Named after character, rename for better clarity, possible splits. New crowner Dec 25: Mega Manning

So I'm happily reading a trope page when I come across Mega Manning. Now I'm not a young'un and I know who Mega Man is, but I never played the game much so I had no idea what it was. A bit of investigation found that it seems to be pretty much the same thing as Ditto Fighter. In fact, both tropes claim the other a subtrope of themselves. Obviously, this cannot be, one or the other must be the subtrope if they are different enough to be different tropes at all.

Given that we're supposed to be getting rid of tropes named after characters, and the similarity between Mega Manning and Ditto Fighter, I think the two should be merged under the name Ditto Fighter.

No Mega Manning doesn't involve copying in the same way that Ditto Fighter does.

Mega Manning is like a Final Fantasy Blue Mage and a Ditto Fighter is the Mime class.

Mega Manning is copying enemy abilities when you fight/defeat them. These are generally stored.

Ditto Fighter is imitating the entire fighting style of an opponent you're facing while you're fighting them.

Mega Manning claims to be a Sub-Trope of Ditto Fighter, and Ditto Fighter claims to be a Sub-Trope of Mega Manning. ZOMG what is going on here

The page for Ditto Fighter describes 3 different variants, and two of those do not necessarily require using the fighting style of the character you're actually fighting at the time...

^ At the very least, that should probably be changed. Someone should decide which is a subtrope of the other.

edited 17th Mar '11 9:52:12 PM by DYRE

They are sister tropes.

Wat.

Sounds The Same But More Specific to me. O.o

Which I guess means if anything Mega Manning is definitely the subtrope.

Still needs rename though.

edited 17th Mar '11 10:32:53 PM by evilneko

Mega Manning is when you learn abilities from your enemies. You can then use those abilities as part of your own fighting style for either the rest of the game or some other limitation.

Ditto Fighter is a character that has no fighting style at all except what it copies. All it can be is a copy of another character.

Ditto Fighter's example section is heavily decayed, with many examples that are more like Mega Manning or Mirror Boss.

One issue is that their origins come from different genres of games.

Mega Manning obviously got its origin from Mega Man. The concept itself is easy, defeat an enemy and gain his attack. Applies to action and action/adventure style games, usually.

Ditto Fighter has its origins from Fighting Games. Here, you'd often have opponents who would either duplicate another character's entire moveset, or perhaps have a moveset consisting of moves from everybody else slapped together into one target.

And then spreading them across to other genres and styles of games, and defining them outside of their original context, is where a lot of this confusion comes from.

As applied to works outside of Mega Man, Mega Manning is described as being the exact same as the T'Sungxpert version of Ditto Fighter. The only real difference seems to be that Mega Manning involves taking or actively copying someone's powers while Ditto Fighter is some inherent ability but I think it works better to make Mega Manning a subtrope of Ditto Fighter. Not merged, since Mega Manning is different from the Mokujinner and Dittomediate forms.

One important thing that sets Mega Manning apart from Ditto Fighter is, in the case of permanent MegaManners, the ability to use their acquired techniques in combination with one another. Consider these fellows:

Smeargle. Its sketch move allows it to permanently copy one of its opponent's moves. It can do this several times against different opponents, allowing it to build a moveset that's unique despite all the moves being copied. Quite a far cry from ditto, who simply mirrors his current opponent.

Shujinko from Mortal Kombat Deception. He starts out as more of a ditto fighter who copies entire movesets, but late in the game he uses his own unique style supplemented by various copied moves. For instance, he can use Scorpion's spear, Liu Kang's bicycle kick, and Sub-Zero's freeze all in quick succession, perhaps with a few regular attacks from his own style mixed in. Not even Shang Tsung, the T'sungxpert, can do that.

I can think of several more off the top of my head, but the bottom line is that Ditto Fighters copy entire movesets and cannot use abilities that are outside of their current set, whereas MegaManners usually copy individual moves and can use them together creatively.

edited 31st Mar '11 4:34:43 PM by LanceOmikron

I like that distinction. Can we make that canonical?

Hmm... I certainly wouldn't mind that distinction.

Though from my above note, it seems to me the distinction is less what moves you copy and more how, from a metagame perspective.

Mega Manning is done in-game. You start with no moves, and gain them as you fight and defeat characters.

A Ditto Fighter already has the moves when you start the game. Be it total moveset copy or a mish-mash of moves stuck together, there's no in-game "copying" or scanning, you begin the game and/or fight with all the moves.

That wouldn't fit the Trope Namer very well—Ditto enters battle, then uses Transform to scan and copy its opponent.

Amusingly, apparently this doesn't happen anymore. In the newest game, Ditto can start the fight transformed.

Anyway, we can say that the Ditto Fighter usually start with the opponents move-set, but that isn't requirement.

Well, that's only if the ditto in question has its dream world ability, and those aren't available yet (in the west, at least). Most ditto will still transform manually.

Anyways, I'd also agree that when and how a ditto fighter mimics a moveset is less important than how closely they mimic it.

edited 31st Mar '11 4:56:26 PM by LanceOmikron

Went ahead and changed the "Sub-Trope" references to "Contrast With"s.

A Mega Manning character can start with a moveset, but add to it permanently by Video Game Stealing, observing the move (sometimes only by having that move used on them), or defeating an enemy/boss with that move.

Ditto Fighter is character has no naturally inherent abilities/moves other than copying another character's moveset. This may happen automatically and they may only be able to copy their current opponent.

Seem fairly distinct to me. Descriptions could make it clearer, since this is at least the second time this has come up in TRS and examples show misuse.

edited 11th Apr '11 11:34:01 AM by ccoa

^ So in Pokemon terms, Smeargle vs. Ditto? (Oh, I see it was already mentioned.)

edited 11th Apr '11 10:33:24 AM by Stratadrake

Well, in video game terms it's Mega Man and Ditto. I don't think anyone's ever thought of them as similar.

Someone fixed the description and I cleaned it up. The Ditto Fighter copies stuff temporarily and has to lose it after the match whereas the Mega Manning character copies it permanently and can store more than one at a time.

It looks like this issue has been mostly resolved, but can someone explain how the "Mokujinner" and "T'Sungxpert" parts of the description for Ditto Fighter apply? Mokujinner seems to be an entirely different trope of randomly changing movesets while T'Sungxpert seems to basically describe Mega Manning, which seems to be the source of the confusion.

The Laconic doesn't describe either of them, and I don't really see too many examples of either of those methods, along with the name of the article, Ditto Fighter, not implying either of those methods. Anyone else think we need to fix that part or remove it from the description?

One distinction that I think is important is that the Ditto Fighter, for most of those examples, doesn't have its own moves (Ditto has no offensive moves, only the ability to imitate others' moves; Mokujin always just borrows the complete moveset of someone else). The instances of Mega Manning, however, do have their own moves to be used besides the ability to copy, and said copying is not required for the most part (Kirby and Mega Man, for example, can get by with their base moves for the most part, and some people go through their games with only the non-copied abilities as a Self-Imposed Challenge). That may be a distinction worth mentioning.

What about those that only use a skill temporarily, as opposed to the 'permanent' Mega Manning? should it be included under Mega Manning or as a subtrope?

Something like borrowing the skill of the opponent temporarily. example: Mx0's Taiga can store one (and only one)spell on his card, Mimic(from pokemon) could only copy a move for the duration of the battle, Grand Magus from DOTA can store a spell for a short period of time.

edited 11th May '11 2:56:44 AM by Pryun