Needs Help: Lightning Bruiser

Let's just link the crowner already and get this over with.

bump

Do we have a crowner link?

There is significant disagreement about what such a crowner would say, let alone whether there should be one at all. Link what?

Here's the crowner.

"Is there a problem?

Yes/No"

Because by my count there are two people who see no problem and 3 at least that do.

A crowner that asks "Is there a problem?" is absolutely useless. Ask for an actual solution, rather than a problem.

No one complain about this one. Let us do that one first and see the result. And at page 5, I think that everyone agreed that there is a problem.

We need to figure out how to fix the actual trope first. We should just go ahead and link crowner #2.

I've read most of the earlier post, and think I've noticed a problem. People seem to alter one of the stats for no reason. Take Glass Cannon for instance. The trope is for characters with high attack and low defense People tend to assume that the Characters SPEED however, would also be either high or low when it should simply be average. Let me demonstrate with the slightly modified tier list.

First Tier

High attack, low defense, average speed: Glass Cannon High defense, low attack, average speed: Stone Wall High speed, low defense, average attack: Fragile Speedster

Second Tier

High attack & defense, low speed: Mighty Glacier High attack & speed, low defense: Fast and Fragile Fighter(?) High speed, high defense, low attack: none

Third Tier

High attack, defense, & speed: Lightning Bruiser

I think we need to define these using all three stats for all of them. This should decrease confusion regarding the 'first tier' characters: one of their stat would simple have to be average. You see what I'm getting at?

edited 27th Aug '12 8:17:02 PM by Vootuu

Except the stat doesn't need to be average. See, this is the unnecessary granularity thing we were talking about.

It seems to me that the stat that doesn't factor into the direct creation of the trope would be average by default. The problem is that without the somewhat similar tropes being very clearly defined, people will keep misusing them. If all the stats are spelled out, there would be no need for guessing and shoehorning.

Now, about the "subversion" nature of this trope. Is it possible for us to just create the tropes "Stronger Than You Look" and "Faster Than You Look" so that it doesn't have to be incorporated into the trope description?

I'm starting to think that "subversion" angle should get dropped entirely, if it's giving people the wrong idea about the stat setup. The expectation it's intended to subvert is entire notion of Competitive Balance. You get used to thinking a strong character should be slow, or a character that is fast should be weak. But dividing up those expectations apparently breeds the interpretation that the character is either +speed/+offense/+defense OR +speed/+offense/-defense, which it is not. My vote would be for nuking the sections.

I sort of like the idea of Faster Than They Look or Tougher Than They Look tropes.

Alright. Can I prepare YKTTWs for those two tropes, then?

Go ahead and do that and see what kind of response it gets. Try not to duplicate examples from subtropes like Acrofatic or Cute Bruiser.

You forgot Stronger Than They Look.

Also, have we figured out how to fix the trope yet? Can we start cleaning up examples already?

edited 7th Sep '12 4:56:36 PM by shiro_okami

Proposed (no options are mutually exclusive):

• Define Lightning Bruiser as strong Offense, Defense, and Speed. Fast-moving Glass Cannons do not apply. Purge bad examples.

• Nuke separate sections for "Fast-Moving Big Bruisers" and "Hard-Hitting Speedsters" as this fosters the misconception that low stamina is not a disqualifier.

• Cut the "subversion" angle entirely.

• Launch tropes for "Faster Than You Look", "Stronger Than You Look", and/or "Tougher Than You Look" to cover the "subversion" angle.

• Re-haul the Competitive Balance tropes altogether.

• Re-haul the Competitive Balance tropes by having strictly defined builds of low/low/high or high/high/low for every combination of Speed, Defense, and Offense.

Would that be acceptable to vote upon? But actually do we even need to vote on the first one?

Incidentally, of this list, I'd vote for all but the final two options. You might say our Competitive Balance tropes could use some work, but I don't think whatever flaws exist there account for the misuse here. A "fast Glass Cannon" is a Fragile Speedster + a Glass Cannon. I don't think the fact that you can't directly call that by its own separate trope instead of a combination is a flaw, the confusion IMO most likely arises from Lightning Bruiser's referral to "hard-hitting speedsters" as a separate category.

However, there ARE builds you can't account for even by combining Competitive Balance tropes, because of Mighty Glacier itself being a combination build of +Attack/-Speed and +Defense/-Speed when we don't have those tropes on their own; nor do we have the negative-offense, positive-speed pair to Fragile Speedster's -Defense/+Speed. I don't think we need one trope for every possible combination of low/low/high and high/high/low, but we technically don't have tropes for the simpler combination of high/low. We can speak of sacrificing offense for defense, defense for offense, or defense for speed, but not for sacrificing attack for speed (which isn't too uncommon for rogue-types or the Weak, but Skilled), nor for sacrificing speed for offense or defense by themselves. Whether that's a huge gap I'm not sure, but it does seem to be a gap.

edited for spelling

edited 8th Sep '12 1:25:30 AM by Tyoria

This! Even if we don't decide to do anything about Competitive Balance or launching tropes right now, we should at least be able to fix Lightning Bruiser right now.

I can start up a thread on a Competitive Balance overhaul if that is needed.

Go for it. It's an issue worth looking at, and it seems this conversation has a hard time not derailing in that direction for so long as it seemingly looks unresolved.

Competitive Balance thread created. Now we can focus our discussion on Competitive Balance over there.

edited 15th Sep '12 6:04:09 PM by WaxingName

Faster Than They Look YKTTW created.

Stronger Than They Look YKTTW created.

Now, is everyone sure that I have to make a "Tougher Than You Look" YKTTW?

Since we didn't seem to be going anywhere on the actual Lightning Bruiser trope, I created a Sandbox here. Took out the Hard-hitting Speedster section and "clarified" the description. Not perfect, but at least it's a start.

I've got a suggestion. Divide Video Games into their respective genres. You may also put it on top of the example list or leave it there.