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... I know, I admitted that I linked to the wrong page. "The Same But More" would be more accurate, I think.
... Unless you're suggesting that there may be no variation in the extremity of YMMV examples...?
Er, no, if you want to convince me of something, you provide the evidence.
I don't think that anyone is suggesting that it's just that. Rather, the suggestion is that the amount of information provided by the game that constitutes "enough information" is a judgement call, one that may vary from person to person, and thus YMMV.
But almost no game provides all of the information required to solve a puzzle. If it did, there would be no puzzle. So the question is that of whether the game provided enough information for the solution of the puzzle—which will vary from player to player.
[edit] I fear that I was perhaps overly snippy in the post above. If so, I apologise (including to AGuy).
For context to those who may have joined the thread relatively recently, AGuy and I have had this argument a number of times already in this thread, with much the same points. Neither of us has thus far convinced the other, and I'll confess that I'm a little tired by this point. (And I wouldn't be surprised if the same is true for AGuy.) (I'm also in general a little drained tonight, which likely doesn't help.)
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 18th 2021 at 9:52:00 PM
My Games & Writing
The Same, but More isn't applicable to examples, but to trope pages.
You want examples?
- There's a few catchable Pokémon that will come up as "Not Available" in the Pokédex due to being either found only via fishing or in Unknown Dungeon (for whatever reason)
- the most obvious example of this is Horsea/Seadra.
- Yanma is similar to Dunsparce being just a 1% encounter rate on Route 35, and no trainer in the game uses a Yanma to have the Pokédex info to know that Yanma is catchable on the route. But like Dunsparce, if Bug Catcher Arnie from that same route is added to the Pokégear, he will alert the player of Yanma's existence, which will up the encounter rate to 30% for a brief time.
- Mantine. A rare 10% Gold or Crystal exclusive encounter that can only be found Surfing on Route 41. Like many of the other Johto Pokémon listed here, Mantine is never battled amongst any trainers. So the player will never have the Pokédex info to know about Mantine's existence.
- Some people may not know that it's actually possible to catch Ho-Oh in Pokémon Crystal. That's because in order for the stairwell to appear to enter into the upper floors of the Tin Tower to reach where Ho-Oh resides, you need to have all three of the Legendary Beasts captured. The three Beasts being Suicune, Raikou, and Entei. While Suicune is the easiest to obtain due to it being allowed to be battled straight out on the bottom floor of the Tin Tower, the player needs to hope that they're able to track down Raikou and Entei as roaming encounters all around Johto. The difficult part is that the player won't know where Raikou and Entei are at first since their data isn't uploaded into the Pokédex until the first time the player randomly comes across a roaming encounter. When the player does finally manage to get hold of Raikou and Entei, it will finally open up the Tin Tower stairwell to ascend up to Ho-Oh. And if that doesn't sound bad enough, you're never told beforehand that catching the three Legendary Beasts will cause Ho-Oh to appear. It just sort of gets told to the player the moment he/she finally has the three Beasts captured.
- Feebas only appears in 6 unmarked water tiles (out of 436 total) on Route 119. They're randomized for every player, so you can't just look up their locations; and you have to fish in the tile, not surf over it, so wandering aimlessly won't help, you have to meticulously fish in every single square. Nothing in the game hints at this—all other Pokémon appear in any tile on the route specified in the Pokédex. Inexplicably, the tiles re-randomize whenever you give a new catchphrase to a man in Dewford Town, a location NOWHERE NEAR the route Feebas appears on; knowing this is of little use, however, since setting a specific catchphrase will not put the tiles in specific locations. Even if you're on one of the special tiles, you only have a 50% chance of reeling in a Feebas, so there's a good chance of missing it unless you fish in each tile two or three times. The Generation VI remakes removed this completely, as Feebas can now be found on any tile with any of the fishing rods. But it also comes with its own difficulty, as written below in the Gen IV entry.
- The three legendary golems. Each beast occupies its own inconspicuous cave; these caves are scattered throughout Hoenn. However, to even get into the caves, they need to be unlocked. To unlock them, you need to use Dive in a tiny patch of deep water on a route at the end of some very fast currents; simply getting to the spot is a result of either trial and error or pure chance. Once you Dive and get into the cavern, you need to be able to read Braille or check the instruction manual. The Braille writing tells you to how to progress - these clues include using Dig on a wall instead of using it to try to leave the cave like you normally would, as well as putting a Wailord and a Relicanth (two relatively hard-to-get Pokémon that most trainers almost never have in their parties, especially not simultaneously) in specific spots in your party. Then you have to FIND the now-open caves, two of which are in places you can mostly ignore for the entire game. What's even more annoying, each cave has their own little Braille test before you can even get to the Pokémon; one requires you to stand in place, not touching the controls, for two minutes. Oh, and Emerald changed the method, like placing Wailord last and Relicanth first in the party instead of the other way around.
- Bagon in Generation III, especially in Ruby and Sapphire. It is found in the deepest room in Meteor Falls, an area of the game you most likely forgot about after going through it (unless you're playing Emerald in which case you return there to fight Steven.) Oh, and don't forget to bring a Pokémon with Surf and Waterfall, since they are both needed to progress to the other parts of the area. By the way, this new section of Meteor Falls has trainers in it before you can even reach the room. You can find a Dragon Fang in the small, mostly water-filled room where Bagon is, but other than that, there is no other indications that there is anything special in this room. Bagon has a 25% chance of appearing on the ground section of this area with the added possibility of encountering one beyond Level 30 (the level in which it evolves to Shelgon), but it is well worth it since Bagon evolves into the pseudo-legendary Salamence.
- So it looks like there's a hole in your Hoenn Dex at No. 151. Turns out it is Chimecho. It can only be encountered in one place, the top of Mt. Pyre, which the player will probably only visit when they need to progress the story. And even when the player is in the area, the grass is out of the way. And even if the player goes to the grass, the chance of encountering a Chimecho is only 2%. So you've got a very rare non-legendary who no one in the game uses or seems to know about hiding in a very out-of-the-way area with no hints that it's there. And it's only good for completion purposes, as its stats are horrendous.
- Another such Pokémon is Snorunt. In a similar vein to Chimecho, no trainer in-game uses one, and it's only found in one area of the game. Said area is also quite late in the game, and it's entirely dependent on phenomena. In this case, Snorunt can only be found inside the Shoal Cave north of Mossdeep City. So you might think, "Oh, I can just catch it anywhere? Sounds easy enough." Not exactly. Snorunt only appears in one particular room in Shoal Cave that is only available at low tide. During certain time intervalsnote , the cave will not be filled with much water, opening up to a icy room that can only be reached during those time intervals. This room is the only place where Snorunt can be found, and even then, the encounter rate is 10%, mildly rare. And as far as actual battle purposes, it's pretty much a Master of None with an abysmal 50 in every stat until it evolves at level 42 into Glalie and still has a mediocre 80 in every stat. To make matters worse, if the internal battery of your Game Boy Advance has run drynote , and it occurred during a period of high tide, Snorunt essentially becomes Permanently Missable Content, rendering you unable to see it in your Pokédex unless you trade.
- See Feebas' entry in Generation III above? Generation IV is much harder in this regard - the amount of tiles has been reduced from six to four, Feebas's appearance rate on the tile is lower, and unlike in Hoenn, the tiles change automatically each day.
- Spiritomb. The part about putting the Odd Keystone into the Ruined Tower is intuitive enough, as examining the latter suggests that something could be put in there and hints at what it is, but the other requirement involves interacting with other people in the Underground at least 32 times. There is one trainer on a nearby route who gives you a hint when you talk to him after beating him, though. The person who gives you your first Odd Keystone does give you some hints on what to do with it... Although he's fairly vague, and nowhere does the game specify exactly how many people you're supposed to talk to while in the Underground.
- Catching a Gible. Pokédex says it's in Wayward Cave, the cave accessed by cutting down some trees by the Bicycle Path and wandering past the grass there? After a couple hours of wandering (and helping Mira out), you'll probably figure out that there's no Gible there. Now go look for an alternate entrance to the cave, one which is blocked from view by the Bicycle Path running above you. You need a Pokémon with Strength and Flash. Then, go to the basement and catch one, while you complete a semi-difficult bike course, at the end of which you also find the Earthquake TM. Platinum doesn't have the boulder, however, allowing the player to catch Gible much earlier than before.
I'm not even a quarter of the way through the Pokemon examples. Do you see why I did not provide examples, and asked you to read the examples instead?
If game critics aren't complaining that they had to use a guide to beat your game, and you don't have the majority of players getting stuck on your game, then the game probably has a reasonable enough amount of information. Some players being particularly slow doesn't mean the game isn't providing information. "I couldn't figure a puzzle out" isn't a trope. Game developers not providing crucial information is a trope.
There is no good reason to reduce Guide Dang It! to a dump for any part of a game someone couldn't figure out on their own. The simple fact that someone opted to use a guide isn't a tropeworthy concept, and there is no way to make the page YMMV without rendering it meaningless, if the only criterion is that someone personally felt they needed a guide for something. Tropes have meaning, and people being slow or bad at a video game puzzle is axiomatic for anything if you go far enough to the left end of the bell curve.
Using a guide is explicitly a metagaming (as in, not contained within the game) solution. A player feeling they needed a guide, by itself, is no more tropeworthy than other forms of metagaming, like a player feeling they needed to hack to beat a section of the game. (Cheat Code is a trope. "I needed to hack the game" isn't.) We have That One Boss and the like, but those, at the very least, tend to often be due to a deliberate design decision to make one particular part of the game exceptionally hard. If a lot of players are managing to deduce some puzzle through the clues offered by the game, the developers probably intended for people to be able to figure it out on their own.
If we really must have a trope for anything a player felt they needed outside help for, then make that its own trope, and leave Guide Dang It! for cases where the game does not provide you any clues about something (or clues provided through some means that cannot be decoded without outside information, such as braille.)
Edited by AGuy on Apr 20th 2021 at 3:43:09 PM
I'm just.. a guy....
Remember, the suggestion was that we split off the two types of example here into two different pages. I'm effectively saying, then, that the new page holding only examples with no information given would be "The Same But More".
No, I wanted numbers.
I don't doubt that there are examples. I was asking how much is "a very large chunk".
As to my reading the examples, again, burden of proof falls on the person making the claim.
Game critics constitute a tiny portion of the audience. As to "the majority of players", how are we to determine that?
Different people having different skills and experiences doesn't invalidate their experiences.
This is a part of our fundamental disagreement: to my mind, there is no "reduction to a dump" here.
The audience experience of finding that the game didn't provide enough information for them to figure out what to do next is a valid experience, I argue. As to "how much is enough", that is, by its nature, a judgement call, and thus YMMV.
Again, that's not what's being proposed.
I strongly disagree. In part because I argue that it's already YMMV in effect.
You see it as meaningless. That doesn't mean that everyone will, too. I don't.
[edit] However, we've gone round and round on this a number of times already. You've not convinced me, and I've not convinced you. We've both made our arguments. Let's stop, at this point. [/edit]
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 19th 2021 at 10:09:41 AM
My Games & Writing
Please forgive the double-post—my response above is long, and I wanted to make it clear to other posters in the thread that this part isn't part of that argument, and is intended for the broader thread.
So, moving forward, shall we make that crowner?
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 19th 2021 at 10:10:57 AM
My Games & Writing
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Link to crowner proposal
.
I dislike voting on "description rewrite" and "make YMMV" as separate questions. I'd like a clearer definition of the trope to be sorted out first. We have a wick check establishing less than 50% correct use, so deciding what the "correct use" of the trope is going forwards is the most important step. I think A Guy is arguing that the trope is defined by the game failing to explain how a mechanic works, while I think Ars Thaumaturgis is defining it as clarity of information.
No, that wouldn't be The Same, but More at all. "A player feels they need to use a guide" is very different than "the game doesn't provide the information to you at all", and would be like arguing that Hopeless Boss Fight is The Same, but More to That One Boss.
Yeah, I'm not doing a wick check for you when we already have one. If seeing all those examples from going not even a quarter of the way through a single franchise is not enough to convince you that people regularly use the trope for when there is no information provided, then nothing will be.
Are you actually arguing in good faith? It seems more like you're trying to find a petty reason to dismiss a legitimate concern. You are choosing to get engaged in the overhaul of a trope page, yet, by your own admission
you will not read examples to get the context to make your arguments or understand other arguments. Instead of seeing a lot of examples from just a section of one franchise and understanding that there are a lot of uses of the trope in the way I describe, you refuse to acknowledge it, instead demanding I give you exact numbers, by reading every one of the examples myself, due to "burden of proof". I'm not going to entertain a wild goose chase.
You know, if a ton of players are getting stuck on one particular portion of the game, there's a good chance that you will find dozens of the exact same complaint - "I have absolutely no idea how to proceed past here." Games where players get stuck tend to have much lower completion rates, and will have achievements for one section disproportionately much less commonly earned by the players than achievements for anything before it.
Their experiences aren't a trope. There will always be bad or slow players. That's axiomatic. Those bad or slow players playing a game and getting hung up on something isn't a trope.
That's because you never saw what Fake Difficulty was like when we allowed people to just list any sort of difficulty they didn't like. Pretty much *every* game that didn't play itself would have multiple things listed by nature of someone not liking it. Invincible Minor Minion, Warring Without Weapons, Inescapable Ambush, One-Hit Kill, you name it, someone considered it Fake Difficulty.
The page has long since been overhauled. If you just allow the page to be for any time a player feels they need a guide since they can't figure something out, you're creating something just like Fake Difficulty was, a negativity magnet that will lose all meaning and become a place for people to dump their frustration.
That is effectively what is being proposed. What do you think Guide Dang It! will become if absolutely anything that someone might not be able to figure out on their own is fair game?
Currently there is misuse, but misuse is just that - misuse. You want to make the misuse cases the default - which means that there will be much more of it.
Answer me this - what is tropeworthy about a person not figuring out a puzzle? In concrete, unambiguous terms. What about it represents any sort of meaning related to the game's design that isn't purely related to the concept of difficulty?
Yes, exactly.
Edited by AGuy on Apr 19th 2021 at 9:45:09 AM
I'm just.. a guy....
Discarded and Feeling Blue
Now, I really don't feel like getting involved in this debate, but one thing jumped out at me.
No, Ars's version isn't necessarily tropeworthy, but you need to remember that they're arguing in favor of the YMMV move. YMMV concepts don't qualify as tropes in the same way actual narrative tropes do, so asking about "tropeworthiness" is like asking why That One Boss is tropeworthy- technically they're not, because they're not tropes at all, but rather describing how audiences interact with the work. And the intent, I believe, would be to document a reaction to the game- like all audience reactions do. Since Ars is arguing that this is YMMV, they're also arguing that it's not a trope, and thus the debate over "tropeworthiness" isn't going to help much.
I had to get in there and say that because it stuck out at me. Now I'm going back to lurking again.
Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 19th 2021 at 9:43:48 AM
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
I was about to compose a (more badly-worded version) of this post. Understanding what your debate partner believes always helps to make a persuasive argument. Questioning their "good faith" debate tactic is inappropriate when they have presented a consistent argument (you don't need to agree with their point, but it is important to understand it).
[/not quite a moderator post]
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
And now two people are jumping in to tell me that I don't know what the other guy is trying to argue. If he's not arguing for it to be a trope, then that is the exact opposite of what he said.
There's nothing about YMMV in particular that disqualifies a YMMV entry from being a trope. The page itself mentions some items being tropes.
But very well. I should've asked "what makes this worth a page?" Because "player needs a guide to figure something in the game out" isn't any more pageworthy than "player needs hacks to get through a section of the game". That One Boss, at the very least, is about a specific aspect of a game's content - a boss - and it is often much harder because of specific design intent. In addition, there is a component of relativity to other aspects of the game ("this boss is very hard relative to other bosses the game has"), which makes it much less common for people to throw just any challenging boss the game has - when all of the bosses of a game are compared, generally there are just one or a handful of bosses that stick out for being exceptional in their difficulty.
Hell, the page actually makes an effort to narrow down its definition through its various bullet points, so it's not just "any boss a player struggled with" (including "every boss in the game", as some have put down before), but more strict on its requirements. The other troper, however, has argued that an attempt to define criteria would invalidate the experience of worse players, as per
and similar quotes, in response to me saying that a player being particularly slow or bad doesn't mean the game isn't providing necessary information.
The proposed reaction would be for anything that stumps a player and makes them seek outside help, which is so overly broad as to be pointless. There is neither an objective component, nor any sort of relativity, to limit the scope of the examples. It is inherently about something negative - a frustrating experience. That is a magnet for anyone who gets frustrated about getting stuck to Rage Quit the game, come here, and put down a boss as Guide Dang It! because they can't read his tells whatsoever.
You might have been around long enough to see Fake Difficulty before its overhaul. The page wasn't turned into a YMMV for any sort of difficulty a troper finds annoying - it was overhauled and its definition made explicit, because there's an actual trope there.
This would be discarding an explicitly definable trope concept in favor of an extremely broad reaction. And that raises the point - if he's arguing to make the trope an audience reaction, why is he arguing that a trope regarding something objectively definable - a complete lack of information provided by the game - is The Same, but More of an audience reaction?
Edited by AGuy on Apr 19th 2021 at 2:22:31 PM
I'm just.. a guy....
TL;DR: Two points. Exact details are written out below.
1. I've said things I've said for reasons that can be clearly illustrated - this isn't just about me not understanding the other troper. In fact, the other troper chooses not to try to understand me. Per his own admittance, he doesn't care to read examples when even a cursory reading of them would demonstrate my meaning. 2. Despite how the other troper attempts to frame it, our arguments do not have any sort of parity - this is nowhere close to being an "agree to disagree" situation. Mine are based on precedent and wiki policies that he either believes doesn't exist or chooses to ignore. He has been incorrect and inconsistent on several occasions, and holds opposing claims to an unrealistic standard when many of his own statements are based on what he "feels" is right.
Now then.
I apologize. I do not know what else to say when I clearly demonstrate that there are a lot of examples of the trope being used in the way I explained, but the other troper refuses to acknowledge it, and tells me that I have to give him exact numbers (which involves reading all of those examples), while telling me that he doesn't have to read examples related to a trope he's arguing to redefine. Do you think what the other troper is asking of me - exact numbers for how often the trope is used in a specific way, when I say "a good chunk of examples" - is a feasible request to oblige? I personally struggle to understand how someone can, in good faith, ask that, while blaming the other party for not giving them exact numbers for a more general point that is clearly valid.
In addition, his arguments don't seem consistent to me - he has moved the goalposts, such as when he argued that the game providing absolutely no information about something would be an exaggerated example of his proposed audience reaction. When it was brought to his attention that tropes cannot be played with, he then argued that a trope for the game providing no information would be The Same, but More of an audience reaction - if that's what he is arguing for it to be, instead of a trope.
This is after he's argued that
I'm not entirely convinced of the idea, but I wouldn't object to it, I think.
He did say "I think" - but that is a lack of consistency as to his stance, as he has now made multiple arguments against an objective trope being made.
And this isn't the only time he seems to not have a cursory grasp of what he is arguing. In response to me saying
he condescendingly said
Not only mixing up the difference between a trope and an audience reaction, but showing that he doesn't know that YMMV can very well involve things that are deliberately invoked by the work, like padding or Evil Is Sexy, if people react to it differently based on some personal criterion.
In response to me arguing
he argues
and is now arguing
Saying "Again", as if he didn't argue for that.
when he hasn't actually provided an explanation as to why the trope wouldn't be so broad as to be meaningless in anything except vague terms, despite being repeatedly asked to do so, while he also says that the experience of even particularly slow players should be valid for the audience reaction. Similarly with
When I explained exactly why the trope would be a negativity magnet, and a past trope that was a negativity magnet due to its broadness and lack of clearly defined criteria, he only says "I still disagree". That isn't an argument, that's a dismissal. (Not to mention that we do, in fact, have many standards for tropes in place to avoid things that are likely to occur in their absence.)
And now I'm being told that he's actually arguing for an audience reaction, when he's argued that this should be a trope. Do you see why I do not feel the argument is at all consistent?
EDIT: More inconsistencies. When he asked another troper
The other troper replied
And a different troper offered
And he accepted that with
Now when I tell him that a large chunk of the examples are about the game providing no clues whatsoever, he demands specific numbers after being shown many examples from just a quarter of the way of the page of one franchise.
He argued
while he is now arguing for the thing being about an experience.
So it's not like I just have no idea what the other guy is arguing, and I would appreciate it if people wouldn't try to "correct" my understanding when I know what's been argued.
I know this is rather long - but this isn't the first time I've been accused of some fault that is not supported by the post histories of the relevant parties, and I would very much like to settle this decisively. It feels pretty personal when a troper decides to leave lurking to intervene in a thread and ignore all of these issues I have pointed out, purely for the sake of personally calling me out for something when the post history of the troper he is backing contradicts his defense.
Edited by AGuy on Apr 19th 2021 at 2:43:37 PM
I'm just.. a guy....
I can see merit to a YMMV split assuming the YMMV version of Guide Dang It! has some level of strictness in how it can be applied, much like other YMMV tropes like That One Boss have these restrictions. Since it'd be treated more like an audience reaction, it should be relatively simple to justify examples by explaining why a certain gameplay element, task, etc might not quite be Guide Dang It! enough that a walkthrough is almost certainly required, and yet many players invariably ask about how to do X.
Eg. in Persona 5, maxing out the various Social Skills and Confidants if you're aiming to do one playthrough is a task that doesn't really require a walkthrough. You can figure out the various time-saving mechanics, free activities that don't take up a time slot, reset Confidant Dialogue Tree events to max out relationship points, etc. There's enough of a buffer in game that if you maxed everything out as quickly as possible and did every available activity, you're left with a month or more of free-time but no activities to use it on, so the game isn't very punishing on small mistakes.
However, a common question that's asked on a near daily basis in the community for both versions of the game is how to max out all Social Skills and Confidants in one playthrough, so while it's perfectly doable going in blind, it's something that gets brought up time and again. With that said, the example I just discussed also likely just falls under That One Sidequest, which itself lists about ~30% of the available Confidants in game (some of the examples I don't agree with but that's a different can of worms). It might be that a lot of those sorts of examples would just fall under That One Sidequest or some other similar YMMV and a new one isn't actually needed, though that also sort of falls into the clean-up option.
Exactly - there should be some criteria. That One Boss has some criteria - it's not just a dump for any boss people struggle with. Having absolutely no criteria, as proposed by the other troper, just for the sake of not "invalidating" the experience of a really bad or slow player, will not make a healthy page.
This has been demonstrated repeatedly in the history of TV Tropes - if you have a trope or Audience Reaction involving something negative, and allow absolutely anything to be an example because someone personally doesn't like something, the page degenerates into meaninglessness.
- Fake Difficulty, as I've mentioned. People listed absolutely every form of difficulty that annoyed them, and you'd often have half the bosses of a game listed down as Fake Difficulty because some player felt that some boss' incredibly telegraphed One-Hit Kill attack wasn't "real" difficulty. The page was drastically overhauled, with strict, clearly outlined criteria for what Fake Difficulty is.
- Hype Backlash. A long time ago, the page was absolutely filled with pretty much any movie that wasn't a total flop. Many of the movies there had a token advertisement budget at best - so the hype wouldn't have even been coming from the media hyping them up or something. The vast majority of examples were ZCEs - just tropers coming to put down some movie they didn't like. The ZCE examples were cut (I was actually the one who proposed and did that, way back then), and then the page eventually disallowed on-page examples completely because it just became a magnet for complaining.
- Discontinuity. Used to be its own trope. People put pretty much anything they didn't like, and potholed it to any of those things they found elsewhere. Page is now a disambiguation for different types of discontinuity, and we eventually got the Fanon Discontinuity we have now - which is defined as an Audience Reaction, and explicitly states that the trope has to be for something dismissed by a significant portion of the fanbase, and not just anything someone didn't personally like.
- Wall Banger. Now part of the Permanent Red Link Club. The page was literally defined as something in a work that's so bad that it makes you slam your head against the wall. Yeah - that ended up absolutely everywhere, and the page was rightfully cut.
In light of that, I don't see any reason we should make an audience reaction that allows anything someone felt they needed a guide for. And if we 'invalidate' the opinion of a really bad or slow player? Why do we need to validate their opinion?
If we're going to have Guide Dang It! as an Audience Reaction, the page either needs criteria that's stricter than "anything someone bad enough had a problem with", or it needs to not allow examples. And if we're going the route of making it an Audience Reaction, we should split off the for the cases where games provide you no information whatsoever on something into a new trope, and outline clear criteria on that.
Edited by AGuy on Apr 20th 2021 at 9:00:36 AM
I'm just.. a guy....
@Warjay: Thank you, and well-put.
@YourIdeas: You make a good argument, I do think. Having examples indicate why the element in question didn't include enough in-game information makes sense, and even contributes towards examples not being Zero Content Examples.
I'm happy to have such a requirement, I do think.
I'm still not clear on the value of a split, however. Why separate "the game gives no information" from "the game gives insufficient information"—that seems more like a difference of degree, not kind, to me. Either way the game isn't providing enough for the player to move forward.
(If I'm understanding the proposed split, at least.)
@AGuy: I have indeed been arguing in good faith. Indeed, I've put in quite a bit of work in addressing your various lengthy posts. (Note to more-recent posters: This recent section of the thread is not the first time in this thread that AGuy and I have had these arguments. In some cases these same arguments, and at similar length.) Quite frankly, I'm done; I'm no longer responding to you; it's not worth the energy.
My Games & Writing
You say you've made effort, yet have shown that you won't make the effort to read pages you're referencing, or do a cursory reading of examples. Saying "I still disagree" after being shown wiki policy and being provided with historic examples, while asserting the exact opposite of wiki policy as truth?
If we've been "going in circles", it's because you keep ignoring the key arguments by asserting the opposite of what is true, and using your own personal gut feeling instead of anything grounded in history. Your only answers to why we should allow a page to be a haven for unfettered negativity have been "I don't think it'll happen" (it has happened, multiple times, with similar tropes) and "we don't worry about negativity until it actually happens" (multiple policies on the website contradict this.)
There is no parity in our arguments. You have yet to address the major issues presented with anything that's demonstrable, and have used outright incorrect claims to support your stance on multiple occasions.
Because you are proposing changing a trope to an audience reaction, and then trying to lump in an actual, demonstrable trope with the audience reaction. It's like trying to lump in Hopeless Boss Fight with That One Boss, because Hopeless Boss Fight is just a more extreme example of a player having a hard time beating a particular boss.
Edited by AGuy on Apr 20th 2021 at 5:09:09 AM
I'm just.. a guy....
The point I'm trying to make for a YMMV split is that it falls on the troper to prove that while their specific example might not qualify for Guide Dang It!, because the game offers enough hints to complete a task or a reasonable amount of experimentation eventually leads to an answer, it might qualify for a YMMV version of it where a significant portion of the player base for a game has that same specific issue, such that you see questions of "how do I solve X?" regularly in circles that discuss the game or you see those players reaching for a walkthrough, even if it doesn't require it.
There might not need to actually be a new trope for this though and what really needs to happen is a clean-up of examples that aren't 100% Guide Dang It!. Some things might get moved to That One Sidequest, Last Lousy Point (not YMMV but still), or the number of other tropes we do have for this purpose. I think that needs to be explored a bit further though to see if a new YMMV trope is actually needed. Point being, a number of incorrect Guide Dang It! examples look more like audience reactions, some of which may very well be one person on a tirade (which doesn't belong here) but some of which are actually sentiments shared across a games' community, and I think that group's thoughts are worth noting.
Edited by YourIdeas on Apr 20th 2021 at 4:15:41 AM
I'm actually curious about whether we should expect the game to tell players about some things regarding specifics of game mechanics. To use an example - effort values and individual values in Pokémon. On one hand, you don't need to know anything about them to beat the game or get 100% completion; on the other hand, they can have a drastic effect on the stats of a Pokémon, which is pretty big in endgame modes like the Battle Tower, and in competitive battling.
I'm not sure on this myself, so I'd prefer if others come to a consensus one way or another.
I'm just.. a guy....
Hidden stats like IVs in early Pokémon games feel more like bonus content and easter eggs and not Guide Dang It!, unless a game's main quest is punishingly hard and requires you to know about those stats. You can catch the first Pokémon you see and beat the main quest (story and Elite Four) easily, their IVs having pretty much nothing to do with your success. Expecting every game mechanic to be laid bare for you so you can get perfect things is a stretch for Guide Dang It!.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
For Pokemon hidden values, I think the best analogy would be a fighting game where pressing Kick and Punch at the same time is a block move. You don't need to block to win, but even being aware of the mechanic changes how you play.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
@YourIdeas: Hmm... I see what you're saying.
However, it seems to me that proof would be called for either way: either a statement that there are no hints and an explanation for experimentation being infeasible, or an explanation as to why the hints seemed infeasible. The form thus becomes similar in the two types of example.
And furthermore, either way the outcome is functionally the same: the player felt that not enough information was provided in order for them to reasonably proceed.
You say that a number of the incorrect examples look to be audience reactions. Indeed, if I'm understanding the wick-check correctly, it looks like there could be nearly as many "audience-reaction" as "non-audience-reaction" examples. (~28% of wicks compared to ~40% of wicks, respectively.)
So, in part given that the thing seems to me to be YMMV anyway and in part because the usage seems valid enough, I say let's just lean into that and let those examples be valid examples.
That said, a cleanup of walkthrough-mode, zero-content, mis-troped, and other such examples likely is a good idea!
@crazysamaritan: I can see such examples fitting given that argument, indeed.
In that case it's not a matter of frustration—but it's still something that might change something important about playing game and that the game isn't telling you about.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 21st 2021 at 10:08:46 AM
My Games & Writing
(Please forgive the double-post; it's been a few days without further discussion.)
So, let me propose a new YMMV definition for the trope, in brief point-form:
This would be a situation in a game in which:
- There is something in a game—a puzzle solution, a hidden item, etc.
- The game doesn't provide the player with enough information by which to attain that thing
- And it's infeasible to gain the thing by other methods.
- e.g. By brute-forcing a combination, or manually searching out an item.
How does that sound?
My Games & Writing
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I just thought of something. If we keep this classified as objective, would making it Trivia be a good idea, since it involves background information on the work? (For comparison's sake, I also think Game-Breaking Bug should be Trivia since it's background information and not something intentionally put in the work, and I think at least one of the mods does as well, but that's outside this thread's scope.)
Fairly recently, the mods decided that proposals to make things Trivia should go through TRS instead of the now-closed Trivia thread.
Currently, I'm too tired to think about what to do with this (I'm just bringing up the Trivia option instead of voting in favor of it); I'm just spitballing at the moment.
Edit: I think I'm still leaning toward making this YMMV, and if we do that, I think it should be indexed under YMMV.Home Page instead of Audience Reactions since there are objective aspects (which is what distinguishes the former from the latter).
Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 23rd 2021 at 11:31:52 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
I'm helping!
No, whether the game gives you enough information to solve the puzzle is something in the game; the guide you might resort to as a result of not getting enough info isn't, but we're not talking about that guide.
Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.
I don't know that Guide Dang It! is really a trivia thing. It's a video game trope in the sense that while it might not be a story-telling device, it's often something that a developer will deliberately place into a game, whether it's to get you to buy a guide, to give observant players secrets to ramp up extra playtime on, to encourage you to experiment and not just go for the most optimal path to beat a game, etc.
On points like Pokemon IVs, I feel like there could be a potential sub-trope missing like Unexplained Game Mechanic that describes in-game mechanics that aren't given much explanation in game but may have a drastic effect on gameplay if the player knew about them. This could include things like Smash Bros' tech, Yojimbo's mechanics for how he chooses moves in Final Fantasy X, etc.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Fair enough on both replies, and as for an Unexplained Game Mechanic trope, I'd support its creation.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Crown Description:
How should Guide Dang It be fixed? [MOD NOTE: Closed as failed.]
"A very large chunk" is enough so that "exaggerated" would be all over the page. You should probably read the examples, there are a lot of them.
There needs to be an actual lack of information, not just any person feeling they need a guide and venting by listing an example because they couldn't read the boss's obvious tells without one.
Edited by AGuy on Apr 18th 2021 at 2:20:02 PM
I'm just.. a guy....