Needs Help: Competitive Balance

*bump* I know this is a fast bump, but I think we're getting close to finishing this for good.

So, is the setup I tweaked on Sandbox.Competitive Balance a good one?

Difficult, but Awesome and its polar opposite Skill Gate Character should be added.

Added that. There anything else?

Skill Gate Character and Difficult, but Awesome are good additions, but I think both belong in the balance section, not split in the balance and imbalence one. And they fit under the current definition of the trope, so they can be added even if there is no change to the description.

Squishy Wizard and Gradual Grinder are archetypes like the ones which are suggested to be removed.

Ditto Fighter and Confusion Fu are about fighting styles not about balance, they don't belong on this index.

So looking at the planed changes we will reduce the number of tropes from 11 examples of proper use of the supertrope to 3.

Rewriting a supertrope in a way, that roughly 75% of its subtropes have to be removed needs more consensus than two people telling each other that they are Ok with this change. It need a proper crowner and maybe someone actually stating what problem is supposed to be solved by this major change. Right now I don't see that someone made a wick check or proved in any way, that this trope, which was specifically build around the "archetypes" has any other problem than people being confused about the "A/D/S- Triangle". Solving the "triangle" problem can be done in less drastic way, like removing the misleading page image and adding more sub tropes.

Confusion Fu is about balance, I think. It's a form of balance in which a character is confusing but perhaps otherwise unimpressive. I can think of some examples:

"Capos" in Tekken (Caporeira fighters Eddy, Christie and Tiger) who have particularly slow and punishable attacks but make up for it by having a number of attacks that are difficult to predict)

El Fuerte in Street Fighter IV, who has an attack which branches into up to six variations and can't be predicted, but otherwise doesn't have as many good tools as the higher tiers.

It's a form of balance in which a character is confusing but perhaps otherwise unimpressive.

The problem is "perhaps". Yes being confusing is maybe the only thing the character using Confusion Fu is good at. But being otherwise unimpressive is not an inherent trait of this fighting style. E.G. sometimes Confusion Fu is used by overall strong fighters against specific enemies with mind reading powers or super analytical skills. (like the One Piece example)

Right. But in that example, he had to overcome an opponent with superior reflexes and analytical skill. He still overcame a weakness with it.

edited 14th Nov '12 2:58:13 PM by KingZeal

The challenge of this fight was not his own weakness, it was his opponents strength.

This is a trope about competition. There's no difference.

It is not a trope about competition, it is a trope about a fighting style, which can be used in a competition.

Again Confusion Fu can be used to balance a weakness of a character, but these balance is not an inherent part of the trope.

In Sandbox.Competitive Balance, note that I reworked "Subtropes of Competitive Balance" into "Common ways to competitively balance". I also reworked it to not be part of an index. So Confusion Fu can fit in that new section because it's a common way to balance.

I still also think Skill Gate Character goes in the "imbalance" section because this is about Competitive Balance, which exists mainly at the highest level play. At the highest level of play, the Skill Gate Character becomes imbalanced in that the character isn't usable anymore.

And about the crowner, I offered to make a crowner for this thread, but everyone was against it, so I decided to not do it.

edited 14th Nov '12 4:07:04 PM by WaxingName

It's not a fighting style. Wing Chun is a fighting style. Karate is a fighting style. Those are practiced movesets and skills. This is specifically about fighting in any manner that confuses an opponent. Hell, even the example you just gave me isn't about a fighting style, but what steps someone take to win a competition. The trope is about a character who competes with another character by confusing them. It's a competition trope.

Just two friends playing the game because they like it is competitive play. X-Box Live versus is competitive play. A game being competitive doesn't mean it's only about the highest level

^I changed Skill Gate Character on Sandbox.Competitive Balance

edited 14th Nov '12 7:59:08 PM by WaxingName

It seems you disregarded my objection.

So the plan is to keep tropes which have maybe sometimes something to do with Competitive Balance, but tropes which are all about balance have to be removed? That doesn't make any sense.

Those archetypes really had nothing to do with balance in the first place. They were just common portrayals on how one advantage was accompanied by a disadvantage (hence why we're moving them to Necessary Drawback). And Necessary Drawback as a whole is one method of balancing. And they were used frequently on work pages that weren't about games at all, so it didn't make sense.

edited 15th Nov '12 1:11:09 PM by WaxingName

Theses archetypes are definitely about balance. They are not about a random combination of an advantage and a disadvantage, they are about a combination of an advantage and a disadvantage in the same field. And the "examples outside of video games" argument is a strike against Confusion Fu, Ryu and Ken, Crippling Overspecialization and Master of None, too.

All reasons given to remove the archetypes will lead to the removal of more tropes, in the end there is not much left on the page.

Technically, you are correct, but it seems the majority of tropers see Competitive Balance mostly in gaming terms, so the archetypes were moved out of it. Basically, Necessary Drawback is sort of now being used as a "trope like Competitive Balance, but for everything else besides gaming".

edited 15th Nov '12 2:52:20 PM by shiro_okami

Actually, I haven't really moved them out. I only put my proposal for fixing on Sandbox.Competitive Balance. I'm still open to suggestions so that we can get to getting this done for good.

*bump* Is it okay with everyone that Sandbox.Competitive Balance can become the main page?

• bump again*

*bump #3* Do we need a crowner to decide if we should swap out the current page with what I've made?

*bump#4*

Alright, I'm just going to make a crowner to swap the Sandbox with the Main page now.

EDIT:Crowner made. Hollering to hook.

edited 9th Dec '12 8:40:46 PM by WaxingName

Bump for votes.