Perhaps move to YMMV?: Goddamned Bats

I have noticed a lot of tropes like such being moved to such a category. Ehy not Goddamned Bats too? While the general consensus of these baddies is usually the same, perhaps it needs to moved to the subjective trope area because, more than likely, there is still a sizable group or two that consider them easy pickings. Thoughts?

(While I /would/ do so, I have the feeling getting a high number of "good idea"s before moving, or maybe a Mod doing so, would be better.)

It has the banner. It gets moved.

Just out of curiosity, did it have the banner when you made this topic?

This trope means 'Hordes of enemies that aggravate players', correct?

It does not speak of the enemie's danger levels.

Just their frequency.

Which is why the page image is of a Zubat. They're the best known instance of this.

Am I correct, or does the page mean something else?

EDIT: No, I misread the page. It means an enemy that aggravates a player, for one of a variety of reasons.

edited 15th Jan '11 10:43:21 PM by CyganAngel

Yep, it's about enemies that are a frequent pain in the ass. They don't have to be dangerous, but they can be.

Not sure if it had the banner when I posted. Hm. As for the appearance bit, maybe a page or two I frequent has the examples in the wrong place.

edited 15th Jan '11 10:44:09 PM by Draken

Move them if you see them. That's how we've been handling things because it's hard to do it all at once. The move is a work in progress.

Will do. If can notice, I will add the tropes to the YMMV page too so that more people can notice them faster.

While we're on the subject, what about Demonic Spiders? (No banner)

edited 15th Jan '11 10:47:29 PM by Draken

According to the article, criteria for Demonic Spiders:

Demonic Spiders are usually made up of many of the following characteristics

• Prevent you from acting as they kill you.
• Frequently employ debilitating Standard Status Effects (i.e. Sleep, Paralyze, or Charm).
• Deliver lethal or near-lethal attacks that are virtually impossible to dodge.
  • Or attacks that ignore accuracy/evasion/defense outright.
  • Have a larger melee attack radius than you do when combined with this, making it all but impossible for a melee-oriented character to get close enough to do his job without getting killed horribly.
• Appears suddenly at a very close range, like a Wall Master.
  • Or are almost impossible to see or track at any range.
• Can duplicate itself or summon reinforcements with no apparent limit on how many or how often
• Require a special type of resources to defeat without extreme skill and concentration and some luck, and that resource is slow to get back. Typically you'd have use rare precious health/magic replenish kits in case you encounter more demonic spiders but you'd continue on low health/magic/ammo if there were no more demonic spiders ahead.
• Can take more punishment than an M1 Abrams tank.
• Move in manners impossible for your character (often with greater speed than you'll ever have).
• Are capable of nullifying your primary methods of attack/defense (often reflecting or absorbing it).
• In action games, may have melee based attacks (or counter-attacks) that quickly hit you from a fair distance away and then cause them to retreat in an equally swift manner.
• In RPGs with a Class and Level System, have the ability to take your hard-earned levels away from you, particularly when there's no easy way to gain them back after the battle and you have to gain them back the hard way.

None of that seems subjective. It is "Annoyingly lethal enemies", with an objective measure of "annoying".

And I bet we could rewrite Goddamned Bats to have similar objective criteria.

I'm not even convinced that being annoying is a valid part of either trope's definition. It could use a thumping with the Tropes Are Not Bad stick.

Ideally, since both of these tropes essentially start with "Annoying enemy" and "Annoying enemy that kills you alot" at their cores, we could make them more objective by separating the components into their own separate tropes:

ie. Demonic Spider would become an index linking to the trope about enemies who have the ability to prevent the player from acting, enemies whose strategy relies on status effects, enemies which require specific rare resources to defeat, etc.

Well, there are other elements, but Goddamned Bats are very common (and not necessarily dangerous), and Demonic Spiders are very dangerous (and not necessarily common). The prevent-you-from-attacking thing is a frequent aspect, but not necessary or definitive.

edited 16th Jan '11 3:53:49 PM by rodneyAnonymous

The cores of the tropes are "Dammit, not these guys again, what a waste of time" and "Dammit, not these guys again, I hate fighting these guys."

Still don't get why they're subjective. A lot of game enemies are explicitly designed to fulfill those rolls, so unless some troll or confused troper really angered Fast Eddie, doesn't make sense for them to be subjective.

In any case, due to the subjective banner, most of them are already on YMMV, so.

Yeah, it does. They are audience reaction tropes.

I understand that this criteria was not clear when this was first created. But now that it is, I see no reason not to close this. But I won't request it to give people time to disagree.

edited 5th Feb '11 9:57:45 PM by BigT

IMHO, if Demonic Spiders is objective, Goddamned Bats is as well, and viceversa. Going with the criteria at the Laconic versions, as well as the posted above, at least. I thought different at first, but the Laconic criteria for GB is almost completely objective — it could be fixed if, as noted in the general trope page criteria, the two sentences in the Laconic are linked ("it is annoying because it is too frequent"). Several of the bullets in the trope page definition can be tested objectively — that the Fan Dumb will care for the results is a matter entirely outside the definition of the trope.

That, and labelling this YMMV means it can't be listed in a work's page, which kills its utility in terms of description for several works which are iconic because of their bats/spiders, among them the Trope Namer.

Yeah, I think we can pretty easily make Goddamned Bats objective.

Attempt at neutralizing: Sandbox.Goddamned Bats

Sandbox version looks good, though I can't make a good comparison atm because I haven't read the Main version in ... a long time.

Sandbox version is good at listing objective means of determining what Goddamned Bats are.

edited 7th Feb '11 12:54:33 AM by GameGuruGG

So, is it acceptably neutral? Can we axe the banner?

It needs more emphasis on how qualifying for a chunk of the objective bullet list is required, and just ignoring it and saying "enemy annoys me lol" is not something we want. Other than that, great.

^^^ I agree. I've personally come across enemies christened as "Annoying as hell" by others that I thought were bearable, sometimes even cool. Sandbox receives my approval.

Well, the core of the trope as I interpret it is that the enemy itself is a hindrance without being a major threat. The primary qualifying criterion for Goddamned Bats is that they're weak, but they still get in your way.

Swapped the main description with the Sandbox version. What do we think? Good enough to drop the banner?

Looks good to me. Now who wants to do Demonic Spiders (even though it doesn't have a banner)?

edited 28th Feb '11 4:05:02 AM by Killomatic