nearl (Arknights) whether she's in full armour or in a summer swimsuit. Amagi (Azur Lane) is Amagi (Azur Lane) whether in a costume or in her original outfit. NTW-20 (Girls Frontline) is NTW-20 (Girls Frontline) whether in a full maid get-up, in Mod 3, or in original outfit. So on, so forth. The only difference Fate has in this case is that it markets and releases these alternate outfits as new Servants which is fucking stupid and only done so that people spend gacha money on them instead of just making them a costume like they actually are.

Welcome to the modern age of mobile gaming, friend. And reasons to draw porn.

Who knows what will happen with the tagging conventions for other series? They might get a rehaul similarly to what the Fate franchise desperately needs. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if other series went the same route of releasing separate costumes as full-on characters to pull in gachas.

But well this ship has sailed and this is how we tag Fate things now. Either way, adding ascensions as full-on chartags would just make it even more of a mess to work with but I suppose is the easiest way to tag it, if only for characters that actually have big changes between ascensions like Salieri. eg. A tag for the ascension version and a "catch-all" for the character in general. Fate/Grand Order was a mistake.

I don't think there's anything wrong with giving alt skins their own tags, many of them aren't as simple as just adding a gen tag or two to a character search. Even for the skins that are just swimsuits, it should be all or nothing. Doing it for some skins but not others would be completely arbitrary.

@blindVigil That would be agreeable for characters with drastic changes. But if we neglect the ones with slight changes, who knows if anyone will bitch about it down the line? Hunting through every individual image to determine their Ascension costume gives me a headache just thinking about it, but it's slowly becoming apparent to me that a lot of folks prefer this over making general *_ascension tags.

To sum everything I've said up to now, this is my current stance on things:

• Danbooru badly needs to catch up with this whole trend of gacha games releasing alternate costumes as full-fledged characters. I don't care if we're talking about FGO, KanColle, Azur Lane, Arknights, or any other gacha game - this problem persists everywhere. If the Fate series was cleaned up in this regard, it could serve as the standard for how other series handle their own tagging. I feel the site is falling behind in this trend, which is causing a great deal of confusion with tagging and consistency.

• Despite how this discussion is going, I actually want to consider fixing the chartags' qualifiers first before moving on to alt. costume tags. Note how I bold this because if we did it the other way around, it'd be like putting the cart before the horse, and I would like to avoid that disaster as best as possible. At least with the qualifiers cleaned up, we would have a more solid foundation for expanding on a character's alternate forms.

• I personally do not care for making chartags for every conceivable Ascension form. I may be swayed if there is a solid list of characters who have dramatic changes where this would be worthwhile. As far as slight changes go though (see my Mata Hari example from before), I feel we would be crossing the line from meticulous to downright neurotic if we tried to tag those. I would be happier with general *_ascension tags, but there's also the problem of potential cross-pollination as I mentioned before, and with currently almost 193K images in the Fate series, it could potentially go south very quickly.

Benit149 said:

Welcome to the modern age of mobile gaming, friend. And reasons to draw porn.

Who knows what will happen with the tagging conventions for other series? They might get a rehaul similarly to what the Fate franchise desperately needs. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if other series went the same route of releasing separate costumes as full-on characters to pull in gachas.

Danbooru badly needs to catch up with this whole trend of gacha games releasing alternate costumes as full-fledged characters. I don't care if we're talking about FGO, KanColle, Azur Lane, Arknights, or any other gacha game - this problem persists everywhere. If the Fate series was cleaned up in this regard, it could serve as the standard for how other series handle their own tagging. I feel the site is falling behind in this trend, which is causing a great deal of confusion with tagging and consistency.

Despite how this discussion is going, I actually want to consider fixing the chartags' qualifiers first before moving on to alt. costume tags. Note how I bold this because if we did it the other way around, it'd be like putting the cart before the horse, and I would like to avoid that disaster as best as possible. At least with the qualifiers cleaned up, we would have a more solid foundation for expanding on a character's alternate forms.

Honestly, you could probably spin-off the mid-to-later part of evazion's post, and make that into the OP of an entirely new thread on the discussion of chartags for skins and costumes, since while comparing F/GO's particular case to KanColle/AL/GFL/AK is like comparing apples and pears/oranges, there is that wider point to be made about the consistency of the matter, as you mention. It's only come up here just now because Fate is probably among the most notable copyrights on the site to have a variety of tags for all its costumes, chartags or general tags.

I would partially disagree with your surprise due to the nature of those games, or at least, some of them. I sincerely doubt GFL or AK, for instance, would release costumes as full-on characters. Azur Lane, though, that's definitely got a few units like that, last I recall. Heck, the best example of this is the child costumes - Azur Lane has released those as unique characters to be constructed, while in GFL, they are skins to be gotten for their respective units. I don't, however, disagree on the nature in which at least some gacha games are heading towards, ex. again Honkai Impact 3rd, Sid Story and Fire Emblem Heroes (units with separate attires, abilities and contexts for the first, multiple art for one unit and alternate costumes released as separate units for the second, and some of both the previous mentioned for the third, ala forum #164005).

But again, this is better suited for a thread of its own, especially since it partially ties into the alternate costume/official alternate costume discussion that's been on and off the past while, in forum #155138, forum #170635 and forum #171315. This thread, meanwhile, should stick to its Fate/ oriented discussion.

I had mentioned it previously in this thread but I feel it got ignored, which is absolutely frustrating because I believe fixing the qualifiers is an essential building block that the Fate series totally needs if we're going to take tag gardening seriously for the Fate series now.

I did make a thread before (forum #160852), but it got completely ignored.

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean umbrella tags like mystic_code_(fate), spiritron_dress_(fate), ascension_(fate) and craft essence?

I think Fate character tagging is already a mess as it is, largely due to F/GO and its handling of events, costumes and character variants.

A new tag category, similar to artist/copyright/character/meta. Although it's a bit of a terrible idea i guess.

I'm once again for the most simple and therefore best solution (see evazion's post).

Damian0358 said:

I would partially disagree with your surprise due to the nature of those games, or at least, some of them. I sincerely doubt GFL or AK, for instance, would release costumes as full-on characters. Azur Lane, though, that's definitely got a few units like that, last I recall. Heck, the best example of this is the child costumes - Azur Lane has released those as unique characters to be constructed, while in GFL, they are skins to be gotten for their respective units. I don't, however, disagree on the nature in which at least some gacha games are heading towards, ex. again Honkai Impact 3rd, Sid Story and Fire Emblem Heroes (units with separate attires, abilities and contexts for the first, multiple art for one unit and alternate costumes released as separate units for the second, and some of both the previous mentioned for the third).

I'm afraid I'm not acclimated to other games besides FGO, so those discussions will have to happen elsewhere. I would like to keep this particular thread to the Fate franchise and use other series as examples for now.

Mysterious_Uploader said:

I did make a thread before (forum #160852), but it got completely ignored.

Funny how Danbooru works that way. The important issues are fully disregarded, but trivial shit like this gets debated on for ages.

Im butting into this thread speaking for us non-upgraded users , searching in this site is already a bit hard sometimes due to the 2 tag limit search for normal users , i belive that adding more tags on top of it would make things even messier for us as well for new or casual users.

Benit149 said:

Because Suited Saber was not defined as a wholly separate character back then. Fate/Zero came out in 2011, while FGO came out in 2015. If the official sources didn't define Suited Saber as a separate character in 2011, then we had no reason to make a chartag for her then. Of course now, in 2020 terms, that particular costume has been released as the Royal Brand Mystic Code for FGO, so... yeah. :/

That's pretty much the crux of my comment - I just find the concept of tagging alternate costumes with chartags to be needless, even if those costumes are released under a name or this or that, and it only really seems to be a thing with Fate - and possibly other gachas as mentioned in responses to my previous comment.

I certainly wouldn't want to go back and tag fanart of suited Saber with a new chartag even if F/GO has introduced that costume with a new name. Saber-in-a-suit is just.. Saber, in a suit. It's not a whole new character, there's no real reason to tag it as a whole new character to me. Artoria with a bikini and a watergun is just Artoria with a bikini and a watergun even if the game slaps a different class on it and markets it as a brand new super cool 5 star SSR!!! so similarly having a full-on chartag for that doesn't seem logical. Hell, with male Servants only ever getting actual costumes for Summer events, and not full-on new Servants, it kind of goes along with the notion that most "alternate forms", in particular for Summer or Halloween, are just the same character in different clothes.

I don't think we tag any of the costumes released in F/GO with chartags either, which is how it should be imo. Astolfo in his casual clothes from Apocrypha, that's not a new character, that's just Astolfo (Fate) wearing a different outfit (which we are tagging with a gen-tag Memories at Trifas now due to F/GO's costume, I suppose). Same for Mordred's casual clothes from Apocrypha, we're just tagging that Mordred (Fate). Orrr we don't tag Mash Kyrielight's Ortenaus outfit with a chartag (even though, for some reason, mash_kyrielight_(senpai_killer_outfit) is a chartag).

To me tagging these costumes or swimsuits as chartags, is like the equivalent of tagging Kaname Madoka as "kaname_madoka" for the regular and "kaname_madoka_(magical_girl)" for the magical girl form or vice versa (while we do have Ultimate Madoka for that form, because it actually IS different.)
Or tagging Raphtalia as raphtalia_(swimsuit) because she gets fanart of the swimsuit she had in the beach episode. Or giving Suzumiya Haruhi a different chartag for her appearance in Disappearance (haha)
So on so forth with every anime where characters appear in different costumes yet only have one character tag.

Etc, etc.

Well, ultimately that's just my stance on the mess that is Fate tagging and tagging characters/outfits. But I digress from the original subject.
With some of the ascensions, like Salieri, there's at least a drastic change in appearance that would warrant being tagged differently, a lot more so than with Summer forms or the like. I don't have any other off the top of my head other than Avenger Nobunaga, but I'm sure there's other characters with ascensions that offer drastic changes that ought to be tagged. Well, there's Kama's different forms too, especially since we tag Lord El-Melloi II separately from Waver Velvet.
I guess it depends on what we would consider different enough to warrant a separate tag. Is Murasaki Shikibu (Fate)'s third ascension different enough? What about Kiyohime (Fate/Grand Order)'s third ascension?

Astolfo said:

That's pretty much the crux of my comment - I just find the concept of tagging alternate costumes with chartags to be needless, even if those costumes are released under a name or this or that, and it only really seems to be a thing with Fate - and possibly other gachas as mentioned in responses to my previous comment.

I certainly wouldn't want to go back and tag fanart of suited Saber with a new chartag even if F/GO has introduced that costume with a new name. Saber-in-a-suit is just.. Saber, in a suit. It's not a whole new character, there's no real reason to tag it as a whole new character to me. Artoria with a bikini and a watergun is just Artoria with a bikini and a watergun, so similarly having a full-on chartag for that doesn't seem logical.

I have to disagree with you there for one reason - the character ID numbers used in FGO. Referring to the Servant List by ID, we see the following for all the variants of Artoria Pendragon:

2. Saber
3. Saber Alter
4. Saber Lily
73. Santa Alter
78. Artoria Pendragon (Lancer Alter)
86. Mysterious Heroine X
119. Artoria Pendragon (Lancer)
129. Artoria Pendragon (Swimsuit Archer)
155. Mysterious Heroine X (Alter)
179. Artoria Pendragon (Swimsuit Rider Alter)
222. Mysterious Heroine XX (Foreigner)
265. Artoria Pendragon (Swimsuit Ruler) (Fate)
???. Artoria Pendragon (Caster)

Oh god, just looking at this list is painful. I dread to think what the future will have in store.

Anyway, as you were saying, FGO itself treats "Artoria with a bikini and a watergun" as a separate character from, say, "Artoria Alter wearing a maid costume" or "Artoria Lancer wearing a bunnysuit" wholly based on the ID number they are given. I think that's evidence enough to support keeping them as separate character tags. Even though they are indeed based off of the same character, these variants are given slight tweaks to their character design and personality (right down to even the size of their breasts) exactly for the same reason you said. Plus DW doesn't give a fuck about originality and wants to profit off of the Saberface/Rinface/Sakuraface/WhoeverElseFace craze as much as possible, instead of actually putting in the effort to make brand new characters.

As far as Saber-in-a-suit from Fate/Zero is concerned, there is no official designation like an ID number for the other variants. Saber-in-a-suit doesn't exist in the game, so no one's going to treat her as a separate character. Like you said, she's just Saber in a suit, so gentags have been used for that outfit. Of course, now that it's a Mystic Code in FGO, that throws a monkey wrench into that discussion as well.

Hell, with male Servants only ever getting actual costumes for Summer events, and not full-on new Servants, it kind of goes along with the notion that most "alternate forms", in particular for Summer or Halloween, are just the same character in different clothes.

Refer to the ID number argument above. Plus, sex sells.

I don't think we tag any of the costumes released in F/GO with chartags either, which is how it should be imo. Astolfo in his casual clothes from Apocrypha, that's not a new character, that's just Astolfo (Fate) wearing a different outfit (which we are tagging with a gen-tag Memories at Trifas now due to F/GO's costume, I suppose).

I may be wrong, but I believe that Memories at Trifas is the only outfit that doubles as a Spiritron Dress and a Craft Essence at the same time. See https://fategrandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Let's_Depart! for more info (stupid link won't work right because of the exclamation mark). I was the one who originally based the name off the CE, not realizing there was an SD for it too. Someone else came in and fixed that afterwards.

Same for Mordred's casual clothes from Apocrypha, we're just tagging that Mordred (Fate). Or we don't tag Mash Kyrielight's Ortenaus outfit with a chartag (even though, for some reason, mash_kyrielight_(senpai_killer_outfit) is a chartag).

Now I'm as genuinely stumped as you are. I think because there is a lack of standardization, taggers are so hopelessly confused that they just do whatever they want and call it a day. Since it's been ignored for so long, that's why we have such a tagging disaster on our hands.

To me tagging these costumes or swimsuits as chartags, is like the equivalent of tagging Kaname Madoka as "kaname_madoka" for the regular and "kaname_madoka_(magical_girl)" for the magical girl form or vice versa (while we do have Ultimate Madoka for that form, because it actually IS different.) Or tagging Raphtalia as raphtalia_(swimsuit) because she gets fanart of the swimsuit she had in the beach episode. Or giving Suzumiya Haruhi a different chartag for her appearance in Disappearance (haha) so on so forth with every anime where characters appear in different costumes yet only have one character tag.

I think you're jumping the gun here. Let's just keep this conversation to Fate for now. If we fret about how these rules are going to apply to non-gacha game/anime series, I'm afraid this discussion might not go anywhere out of fear of misconstruing the issue.

With some of the ascensions, like Salieri, there's at least a drastic change in appearance that would warrant being tagged differently, a lot more so than with Summer forms or the like. I don't have any other off the top of my head other than Avenger Nobunaga, but I'm sure there's other characters with ascensions that offer drastic changes that ought to be tagged. Well, there's Kama's different forms too, especially since we tag Lord El-Melloi II separately from Waver Velvet.

If there is a start to populating Ascension tags, whether they be generalized or specific to a character, it'd be easiest to start with the most obvious candidates like Salieri, Lord El-Melloi II/Waver Velvet, and the Swimsuit Servants.

I guess it depends on what we would consider different enough to warrant a separate tag. Is Murasaki Shikibu (Fate)'s third ascension different enough? What about Kiyohime (Fate/Grand Order)'s third ascension?

Warranting who and which form gets an Ascension tag should be left for a new thread dedicated to it. For those two examples you gave, they most certainly would.

Tagging character is already tedious enough when you don't play the game, but I don't think that we will be able to both keep it simple and distinguish the different appearances of a character at the same time.

Costume as general tags will make them stand out less. I fear they will be easily forgotten. Do we have data about how frequently other costumes, for example those from Love Live! or Idolmaster, are forgotten? The idea of a new category is appealing, but then we would be discussing whether the tags from list_of_uniforms should be gentags or costume-tags.

Saber/Saber Alter/Saber Lily/Artoria Pendragon (lancer) all get different chartags, but Artoria Pendragon (swimsuit archer) shouldn't get a chartag because she really is just.. Saber, in a bikini, and with a watergun. If we tag this as a chartag, then why isn't suited-up Saber in Fate/Zero a chartag?

I remember that we already had a similar discussion and someone pointed out that Saber and Artoria Pendragon (swimsuit archer) are different characters universe-wise (they can even coexist simultaneously) and thus should be different chartags. This is not the case with Saber from Fate/Zero, which is really the same entity as in Fate/Stay Night. I guess this is not the case either with these Ascension ? However, this system is already wobbly because of couple such as Hibiki (Kantai Collection)/Verniy (Kantai Collection) or Kaname Madoka/Ultimate Madoka.

I would say that we should accept for things to be overcomplicated with FGO. Tag each distinct form with a chartag if you can, hope that someone else will do it if you can't, and put an umbrella-tag to be able to merge everything. By distinct, I mean both universe-wise and feature-wise (like for Saliery). If it is just clothes, a gentag is enough.
-------------------------------

• When a Fate character first appears in one game, but later appears in Fate/Grand Order, then we don't really need to keep tagging which game they originally appeared in. Characters like Astolfo and Mordred get tagged as Fate/Apocrypha or Fate/Grand Order or both, pretty much at random. Other characters like Hassan of Serenity or Suzuka Gozen get 4 or 5 copyright tags per post for a single character, just because they originally appeared in some spinoff of a spinoff of a spinoff.

The problem is that if you search for Fate/Apocrypha or Fate/Prototype: Fragments of Blue and Silver, you will then find any picture featuring the characters from these novels... except for a few characters that are too popular to be tagged as such (though they represent the vast majority of the copyright's images).

This is pointless, at a certain point it stops mattering where a character originally appeared, especially when they're only popular because of Fate/Grand Order.

It may be true for Hassan of Serenity or Suzuka Gozen, but the sudden surge of pictures for Astolfo and Mordred was in mid-2017, with 417 picture for Astolfo in July 2017 (the Fate/Apocrypha anime begun on July 2nd). This is difficult to link the popularity of one character to one copyright, but easy to look where it appeared for the first time. That's why I think we should exclusively use the original copytag.
This problem could also be solved by nuking the FGO copytag

Yeah I agree with using character tags for each different form. I don't play the game and I don't have any intention to in the future, I don't see why anyone should be forced to learn whatever ascension or evolution stage a character's form is instead of just using a name for the character form itself like we already do for most of FGO, Azur Lane, Girls Frontline etc.

"character name" is easier to remember than "generic second ascension that applies to a thousand characters" in terms of visual recognition.

Benit149 said:

I have to disagree with you there for one reason - the character ID numbers used in FGO.
[...]
Anyway, as you were saying, FGO itself treats "Artoria with a bikini and a watergun" as a separate character from, say, "Artoria Alter wearing a maid costume" or "Artoria Lancer wearing a bunnysuit" wholly based on the ID number they are given.

I'm aware of that, yeah - and I'd assume this was one of the reasons why every single variant is given a character tag. It's kind of a technicality though, really with these variants it pretty much feels like the DW only decided to treat them as separate characters so they can market them, since F/GO doesn't have a way to sell costumes - and they'd have probably just been in a "costume gacha" à la GFL if F/GO did have such a system in place.
I just think it's a flimsy reason because in practice it's not really any different from the non-gacha characters I brought up as examples like Madoka or Raphtalia getting swimsuit tags or magical girl form tags; it wasn't really "jumping the gun" in the sense of, I don't expect the discussion to ever come up about such rules being applied to anything outside of Fate. God I hope not. More so they were meant as extreme examples to point out why I find it over the top to tag every FGO variant as a character, wherein a lot of them are just [this character that already exists but in a swimsuit/halloween costume/whatever alternate outfit and ever so slightly altered to pretend it's a different character and sell it]. And for the variants that aren't so samey (such as, for example, Saber Alter or Saber Lily) then a new chartag is perfectly fine since they are vastly different. Much like Ultimate Madoka for example.

But well, this particular subject I feel is only tangentially related to the topic of tagging ascensions, so I'll refrain from responding on this topic now since I feel I've said what I meant to say and don't really want to derail the subject any further.

Rignak said:

I remember that we already had a similar discussion and someone pointed out that Saber and Artoria Pendragon (swimsuit archer) are different characters universe-wise (they can even coexist simultaneously) and thus should be different chartags. This is not the case with Saber from Fate/Zero, which is really the same entity as in Fate/Stay Night. I guess this is not the case either with these Ascension ?
[...]
I would say that we should accept for things to be overcomplicated with FGO.

The ascensions are kind of an overcomplicated mess as well.
In some (most, probably) cases, it's the same Servant with an outfit change, sometimes slight (eg. Mata Hari or Shuten Douji), sometimes more noticeable (eg. Astolfo or Jeanne d'Arc). In some cases, there are drastic appearance changes (Kiyohime's hair colour, Shikibu's appearance, Sei Shoganon, etc etc.) and in rare cases they are pretty much different aspects altogether (Avenger Nobunaga's three different ascensions are basically three different characters).

In all cases though, they don't co-exist with the base form of the character. To go back to Benit149's response above, they have the same ID in the game, it's the exact same character, the same entity. I don't even know how it's supposed to work "in universe", it's your one Servant powering up, I suppose? But either way, "Stage 3 Kiyohime" doesn't coexist with "Stage 1 Kiyohime", unlike I suppose swimsuit Artoria and normal Artoria for example.

Rignak said:

This problem could also be solved by nuking the FGO copytag

I don't know if this was a joke or not but thing is a lot of Fate characters (probably the majority even, at this point) ARE from F/GO. They haven't been anywhere else, in any other Fate franchise, they originate straight from F/GO. What would you tag those, just Fate (Series)?

nonamethanks said:

Yeah I agree with using character tags for each different form. I don't play the game and I don't have any intention to in the future, I don't see why anyone should be forced to learn whatever ascension or evolution stage a character's form is instead of just using a name for the character form itself like we already do for most of FGO, Azur Lane, Girls Frontline etc.

"character name" is easier to remember than "generic second ascension that applies to a thousand characters" in terms of visual recognition.

Thing is in most cases that 'form' doesn't even have a name. The cases where it does are rare, there are some fringe cases like Avenger Nobunaga (which are already tagged accordingly) and Salieri which we are discussing currently and can have a specific name, but in a lot of cases, they're just.. the same character. In a different get-up or with a noticeably different appearance that doesn't have a particular name.

For example, Kiyohime at Stage 1 and Kiyohime at Stage 3 are just.. Kiyohime. It's the same character, same name, same ID, even though at Stage 1 she looks like this and at Stage 3 she looks like this. There's no other name to give to the character tag other than adding some non-descriptive suffix like _(Stage_3). That said having it as a chartag means it would be easier to tag it if one doesn't know the copyright, since one quick check would tell you which Kiyohime tag is the proper one, rather than a gentag you don't even know about.