Category talk:Enemy lines

Old catagory catalog
...Wait, what? Gah! My browser just ate my post! Okay, let's take this from the top (and remember to copy it before you hit save this time)!

Okay, so "Monsters" were replaced by "Enemies", which makes sense. And new cats were created to replace the old ones. Also makes sense. However, not every Monster cat got a corresponding Enemy cat. Maybe that's for the best, but we never know when we might change our minds and want to bring some old ideas back, so I'm going to create a record of all the old Monster cats. If anyone wants to bring any back, feel free to argue your case.


 * Monsters exclusive to Golden Sun
 * Monsters exclusive to Golden Sun: The Lost Age
 * Monsters exclusive to Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
 * Monsters that can summon other monsters
 * Monsters that drop rare items
 * Monsters that drop unique items
 * Monsters that take multiple actions each turn
 * Monsters with healing abilities
 * Monsters with high Jupiter resistance
 * Monsters with high Mars resistance
 * Monsters with high Mercury resistance
 * Monsters with high Venus resistance
 * Monsters with low Jupiter resistance
 * Monsters with low Mars resistance
 * Monsters with low Mercury resistance
 * Monsters with low Venus resistance
 * Psynergy-capable monsters
 * Unused monsters

Personally, I think the Psynergy-capable cat would be a useful reference tool. But we can talk about that later. Right now I just want to get this up before my browser decides it hates me again... The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 11:27, 27 February 2013 (CST)

P.S. I decided to cross out the categories we already have counterparts for (which is more than I originally realized; They'd been separated by game and put under other categories).


 * Okay, I have some time now. The Psynergy-capable cat would be useful for knowing which enemies one should (or shouldn't) attempt to use Luff or Fugue on. Are there any objections? Please speak up soon, because I'd like to recreate the cat before the old monster cats get deleted. The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 20:15, 27 February 2013 (CST)
 * Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the existing Category:Psynergy-capable enemies in GBA and Category:Psynergy-capable enemies in Dark Dawn the categories you're intending to make? Their description pages even talk about how Psynergy Sealing effects are relevant against them. Erik the Appreciator (talk) 20:31, 27 February 2013 (CST)
 * ... Waitwhat? Oh, I see. So a lot of the old monster categories got split into two cats and stuck under the "GBA Enemies" and "DD Enemies" cats. I was only looking at the sub-cats under this category here. But, now that I know that, why do we have them separated like that in the first place? It's just infinitely confusing. Why not have a single "Psyngery-capable enemies" category, regardless of what game they're in? Same goes for the Resistance cats. The item drops cats I can understand, since the items an enemy can drop is far more likely to change than its moveset and elemental affinities. The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 20:47, 27 February 2013 (CST)
 * Those were decisions I made after giving the category situation a lot of thought when I first started the giant enemy-line page restructurings a year ago, and (ironically enough given your reaction) part of the purpose of doing it like that was to remove all possible pieces of confusion and ambiguity that pop up because of how the two slightly-differentiated generations were originally all grouped together (and what might happen if GS4 gets added to the mix).


 * Admittedly, the first and foremost reason for deciding on this road was to allow the reader to have access to the data that is relevant to the specific game they want info for. If I were a recent reader who wanted a reference of every enemy in my Dark Dawn file that is weak to Venus, and/or if I wanted to see how small such a list of enemies would be for this game in particular, I, for one, wouldn't want to be forced to also see the names of enemies from much older games I might not have even played, like "Gnome Mage", "Tornado Lizard", and "Gargoyle". Likewise, I wouldn't want unfamiliar Dark Dawn enemy names populating resistance categories if I were just playing on GBA (for one little thing, that's sort of spoilerish to a GBA player hoping to move to DS. And what if readers saw "Alex" as part of a multi-generation Psynergy-Capable category and discerned from that that he's a fightable boss in the newly-released GS4? =P). I'd have argued for this to be the reason to split the resistance and psynergy-capable categories apart by generation even if every enemy line had exactly the same ordering of elemental resistances-to-weaknesses.


 * But there's also the issue that one can never guarantee that one enemy in a generation will have all the same categories as its next-generation counterpart, even the categories you would expect to remain the same. And as it so happens, a resistance difference has already happened between GBA and DS - the Pyrodra is resistant to Mercury but weak to Mars in TLA, but is weak to Mercury and resistant to Mars in Dark Dawn. (I personally verified this was not a typo by casting Serpent Fume on the Pyrodra in Treasure Isle and by casting Frostbite on the Pyrodra in Burning Island Cave; in both cases, the three "!!!"'s appeared.) Looking through the whole collection of enemy line articles on the wiki shows this is the only case of that happening between an individual monster's separate incarnations, but I believe even that one case is enough to break the argument that categories about resistances between generations should be merged because "all" resistances are parallel between generations. (BTW, the only other resistance difference I found while looking all the enemy lines over are that the Will Heads of GBA and Willowisps of DS have different weaknesses, though that sounds like an argument to split those two lines apart...)


 * Besides, when I announced the start of the enemy-line-rewrite project in Talk:Monsters last April, I showed my intention to split the categories into GBA and Dark Dawn sets by posting a bulleted list, and you yourself approved it and thought the only question with the new category setup was whether to have separate categories for enemies taking 2 turns and enemies taking 3 turns. =P Erik the Appreciator (talk) 22:07, 27 February 2013 (CST)


 * First of all, that was nearly a year ago. You can't expect me to remember everything (especially since I only had a brief blurb in that conversation). Second, people change their opinions over time. Now, I'm willing to let the resistances go for now (I only said they're less likely to change than item drops, not impossible), but I'm still not convinced on the Psynergy cats. You seem to have two arguments:


 * 1. "Just because they can use Psynergy now doesn't mean they will still use it when they return." Okay, but is this actually the case right now? If not, then we don't have to separate them yet and can worry about that when the time comes. Besides, there have been times when we've combined articles that only meet the cat's requirements in certain games but not others.


 * 2. "Combining the categories could provide spoilers." Newsflash: We have plenty of other ways to spoil players besides categories. I mean, just look at the Boss template. We have the Vault Bandits, Tret, Saturos (with and without Menardi), Briggs, Moapa, Ku-Tsung and Ku-Embra, the Mountain Roc, and two fights with Blados and Chalis. Besides, your Alex example is kinda counter-productive. Anyone who even knows who Alex is (well, and his importance to the overall plot) wouldn't be surprised if he becomes a boss one day. The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 11:40, 28 February 2013 (CST)


 * Yeah, if there had yet to be any actual cases of the earlier not being the same as the later in terms of being Psynergy-capable, I suppose the Psynergy-capable category would have been a little more of a nebulous case. Since the lack of proven cases of Psynergy-capability differences was what I had assumed, all I could do there was come up with whatever little incidental side-reasons I could think of while relying strictly on the mere principle that showing the later-games' enemy names earlier wouldn't help a reader if it would clutter things up for them (even if other parts of the wiki would obviously ensure readers would have been "spoiled" on who might become bosses anyway - that wasn't even really intended to be part of my argument's core supportive logic). But as it turns out, I failed to notice in time for my previous post that the Fenrir is the lone case of a GBA enemy that gets a Psynergy for the first time in Dark Dawn, while the Killer Ape can no longer Douse in Dark Dawn, which sort of means the topic of Psynergy-capable enemies is another proven case of categorical contradictions when separate generations are massed together as one and the wiki has arbitrarily deprived itself of the capacity to differentiate generations individually with categories.


 * As you'd probably expect, I'm still staunchly in favor of this generational division in categories, and all the more so now because of how I had just discovered things like the Pyrodra's resistance and the Fenrir's Psynergy-capability. And yes, I would argue for the splitting of the limited category to be in the same setup as what the unique items have going for them right now - a sub-category detailing what is unique per individual game, and a master category above them that lists only those items that stay unique all throughout the known series. Erik the Appreciator (talk) 12:46, 28 February 2013 (CST)


 * Well, I only wanted to blow the spoiler argument out of the water because it seemed incredibly silly to me. ^_^; Anyways, I'm still not entirely convinced they should be separate, but I think you just suggested an alternative: Have "master categories" for the resistance and Psynergy cats (and the limited items cat) listing the enemies (and items) in multiple games, then have game-specific sub-categories for enemies that only appear in certain games and whose attributes change between games. I don't know exactly how much overlap there will be, but I think it's worth looking into. The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 14:20, 28 February 2013 (CST)


 * I'm having a hard time imagining how that would end up somehow working better than the current setup, though, for it sounds like the result could be even more confusing and cluttering in comparison to the current setup. That's because we have to remember to take into account how the categories are displayed on the bottom of each enemy line page and under each individual enemy section, as well as what should be the meaning of going into a category page when you click a link from its appropriate spot in an enemy line page.


 * Based on how you worded your proposal that "master categories" contain all the enemies that belong to that category throughout every game in the series, while "game specific categories" are "for enemies that only appear in certain games and whose attributes change between games", I'd interpret that to mean that only Dark Dawn-exclusive enemies and the odd Pyrodra-like case would appear in a Dark Dawn-exclusive resistance category listing. So, what you would get if you click "Dark Dawn enemies with low Mars resistance" at the bottom of the Dark Devourer enemy line is a very short list showing what few other enemies -only- appearing in Dark Dawn are also Mars-weak, and that a link to the "Category:Enemies with low Mars resistance" category that this sub-category would of course have then brings you to a listing showing all enemies in each game in the overall series that are also Mars weak. Meanwhile, clicking on this generalized "Category:Enemies with low Mars resistance" category link under a returning monster like Succubus (therefore, under either incarnation of the Succubus in the Siren enemy line page) would bring you to this same listing.


 * Now, because this generalized list would not have any of the enemies that only appear in the GBA games, what happens is that when you look at a generalized category such as low Mars Resistance, and then go from there to look at the Dark Dawn-specific low Mars Resistance sub-category, between these two lists you do end up having all of the same names and content as what's currently in Category:Dark Dawn enemies with low Mars resistance. All the reader would then have to be told to do is to switch between these two category listings to get all of Dark Dawn's Mars-weak monsters. Here is where I'm going to argue that this setup is more awkward than it needs to be, because it only really achieves what the current category setup already achieves, but requires extra clicks between categories on the part of the reader for them to get the full information. Meanwhile, I'd argue that it's quite important to have complete and non-segmented listings of every enemy in Dark Dawn weak to [element] so that readers will have minimal hassle finding out which monsters (disregarding something as irrelevant as their origin point in the series' timeline) to use which elements of Djinn to djinn-kill.


 * And furthermore, this setup disregards another feature of the current category setup: that new enemy line pages and sections will be easy to write and put in as more Golden Sun games are released, since what has already been written will not need all that much category-changing alongside the new content (e.g. at most, enemies will become no longer exclusive to certain games). Since the current categories already establish that [enemy] is specifically a [GBA/DD] enemy that is weak to [element A] and resistant to [element B], there won't be any need to change these GBA and DD-centric categories even if GS4 brings some recurring enemies back again but gives them different resistances. If GS4 does this while this other system is the one in place, on the other hand, we'd have to go into the GBA and/or DD incarnations of the enemies and replace all instances of general categories with GBA and/or DD-exclusive subcategories. ...Okay, this probably is a very minor issue because changing a few existing enemies' categories is only a very little extra bit of minor work. (Though it was always you that insisted on replacing "featured in Golden Sun, Golden Sun: The Lost Age, and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn"" at the top of articles with "featured throughout the Golden Sun series" because you argued it just causes more work with "each game that comes out". XD )


 * So that's what I think about merging resistance and Psynergy-capable categories together but having separate sub-categories where all the game-exclusive content and situations are put inside instead... But there's also the idea of the different approach that's actually being used in the Unique items category example, where every category the item gets is in both the [GBA/DD]-exclusive form[s] and the generalized form on top of it. Before I start dissecting this concept, I want to know if this is the idea you had in mind to begin with/are open to looking into. O_O; Erik the Appreciator (talk) 18:17, 28 February 2013 (CST)


 * (Resetting indent. Man, can we go into insane detail about the littlest things or what?)


 * First of all, I don't know if I explained myself well, so let me try again. The "master categories" would contain enemies that appear in every game - GS1, TLA, DD, etc. - while the game-specific categories would contain all enemies in that game that aren't in the top-level category. Things might be complicated by GS1 and TLA being combined into a single GBA category, so let's suppose that GS4 comes out. "Enemy X" appears in GS1, TLA, and GS4, but not in DD, so it would appear in the GBA and GS4 categories but not in the DD and top-level categories. But maybe you already understood that and I just didn't understand the way you restated my ideas. ^_^;


 * But moving on: I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. Items in the Unique items category don't appear in any of the game-specific sub-categories. However, I do think that would be a good idea, both for the items and the monsters. The top-level cat would list all monsters/items that qualify and that appear in every game, while the game-specific sub-cats would list every monster/item in that game that qualifies. Then, if a certain enemy/item that was in the past three games isn't in GS4, we can just remove the top-level category from its page without having to add or change anything else.


 * Anyways, as long as you're explaining your reasoning, I should probably explain mine. I don't know how common it is, but I'm sure there are readers out there who, at least sometimes, navigate by categories. This category is effectively the master cat for all enemy-related cat, so all major topics - Game appearances, weaknesses, access to Psynergy, number of actions, etc. - should be visible from here. But when I look at the current version of this category, some things are missing. Unless readers think to check the "GBA Enemies" and "DD Enemies" categories (I certainly didn't until you brought them up), they wouldn't know how to access this information. I tried to mitigate the problem by "starring" those two categories, but that doesn't guarantee readers will look at those cats. That's why I feel that such information should be visible from here, and having a long list of "[game] enemies with [high/low] [element] resistance" categories would just make things harder to navigate (it's not so bad right now, since there's just GBA and DD, but eventually...)


 * I'll admit, you have a point: When readers click on, say, "Dark Dawn enemies with low Mars resistance", they should be able to see all enemies in Dark Dawn weak to Mars attacks. I just want readers to also be able to come to this category and easily access information on what elements should be used on what enemies (among other things, of course). So if you want to list multi-game enemies in both top-level cats and sub-cats, you have my support.


 * Of course, if we were to do that to the resistance and Psynergy categories, would we want to do the same to the item drops cats? After all, readers that come here should be able to see that we have at least some info on item drops. The "Grave Eclipse enemies" category can probably stay where it is, though, since the GE is (currently) unique to Dark Dawn.


 * I feel bad doing this, but, now that we seem to be approaching a consensus, there are a few other issues I recently became aware of that I'd like to address. First of all, should GS1 and TLA really be combined under a GBA heading? I'll admit, there are very few non-boss enemies in GS1 that don't appear in TLA, but the other way around is not true. Using your own logic, what if a reader wants to see information about GS1 without being bogged down by all the TLA enemies? Wouldn't it be better to have GS1 and TLA separate? Sure, many of the enemies in the GS1 categories will also appear in the TLA categories, but it allows readers to have info on just GS1 without having to worry about other games. (And no, I'm not being sarcastic. After your post, this became a legitimate concern.)


 * Second, if the top-level categories only contain enemies that appear in every game, that means they would have to be around since GS1. That doesn't seem like a very effective way to decide what appears where. I want to suggest an alternative method, slightly more complicated but fairer to newer monsters. These top-level categories would contain all [monsters/items/whatever] that have appeared in every game since their introduction. Oddly enough, the Pyrodra is a perfect example: It wasn't in GS1, was introduced in TLA, then returned for DD. Using this method, the Hydra line would also appear in the top-level category, despite not being around in the first game. And before anyone points it out, this wouldn't include enemies introduced in DD unless they appear in GS4 (and then enemies introduced in GS4 would have to appear in GS5, etc.) If this seems too complicated, then we can just make it so that any enemy that appears in at least two games would qualify. I'm not sure which would be better.


 * Third... Well, this is more of a preemptive strike against potential counter-arguments. I'll admit, there's always the possibility that there will be little to no overlap between the game-specific categories. I'm sure some would argue that creating a top-level category would be pointless since it wouldn't contain any articles. However, categories can contain other things than just articles. If you're navigating the wiki by categories, sometimes it's handy to have a "category of categories" (assuming the bottom-level categories have decent contents, of course). For example, I created Category:Unleashes a while back primarily to group together a bunch of Unleash-related categories, rather than having them clutter up the Weapons cat. I doubt there will ever be many articles there, but it's still useful. The same can be done with some of the enemy categories here. From "Enemy lines" you could access "Dark Dawn enemies" and "Psynergy-capable enemies", both of which would contain "Psynergy-capable enemies in Dark Dawn". Maybe there wouldn't be enough overlap for many enemies to appear in the top-level Psynergy category, but it would still be useful for quickly accessing all of the game-specific sub-categories.


 * ... Man, don't we have anything better to do than ramble on about categorization policy? I think I'll shut up now and give you a chance to respond. ^_^; The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 22:24, 28 February 2013 (CST)


 * Lol, guess I'll just go by each of your paragraphs then. Paragraph #1: That does look just like what I thought you were proposing earlier, though I think the confusion that came out of my restating your ideas came about because I was assuming that your system idea was meant to replace all of the current infrastructure with just itself, like if the idea was basically to use as few categories as possible and remove the all-Mars-weak-enemies-in-Dark-Dawn functionality because that clashes with that idea, or something. BTW, I'll just state for the record that my first and foremost concern -is- that the functionality about seeing all Mars-weak enemies in DD when you click on a DD enemy's Mars-weakness category should be retained. But so long as that is in place, solutions involving changing around all the categories around those have the capacity to work.


 * Paragraph #2: *headdesk* Okay, I don't know how I ended up making that sentence at the end about "every category the item gets having both their [GBA/DD]-exclusive form[s] and the generalized form on top of it". (Maybe I was just rushing the last paragraph at the end there because that was at the end of a huge post I was eager to submit before anything happened.) But I clearly didn't glance at the Unique items categories long enough, since I never noticed that the items included in the small list in the master category of Unique items were not also present in all of the three subcategories. So I'll strike that thru.


 * Paragraph #3: That's a fairly relevant perspective I admittedly never thought from before. Master-categories should avoid having missing things like that, and should generally emphasize listing pretty much "everything" and allowing the sub-categories to compile only specific selections of that data. I believe having that as the system wouldn't and shouldn't conflict with the presence of categories like "Dark Dawn enemies with high Mars resistance".


 * Paragraphs #4 and #5: I am getting the impression that whatever solution we come up with will involve having the contents of sub-categories also presented in top categories. I mean, the category sets about the collectible Djinn do that, having the "Djinn" main category list all the Djinn in existence and also provide links to sub-categories such as "Jupiter Djinn". On that note... I find it odd now that when I had put in this whole current category system, I just chose the oddly-specific category about "Enemy Lines" to be the "master category" that branches out into all the specific areas where the information is kept, when there aren't any standalone enemies or bosses present in the list. Realistically, the master category should just be called "Enemies", and it contains every enemy in the game.


 * Paragraph #6: I always thought this issue would finally rear its head someday. Really, the way a lot of categories about GS1 and GS2 are merged is nothing more than a holdover from the days when the wiki's structure reflected that it covered a franchise that was just a pair of conjoined GBA carts, and even when Dark Dawn finally arrived the GBA-categories were pretty much kept for tradition's sake. But I can admit that if any problem comes up on the wiki that would be helped out by the newfound consistency that comes with splitting "GBA" categories into "Golden Sun" and "Golden Sun: The Lost Age" categories, then they should be split.


 * Paragraph #7: My likely support of having master-level categories contain all the stuff that the sub-categories also contain is partly so that further radical ideas like this can be kept locked away. ;)


 * Paragraph #8: Categories containing only links to further categories should be fine, though... looking at that Unleashes category page, couldn't that end up containing the names of every distinctively-named Unleash effect in the series? Erik the Appreciator (talk) 02:16, 1 March 2013 (CST)


 * Actually, I think you brought up something that occurred to me last night (while I was trying to go to sleep). Top-level categories really should contain all relevant articles. I know this in my head, but it feels weird and I can't explain why. For the sake of doing things correctly, though, I'm willing to go with "All Mars-weak enemies appear in 'Enemies with low Mars resistance'", in addition to having the game-specific sub-categories. I'm not sure how to handle the Pyrodra, though... In other news, the master category probably should be just "Enemies", although I think having a "Bosses" sub-category is still a good idea.


 * Before I get into anything else, though, I'd like to point out that, at this point in time, all Unleash pages are just redirects. Yes, we could categorize them, but why? Not to mention we have a long list at Unleash/List of Unleashes. Now, if Unleashes got actual articles, that would be another issue, but right now it just seems pointless. Which is probably why all of the sub-categories are "Weapons with [x] Unleashes". But that's a debate for another page ^_^;


 * There is one issue that I feel I should bring up, though. (Again, this is something that only occurred to me last night.) GSU has absolutely no consistency on the "GS1 and TLA vs. GBA" issue. For example, the Item/Equipment and Psynergy categories don't differentiate between games, but look at the templates. Weapons and Armor, like Template:Light Blades, have GS1 and TLA clearly separated. Template:VenusPsynergy, on the other hand, lumps GS1 and TLA together without any distinction. And Djinn have separate categories for each game, while the templates group GS1 and TLA together (although it does differentiate between the two within the template). I think you and I can agree that, if we have to choose, GS1 and TLA should be separated. But this is a bigger issue than it seems...


 * But maybe we shouldn't worry about the entire wiki just yet. Let's get the Enemy categories in shape first, that way we can safely delete the old Monster cats (some of which still have a few bosses in them). So should we replace "Enemy lines" with just "Enemies"? And I don't think you commented on creating a top-level rare-item-drops category.


 * P.S. I have an idea for the Unique items categories. When I renovated them way back when, I wanted a place to put those items that show up once-per-game. Now I've thought of a new way to do that while still having the other Unique items categories doing their jobs correctly. I'll get started on that, but I felt like bringing it up. The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 11:45, 1 March 2013 (CST)


 * Keep in mind that categories are supposed to be the more technically accurate side of things, while directory templates can take more liberties for the sake of being informationally (that's not a word? >.>) practical. The way the GBA Djinn template puts all 72 original Djinn together is ideal for informing about collecting all of them by the end of TLA, one of the game's primary goals. Weapon directory templates keep GS and TLA separate, on the other hand, because of how TLA-players don't really have full access to all of GS1's weapons. For Psynergy, though, that seems like it can be left GBA-merged - both in terms of categories and templates - because TLA Psynergy features all of the existing GS Psynergy while building upon it with extra levels and a few extra series, so a GS1 player probably wouldn't really be confused when seeing "Aura series" in the Mars template and finding out from clicking it that it is added in the second of the GBA duology. Basically, I'm saying there doesn't really have to be a full state of consistency all throughout the wiki if what is displayed up-front works to inform readers well enough anyway, and what we end up doing with the enemy categories shouldn't necessarily force a new state of total consistency on the rest of the wiki. At this point in time, all that does need to change elsewhere on the wiki in response to this issue is that the contents of the Unique Items category fill up all of its subcategories and vice versa, and then this system is imported into other category topics like Rare Items.


 * I didn't really notice that the minimal contents of the Unleash category included the Unleash/List of Unleashes page, which effectively is all that Category:Unleashes really does need to list because every Unleash in the game is compiled and informed of in that one page (only if every single Unleash in the game did actually have its own article would it work to have every Unleash's name in the master Category:Unleashes page, and fortunately we're not doing anything like that). But Category:Enemies should contain every enemy line page and single enemy/boss/fightable character in the game because those are all separate articles.


 * Another thing that just occurred to me that could be very important: Maybe we should just halve all our work and remove anything to do with categorizing "high" resistances whatsoever? It's like, who cares about that? Each enemy's weakness is what is important here, as we obviously know, and the high-resistance categories being displayed on all these enemy pages is a major ingredient to the clutter issues.


 * I'm guessing that the way the current enemy issue could be structured is that, we have every enemy-containing article on the wiki in Category:Enemies, and its sub-categories include Category:Enemies with low [Venus/Mars/Jupiter/Mercury] resistance and Category:[Golden Sun/The Lost Age/Dark Dawn] enemies. Each of the four general elemental weakness subcategories will contain three subcategory links to each of the three games' self-contained collections belonging to that elemental weakness. Meanwhile, each of the [Golden Sun/The Lost Age/Dark Dawn] enemies categories will also link to their respective four elemental weakness subcategories. That's basically "two paths down" to what will end up being twelve subcategories at the bottom dealing with [Golden Sun/The Lost Age/Dark Dawn] enemies with low [Venus/Mars/Jupiter/Mercury] resistances. But filling both of these paths towards the bottom with enemies will really clutter the enemy line pages, so I'm thinking that for the "Category:Enemies weak to [element]" median category page that links to three game-based subcategories, that should be more of an "empty sitemap" category that strictly exists to have the subcategory links. The Pyrodra, in all this, will end up being included in "Category:Enemies", "Category:The Lost Age enemies", "Category:The Lost Age enemies with low Mars resistance", "Category:Dark Dawn enemies", and "Category:Dark Dawn enemies with low Mercury resistance". It will not appear in "Category:Enemies with low Mars resistance" and "Category:Enemies with low Mercury resistance" median pages because those won't actually have any enemies in their listings. Category:Enemy Lines, meanwhile, could be an incidental subcategory to Category:Enemies as well, but that won't have any subcategories of its own anymore. Erik the Appreciator (talk) 13:29, 1 March 2013 (CST)


 * I'll let the template issue go for now, partly because I want to get this done already. ^_^; And I'll admit, knowing an enemy's weakness is far more important than knowing what it resists, especially if you're going for Djinn-kills. I suppose some people might find it a useful reference for knowing what not to use, but it just isn't quite as important. So yeah, I'd say we can ditch those too.


 * I think the "clutter" you mentioned is one of the reasons I was earlier resisting the idea of putting the same article in multiple related categories. I just think it's weird that you bring this up with the top-level categories rather than the multiple sub-categories you talked me into, which will result in more clutter (important, perhaps, but cluttered all the same). Despite the irony, I have no objections to turning the cross-game categories into "empty sitemaps", as you put it. My main question right now is if we're going to incorporate top-level Psynergy-capable and item drops categories the same way, since you only used resistances in your example. Actually, on second thought (and after writing much of what's to come ^_^;), should we consider changing the names of the low-resistance categories? I mean, sure, the current names aren't bad, but "low [element] resistance" does not automatically mean "lower than all other resistances". It's not hard to figure out that's what it means, but would something like "Enemies weak to [element]" be more accurate? Anyways, moving on...


 * I'm a bit iffy on keeping the "Enemy Lines" category if we bring in a simple "Enemies" cat. Sure, we have a "Bosses" category and the Enemy Lines cat could be useful for listing all non-bosses, but would it really be worth the extra clutter? Or am I just being paranoid?


 * Another idea just occurred to me. Should the game-exclusive categories - by which I mean "Enemies exclusive to [game]" - be in the Enemies master category? Like with the Grave Eclipse, those are very game-specific. If someone wanted a list of all enemies that only appear in a certain game, wouldn't they logically start their search in the list of all enemies that appear in that game? And, for that matter, I'm wondering if we even need those categories at all anymore, but I'm not going to propose ditching them just yet since this is only just coming to me. The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 16:30, 1 March 2013 (CST)


 * I sort of feel a listing of which enemies have only appeared in one game is fairly neat-looking trivia, and in the case of Dark Dawn ends up being a list of every original enemy and boss name new to the series. Seems fairly harmless. Though it looks like these exclusive-enemies categories should only be under each game's sub-cat and not the Enemies master-cat. I think it doesn't break anything to "incorporate top-level Psynergy-capable and item drops categories the same way", as you said. Now that we're at a point where we're only talking about which enemies have which element as their lowest resistance, "Enemies weak to [element]" sounds like that's what it should be renamed to. The "Enemy Lines" category could probably be deleted at this point because the master category will end up making it very visually apparent which articles are the enemy lines for those who care (they all end in the same "enemy line" phrase and will be longer than names like "Star Magician"). As for any instances of me having voted for separate things that cause more or less clutter separately, I guess I might have lost track of one or two of my thoughts over the course of this extremely multi-fronted discussion we've been having, but let's just see if our end product strikes a good balance between minimum-amount-of-purely-informative-categories and amount-of-categories-total. Erik the Appreciator (talk) 18:29, 1 March 2013 (CST)

Enemies reorganization proposal
Man, this is going on and on, isn't it? Anyways, based on everything we've gone over so far, this is how I'm currently picturing the new Enemy category organization. Bold is for article-less categories that group together related categories, while italics are for categories that appear under two or more other categories.


 * Enemies
 * Enemy lines|_
 * Bosses|_
 * Golden Sun enemies|*
 * Enemies exclusive to Golden Sun|*
 * Golden Sun enemies that drop unique items
 * Golden Sun enemies with low Jupiter resistance weak to Jupiter
 * Golden Sun enemies with low Mars resistance weak to Mars
 * Golden Sun enemies with low Mercury resistance weak to Mercury
 * Golden Sun enemies with low Venus resistance weak to Venus
 * Psynergy-capable enemies in Golden Sun
 * The Lost Age enemies|*
 * Enemies exclusive to The Lost Age|*
 * The Lost Age enemies that drop unique items
 * The Lost Age enemies with low Jupiter resistance weak to Jupiter
 * The Lost Age enemies with low Mars resistance weak to Mars
 * The Lost Age enemies with low Mercury resistance weak to Mercury
 * The Lost Age enemies with low Venus resistance weak to Venus
 * Psynergy-capable enemies in The Lost Age
 * Dark Dawn enemies|*
 * Enemies exclusive to Dark Dawn|*
 * Grave Eclipse enemies|*
 * Dark Dawn enemies that drop unique items
 * Dark Dawn enemies with low Jupiter resistance weak to Jupiter
 * Dark Dawn enemies with low Mars resistance weak to Mars
 * Dark Dawn enemies with low Mercury resistance weak to Mercury
 * Dark Dawn enemies with low Venus resistance weak to Venus
 * Psynergy-capable enemies in Dark Dawn
 * Enemies that drop unique items
 * Golden Sun enemies that drop unique items
 * The Lost Age enemies that drop unique items
 * Dark Dawn enemies that drop unique items
 * Enemies with low Jupiter resistance weak to Jupiter
 * Golden Sun enemies with low Jupiter resistance weak to Jupiter
 * The Lost Age enemies with low Jupiter resistance weak to Jupiter
 * Dark Dawn enemies with low Jupiter resistance weak to Jupiter
 * Enemies with low Mars resistance weak to Mars
 * Golden Sun enemies with low Mars resistance weak to Mars
 * The Lost Age enemies with low Mars resistance weak to Mars
 * Dark Dawn enemies with low Mars resistance weak to Mars
 * Enemies with low Mercury resistance weak to Mercury
 * Golden Sun enemies with low Mercury resistance weak to Mercury
 * The Lost Age enemies with low Mercury resistance weak to Mercury
 * Dark Dawn enemies with low Mercury resistance weak to Mercury
 * Enemies with low Venus resistance weak to Venus
 * Golden Sun enemies with low Venus resistance weak to Venus
 * The Lost Age enemies with low Venus resistance weak to Venus
 * Dark Dawn enemies with low Venus resistance weak to Venus
 * Psynergy-capable enemies
 * Psynergy-capable enemies in Golden Sun
 * Psynergy-capable enemies in The Lost Age
 * Psynergy-capable enemies in Dark Dawn
 * Enemies that take multiple actions per turn
 * Unused enemies

This incorporates both of our ideas at this time, even if we haven't yet come to a consensus on all of them yet. I just thought it would be useful to have a visible map of the end product. The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 16:30, 1 March 2013 (CST)
 * That does look like what it's going to end up as. Just replace "enemies with low [element] resistance" with "enemies weak to [element]" and I think we're all set. Erik the Appreciator (talk) 18:29, 1 March 2013 (CST)
 * I just had to let you two know, that if this were a content page, it would be one of the 20 largest pages on the wiki. I simply must applaud your two on your ability to write such lengthy posts. ~ dkpat (talk) 19:11, 1 March 2013 (CST)
 * I don't know if I should be proud or embarrassed. ^_^; Well, it was more Erik than me, honestly. We both have the potential, but he seems to be more in-tune with his "inner elaborator". The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 19:34, 1 March 2013 (CST)

Something that just recently occurred to me. I realize it's a minor point, but should it be "Enemies weak to [element]" or "Enemies weak to [element] attacks"? I favor the latter, but didn't want it coming out of left field. Any objections? The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 10:47, 6 March 2013 (CST)
 * No. Erik the Appreciator (talk) 11:49, 6 March 2013 (CST)
 * ...That's surprisingly brief for you ;p I'd assume you mean "No objections", but that could also be interpreted as "No, don't do that". The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 16:21, 6 March 2013 (CST)
 * ...That potential confusion did not occur to me at all - I only focused on the "Any objections?" question at the end, without really realizing that you worded the earlier part about adding "attacks" to the end as a question of its own, which my "no" could have ended up referring to. There's one way of showing why I only want to give detailed responses in discussions. Anyway, I agree that enemy weakness categories should specify they are weak to elemental attacks rather than elements, and there's probably some small justifications out there for that. Erik the Appreciator (talk) 19:25, 6 March 2013 (CST)

Okay, I think that, as far as setting up the categories goes, all that's left to do is the elemental weaknesses. But, when I was about to begin, I stumbled across these:


 * Category:GBA enemies weak to all elements
 * Category:Dark Dawn enemies weak to all elements

So, should we keep these? They're rather small, but I can't see any reason to actually get rid of them (well, except for splitting the GBA one into GS1 and TLA). And if we do keep them, should the enemies contained within also be listed in the element-specific categories? I would think so. Regardless, I think they should be moved out of the lowest-level they're currently in so they won't be so hard to find in the future. Assuming we keep them, of course. The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 13:02, 8 March 2013 (CST)


 * I anticipated that question would come up, and it's a bit of a hard question to answer. But if them being as bottom-level as they are is enough of a convenience issue to find that they would at least need to be moved out of the bottom level, and the enemies inside them should also be included in the element-specific categories, perhaps the all-element-weakness category might as well be deleted.


 * On a tangent, I think that despite the Thief enemy line's appearances in TLA being technically different enemies from the three variants fought in GS1 and not including a Brigand like in the first game, that page might as well remain as simple as having each of the two GBA sets of four elemental-weakness categories at the bottom. Erik the Appreciator (talk) 13:57, 8 March 2013 (CST)


 * I think I'm a bit confused here. Is your argument basically that the all-weak categories are more trouble than they're worth? Because, in retrospect, I think it would be a useful bit of trivia. If anything, we might want to consider combining them into a single "Enemies weak to all [elements/elemental attacks]" category up at the top level. Now, if you insist we get rid of them, that will be good enough for me (I notice that you're the only person that ever touched either category), but merging might be a better solution than deletion.


 * As for the Thief bit, you mean there would be eight elemental-weakness categories (ignoring the current topic of all-weak cats), four for GS1 and four for TLA?


 * Also, I hate bringing up a new topic in the middle of things, but should we consider splitting the bosses by game as well? And if we do, should we keep the bosses listed in the main Boss category (unlike what we're doing with some of the "directory cats")? I'm a bit torn on this issue, so I'm not going to follow through on it unless someone else approves. The World&#39;s Hungriest Paperweight (talk) 15:45, 8 March 2013 (CST)


 * It was merely possible the all-weak cats might be more trouble than they're worth, but you make having one additional merged version sound like it'd be good for trivia's sake, so you can do that. Yes to the Thief bit, and I figure bosses being just single enemies in certain games means they should be split apart by game too. Perhaps I could just say we should not have all of the bosses additionally compiled into the main boss category since there's the fact the Boss directory template pretty much does that already, displaying all of them up front together in one space, but with the additional little benefit that the template at least keeps the identity/form of each final boss a secret to your casually-glancing readers. Listing every boss in the game together in one main Boss category might defeat that purpose a little more than necessary, whereas if you go from that main category into one of the game sub-categories, you know exactly what you're going to get - a list of every boss name in that game. Erik the Appreciator (talk) 18:58, 8 March 2013 (CST)