Exotic weapons folders on Destiny and Destiny 2

For years, tropers have been adding tropes to individual Exotic-tier weapons on Destiny and Destiny 2, eventually culminating in the creation of an Weapons page that the moderation team later deemed invalid for being unindexable and for setting up a bad precedent when a troper requested to do a similar Items page on League of Legends. The Weapons page was thus put in the Permanent Red Link Club.

A few threads have been created in reaction to the Weapons page being cutlisted. One troper argued to move all that hard work to a Characters page, but was refuted. They eventually reached an uneasy compromise to put them in a folder on the main page. Now, that folder has become bloated to the point that the time has come to make a decision on its fate.

A couple of weeks ago, Arsenal_Gear proposed to delete the entire folder for Exotic weapons and retool the valid tropes into alphabetical order. In its current form, the folder reads very much like a Characters page, complete with an image of the weapon and a description above the example line for each entry. Because the main page isn't a Character page, this folder's existence has become dubious at best.

In response to that proposition, I had started a thread on Destiny 2's discussion tab to underline the reasons for such a change, but no one commented on it for weeks, even when I sent a couple of frequent editors PMs to redirect them to the discussion. In fact, I even went to ATT to inquire about what happens should nobody deign to participate in the discussion.

TL;DR, we're here to question the Exotic folder's existence on both games' main page, and whether or not we should go ahead with burning it all down, salvaging valid tropes into alphabetical order.

If no one objects to this after a week, I will proceed with the changes, because two tropers vocalizing their desire for a change outweight silent editors. Speak now, or forever hold your breath. No whining accepted after that point.

Edited by AnoBakaDesu on Jun 7th 2019 at 12:57:56 PM

I dunno. I feel like exotics (and lore tabs in general, for that matter) are sufficiently segregated from the main game's narrative to warrant their own subcategories, generally because a lot of the subjects they cover (almost everything, in the case of exotic lore in particular) has little to none of its material even referenced in the game proper. That said, I'm hesitant to include tropes about the weapons and armor themselves rather than the stories that come with them unless those tropes have narrative significance; "no such thing as notability" be damned, it feels silly to talk about how a hand cannon is a hand cannon if it doesn't really matter to any stories if the hand cannon is a hand cannon.

I don't know anything about League of Legends weapons, incidentally. Do they each come with their own little works of microfiction? That's the only way I could see an argument about giving them their own tropes holding any sort of water.

To explain this a bit, each of the exotics in destiny comes with its own story tab, that builds up the world its self through the history of the piece of gear it is attached too, there not... exceedingly long, but there not just a quick thumbnail either, most of them make there mark in at a couple paragraphs.

So like there is actualy a not insubstantial amount of story to them, but I am not sure how one would handle it.

Edited by Imca on Jun 8th 2019 at 2:51:29 AM

While there are a few Exotics that are tied a bit to the story, particularly the ones that have their own Exotic Quests or have high lore importance like Thorn, The Last Word, etc., a good majority of them are just random drops and their flavor text/lore tabs, in my eyes, are just supplemental and have their own self-contained stories that don't really add much to the greater, overall narrative. Yeah, I think I'm in favor of getting rid of the folder and salvaging the appropriate tropes.

Edit: By greater overall narrative, I meant the story presented in-game as the main campaign for the base games and DLC. I know how to word good.

Edited by CommanderPacis on Jun 8th 2019 at 10:57:37 AM

I'm not familiar with the work, but here's my take.

• Weapons are not characters (unless they're Empathic Weapons that are treated like characters), and shouldn't get character page entries.
• If the weapons are a vehicle to deliver lore that not everyone sees, they seem analogous to DL Cs or sourcebooks. In my observations, most of the time this kind of content is simply grouped together with the main page unless they can stand on their own as works, which sounds like isn't true here.

Based on that, it seems like the course of action would be to move valid entries into the main, alphabetized trope list. Entries should note the source for the info.

The only other option I could give for the Weapons folders would still be deleting it, but splitting the page examples into separate Story and Gameplay folders, just like Touhou Project or Dark Souls. The salvageable tropes would then be segregated into these two folders.

With the lack of a strong objection from any interested parties for over a week, this discussion is done with, and I will proceed forward with the purge. Anyone else who comes forward and whines will be redirected to this thread; they had a whopping 3 weeks to contest the proposal when I started the endeavour at the end of May.

Edited by AnoBakaDesu on Jun 18th 2019 at 1:41:08 PM

If we're talking about Flavor Text truly, then maybe a FlavorText.Destiny Weapons page could be made??

Oh, they've been cut already. Huh. okay.

Edited by Malady on Jul 1st 2019 at 8:31:17 AM

Let's face it, many tropers who edited those weapon entries forgot that they're not supposed to write character entries, and some even fiercely edit-warred over it, which is why you don't see much on an influx on the pages anymore (hint: they got suspended and never appealed their case).

The amount of work on a page does not matter if the consensus says that it's invalid and therefore should be cut. Lots of pages get deleted on a weekly basis due to rampant misuse, putting the excuse of spending so much effort into them is pretty insignificant in scope.

Edited by AnoBakaDesu on Apr 4th 2020 at 2:06:07 PM