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howto:named_outfits wiki (formerly "WIP Guide to Gacha Game Tagging")

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Benit149

All right folks, I've decided to go ahead and post what I've worked on in an article I've titled Guide to Gacha Game Tagging, as mentioned in topic #17356 and topic #17375. There is obviously a demand for standardizing how characters in gacha games should be tagged since they are evolving into their own niche, and I strongly believe that Danbooru needs to catch up in this regard. Please take a good look through, and if it's at least acceptable, I will make it a wiki so that anyone can edit it, rather than just me in this forum thread. There are some things I wish to see improved for this article, particularly:

EDIT: 2020-09-16

RELEASED WIKI: howto:named_outfits (name subject to change)

The original version of this article was deemed to be more focused on problems specific to Fate/Grand Order, rather than functioning as a generalized guide to standardizing gacha game tagging. I have thus eliminated any and all references to F/GO except for the mentions in Introduction and List of Gacha Games. I likewise removed sections that would have been deemed irrelevant here, and altered the wording to be as impartial as possible instead of sardonically commentating on game developers' monetization practices here and there.

Things I'd like to see improved would be:

  • a non-Azur Lane example in One Character, One Skin because my knowledge of non-F/GO games is extremely limited and I don't want to use F/GO examples, yet I want to promote a sense of variety in what series are used for examples
  • how sparse in explanations One Costume For Multiple Characters is, since I have not dabbled very much into this subject
  • clarification in the Cosplay section since looking around for examples was rather confusing for me due to how mishandled it currently is. I used post #3858233 as my guide for it, but I could be wrong.
  • whether or not there is value in compiling a list of gacha games when this issue doesn't just exclusively cover gachas

Please DO NOT discuss anything regarding Fate/Grand Order in this thread. That has been widely regarded as an exception among exceptions when it comes to tagging, and there may need to be a separate guide made for that specific game. If you wish to discuss about F/GO in-depth, please go to topic #17356 ("The Fate/Grand Retagging Project") and voice your concerns there. This thread is intended to be a generalized discussion on gacha games (and by extension video games as a medium) and how to tag characters.

GUIDE TO GACHA GAME TAGGING

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Danbooru's guide on how to tag characters and their alternate outfits that appear in gacha-styled mobile games.

This genre of video gaming started around the early 2010s when mobile gaming increased in popularity, and became wildly popular in Japan with the release of arguably the first gacha-styled video game, Dragon Collection. With this new business model rapidly gaining success, it wouldn't be long before others followed suit, altering Dragon Collection's concept of virtual hoarding and adapting other trends like card games, farm-building, loot boxes, and pulling for characters.

Danbooru itself started in 2005. This is approximately a five-year gap between the site's start and the influx of gacha games that would follow around the mid-2010s. Unfortunately, this means that tagging characters from gacha games has become a complex issue and is debated on per individual game. To make matters worse, characters from existing copyrights are imported into gacha games to feed on fans' familiarity with a particular series and its cast. There lacked a means of standardizing these characters all across the board. The conventions that work great for one title may not work so well for another, which then leads to massive inconsistencies and confusion.

The hope of this guide is to act as a foundation for how to tag any character regardless of which game they come from.

As discussed in the forums however, Fate/Grand Order has been separated into its own discussion due to the unique circumstances surrounding how it releases characters and alternate outfits. This article has deliberately excluded any examples from that game for this purpose. Please go to topic #17356 ("The Fate/Grand Retagging Project") if you wish to discuss tagging conventions for F/GO specifically.

TERMINOLOGY

Gacha (ガチャ) is shorthand for gachapon (ガチャポン), which in itself is an alternate saying of gashapon (ガシャポン). Whatever the reading, this is a type of Japanese-produced vending machine that customers dispense money into, then they twist a crank and the machine dispenses a plastic egg containing a randomly-selected toy or prize. Usually this is one toy out of a collectible set, incentivizing customers to pay more to complete the collection. Gasha/gacha is the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of the crank being twisted, while pon is the sound of the toy dropping into the receptacle.

Similarly, a gacha video game is a branch of mobile gaming where players save up a fictional in-game currency, then use it to roll the virtual vending machine (think of spinning a slot machine or roulette wheel). What players roll for tend to be desired characters, character classes, weapons, vehicles, materials, add-ons or whatnot, depending on the type of game being played. For simplicity's sake, these will be called prizes. The majority of this discussion is going to cover characters and alternate costumes, since Danbooru is a character-based imageboard.

Furthermore, prizes are often categorized by rarity levels, with lower rarity prizes being easier to collect but are not as desirable as those with higher rarities. Snagging the higher rarity prizes depends on a luck variable, and sometimes obtaining free in-game currency is purposely designed to be extremely difficult and cumbersome. This then incentivizes players to spend money for the in-game currency, allowing for more rolls in the hope of picking up a higher rarity prize. These are considered to be microtransactions, and while the games themselves are free-to-play and the gacha element typically optional, they are actually designed with this business model in mind.

DANBOORU’S TAGGING GUIDELINES

Due to the complex nature of gacha games and how they market characters, alternate costumes, and/or alternate forms, Danbooru’s guidelines for separating everything with tags work differently from non-gacha titles. Make note that these conventions are not exclusive to gacha games - console games and MMORPGs also use similar systems for releasing characters and alternate forms/outfits. This article primarily focuses on gacha games because the bulk of new releases tend to originate from there, but it is not a concept exclusive to gachas. Regardless of what game type is being dealt with, there are some categories to go over with how these are treated here.

Developers often recycle an already-released character and have an official artist design a different costume for them, then market that character as downloadable content (DLC) or a prize to roll for in the gacha. This then complicates tagging these alternate costumes because while they literally are the same character just wearing a different outfit, the game itself treats them as an entirely different character by giving that costume an official name. Compounding things is that these characters may possess different skill sets, character classes, and/or be categorized according to an in-game ID number, further proving that the developers intended for these alternate costumes to be treated as full characters.

That last sentence is especially important for Danbooru’s purposes, particularly the phrase, "Alternate costumes to be treated as full characters". When it comes to video games, that is how a named costume should be treated here – with a character tag, not just treating it as the same character wearing a different outfit. For Danbooru’s purposes, this is called a variant. Other terms that can be used interchangeably are forms, versions, and alternate costumes, but this article will stick to the term variant for consistency's sake.

This is where video games are developing into their own niche with handling characters, and has been a growing source of confusion in the last few years for one simple reason: Most forms of media don't name their alternate outfits. For a non-video game example, Yoko Littner's swimsuit (post #178763) that she wears in a single episode of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann doesn't have an official name attached to it; it's just a swimsuit. Another example is Tomoe Hotaru's black dress (post #2227732) that she frequently wears in Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon. The creators never assigned a name to it; it's just a dress she wears. Therefore, regardless if the costume comes from an anime, video game, movie, book, or other form of media, if the creators/developers don't give a name to an alternate outfit, then don't give it one here.

Further discussion is needed regarding an outfit that was initially released without a name, then retroactively given a name later in the franchise's life, and whether or not it should be likewise retroactively tagged with a new character tag. While this is uncommon, it does happen.
- Benit149

In contrast, a gacha example would be Azur Lane's Sirius, who has a swimsuit that is officially called Midsummer Seirios. This means that it should be given the same treatment here by denoting a character tag (or chartag for shorthand) to it.

That is the primary difference between tagging characters and outfits from gacha games and those from non-gacha titles. Video games have developed systems of their own as far as officially naming a character's alternate outfit, and Danbooru users then tag according to whatever conventions the official sources use. Console and MMO games have downloadable content (DLC) for players to purchase said costumes, and gacha games treat these as new gacha prizes.

DEFAULT + ONE VARIANT

Using the Sirius example mentioned above, the variant of her that was released first in Azur Lane is considered to be her default variant, or just default. The default's tag would be:

Danbooru already has a tagging system that pairs character names with the copyright as a qualifier, separating them from a character with the same name in a different copyright (called disambiguation here). Later in the game's life, the developers released an alternate costume; a swimsuit that was given the name Midsummer Seirios. This would be her holiday variant. By this, I refer to limited-time variants who are only available for rolling during a specific period of the year, and their character designs will often reflect this. The three most popular holidays are Summer (or 'Swimsuit' variants), Halloween, and Christmas. Some gacha games may incorporate other holidays like Valentines or Easter for character design purposes. Another catchall term that can be used is special variant if there is no holiday attached to the costume.

To facilitate this, a new chartag is created:

The original sirius_(azur_lane) chartag is also added to function as an umbrella tag, compiling any and every post of Sirius regardless of variants. If a user then wanted to exclude Midsummer Seirios from a search and just look up Sirius' default variant, they can then do a sirius_(azur_lane) -sirius_(midsummer_seirios)_(azur_lane) search. The naming convention for a holiday/special variant's chartag would be:

  • character_(holiday/special_variant)_(copyright)

There is some debate as to whether or not the default should get the same treatment as the holiday variant for consistency’s sake, or if it’s best to just leave them as is. At the moment, it probably safest to handle these cases on a game-to-game basis since no one is going to be familiar with every single game out there in the market.
- Benit149

ONE CHARACTER, ONE SKIN

This is not the same as the default version of a character being functionally different from a separate version of the same character (or "variant"). A skin really is just a character wearing a different outfit while retaining their in-game functionality, whether they be skill sets, classes, abilities, and what have you. This is yet another way for developers to incentivize players rolling for a character so that they can then obtain the character skin.

Using Bremerton from Azur Lane as an example, her initial character model was first released as a prize to be rolled for (post #3836613). Therefore, that tag would be:

Then the developers released a full-on new skin for Bremerton that players could obtain, that being her Scorching-Hot Training outfit (post #3846884). Her functionality in the game doesn’t change, but her appearance does. To facilitate this, a new chartag is created:

Not only that, the original bremerton_(azur_lane) chartag is also added to function as an umbrella tag, compiling any and every post of Azur Lane's Bremerton, the same way that we did for Sirius earlier. It follows the same logic as a character with a holiday/special variant, except that the naming convention would be:

  • character_(skin)_(copyright)
ONE COSTUME FOR MULTIPLE CHARACTERS

Sometimes there is a singular alternate costume that will cover multiple characters with one brush stroke.

In Kantai Collection, there are Remodels; Warship Girls R uses the same Remodel concept; Azur Lane also does the same, but calls it Retrofit. Girls Frontline has Labyrinth of the Dark, a group of costumes that were released for just five characters rather than for a large portion of the case. Idolmaster likewise has named thematic outfits that multiple characters of a band will wear as a sort of uniform (barring minor design changes per character), like Cute & Girly, Sailor Swimsuit, or Cool & Sexy.

At the moment, this is the only category that uses general tags (or gentags) rather than specific chartags.

More discussion is needed as to whether or not it is desirable to leave it like this or to expand them as chartags. The crux of the argument is that gentags wind up getting 'lost' in the quagmire of dozens of other gentags describing everything in an image, while making chartags for every instance is far too cumbersome and pedantic.
- Benit149

COSPLAY

Use the default variant's chartag when dealing with any and all *_(cosplay) tags:

  • character_(copyright)_(cosplay)

If you are uploading a cosplay of a holiday/special variant, then tag it like this:

  • character1_(copyright) (chartag)
    • character1_(copyright)_(cosplay) (gentag)
    • character1_(holiday/special_variant)_(copyright) (chartag)
  • character2_(copyright) (chartag)
CHARACTERS FROM EXISTING COPYRIGHTS

As stated in the introduction, characters who already exist in previous forms of media are transferred into gacha games as prizes to be rolled for. Does this mean existing characters have to be renamed to fit with them being in a gacha game?

The simple answer is, no. Stick to the chartags that already exist, and use the gacha's copyright tag only if an image is applicable to the gacha game.

So what's the purpose of making copyright tags for gacha games if they don’t have to be used on existing characters? Original characters and/or concepts unique to the gacha game will pop up, which means that the copyright tag has to function as their origin. With Wild Arms: Million Memories, we have Brittany Shrewsbury; for Tales of the Rays, we have Ix Nieves and Mileena Weiss; for Star Ocean Anamnesis, we have Evelysse; for the Madoka Magica game, we have Tamaki Iroha, Futaba Sana, Yui Tsuruno and others. So on and so forth.

If a character originated from a gacha game and nowhere else, then there is practical use for a copyright tag. Likewise, official art of existing characters can fall under the gacha's copyright since that's where it's being marketed.

IN CONCLUSION

The aim is to simplify things by using examples and already-existing tagging conventions, while defining why there is a difference between video game media and other forms of media when it comes to handling characters. The hope is to standardize this process so that what works for one gacha game can work for another, rather than making up unique rules on a game-to-game basis that will wind up conflicting with each other.

LIST OF GACHA GAMES

Let's get into the games that these guidelines are applicable to. Some of them are mobile spin-offs of existing copyrights, while others are wholly original titles. Regardless if the game is active or defunct, they will go here. The titles will be listed in alphabetical order.

To reiterate, Fate/Grand Order has been excluded from this article entirely, and thus from this list as well.

This is an ongoing work-in-progress. Any contributions made will be greatly appreciated.

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blindVigil

I haven't read the entire thing yet, but just at a glance my immediate first concern is that it's way too long. A point that's been brought up in regards to many of the older howtos and guidelines that needed to be rewritten recently, many of which probably still need to be rewritten, is that if you make them too long and too wordy, it's very difficult for people to digest them. This results in no one bothering to read it, and those that do read it struggling to process all of it. If possible, whatever this leads to will probably need to be made more concise and easier to read.

Otherwise, I commend your efforts to fix this giant mess of contradicting tagging policies.

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Benit149

blindVigil said:

I haven't read the entire thing yet, but just at a glance my immediate first concern is that it's way too long. A point that's been brought up in regards to many of the older howtos and guidelines that needed to be rewritten recently, many of which probably still need to be rewritten, is that if you make them too long and too wordy, it's very difficult for people to digest them. This results in no one bothering to read it, and those that do read it struggling to process all of it. If possible, whatever this leads to will probably need to be made more concise and easier to read.

Otherwise, I commend your efforts to fix this giant mess of contradicting tagging policies.

I know it is, and that certainly is one of the biggest problems I've had to face when making this, but there are so many bases to cover that it inevitably becomes lengthy. Perhaps there could be a notation at the beginning stating that a reader doesn't have to digest everything at once, but rather search for the topic they're interested in.

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Login to view

I'm currently reading through this, one of the complaints i have is how you're focusing a lot on the anti-consumeristic practices the games hold, while your focus should rather be how to tag characters.
Your saber example is pretty wrong, because while some, such as the swimsuit version, have little change at all, artoria pendragon (lancer) is an entirely different character, with a different backstory, design, and all. In general Fate most of the time has some reason on why characters are treated as different characters, or are at least distinguished enough (see also: lancer vs cu chulainn alter (fate/grand order)).

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blindVigil

After reading the whole thing, I'm more certain than ever that this is primarily a Fate problem. Most other gacha games are a lot simpler in how they handle variants/skins/whatever, they stick mostly to a single approach and deviations are an exception. Meaning most of them should only need a simple solution.

Then we've got FGO over here doing basically everything preceeding games have done all at once. Multiple level up forms, which are drastically inconsistent in how they differ, unlike other games where each form is progressively more different than the last. Alt forms as separate characters, alt skins that aren't separate characters, non-playable costumes introduced in events/CEs, some of which are probably going to become alt forms/skins later.

I don't think it's possible to make a set of rules that applies to all gacha games. FGO is gonna need its own set of rules separate from everybody else because that game is insane. The rest of the games can probably be divided into categories for further consideration.

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Astolfo

blindVigil said:

After reading the whole thing, I'm more certain than ever that this is primarily a Fate problem. Most other gacha games are a lot simpler in how they handle variants/skins/whatever, they stick mostly to a single approach and deviations are an exception. Meaning most of them should only need a simple solution.

FGO is gonna need its own set of rules separate from everybody else because that game is insane. The rest of the games can probably be divided into categories for further consideration.

Pretty much this, yeah. I'm not aware of any other gacha games that combines all of these:
1) Multiple level-up forms for the same character sometimes (Salieri, Kiyohime, etc)
2) Actually justified separate variants that are different characters (Artoria Lancer, Saber Astolfo, Cu Alter, Jeanne Alter, Saber Lily, etc.)
3) Separate variants that are basically just costumes (Swimsuit Jeanne Archer, Swimsuit Artoria Archer, etc., basically all the summer Servants and most of the Santas)
4) Variants of variants of characters, whether justified by differences or that are just costumes (Jeanne Alter Santa Lily, Swimsuit Jeanne Alter Berserker, Artoria Santa Rider, Mysterious Heroine XX, etc etc.)
5) Actual costumes that are given to characters or variants of characters (Memories at Trifas, Shinjuku outfits, etc)
6) Costumes that are only ever seen in cutscenes or Craft Essences or so on (Serafuku Astolfo, maid Chevalier d'Eon, Marie Antoinette Alter, etc.)
7) Probably more I'm missing at this point

I haven't played them all (I only really dabbled in GFL and actively play Arknights) but those two seem a lot more consistent in how they approach alternate forms and stick to one model, like selling costumes that are just costumes in Arknights.
This is, ultimately, a Fate/FGO centric problem, particularly egregious due to the way they handle holiday skins and also recycle the same two characters 20 times

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Obst

I've been wondering how to handle the Pokemon Masters characters for a while now, and this seems as good a time as any.

All the game's characters seem to fall under your "ONE VARIANT" catagory. Generally, the characters have a standard form in which they're wearing the outfit they're most associated with, and sometimes an alternate one. These alternate outfits are limited-time pulls associated with a holiday or event. For example, Steven Stone has a Standard outfit and a Summer outfit. They're canonically the same person wearing different clothes and using a different partner Pokemon, although they're treated as seperate characters mechanically. Sometimes characters will be wearing what's called a "Sygna Suit", as with Standard Cynthia and Sygna Suit Cynthia, but it's essentially the same thing.

This would lead to character tags such as: steven_stone_(summer) and cynthia_(sygna_suit)_(pokemon), rather than their in-game designations of summer steven and sygna suit cynthia, which seems reasonable to me. I've been tempted to create a sygna suit tag as well, although I'm not sure if both are needed.

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Damian0358

To add to the fact that this is indeed mainly a F/GO-centric problem, let's consider plenty of the other gachas that exist that are based on other intellectual properties, especially those based on shounen properties.

I myself play Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle, and in that game, you have countless units that ultimately end up sharing the same name due to the nature of the franchise. Concentrating on Son Gokuu only for this example, we have "Goku (Youth)", "Goku (Youth) (Great Ape)", "Goku", "Goku (Dokkan Butoden)" [an 8-Bit version of Goku released for April Fools'], "Goku (Angel)", "Goku (Kaioken)", "Super Saiyan Goku", "Super Saiyan Goku (Angel)", ""Super Saiyan Goku (Angel) (Super Kaioken)", "Super Saiyan 2 Goku", "Super Saiyan 2 Goku (Angel)", "Super Saiyan 3 Goku", "Super Saiyan 3 Goku (Angel)", "Super Saiyan God Goku", "Super Saiyan God SS Goku", "Super Saiyan God SS Goku (Kaioken)", "Goku (Ultra Instinct -Sign-)", "Goku (Ultra Instinct)", "Goku (GT)", "Super Saiyan Goku (GT)", "Super Saiyan 2 Goku (GT)", "Super Saiyan 3 Goku (GT)", "Super Saiyan 3 Goku (GT) (Golden Great Ape)", "Super Saiyan 4 Goku", "Super Full Power Saiyan 4 Goku", "Goku (Xeno)" and "Super Saiyan 3 Goku (Xeno)". And this is merely concentrating on units that only have him.

However, as indicated by the gen- and copy-tags I've linked, for most of these, there's typically a universality behind these units, whether it be in transformations or just the state the character is in. Whilst I haven't played Dragon Ball Legends, I'm aware that the same thing applies over there (perhaps with a different name format, but still), though it is more worthy to be mentioned due to having an original character in Shallot, though they actually more thoroughly upgrade units there, so rather than multiple Shallot units, you have one that goes through the Super Saiyan tree, going from 1 to 2 to 3 to God. Goku, meanwhile, still gets multiple units in multiple types in multiple forms/incarnations.

While, of course, this is likely something that other gachas might not have in an exact form, one could confidently say that for other gachas, in tag form, there's typically not a need to distinguish them through character tags.

Astolfo said:

I haven't played them all (I only really dabbled in GFL and actively play Arknights) but those two seem a lot more consistent in how they approach alternate forms and stick to one model, like selling costumes that are just costumes in Arknights.

To add to this, as I've mentioned in previous discussion before, on Danbooru, Arknights' alternate outfits/costumes are not tagged, and for Girls' Frontline, we only have one instance of it, with the Dark Fantasy Labyrinth of the Dark tags (originally just that 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). Really, the only relevant part for them in this discussion is a) whether or not alternate costumes should be tagged for them (ala Azur Lane); and b) if something is done about Remodel-style tags, what do we do with Elite II/Elite I and MOD3?

To my knowledge, Honkai Impact 3rd and Azur Lane probably have the closest examples relevant to the discussion; the former is being discussed at this moment in the thread @ManularChimera4 made, while the latter has child units which you can construct (GFL has its own child skins, but those are just skins for existing units, not new units on their own).

I'll cap off my post by sharing a list of military anthro gachas/collecting games that I had made, adapting it from another list I found online;

-- Army --

-- Navy --

-- Airforce --

-- Combined Arms --

-- Others (and Non-Anthro) --

Feel free to expand this list

Additionally, Punishing: Gray Raven, Artery Gear/Armor Girls, Eternal City/Forever 7th Capital, Alice Gear Aegis, Calabiyau and Core Fusion, which I think don't belong in this list specifically, but are still gacha games.

Also, in the previous thread, I mentioned Sid Story as another gacha game. And there's also Touhou Cannonball and Touhou Lost Word, Dragon Ball Z Bucchigiri Match, Ring Dream, Nyanko Daisensou, Megido72, Valkyrie Profile Anatomia, Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine... does BanG Dream! count?

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user 499293

For Arknights, should elite 2 skins be tagged like `character_(elite_ii)_(arknights)` then? or some other form? or just not have a separate E2 tag? Some are very distinct, e.g. Sora's E2 form has rabbit ears instead of wolf ears/tail.

I noticed there was significant under-tagging of skins but I wasn't really sure how to go about it.

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blindVigil

ルーミア said:

For Arknights, should elite 2 skins be tagged like `character_(elite_ii)_(arknights)` then? or some other form? or just not have a separate E2 tag? Some are very distinct, e.g. Sora's E2 form has rabbit ears instead of wolf ears/tail.

I noticed there was significant under-tagging of skins but I wasn't really sure how to go about it.

Currently they're tagged using elite ii (arknights). Honestly, it seems pretty useless. A few characters have strikingly different E2 portraits like Ptilopsis but many of them are either only slightly different or not different at all. There's also elite i (arknights), which is 100% useless, because it only applies to Amiya and her design doesn't even change between promotions. I think it makes more sense to make separate tags for the few characters that actually change a noticeable amount when promoted, if we're going to tag them at all.

Semi-related, I would be in support of tagging Arknights skins the same way we've been tagging Azur Lane skins.

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user 499293

blindVigil said:

Currently they're tagged using elite ii (arknights). Honestly, it seems pretty useless. A few characters have strikingly different E2 portraits like Ptilopsis but many of them are either only slightly different or not different at all. There's also elite i (arknights), which is 100% useless, because it only applies to Amiya and her design doesn't even change between promotions. I think it makes more sense to make separate tags for the few characters that actually change a noticeable amount when promoted, if we're going to tag them at all.

Semi-related, I would be in support of tagging Arknights skins the same way we've been tagging Azur Lane skins.

Oh, I didn't even see the elite ii tag. I figured they'd be character tags as with separate skins in Azur Lane, yea. I know many stay the same but two that are different off the top of my head are Texas's elite 2 (gives her two-tone hair with red highlights, similar to the winter messenger skin but with the tattered default clothing) and Sora's giving her completely different features. I don't know how different a skin would have to be to warrant its own tag.

I added texas (winter messenger) (arknights) to a few pages of Texas's pictures (there are probably many I missed), basing the name of the tag on Azur Lane's skins' tagging. Hope that wasn't a problem.

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Damian0358

While I'm here, may as well repost what @evazion posted in the other thread, for further discussion reasons;

evazion said:

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.

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.

Also, semi-related to this discussion is the alternate costume/official alternate costume discussion that's been on and off the past while, in forum #155138, forum #170635 and forum #171315.

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Admiral Pectoral

Two more gacha games to add to the list.

(Variants for these two games have not been addressed at all on Danbooru, so I will keep a close eye on this thread to see how that can be fixed)

Aside from that and after reading through the post, I think it would be better to use a character other than Marie as an example because marie_antoinette_(alter)_(fate/grand_order) exists and makes the supposedly simple example more confusing (to me at least, since it wasn't mentioned at all).

How about picking a character that only has a swimsuit variant (so far at least) like nitocris_(fate/grand_order) or tomoe_gozen_(fate/grand_order)?

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Benit149

Mysterious_Uploader said:
I'm currently reading through this, one of the complaints i have is how you're focusing a lot on the anti-consumeristic practices the games hold, while your focus should rather be how to tag characters. Your saber example is pretty wrong, because while some, such as the swimsuit version, have little change at all, artoria pendragon (lancer) is an entirely different character, with a different backstory, design, and all. In general Fate most of the time has some reason on why characters are treated as different characters, or are at least distinguished enough (see also: lancer vs cu chulainn alter (fate/grand order)).

@Mysterious_Uploader As far as the anti-consumerism goes, I was adding my own brand of humor to the article, but I can always tone it down in future versions so that it's strictly impartial and informative.

As for your second argument, I want to disagree with you. I don't care what major or minor tweaks, adjustments, and lore the developers give to a base character. DW can give Lancer Artoria a different weapon, bigger boobs and a unique backstory all they want, but she's still based off of Saber Artoria's character design, and Danbooru operates on the premise, "Tag what you see," not, "Tag based off of what you know of this copyright's mishmashed approach to lore and character design". That's why I consider Lancer Artoria (and by extension Lancer Alter Artoria) to be bona fide variants of Saber Artoria. They may have some differences, but they all use the same base character model, and thus should be grouped together as I did in my example.

blindVigil said:

After reading the whole thing, I'm more certain than ever that this is primarily a Fate problem. Most other gacha games are a lot simpler in how they handle variants/skins/whatever, they stick mostly to a single approach and deviations are an exception. Meaning most of them should only need a simple solution.

Then we've got FGO over here doing basically everything preceeding games have done all at once. Multiple level up forms, which are drastically inconsistent in how they differ, unlike other games where each form is progressively more different than the last. Alt forms as separate characters, alt skins that aren't separate characters, non-playable costumes introduced in events/CEs, some of which are probably going to become alt forms/skins later.

I don't think it's possible to make a set of rules that applies to all gacha games. FGO is gonna need its own set of rules separate from everybody else because that game is insane. The rest of the games can probably be divided into categories for further consideration.

Astolfo said:
Pretty much this, yeah. I'm not aware of any other gacha games that combines all of these:
1) Multiple level-up forms for the same character sometimes (Salieri, Kiyohime, etc)
2) Actually justified separate variants that are different characters (Artoria Lancer, Saber Astolfo, Cu Alter, Jeanne Alter, Saber Lily, etc.)
3) Separate variants that are basically just costumes (Swimsuit Jeanne Archer, Swimsuit Artoria Archer, etc., basically all the summer Servants and most of the Santas)
4) Variants of variants of characters, whether justified by differences or that are just costumes (Jeanne Alter Santa Lily, Swimsuit Jeanne Alter Berserker, Artoria Santa Rider, Mysterious Heroine XX, etc etc.)
5) Actual costumes that are given to characters or variants of characters (Memories at Trifas, Shinjuku outfits, etc)
6) Costumes that are only ever seen in cutscenes or Craft Essences or so on (Serafuku Astolfo, maid Chevalier d'Eon, Marie Antoinette Alter, etc.)
7) Probably more I'm missing at this point

I haven't played them all (I only really dabbled in GFL and actively play Arknights) but those two seem a lot more consistent in how they approach alternate forms and stick to one model, like selling costumes that are just costumes in Arknights.
This is, ultimately, a Fate/FGO centric problem, particularly egregious due to the way they handle holiday skins.

Mexiguy said:
Yeah, this is mostly a FGO problem and any solution for it isn't gonna be applicable to any other gacha due to how unique its circumstances are.

@blindVigil @Astolfo @Mexiguy I had a sneaking suspicion that was the case. I agree that almost every other gacha game out there is much simpler in their approach to marketing characters, usually by making one variant or skin for a character rather than a billion like FGO does. As I was typing the later sections and providing examples, I was beginning to believe this was an FGO-exclusive problem too. Even so, I wanted to make sure that these methods could be potentially useful for other copyrights since I have zero knowledge of games like KanColle or Honkai Impact 3rd. If not, then perhaps this could be rebranded to be a guide on tagging FGO's complicated approach to characters, rather than on gacha games in general. If a general guide is desired, then someone else would have to take the reigns on writing that one because I am beginning to get worn out from this and sorting through FGO's qualifiers in topic #17356, not to mention the potential mess of dealing with everything Astolfo said once the qualifiers are cleaned up.

Obstetrics said:

I've been wondering how to handle the Pokemon Masters characters for a while now, and this seems as good a time as any.

All the game's characters seem to fall under your "ONE VARIANT" catagory. Generally, the characters have a standard form in which they're wearing the outfit they're most associated with, and sometimes an alternate one. These alternate outfits are limited-time pulls associated with a holiday or event. For example, Steven Stone has a Standard outfit and a Summer outfit. They're canonically the same person wearing different clothes and using a different partner Pokemon, although they're treated as seperate characters mechanically. Sometimes characters will be wearing what's called a "Sygna Suit", as with Standard Cynthia and Sygna Suit Cynthia, but it's essentially the same thing.

This would lead to character tags such as: steven_stone_(summer) and cynthia_(sygna_suit)_(pokemon), rather than their in-game designations of summer steven and sygna suit cynthia, which seems reasonable to me. I've been tempted to create a sygna suit tag as well, although I'm not sure if both are needed.

@Obstetrics Sorry if my knowledge of Pokemon Masters is terribly limited. If the Sygna Suit is the same costume but worn by multiple characters (like the Team Rocket uniform), then that should be treated as a uniform, and thus a gentag would be made (see List of Uniforms). If they really are unique designs per character, and if we're dealing with a gacha game that markets those designs as separate characters with different in-game functionality from their base, then a chartag would be done with each character, and then *_(pokemon) added to the end to fit with the character_(skin)_(copyright) convention.

CuteBara said:

Aside from that and after reading through the post, I think it would be better to use a character other than Marie as an example because marie_antoinette_(alter)_(fate/grand_order) exists and makes the supposedly simple example more confusing (to me at least, since it wasn't mentioned at all). How about picking a character that only has a swimsuit variant (so far at least) like nitocris_(fate/grand_order) or tomoe_gozen_(fate/grand_order)?

I tried to use a character from the first summer event, but Marie Alter completely slipped my mind because I don't know anything that's going on in the Japanese server other than what new characters are released. If this is rebranded into an FGO-centered article, then I will indeed make that change.

I'm afraid I can't reply to the other posts since I don't know those games very well, and the example @Damian0358 made concerning Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle sounds like a nightmare.

Anyway, the consensus seems to be that while the earlier segments will be applicable due to most gacha games' simpler approach to marketing characters, the later segments are considered to be issues unique to FGO. I can always rebrand this to be an FGO-centered guide rather than for gacha games in general. As far as writing a general guide though, I can't help there. I have my hands tied with making this guide and cleaning up the Fate franchise's qualifiers, so if there is interest in a general guide, someone else will have to do it. There's also the possibility of other games with similar complicated mechanics to have their own unique tagging guidelines as well. Making different guides for different games sounds like a chore and may discourage users from uploading images for these titles, but that's just the nature of the beast we're dealing with here. Gacha games are evolving at a rapid pace, and we need a way to keep up.

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blindVigil

Benit149 said:

As for your second argument, I want to disagree with you. I don't care what major or minor tweaks, adjustments, and lore the developers give to a base character. DW can give Lancer Artoria a different weapon, bigger boobs and a unique backstory all they want, but she's still based off of Saber Artoria's character design, and Danbooru operates on the premise, "Tag what you see," not, "Tag based off of what you know of this copyright's mishmashed approach to lore and character design". That's why I consider Lancer Artoria (and by extension Lancer Alter Artoria) to be bona fide variants of Saber Artoria. They may have some differences, but they all use the same base character model, and thus should be grouped together as I did in my example.

Actually, I really think Lore supports this argument completely. FGO breaks a million Fate rules, but ignoring that, FGO didn't create a mess with its insane approach to variants. It just walked up to the already existing Danbooru Fate tagging mess, and just dumped a load of trash on top of it. And now once a year we redo the tags trying to clean it all up.

Danbooru has been desperate to treat every single Servant as a completely separate and independent entity, disregarding one simple fact: All Servants are based on a single person. All versions of Artoria Pendragon are Artoria Pendragon, sharing design elements, personality traits, and backstory details. Differences in backstory are irrelevant, age is irrelevant, alternate dimensions are irrelevant. Whatever Class she's in (and she now has a variant for every single one), her name doesn't stop being Artoria Pendragon.

Classes are not names. Saber is not her name. Saber is a Class, Title, Job; it is a designation, not a name. Saber should never have been her tag, spoilers being the only valid reason it is, which isn't a valid reason anymore. Class is the primary distinguishing factor between Servants, but it is not their identity. It also doesn't make sense for tagging/searching for some of her tags to be "Saber" and the rest "Artoria Pendragon". You can't even see all variants of her with autofill because of this inconsistency, and characters who aren't Artoria come up in the "Saber" autofill.

Artoria Pendragon (Saber)
Artoria Pendragon (Saber) (Alter)/Artoria Pendragon (Saber Alter)
Artoria Pendragon (Saber) (Lily)/Artoria Pendragon (Saber Lily)
Artoria Pendragon (Lancer)
Artoria Pendragon (Lancer) (Alter)/Artoria Pendragon (Lancer Alter)
Artoria Pendragon (Caster)

This is roughly what playable Fate character tags should look like, and not just for characters with multiple variants. Even if they only have one variant now, you can reliably guess that they'll get at least one more eventually, so might as well give the "default" variant a qualifier too in preparation for it. I'm not even going to get into Ascensions, skins, and CEs, cause those are a whole other problem. Not to mention all the special case playable Servants that are variants of a variant of a variant and are going to need special attention.

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mortalkombachan

Artoria Pendragon (Saber)
Artoria Pendragon (Saber) (Alter)/Artoria Pendragon (Saber Alter)
Artoria Pendragon (Saber) (Lily)/Artoria Pendragon (Saber Lily)
Artoria Pendragon (Lancer)
Artoria Pendragon (Lancer) (Alter)/Artoria Pendragon (Lancer Alter)
Artoria Pendragon (Caster)

This is roughly what playable Fate character tags should look like, and not just for characters with multiple variants. Even if they only have one variant now, you can reliably guess that they'll get at least one more eventually, so might as well give the "default" variant a qualifier too in preparation for it. I'm not even going to get into Ascensions, skins, and CEs, cause those are a whole other problem. Not to mention all the special case playable Servants that are variants of a variant of a variant and are going to need special attention.

Fully agree with blindVirgil. Artoria Pendragon (all) could be renamed to simply Artoria Pendragon (without "(all)") as the main/disambiguation tag which the others implicate (and having the same treatment for other characters), in my opinion.

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Astolfo

blindVigil said:

Actually, I really think Lore supports this argument completely. FGO breaks a million Fate rules, but ignoring that, FGO didn't create a mess with its insane approach to variants. It just walked up to the already existing Danbooru Fate tagging mess, and just dumped a load of trash on top of it. And now once a year we redo the tags trying to clean it all up.

Danbooru has been desperate to treat every single Servant as a completely separate and independent entity, disregarding one simple fact: All Servants are based on a single person. All versions of Artoria Pendragon are Artoria Pendragon, sharing design elements, personality traits, and backstory details. Differences in backstory are irrelevant, age is irrelevant, alternate dimensions are irrelevant. Whatever Class she's in (and she now has a variant for every single one), her name doesn't stop being Artoria Pendragon.

This is pretty much the crux of my problem with trying to separate actual variants and holiday variants (particularly swimsuit variants). I'll stick with Artoria as my example because she's the easiest with all those variants, but the same can apply to any character with several variants.

On one hand, you have actual, justified, separate variants - Saber, Saber Alter, Artoria Pendragon (Lancer), Saber Lily, so on - actually, fully separate characters that although based on the same figure, bear noticeable differences in appearance, lore, and even behaviour.
They are, generally, different "aspects" of a character. If the Heroic Spirit is a book called Artoria Pendragon, then you could say the Servant is a chapter from that book. "Saber" is one chapter, "Saber Lily" is an earlier chapter, "Saber Alter" is another chapter, Artoria Lancer as well, so on, so forth. Under this guise, we can generally reasonably assume that the first version of a character we see is their default - their "main" chapter, so to speak.

On the other hand, you have an already existing character, in this case vanilla/Saber Artoria, who put on a swimsuit and picked up a watergun and was then made a separate character in the Archer class to be sold in the gacha - something made particularly blatant by the fact that all the male Servants who have had summer outfits thus far have just been given costumes, presumably because they'd make less gacha money than women in bikinis. This isn't a new chapter, this is just a sidenote in the Saber chapter wherein she had a summer vacation.

Every single summer variant of a Servant has only ever been [pre-existing character in a swimsuit] - a simple summer costume, and has only ever been a 'variant' so that F/GO could sell it within the boundaries of its existing systems. If we want to get into in-universe explanations, during the first summer event Scathach explains she used rune magic (iirc) to alter her class from Lancer to Assassin. It is, quite literally, the exact same Scathach as Lancer, but in a bikini. I'm not 100% on this but I'm pretty sure the same applies to the Santa variants as well (except Jalter Lily). Santa Alter is, quite literally, just the regular Saber Alter who decided to play Santa.

Quite frankly, a huge part of F/GO's tagging woes are caused by holiday variants and trying to figure out how the hell to handle them. Take those out of the equation, and the only real problem left is character recycling, especially the most egregious cases Artoria and Jeanne d'Arc. Outside of these two most characters have one or two variants, maybe three at most? Thinking of Cu here with four of them. Outside of him I'm not sure who has more than two/three.

... Honestly, even with the Summer variants, the recycling is really the main issue; without the recycling, Summer variants wouldn't really be an issue, whereas with the recycling they heavily exacerbate the issue because you then get variants of variants of variants of variants.
Mysterious Heroine X (Alter) is literally a variant of a variant of a variant, the day she gets a swimsuit version is the day they introduce a variant of a variant of a variant of a variant. Look forward to it!

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As for your second argument, I want to disagree with you. I don't care what major or minor tweaks, adjustments, and lore the developers give to a base character. DW can give Lancer Artoria a different weapon, bigger boobs and a unique backstory all they want, but she's still based off of Saber Artoria's character design, and Danbooru operates on the premise, "Tag what you see," not, "Tag based off of what you know of this copyright's mishmashed approach to lore and character design". That's why I consider Lancer Artoria (and by extension Lancer Alter Artoria) to be bona fide variants of Saber Artoria. They may have some differences, but they all use the same base character model, and thus should be grouped together as I did in my example.

You said it yourself, we tag what we see, not what we know. artoria pendragon (lancer), a character with large breasts, long hair and green eyes, with different clothes, can't be compared to saber. The body type is different, the face is different (no, it's not just artstyle, she's supposed to be the goddess Rhongomyniad in Saber's body), the weapon is different and the hairstyle is different. Aesthetically, they're completely diffferent.

Why are we even discussing the reason behind characters' existence? We're derailing, the character tags won't get removed or merged.
Half of this thread are people complaining on how many alts there are and their reason of existence, if it's justified or not...
They exist, nothing you can't do about it to prevent their existance. This topic's purpose should be to catalogue them. (Yes, swimsuit servants will get their own tag, just like we tag costume variants or different skins are tagged on other gachas.)

Anyways, this is turning out to be a fate-centric issue. Either work on a gacha standard and work on fate's standard basing yourself off of that, or go back to forum #17356.

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blindVigil

Mysterious_Uploader said:

They exist, nothing you can't do about it to prevent their existance. This topic's purpose should be to catalogue them. (Yes, swimsuit servants will get their own tag, just like we tag costume variants or different skins are tagged on other gachas.)

Anyways, this is turning out to be a fate-centric issue. Either work on a gacha standard and work on fate's standard basing yourself off of that, or go back to forum #17356.

I was under the impression we never actually officially decided to tag skins. Someone just started doing it for Azur Lane and no one questioned it until someone wanted to know why we weren't doing the same thing for GFL. And despite that discussion being positive towards the idea, no one ever bothered to do it for GFL aside from one particular set of skins. No one's been doing it for other gacha games, either. Arknights has already been pointed out as one that hasn't been given that treatment. It's pretty much just AL.

It doesn't seem to be a universally accepted policy. Someone's currently trying to nuke Honkai's battlesuit tags, and those are for playable alts, not skins.

So, maybe we should start there, strictly for the sake of clarity.

  • Are we tagging gacha game skins?
  • If so, how are we doing it?
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