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Bravely Default may have various similarities to certain Final Fantasy games, but it is very specifically NOT a part of the Final Fantasy series. It is considered a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, but it isn't an actual sequel to it. It doesn't take place in any of the Final Fantasy worlds, nor does it carry the name, nor does it contain the iconic staples of the series. Please don't spread misinformation. Please remove it from the Final Fantasy template.
Its related to it in some form and fashion and as a bonus for Bravely Default: For the Sequel, the game offers Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light bosses similar ot how Kingdom Hearts has Final Fantasy characters in it as cameos.Lucia Black (talk) 12:55, 13 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. If we're going to add follow ups to numbered games, then X-2 and XII Revenant Wings also should be added to the main series. -- ThiagoSimoes (talk) 19:32, 19 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Direct sequels to a main game should be added, as they're also main games. This means X-2, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns. Revenant Wings would be a spin-off.. -- DarkKyoushu (talk) 12:16, 1 September 2015 (GMT)
I agree with DarkKyoushu above, as well as Jeromesandilanico, who made a suggestion back here that was ahead of its time. Now that there are three direct sequels, it makes no sense to leave them out of the template. Readers should not have to click on a main game like X to find out that there is another main game that was a sequel to it, especially when the template is otherwise thorough in listing every conceivable related game that is not a mainline FF entry. Since adding X-2, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns to the main series listing would lengthen that line considerably, I'm making a callback to Jeromesandilanico's suggestion of a new line in the template, underneath "Main games", called "Direct sequels". Any objections or suggestions, or should I go ahead and try it, and we can look at the results? --Iritscen (talk) 17:29, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Eh, there are over 130 releases in the series, though a large amount don't have their own articles, so I wouldn't say that the template lists "every conceivable related game". It lists all of the related series, which are sometimes just one game. In any case- having a "sequel" line is complicated. FF4 has The After Years, FF5 has Legend of the Crystals (but it's an ova), FF7 has a whole series of games, which have their own template (do any of them count as sequels, since only the movie is later in time?), FF10 has a sequel (in its own template), FF12 has a sequel (but that sequel is part of a related series which has its own template), FF13 has 2 sequels (do we list them both? Also, they're in their own template), FF14 has a remake and then that remake has expansion packs, FF15 doesn't have a sequel but is part of a series (which is in the FF13 template)...
Basically, it sounds nice in theory to have a "direct sequels" section, but it's actually a muddled mess. There is probably a better way to organize things in the template besides the "external template"/"sections that only pop up when you're on one of their pages" thing we have now, but I don't think a "sequels" section is it. --PresN20:51, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you mean. I was thinking about only three sequels for the entire mainline, and forgot about the FF VII prequels (Crisis Core and Before Crisis) and sequel (Dirge of Cerberus) and FF XII's sequel. I think that OVAs could be ignored in the "Main games" listing, but having so many pre/sequels still makes for a challenge in terms of neat presentation. I played around with putting the related games in their own collapsible sub-box, as seen here, but I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the results.
Still, I notice that the rebuild, or whatever you want to call it, of FF XIV, "A Realm Reborn", gets its own link in parentheses after "XIV", which makes the exclusion of the actual independent games X-2 and two XIII sequels even stranger. Maybe the ideal approach would be collapsible areas after each roman numeral, e.g., "IX · X (related) · XI", where clicking the "(related)" after "X" turns into a link called "(X-2)", clicking the "(related)" after "VII" turns into "(Crisis Core, Before Crisis, Dirge of Cerberus)", etc. But it doesn't seem that it's possible to make text expand to the right like that, and replace "(related)", without writing a custom JavaScript for this template. I'd love to know if anyone has any other ideas. --Iritscen (talk) 00:07, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I like that! My only notable concern with it is that not every reader may understand that the column headers are game titles meant to be clicked on. Here's a slight variant on your idea, with full game titles for the column headers so that the eye is more likely to see that each title is a blue link. This required dropping back from eight titles per row to five to allow for smaller monitors. I also made some small corrections to the actual titles listed under each game:
Actually, the template has needed a simplicity overhaul for a while now. Cut the game-specific display-only-parameter stuff. This navbox has never been so big that it actually needed that functionality. I have had a first-cut draft sitting at User:Izno/Sandbox#Final Fantasy for a while now. --Izno (talk) 11:40, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I think all three of us can agree that the "game-specific display-only-parameter stuff" should ideally be a global part of the template so that you don't need to click on the articles for Final Fantasy IV, VII, X, XII, or XIII and read for a while, or scroll to the navboxes at the bottom, just to find out that there were major follow-ups to these games.
Taking a look at your draft, it seems like your suggestion is to just have a new row for each game. You've even made a row for games with no sequels, in order to link to all articles pertaining to each game. I like the comprehensiveness of that, but you've only done it for some of the games. There may be few related articles for FF I-III, but their absence seems potentially confusing. Yes, they're listed in "Main games", but that row has its own issue: since you already have links to each mainline entry at the start of each row, the "Main games" row adds nothing of value, except that it lists the first three titles.
I wanted to see how tall the navbox would get with rows for each game, so I augmented your navbox draft (I decided to combine I-III into one row to fully replace the "Main games" row, and I made some corrections and updates for the rest of the mainline games):
Maybe it's okay if the table is that tall? The navbox goes at the bottom of the article, after all. Are there other examples of big navboxes out there? I tried looking at some major game series' navboxes, and none were as complex as Final Fantasy's, including Dragon Quest's. Maybe none of them have the number of works that FF does.
Both your version of the navbox and PresN's accomplish the goal of listing each sequel or prequel alongside its original game. At the moment, I think it looks better to have whitespace in the many-row design than it looks in the multi-column design, but what do you guys think? --Iritscen (talk) 15:31, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
What probably happened is that I got sick of trudging through the live template's behavior to ensure I got every link into the sandbox navbox. :^) Usually navboxes aren't that tall, but I've seen ones on that order. I think it's fine not to have every game have a devoted |group=; we only really need that if we have lots of sub-game articles for a particular game. --Izno (talk) 16:03, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, it took a while to collect the additional articles that I listed there, and I still probably missed some (just made a couple fixes, in fact). I think the main question is whether it would look odd or confusing if only some games had their own row. If we don't give a separate row to the games that have no "additional works" at all, we would only have rows for Final Fantasy 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, and 15, which I think might confuse some readers ("Where did 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, and 11 go? Why are just these games here?"), or simply look unappealing.
That's why I like the approach of just listing them all separately (besides the first three, which are from the "pre-story" days and have little to say about them in terms of related articles). There's probably not a perfect way to do this because of the sheer complexity of what we are trying to map, though I'm still very open to anyone else coming in with a clever idea. Otherwise I think it's just a matter of finding what annoys us the least and yet actually lists all the FF games. --Iritscen (talk) 18:09, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, not sure I like the multi-row design, as most of the rows are really empty. I tried populating the multi-column a bit more with music, character articles etc. (though I didn't add the individual character articles): --PresN18:12, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
