Is this an example?

Personally I have been using Arc Number because of the following part of the description on the trope page:

I took this to mean that Numerological Motif was about existing real world Numerology being used in a work where as Arc Number is about numbers significant to the work itself and only that work. I could be wrong however as the sentence is rather poorly written.

edited 7th Nov '17 11:31:42 AM by SebastianGray

I've been cleaning up blatant misuse from Game-Breaking Bug, but I'm not sure about certain examples. Which of the following scenarios would qualify as "game-breaking"?

• A bug which makes 100% Completion impossible, but the game can still be beaten. Does the scale of the locked content matter? For example, does it make a difference if the glitch breaks a major side-quest with great rewards, or if it just makes a single Gotta Catch Them All item unavailable?
• A bug which makes the game much more difficult than it should be, but still beatable if you're very patient. For example, if it made certain attacks impossible to dodge, or make certain enemies capable of killing you in one hit (but still beatable if you kill them without taking damage).
• In a game with Multiple Endings, a bug which makes you get a different ending than you're supposed to. Technically you did beat the game, but the outcome you got isn't at all what it's supposed to be. Or a game where certain endings are impossible to get.
• A bug which causes plot-critical information to be revealed much earlier than it should have been, spoiling a late-game Plot Twist.
• A bug which causes the sound to break and turn into unbearable noise while the rest of the game keeps working fine.
• A bug which can be abused in multiplayer games and makes the game extremely boring if both players use it.

Game-Breaking Bug is defined by a severe bug that makes the game impossible to complete, or that cripple your ability to play. That in mind...

• Bugs that prevent 100% Completion don't count, if that's all they do. That's about an extra challenge, and those bugs can be fairly minor.
• If it makes it more difficult, but still beatable, it may count. It depends on the severity of the extra difficulty. If an average or decent player can still complete it, it's probably not severe enough.
• Multiple Endings I treat like 100% Completion. If it's a game with several side endings and one main ending, and the bug prevents the main ending, I'd consider it, but otherwise not on its own.
• Spoiling the story is not related to gameplay. At most it might count for a Visual Novel if the scenes are shown in the wrong order, but there the text is the "gameplay".
• Sound bugs are not severe, unless the gameplay revolves around the sound. By that I mean something like a music game, or one that's functionally impossible to play on mute.
• Bugs that when abused makes the game boring don't make it unplayable. You're also on equal terms if both use them, so it's not really harder either.

Of course, as with all tropes, it depends mostly on the actual examples, so there can easily be exceptions to the above.

Reposting:

• Informed Ability: Downplayed. Skarmory is described as an extremely fast flier by the Pokédex, but its Speed stat, while not terrible, is really nothing to write home about. It does, however, get Agility and Autotomize to boost its speed.

Is this example correct?

Other Informed Ability question, this time unrelated with Pokemon: The description mentions that "Are they combat experts? Have them take the fight to their opponents whenever they can and gain the upper hand." This means that if a character gains a blatant advantage in a combat about their opponents, their combat expertise is not informed, gaining or losing?

I don't think you should take every example written in the description down the slippery slope as far as you can within the literal definition of the text. The spirit of Informed Ability is that a character never actually shows she has the ability she's described to have.

If she's a combat expert, then she should show that expertise one way or another. Taking advantage of a situation may or may not count against the trope, depending on how it's done. Sometimes you need to be an expert to see where the advantage lies, how to (ab)use it, or to get the advantage in the first place. If you can argue that the action demonstrates some kind of expertise, it's not an example of Informed Ability.

I don't think the Pokemon example counts. First off, calling it downplayed when it's shown to some degree smells of shoehorning. Second, basing story tropes on game stats is shady. Can you with absolute certainty that the stat called "Speed" has the exact same properties as a descriptive text saying "fast"? Speed in games usually has to do with dodge, turn times, or movement speed. Saying something is fast in a narrative can mean those as well, but it doesn't have to. Even just for movement speed, there's a difference between top speed and cruise speed. Stats are at the end just numbers balanced to the gameplay, abstracted from some similar concept in real life. A high movement speed may not come into relevance in a duel.

Here's an example from the work page for The New Mutants...

• Not Wearing Tights: The film will contain no costumes and no supervillains.

Maybe the "no supervillains" thing falls under No Antagonist instead.

Reposting from a few pages ago:

Are the following examples being used correctly?:

From Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:

• Adaptation Displacement: Hermione snarking that she has to go and vomit at Ron and Lavender's Sickeningly Sweethearts behaviour is entirely in the film. Fans forget that it doesn't happen in the book.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Lavender is meant to come across as a Clingy Jealous Girl, but you can't help but feel a little sorry for her. Ron only gets with her to make Hermione jealous, and she only behaves so nauseatingly romantic towards him because he never tells her he doesn't like being treated that way.

From Red State:

• Career Resurrection: Sort of. While his mainstream career pretty much ended after Cop Out, this film saw the beginning of Kevin Smith's new series of self-financed road show films, allowing him to continue to make films exactly the way he wants to. He also claimed that working with Michael Parks made him fall in love with filmmaking again after Cop Out made him start to hate it.

Adaptation Displacement is misused, since the trope’s meant to describe adaptations that are so popular that the public isn’t aware of the original. Cut it. The entry for Unintentionally Sympathetic is acceptable.

What about the Career Resurrection example?

Would it be Downplayed Insistent Terminology if a character uses "Delete" as "Kill", like in VideoGame.Simulacra?

Or it is more, whatever the general word substitution trope for things like Call a Human a "Meatbag", and "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word.

Distinction Without a Difference?

Is this Zigzagged Distinction Without a Difference? Example from the page. Because if there is a difference, then it's not that trope?

Or should just the second bullet be integrated into the larger section, as it's a violation of Example Indentation in Trope Lists?

• In Dark Souls III your character is not like the Slayer of Demons in Demon's Souls, the Chosen Undead From Dark Souls or the Bearer of the Curse from Dark Souls II, who lose their humanity when they die, cutting them off from online play and, in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls II, penalising their maximum HP until they use a consumable to recover their human form. Instead your character is an Unkindled who is always human even after they die, but who also has the option of using a consumable to ascend to Lord of Cinders form, gaining bonus maximum HP as well as access to online play, at least until the next time they die. As anyone with basic logic can see, there's absolutely no difference, FromSoftware just repackaged human form as a "powered-up" state rather than the default state and made the "weakened" state the new default, a simple case of Moving the Goalposts.
  • There is a small difference: obtaining a Dark Sigil will cause you to slowly hollow every time you die like in the previous games. The good news is that this time hollowing is purely cosmetic. The bad news is that burning an Ember isn't enough to reverse the damage; there are ways to do this, but they're much more expensive.

edited 13th Nov '17 9:51:16 PM by Malady

Insistent Terminology is about someone insistently correcting the use of a word, not consistently using a synonym or euphemism, so it's not an example of that. "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word is a subtrope, so it can by definition not be an example of that either. Call a Human a "Meatbag" is about that specific word.

It could maybe be an example of a singular character making use of Never Say "Die", if it's about censoring, but I'm not aware of the context or the work at all. Sometimes other words are just more accurate.

The DS3 example is not Distinction Without a Difference since it doesn't have the same meaning. The example tries to argue that a difference in the narrative description of something is meaningless when the game mechanics is the same, which just isn't true. Moving the Goalposts is an argumentative tactic, and likewise Distinction Without a Difference relies on making an argument about a difference. However, the only argument comes from the troper who wrote the argument. The example doesn't provide any context that the game actively makes that comparison and claims they're different.

Furthermore, from a psychological standpoint, there's a difference. I think World of Warcraft did something similar when they tried to encourage people to not play too much at once with experience penalities, but later changed it to a bonus that in essence worked the same way. However, players accepted it far better. If the standard changes, it changes.

Essentially, I find it just complaining that there's no significant difference in game mechanics despite the lore being different.

It's an AI-ish being talking about "deleting" people from the world... With that context, what changes?

So, cut the DS3 example, or move it somewhere?

edited 14th Nov '17 10:47:01 AM by Malady

That context makes it seem like a natural word to use. Not sure if there's a particular trope for it.

Shopkeeper, are these Video Game examples too general, and would any appearance of a shopkeep, count for this trope?:

• Very common in RPGs in general.
• Some MMORPGs allow players to set up their own stores to sell just about anything they don't need. Unlike NPC's, their stock is naturally limited.

edited 15th Nov '17 8:15:27 PM by Malady

Examples Are Not General. Cut that.

Does this count as an example of My God, What Have I Done?? Spoilers for Steven Universe.

• By leaving the relative safety of Earth in "Raising the Barn" after hearing of Steven's encounter with the Diamonds, Lapis has made herself exposed. She is now alone and with almost no water to defend herself with. If any Homeworld Gems find her, capturing her would be all too easy. After being captured, she would realize that she was captured because she left impulsively without thinking of the consequences.

No? It's written as purely speculative/hypothetical, unless I'm missing something (don't watch the series) - that's not even remotely a valid kind of example.

It's also about herself, not others like the trope is about.

That does not look like a good example of My God, What Have I Done?. The laconic for the trope states they have to do something heinous, like kill a person or release a Sealed Evil in a Can.

I say cut that.

From YMMV.The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, does this count as Unfortunate Implications? (This is for the Disney version).

• Unfortunate Implications: While "no one is entitled to another person's romantic love" is a fine moral, some viewers have argued that the film's aesop as presented is actually cold comfort to a disabled person, and rather infantilizing besides.

That entry should be cut regardless if it's a valid example or not because it uses a Tumblr post as the citation which is against the rules according to the Unfortunate Implications page:

The citation should be in a reputable source. We'd prefer you cite something a bit more formal than someone's Tumblr blog. Anyone can write a blog post and then call it a "citation".

edited 17th Nov '17 10:40:23 PM by ADrago

Does it count as Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks if there is no sex involved? For example, if they're just singing about butts for some childish humour, is that an example?

From Trivia.Stretch Armstrong And The Flex Fighters:

• All-Star Cast: We have Scott Menville, Steve Yeun, and Ogie Banks as the main characters, with the supporting cast being made up of Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day, Kate Mulgrew, Gary Cole, Walter Koenig, Keith David, Josh Keaton, and more. What could be better than that?

Since some of these people seem like stars only among VA fans, does this qualify?

As someone who pays virtually no attention to Voice Actors, the main cast is completely unknown to me - looking them up on imdb leads me to 1 or 2 major roles each (and tons of one off characters). 6 of the 7 listed supporting cast, on the other hand, I know exactly who they are without having to think about it. So, these aren't total nobodies, but I don't really think this counts unless All-Star Cast has decayed to the point of meaning "These people have actually worked in the industry before this role".

Ditto this. I'd say it's not an example as written, though the supporting cast does make me wonder.