Board Thread:Wiki discussion/@comment-18014300-20170420064223/@comment-18014300-20170616091555

I was thinking this over, and I have just realized the merit of Touloir's perspective a bit more or at least understand it better.

For example, I was confused over his assertion that swords describes the "concept" of swords while Hidden Blade doesn't. I don't think this is correct, but I do think that another way Touloir could have described it as that swords in Assassin's Creed is a class or category of weapons whereas Hidden Blade is a single weapon.

This harkens back to when I just split spear from long weapons since it used to redirect to it, and when "Swords and maces" were one article, standing in for "medium weapons".

I think even though we are focusing on a lore-based direction in this wiki over gameplay, a case may be made that preserving these gameplay classifications is convenient, especially if it doesn't violate any logic. It's only a matter of organization.'

However, this is a very important counter-point: with the release of newer games, it's clear that one game's organization or classification of weapons is not universal or consistent across all other games. In other cases, weapons which we might think should be treated as a collection or group are treated as a distinct, singular item in a game.

For example: mace. Since there is a Cavalieri Mace, a Flanged Mace, a Condottiero Mace, a Byzantine Mace, and an Ottoman Mace, it would seem that for the sake of organization, we can treat an article at mace as dealing with maces as a collection or group. In other words maces. However, in Assassin's Creed: Unity, there is also a specific weapon named simply "Mace" even while there are other maces in the game. There is the same problem with Warhammer since the game has a specific weapon, on the same level of organization as other specific weapons, simply named "Warhammer" while there are other weapons in the series that are specific models of warhammers including the Lucerne hammer and the Prussian War Hammer. This becomes confusing and problematic because when we're writing an article and describing warhammers or maces in general, we might want to link to "warhammer", but it would lead to the specific model of warhammer or mace in Unity rather than warhammers or maces in general. A solution to this is to just have separate articles on maces and the specific, too-simply-named Mace in Unity, but I think this leads to another question.

Is the "Mace" in Unity really meant to represent a specific model of mace that is poorly named, or just a mace in general? If the latter, then it means that the game apparently organized maces in general on the same tier of organization as other more specifical weapons. After all, other weapons are called flamberge or bisento or bident or claymore or scimitar. They're always named very simply, and each one of these "specific" weapons can in fact arguably stand as "collections of weapons of that type" as well, just like "mace" or "warhammer".

While we might not realize it, this is the same even with older games. "Lucerne hammer" can also be a collection or group of different Lucerne hammers. As can cinquedeas especially since there are three models of cinquedeas in the series, the notched cinquedea, the Channeled Cinquedea, and the cinquedea in Unity which is as long as a sword. The two older types of cinquedeas from AC2, being more specific types, can arguably be grouped under the article "Cinquedeas" from Unity which sounds more general. Alternatively, we can treat the "cinquedeas" in Unity as not referring to using a cinquedea in general, but a specific model.

All this is very confusing and long-winded, I'm sure, so let me bold my point. It's clear that in the AC series, classification of weapons is not immutable, and it is often quite arbitrary as well.

The argument for designating certain articles as dealing with "groups" of something is based purely on a game's manner of organizing gameplay terms. Mercenaries is a faction. Swords is a group of different types of swords. However, games differ in their organization of gameplay terms from game to game. There's no "general cinquedea" or "general mace" in AC2. There's different specific types of maces and cinquedeas. Hence, an article at "maces" can conceivably be a group of the different specific types of maces. However, in Unity, "mace" itself is on the same tier as a specific, individual weapon.

Outside of organizing as a game does (which is inconsistent across all the games), there is no logical way of distinguishing some things as designating a "group" and some not. "Maces" can be a group of different kinds of maces, or it can be regarded as a specific item "Mace". Yes, a bastard sword seems like a specific sword, not a group of swords. However, there are different types of bastard swords across the different games, showing that indeed, we can say there is a group of (different types of) bastard swords, just as there is a group of different types of swords. Any item can be treated as a group or an individual item.

It's quite clear that our wiki is inconsistent about which subjects should be treated as a group and which should not. We think to be faithful to the series' way of organization or classification, except this has become outdated because the games aren't consistent with it. This method is thus unreliable.