Suggestion for some of the tropes: Competitive Balance

Namely

• Fragile Speedster
• Glass Cannon
• Lightning Bruiser
• The Mario
• Mighty Glacier
• Stone Wall

I was thinking we could illustrate them ourselves with a bunch of graphs. All of these refer to the same 3 stats: Attack, Defense, and Speed. All we have to do is make an graph for each one to make them uniform.

edited 16th Jul '11 4:49:31 PM by SalFishFin

Nuked the duplicate. Sorry for the wait.

I think it would be best to have five concentric pentagons.

I think it should be Speed, Range Atk, Melee Atk, Health, Defense. We could add tow more if we wanted, Atk Speed and Special.

Yeah, but the ones I listed are all concern the same 3 stats: Speed, Power, and Durability. We can probably have a ton of stats for The Mario, though, to show its rounded nature, but otherwise, adding extra stats would be... extra.

Well, the problem is that most of them only mention two.

Point.

So if I'm reading this right:

• Fragile Speedster- High Speed, Low Durability. Attack Doesn't matter May overlap with Glass Cannon if Attack is High.
• Glass Cannon- High Attack, Low Durability, Speed doesn't matter. May overlap with Fragile Speedster if Speed is High.
• Lightning Bruiser: High Speed, Durability, and Attack.
• The Mario- Middle in everything
• Mighty Glacier- High Attack, High Defense, Low Speed.
• Stone Wall- High Defense, Low Attack. Speed is Negligible.

I don't think that Fragile Speedster overlaps with Glass Cannon very often. Normally, a Fragile Speedster does damage by hitting a bunch of times really fast, while a Glass Cannon hits like a sledgehammer. From my experience.

So should we change Fragile Speedster to "High Speed/Low Power/Low Durability?"

...no. It's fine as it is. Besides, it can overlap with Glass Cannon.

That's the problem, while they can overlap, it's not necessary for the trope.

First try, very open to suggestions. I can post the excel sheet if anyone wants it.

edited 21st Jul '11 9:08:21 PM by Earnest

I don't think that's the way it was though of.

How was it thought of?

Later: Oh, you mean the pentagons? Yeah... I tried that, and the overlap is murder on the eyes. I suppose we could try six separate pentagons. I'll post those results later just for reference.

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:37:42 AM by Earnest

And here's a pentagon spread. Really, side by side would be the only way, because no amount of careful stacking would stop at least some obstructive overlap.

edited 22nd Jul '11 5:45:40 AM by Earnest

Argh, those are a mess...the first graph is much better.

I like pentagon graphs better in general...can you do one graph for each trope, and put them all next to each other?

That's more along the lines of what I was thinking. Except I meant to have the graphs put on the actual pages. I say this because of the images on those pages, the only relevant one is of a trading card.

Also, I believe that there was a trope called "Glass Ninja" which was about "Fast, Hits hard, but isn't durable." I can't seem to find it though.

edited 22nd Jul '11 9:30:37 AM by SalFishFin

Let's see the individual graphs and we can go from there.

Here's what I was thinking:

That's not bad, but I think I lean toward the pentagons strictly because they give a broader range of stats.

But the larger number of stats is unnecessary to the trope description. "HP" and "Defense" are both covered by "Durability" and all of those "Attack" Stats are covered by "Power." It's much more concise.

We could add a bunch more "Stats" for The Mario, but otherwise, we don't need more than the three that I listed.

No, because just three makes the Lightning Bruiser seem OP when he's usually limited by range.

I think we should do four stats instead of three or five, namely Speed, Durability, Range, and Power. Melee power is more implicit when you see that a character lacks range.

edited 22nd Jul '11 12:08:33 PM by TweedlyDee

"They may, however, be balanced by having other weaknesses, such as a total lack of range or magical capability"

Emphasis mine.

I can attest to the fact that the Lightning Bruiser isn't always "balanced" like that. Example: Hector from Fire Emblem. I could send him at any group of enemies I wanted taken out, no matter if they were magic users or Melee attackers using the most powerful weapons at their disposal, and he'd get double attacks on all of them (barring a Swordmaster) because of his high speed, take Scratch Damage at best from anyone he didn't manage to dodge because of his high defense, and still kill anyone in one turn with the weakest weapons he has because of his high strength. Hell, even a Killing Edge Swordmaster who got two critical hits couldn't take him out because his HP was ridiculous. He was a Lightning Bruiser through and through, and literally nothing could stop him.

edited 22nd Jul '11 12:29:47 PM by SalFishFin

I say we take the "messy pentagon" thing Earnest made, convert it to a triangle, and make six of them each corresponding to just one trope?

These are some tall orders, so I'm dividing them up into posts. Here are the pentagons. I can play with Mario and Bruiser to make them not take up the whole field, maybe add a new series and make it invisible to contrast better.