Opening this up.
I simply recommend to rewrite the description to remove any references to offense and move on.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
2883 wicks have to be checked, and that's assuming the crowner votes in favour of making this page "Fast, but easily hurt and low damage".
edited 18th Mar '15 10:08:54 AM by crazysamaritan
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
A broadening of a description does not require a wick cleanup at all.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Huh? I am not seeing anything about narrowing the trope.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Your version: Fragile Speedster means "low durability, high speed".
acrobox version #1: Mighty Glacier means "high durability, low speed" and Fragile Speedster means "low durability, high speed".
acrobox version #2 Fragile Speedster means "low durability, low offense, and high speed".
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
The wick check was in favor of mentioning that Fragile Speedster includes Low Offense. Here is the check in question: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/remarks.php?trope=Main.FragileSpeedster
In my mind thats a broadening of the trope not a narrowing.
If that line is added then you dont need a cleanup or anything. Just a minor tweak to the description.
acrobox version #2 Fragile Speedster means "low durability, low offense, and high speed".
More like
version #1: Mighty Glacier and Fragile Speedster are both rewritten to talk about the Power-Mobility Duality instead of the Durability-Speed-Offense Triangle. (more work intensive)
version #2: Fragile Speedster means "low durability, low offense (which isnt currently there), and high speed". (less work intensive)
edited 18th Mar '15 12:40:21 PM by acrobox
The Unknown
Low offense isn't a necessary component, since this trope is supposed to overlap with Glass Cannon (low durability, high offense) anyway. The most important thing here is Speed, hence the Speedster part of the name.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
It should be noted that as of right now, Fragile Speedster has nothing to do with offense one way or the other. A Fragile Speedster can be a Glass Cannon or it can be low-offense or it can be somewhere in the middle, it doesn't matter. As long as it's fragile and it's speedy, it's a Fragile Speedster.
By definition, changing that to REQUIRE low offense would be a narrowing, not a broadening, of the trope definition.
edited 18th Mar '15 2:22:47 PM by hbi2k
Well then call it a narrowing.
Including low offense is already the way its being used around the site as proven by the wick check.
This was also the way it was being used on the Competitive balance page until about a week ago.
It's just changing the description to reflect how its being used/what is is already understood to be generally.
Looking at the wick check from the OP, I find it to be extremely Confirmation Bias-y. Every example which includes low offense is taken to mean that the troper assumes that low offense is an integral part of the trope, but every example which specifies high offense is taken to mean that the troper assumes that it's "exceptional" for a Fragile Speedster to have high offense and that therefore it's not part of the trope.
Dude, you can't have it both ways.
Also, I don't think there's anything about letting Fragile Speedster include both high- and low-offense examples that precludes it being used as a Foil for the Mighty Glacier. Foils don't need to be exact inversions of one another— in fact it's often better if they're not, some amount of similarity casts their differences in sharper relief— it's enough that they have an obvious point of contrast between them, in this case slow speed vs. high speed.
So I also take issue with using any example in which a Fragile Speedster and Mighty Glacier are presented as foils— which in the wick check is often defined as loosely as "using both terms in the same sentence"— as being out of line with the trope definitions as they exist.
edited 18th Mar '15 2:27:16 PM by hbi2k
The ones that were exceptional were phrased as such on the pages they were found on. Things like 'unlike most speedsters they have offense too' or 'this is a speedster with glass cannon attributes that gives it high offense' or "there are three builds, the glacier which is the opposite of the speedster, and a balanced one". All of which imply that without qualifying it, you would assume speedsters have low offense.
All the pages the examples came from are linked. You can read the exact phrasing and context in how each page talks about character builds and see if the inferences were out of line.
edited 18th Mar '15 2:32:32 PM by acrobox
^ I disagree that "this is a speedster with Glass Cannon attributes" assumes or implies in any way that Fragile Speedsters normally have low offense. It assumes or implies nothing, just makes mention of one common variation of Fragile Speedster. It's no different than pointing out which Internal Subtrope an example falls under.
There are examples which do imply what you say, just not nearly as many of them as you're counting in your wick check. The bad examples should be corrected as they're found.
If you really want to you can do your own wick check. I'm not stopping anyone from getting new data.
All I'm saying is that in what i found, fragile speedster more often than not have low offense. So the page can change to reflect that by adding one or two lines.
The FS page could even read like "speedsters often have low offense, but this is not a hard and fast requirement for the trope" and that would be it.
edited 18th Mar '15 2:32:56 PM by acrobox
^ That's... pretty much what it already says, that a Fragile Speedster CAN have low offense, but often doesn't.
The NECESSARY parts of the definition are "fragile" and "speedy." Everything else is a variation or irrelevant.
edited 18th Mar '15 2:38:01 PM by hbi2k
I am going to have to agree, all that is really required for this is High Speed and Low Defense. You can be both a Glass Cannon, High Damage and Low Defense, and Fragile Speedster, they are not exclusive.
If there are enough examples to qualify then Low Damage, Low Defense, High Speed might make a different trope but that really isn't really too much of a balance stereotype because of Death of a Thousand Cuts leads to high DPS.
edited 18th Mar '15 2:52:45 PM by Memers
^^ Because people eliminate examples when power is defined as offensive power in a work.
Say you have a game with two stats, power and speed, and durability doesnt factor in. There's a character with high offense and low speed, he's a glacier. And there's a character with high speed and low offense THIS PERSON IS NOT A SPEEDSTER UNDER THE CURRENT DEFINITION.
that's why the real solution is to reword into Power-vs-Mobility duality, than to worry about the specifics of the offense-defense-speed triangle. Power and Mobility are defined in a lot of different ways depending on the game or work.
But completely rewriting both tropes to be about duality might be too drastic and would require us to trade drafts back and forth of what they would look like. just adding one line to speedster accomplishes mostly the same thing with a lot less effort.
Launching a new trope thats the same but more specific for either of them is redundant.
edited 18th Mar '15 2:52:55 PM by acrobox
If there is just a speed stat and offense stat then that is just NOT this trope what so ever. They are just speedy.
Under the current definition. But with the proposed one line change they would be.
What i've found is that a lot of works call those characters speedster anyway, so why not just let them. That way we avoid making a whole new mostly redundant trope.
—>Say you have a game with two stats, power and speed, and durability doesnt factor in. There's a character with high offense and low speed, he's a glacier. And there's a character with high speed and low offense THIS PERSON IS NOT A SPEEDSTER UNDER THE CURRENT DEFINITION.
Right. What's the problem? A Fragile Speedster cannot exist in a setting that lacks the possibility of being fragile.
If you discard the "fragile" part of the definition, then you're left with just "speedster." We've got that trope already.
edited 18th Mar '15 2:58:30 PM by hbi2k
This 'not a speedster under the current definition but would be with one minor line change' is the foil of Mighty Glacier in the duality the Competitive Balance is based off of.
This character is a speedster in the Power-vs-Mobility duality. But not under the Offense-Defense-Speed Triangle. But most tropes have moved away from that triangle in favor of focusing on duality.
You yourself said that the proposed one line change was 'pretty much what the trope says already' so why not just say it.
I'm not discarding 'fragile' I'm just letting works define for themselves what 'weak/fragile' means when you pair up "strong and slow" with "weak and fast."
edited 18th Mar '15 3:04:42 PM by acrobox
There are already lines in both Glacier and Speedster that account for racing game variants. Powerful engine(high top speed) and high weight balanced by low acceleration and bad cornering for glacier, and weak engine(low top speed) and low weight balanced by high acceleration and good cornering for speedster. The Speedster has low top speed in racing games because racing games define power and mobility different from fighting games.
Thats even how 'fast' your car is often determined in real life. People say youre in a fast car based on how quickly you get from 0-100mph. High acceleration. Tough vehicles like Trucks and semis are heavier and harder to turn, better at carrying loads, and probably take crashes better than a fast sports car would. Even though every car on the highway can get to 100mph.
Just allow one line about how in fighting games speedsters will probably have low offense, because some games define being having low power as having low attack strength, which is again already how it is being used.
edited 18th Mar '15 3:32:19 PM by acrobox
Racing runs on something completely different unrelated to this.
This trope is not game specific at all, it's quite common in regular fiction. And as I said before thanks to Death of a Thousand Cuts they usually do not have low DPS. They hit fast but light and that averages out to be the same or higher than the average.
Ugh. Would you believe I was like 90% done with a wick check and managed to make ONE mistaken click which closed the tab and lost my entire post? Anyway, my general impression was that the vast majority of examples are textbook ones that establish speed and fragility and don't mention strength or offense at all; of those that do mention offense, many more were high-offense than low-offense, but there were examples of both, and in both cases the mention was usually incidental. There doesn't seem to be much of a problem with understanding or using the trope; the biggest problem is the frequency of Zero Context Examples.
Without hard numbers or links, I don't expect you to take my word for it, but I don't have time to do another wick check right now. I may get around to it tomorrow or I may not.
SHORT VERSION:
Fragile Speedster and Mighty Glacier should fit as foil pairs instead of operating on the outdated three stats system. The easiest way to do this is to slightly broaden FS' description to include low offense, which is how it is already being used colloquially because of Trope Creep. This is backed up by a relative majority after 2 wick checks.
DATA:
2 wick checks have been performed:
LONG VERSION:
Once upon a time Competitive Balance was seen as the interplay between Offense-Defense-Speed.
Now CB is viewed as foil pairs between common character builds.
2 Wick checks have been performed. A relative majority indicates that in common use, Mighty Glacier and Fragile Speedster are seen as a foil pair. The former Strong and Slow, the latter Weak and Fast. Because the way stats break down in every game specifically is different this was (until recently) spelt out as "Sacrifices mobility for power" and "Sacrifices power for mobility" to be as accommodating as possible (power meaning offensive power, defensive power, weight, lifting heavy objects etc - mobility can mean first in attacking order, movement range or footspeed, rapid fire, agility, acceleration, evasiveness etc)
Some people get hung up on the wording of FS and MG as is where the former is high speed low defense, and the latter is high offense, high defense, low speed. But the wording is outdated as CB is no longer about explicit combinations of those three values.
We can either rewrite both to be worded more about power vs speed, or just tweak FG to include low offense in its description, which is already how its being used.
edited 19th Mar '15 2:15:44 PM by acrobox