Talk:Dragon Quest character classes

Scope and merge / split proposals

IMO this article should focus on general information, while game-specific information should be covered in the gameplay sections of the relevant game articles. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 06:09, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

The sections about DW 3 and DQ 6 were originally in their respective articles and were suggested to be removed, so I put them here a while ago.  ?EVAUNIT^{神になった人間} 15:10, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Reorganization

This article, as mentioned previously, should be about the overally similarities with classes. Sepcific differences, are better covered in the games' articles. FE: Talk about how the Fighter class works in general throughout all the games, not every specific one.陣内_Jinnai 20:03, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree that that's the way to go, but, other than the main eight or so classes, there are a few different ones. VII, for example, has like thirty classes. I'll probably get to sorting this out in the next few days (just had to move into new apartment). I think I'll just list the main ones and explain them, then have a subsection talking about the weirder ones (ie. have a paragraph about the monster classes from VII).  ?EVAUNIT^{神になった人間} 21:39, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Well beyond the core clases that's fine. I would seperate the hero and talk about his/her class seperatly, ie both the class and how, in DQ9 they start as a minstrel class.

It is probably also worth mentioning (assuming you, I or someone else can find the article(s) that talk about DQ8s characters as representing the archetypes of classes, ie the game doesn't have any classes, but the characters represent the four classic core classes of mage, priest, rouge and warrior to an extent. I think I saw an article by one of the RSes talking about this, but it may have been offline source. That or another article also talked about how since DQ2 even when the game didn't have classes per say, it modeled its characters around the those basic class archetypes.

As for the advanced classes, I would talk about their similiarties and differences without doing anything that crosses over into WP:OR. You can do this by using objective measures such as those I redid the class paragraph on Dragon Quest as.陣内_Jinnai 18:31, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that this table summarizes well "the overall similarities with classes" (copied&pasted from Jinnai's first message). The idea is: three standard class-types (Fighter, Wizard, Healer) and three hybrid class-types (Hybrid Fighters with some magic, Hybrid black&white magicians, Mixed classes), sorted from "pure fighters with no magic" to "best healers with limited offensive skills". I played only the first four games, though. Please contribute. --Abacos (talk) 10:05, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Dragon Quest (version)	N. of Classes	Fighting Classes	Hybrid Fighting Classes	Hybrid Classes	Offensive Magic Classes	Hybrid Magic Classes	Healing Magic Classes
DQ 1 (NES)	1	-	-	HERO	-	-	-
DQ 2 (NES)	3	HERO	-	Prince	-	Princess	-
DQ 3 (GBC)	9	Warrior Fighter	Thief	HERO Dealer Jester	Mage	Sage	Cleric
DQ 4 (NES)	16	Soldier Princess (Guardsman) (Alchemist) (Young Man) (Baby Dragon)	(Jester)	HERO Merchant	Wizard Dancer	(Troubadour)	Chancellor Fortune Teller (Kind Monster) (Zenithian)
DQ 5 (DS)	(stub)
DQ 6 (DS)	(stub)
DQ 7 (PS)	(stub)
DQ 8 (PS2)	(stub)
DQ 9 (DS)	(stub)

It can be seen that the Fighter in DQ3 corresponds to the Princess in DQ4; also, the Mage in DQ3 is split in two in DQ4: the Wizard has Ice spells, the Dancer has Fire spells; similar thing for the Cleric in DQ3 that in DQ4 is split into Chancellor (beat/defeat) and Fortune Teller (infernos/wind). --Abacos (talk) 10:24, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

As I mentioned in my talk page, grouping them under broad categories is OR. Just because FF does it, doesn't mean we should copy a bad practice (or perhaps they have RSes that group them as such). If you want 陣内_Jinnai 15:37, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean with "or"? "Either" what? What's the second option? And what's "rs", as well? Acronym-mania is, in my humble opinion, a horrible habit from the USA (fine, that's an acronym too :-P ). By the way, the broad categories come from the page about role-playing Character class, I didn't invent anything. In the worst case, I think that the table in this discussion page can still be useful as a guideline. Cheers, --Abacos (talk) 10:08, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Those broad categories might come from another article, but just because they exist there doesn't mean we can just assign them here. That is original research, which Wikipedia doesn't allow. You need reliable sources (as defined by Wikipedia) saying that X is such. We have them saying that X in some games are specific classes - the games themselves, but not class-types. You might be able to argue that mage/wizard is magic-user class, but not something like a Hero or Fool which are Dragon Quest original classes. In addition, you cannot simply place characters into a class when no such source doesn't do so already, ie for most of the games that don't use classes. Even for DQ8, I've only heard some mention that the characters are the basic role-playing class archetypes, but they don't go into detail without going into detail about who is what. While it may be obvious to you what Jessica would be, it might not to someone who has no background in role-playing games.陣内_Jinnai 14:31, 4 May 2011 (UTC)