TL;DR - We should probably create individual articles for each of the "Legendary" and "Epic" tier "Costumes" and "Weapon Wraps" in Star Wars: Hunters.
Hey all, this is my first time creating a Senate Hall, but I feel there is a debate that keeps popping up every few weeks across Discord that I wanted to go ahead and give it its own dedicated discussion space. Somehow archival of elements within the relatively recent Star Wars: Hunters mobile game has sort of become one of my big personal projects, and as someone who greatly enjoys the game, I definitely cannot complain. However, the question of which cosmetics from said game warrant their own full articles seems to frequently come up pretty much every time I start working on new batches of Hunters articles and Appearances.
There still seems to be some confusion or contention when it comes to what constitutes a notable cosmetic from a Star Wars video game. I’ve been told there was some sort of SH/CT specifically regarding Star Wars: The Old Republic and the Cartel Market in the past that I have yet to read, and there clearly needs to be a larger discussion at some point that blankets all video games as a whole in regards to cosmetic items. However, Star Wars: Hunters is technically unlike any other Star Wars game that currently exists for a specific reason that I will detail below, and is thus, from my observations, deserving of its own set of guidelines for what should and should not be given a dedicated page.
For those who are unaware, in-universe, Hunters follows the Hunters of the Outer Rim, a semi-staged competition meant for entertainment purposes somewhat akin to something like the WWE. As such, the Hunters' cosmetics and their names seem to be a very real thing within Canon, being alternate costumes, outfits, and armors that these performers alternate between for the sake of the Grand Arena’s audience. This is further reinforced, not only from the various pieces of promotional media that showcase the Hunters wearing their assortment of costumes, but via the inclusion of quotes associated with each individual “Costume” and “Weapon Wrap” that lend a little bit of additional lore or context to either the specific cosmetic or the individual who wears them.
And that’s truly where the question of notability comes into play. Up until this point, I and a few others have only created a handful of articles for these cosmetics entirely on a case-by-case basis rooted in each of our personal preferences. We use questions like, "does this armor or weapon have any greater lore attached to it? (See something like Starcrossed Punk)" "Does it have cultural relevance to a particular group or species? (See something like Shyyyo Defender)" "Is it implied to represent a greater faction or troop variant? (See something like Marine trooper armor)" Or maybe even just, "does it look really cool, and would people visiting the site who may not play Hunters enjoy seeing this thoughtfully designed item and learning more about it? (See something like Wild at Heart)"
Unfortunately, due to the individualistic approach to each of these cosmetics from like 5 or 6 different people, debate has arisen with no clear consensus on where the line should be drawn on what the site will and will not, or should and should not, host. So I would like to go ahead and present and support the following idea: allowing every “Legendary” and “Epic” Costume and Weapon Wrap in the game to have their own article, while NOT creating articles for any of the “Uncommon” and “Rare” tier items. The reason for this being that the former two rarities are each associated with a unique quote and often distinct bit of lore, and are specially designed to be an upgrade (or entirely different) from a Hunter’s baseline appearance, while the latter two only consist of “repaints” or "recolors" of the default cosmetics in the game and all share identical generic quotes, which could easily be interpreted as them all being the same armor/outfit/plating/equipment.
I would also like to hear opinions on if there should be specific rules per character, as droids like J-3DI and K-A0S are changing the actual plating on their bodies instead of outfits, while characters like Sentinel often wear armor belonging to actual units within the Galactic Empire. Additionally, on a lesser note, a few people have already brought up that it might also be worth listing all Costumes and Weapon Wraps on the associated page for each of these characters and their weapons, giving us the opportunity to archive the names of lower rarity objects for preservation sake (a very important concept when it comes to mobile games), while not creating dedicated articles for every single one. I suppose if we don’t end up condoning the main policy mentioned above, then it will either remain the current case-by-case method, or we may end up actually having to delete some articles. But regardless, I will do my best to continue to preserve Star Wars: Hunters in any way I am allowed! Thanks everyone and I look forward to hearing from you all!
MTrac1000 (talk) 20:19, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
Discussion
- I like your suggestion for only making pages for the costumes with unique quotes, since those have something unique and their pages could actually have information besides "This character wore this colored outfit" . Also agree that all outfits should be noted on character's pages, especially since its implied they actually wear them in-universe. I don't think we should be making special rules for characters. The droids changing their plates can just be noted in the character articles, and Sentinel's armor can be noted on the pages for the units his armor is of. CometSmudge (talk) 03:41, 30 September 2024 (UTC)
- I'm glad you agree! The case-by-case basis thing does technically work, but drawing a distinct line will be so much more efficient going forward! And that makes sense, keeping the rule consistent between characters will be the easy way to maintain them. Hopefully we will be able to move forward with these parameters. - MTrac1000 (talk) 17:18, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
- Generally, Im on the same boat. It is very much a case by case situation for me. From my perspective these cosmetic items are the equivalent of costume change in WWE lol. Makes sense to cover it under the Equipment section, but not always its own article. I dont see anything wrong with wanting to codify how we cover cosmetic items, for the sake of clarity. Bonzane10
05:46, 30 September 2024 (UTC)
- Understandable! You know I respect your input highly when it comes to Hunters, and I definitely do not want this to become how we handle all Star Wars game cosmetics going forward, just these specific two types within Hunters. I can definitely see the approach that they're all just costumes/sleeves and thus don't warrant individual notability, though I think with the WWE analogy in mind, sometimes these real life performer's iconic outfit changes take on a life of their own (reminded of some of Hulk Hogan's most popular fits and the nicknames associated with them). So from that perspective, I do still think this a special instance where they would garner stage notability within the Grand Arena, again, enough so to each have official titles or names, which is why I'm sticking to the idea that we at least draw the line at Legendary and Epic rarity skins (though I guess I could see an argument being made for just Epics as well). For now we'll all carry on under the case-by-case unwritten rule, but hopefully some sort of catchall standard can eventually put in place to streamline how we individually choose! - MTrac1000 (talk) 17:18, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
- Do support the concept, though this concept of notabilities for cosmetics probably applies to many more video game types than just Hunters. Rather than make a Hunters-specific addition, could be worth making it a new section of the "In-universe" subsections of the Notability policy for loreless/captionless cosmetics in general. Or, if not all loreless/captionless ones, it could form the basis for a section where we could state which games we apply this to (starting with Hunters), and having it in a section there would easily allow for new games to be CT'd in to that list.—spookywillowwtalk 01:04, 7 October 2024 (UTC)
- I'd definitely be down for a wider categorization! It will require a fair bit of work and peer review I believe as almost every game approaches cosmetics differently, making them sort of hard to cover with a lone blanket rule, which I guess is where the individual CTs would come into play. However, we may still be able to work out a baseline for what should or should not be covered within any game. Star Wars: Squadrons is another one that comes to mind in regards to preserving the cosmetics who all have small in-universe bios. I'll see if I can't figure out a way to better approach this. Thank you for your input! - MTrac1000 (talk) 16:09, 8 October 2024 (UTC)
- I have nothing again creating articles for those items when they are clearly different armor/plating and/or having exclusive narrative/lore bits attached to them, as we wouldn't refuse to create article for similar items for games like KotOR, the Jedi series, Outlaws, etc. Now, I would tend to support spooky position and say we should aim globally rather than just limit the scope of a notability update to Hunters, but having a quick look at SWTOR (and the 100,000 items listed on TOR Community)... I just don't know what to do, as if we were to say that items (I prefer to use this term rather than "cosmetics" which be subjective in some cases) that are "loreless/captionless" should not get an article, this could very much put us at odd with a GREAT numbers of items from SWTOR (with items added all the times because of "power creep"...) AND single players games where you can find many items that just display stats. Having a blanket rule isn't really going to cut it I think, and maybe we should focus on Hunters for now, and update it later (because, yeah, we talk about this for years, but we barely made any progress ><). NanoLuukeCloning Facility 17:07, 11 October 2024 (UTC)