Needs Help: Competitive Balance

We don't really need the The Same But More Specific version. It's something that happens sometimes, but that doesn't make it an archetype.

Stone Wall And Fast

edited 9th Nov '12 2:39:58 PM by troacctid

Wait. What is it more specific to?

It's more specific to Stone Wall. It's also combined with Too Rare To Trope, since it's not an established archetype either.

Have we decided if we are going to do this yet or not?

No it isn't. Stone Wall Has nothing to do with speed. The trope is high Defense and low attack power. Speed is Arbitrary.

Well, TRS won't be open for a while, so all we can do is still use this thread. And as mentioned before, I do support bringing the archetypes into Necessary Drawback instead of Competitive Balance. All we need to really do is think of what to do with Lightning Bruiser, and there's that other thread I started for that.

Yes, that's why it's The Same But More Specific. Tacking on "...and also, he's fast" to a trope that has nothing to do with speed is a textbook "But More Specific."

Exactly. It's not necessary to cover the whole "holy triangle" of Atk, Def, and Spd to fix the problem. Just make the established archetypes fall under a new trope.

No, as we've been saying, the "Holy Triangle" has become pointless. It sacrifices accurate tropes to pigeonhole character types together.

For example, there's cooperative-based games where a character's entire purpose is that they're fast and capable of taking damage. Or you have characters like the Rogues in Dragon Age that can actually tank more damage than the Warrior because their evasion is more efficient than the tank's defense. The "Stone Wall" trope barely gives you one line to acknowledge the speedy variation.

There are Squishy Wizards who can move really fast too. Doesn't mean we need a subtrope for them.

Tanking and evading are not the same thing. I've never played Dragon Age, but it seems that your example is still a Fragile Speedster if it's all about evasion.

If we need a trope about evasion, the one we need is the Dodge Spam trope. (Which is a tactic, not a character archetype.)

edited 10th Nov '12 4:31:53 PM by troacctid

Yeah we do, if it's tropable.

Yeah, tanking and evading are the same thing. A tank can use evasion, damage resistance, or damage deflection. All "Tank" means is a character able to consistently negate enemy attacks. How they do it is up to the individual game.

Hell, if we're going this route about The Same But More Specific, why don't we just make "The Fast One" and make both Lightning Bruiser and Fragile Speedster Types 1 and 2?

Tanking seems to be more of taking enemy attacks, letting them hit, and taking the damage for the other party members. Evading is drawing enemy attacks from the other party members and not letting them hit. In many cases, I'm aware that if the evader actually gets hit, he goes down quickly. Any other definition for either would be too unindicative.

Also, Lightning Bruiser is a "special case", since it doesn't have any Necesary Drawback at first glance. You can give input on the TRS thread I made for that instead.

edited 10th Nov '12 6:37:45 PM by WaxingName

Lightning Bruisers still have a drawback. Just usually not one that deals with the triangle. Another reason why the triangle is inefficient.

As for tanking:

"A tank is a style of character in gaming, often associated with a character class. A common convention in real-time strategy games, role-playing games, MMORP Gs, MOB As and MU Ds, tanks redirect enemy attacks and/or attention toward themselves in order to protect other characters or units. Since this role often requires them to suffer large amounts of damage, they rely on large amounts of vitality or armor, or alternatively evasiveness and misdirection" — Wikipedia.

So yeah, Evasion Tanking is a thing.

edited 10th Nov '12 6:54:05 PM by KingZeal

I mean, we're clearly in agreement that we don't want these tropes to be hijacked by this arbitrary "triangle", so why not just go ahead with a YKTTW for Evasion Tanking? It's not a strategy that's specific to a low-attack, high-defense character. I don't think it falls under Competitive Balance or Necessary Drawback.

Seconding making a trope for "Evasion Tanking".

Now, can we all agree that we can move the archetypes from Competitive Balance to Necessary Drawback now? We're long overdue.

Yes, can we please do this already? Arguing about subtropes is incredibly pointless if we don't even know what supertrope they will go in or how they are going to fit into it.

I would point out that Tanking by itself is not a trope either, thus I see no reason to go all the way to "Evasion Tanking" when you've already proven it's covered under the concept of Tanking.

Another vote to push towards getting something done here and eliminate the "holy triangle" so we can focus on cleaning up subtropes.

Speaking of the holy triangle, let's remove those charts until further notice, since those add to the confusion. I'll start an Image Pickin about it.

edited 11th Nov '12 2:05:17 PM by WaxingName

So, can I finally fix the description so that we won't have to put those tropes under Competitive Balance anymore?

Well, discussion has frozen a little, but, exactly how are we going to fix Competitive Balance so that the archetypes aren't part of it anymore? Are we going to remove the archetypes entirely from the page and just replace it with Necessary Drawback to explain just one way they're competitively balanced?

Remove the archetypes entirely from the Competitive Balance page. They will be solely subtropes of Necessary Drawback (they are in that page already). Since Necessary Drawback is more generic while Competitive Balance seems to be biased towards gaming, I think it would make more sense for Competitive Balance to also be a subtrope of Necessary Drawback.

edited 12th Nov '12 6:43:51 PM by shiro_okami

Alright, we'll do that. Now, all we have to do is deal with Lightning Bruiser. Can we continue that TRS thread I started so everything will be cleared up there?

Also, we'll need slight wick cleaning to dissociate those archetypes from Competitive Balance.

edited 13th Nov '12 5:57:08 AM by WaxingName

After making all the changes, I realized that some description tweaking was in order. Because some of the changes were drastic, my proposal is on Sandbox.Competitive Balance. It removes every non-game example because they don't fit very well at all. I also simply added Necessary Drawback to a list of common ways to competitively balance since it's only one way to do so.

So, is this Sandbox good, or does it need other changes?