Peeks from Under Rocks
First, the only way to Invoke The Penny Farthing Effect is to deliberately make something more complicated than it needs to be, and simplify a later generation. The Submachine Gun thing seems to be that 1st gen were all very precisely built in every particular, while 2nd gen used a lot of simplified parts to increase production. I've not seen the episode, but would it be obvious which parts they could cut corners on?
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
"Cut corners" implies cheap and low-quality, which is the opposite of this trope and why I'm arguing this example is misuse.
I'm pretty sure whoever wrote that one meant to say "discussed" rather than "invoked".
I'd like to apologize for all this.All that's left to do is discuss the last remaining examples, shouldn't take too long. This one about this very wiki confuses me. Does it even count as "design"?
- In the early years of the wiki, several Tropes were named after a character who was known for the Trope or a Stock Phrase uttered when the Trope was in effect rather than what the Trope actually was. These practices are no longer accepted as they put Conciseness and/or Wit ahead of Clarity, leading to Trope Decay.
Is it implying that trope namers from the early days of the wiki are all bad design and that they all get replaced by new names and the old names viewed as terrible in hindsight?
Edited by Tabs on Jun 11th 2021 at 5:20:13 AM
Varies, but it was a common practice.
My issue, I'll reiterate, was that I don't think this even counts as "design".
I'd like to apologize for all this.
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
Some aspects of this wiki's design might count, but IDK much about the coding.
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure PurenessOkay, here are all the examples I could salvage on my clean-up. Some of these come from the main page, as it seems the trope was never properly cross-wicked.
- Armored Core: Nexus introduced the ability to tune parts for increased performance, but did not allow the player to redistribute tuning points; if the player wanted to change their tuning settings for a part, they would need to sell it and buy it again. The following two games, Ninebreaker and Last Raven, allowed the player to reallocate their tuning points at will.
- In the BioShock series, the right hand shoots the weapon and the left hand shoots Plasmids. The first game only allows using one or the other. BioShock 2 fixed this by allowing Plasmids and weaponry to be fired simultaneously, while BioShock 2's multiplayer mode and Bioshock Infinite have the player pocket their weapon away briefly when using Plasmids or Vigors.
- Dragon Quest has the player open their menu and select the "Stairs" command in order to climb or descend a staircase. Remakes and later games in the series fix this by having the player climb stairs either when stepping on that tile or when pushing the action button.
- In DuckTales, Scrooge's Pogo Jump is performed by holding down and B while in mid-air. Considering Scrooge has no other mid-air moves that use the B button, the holding down part is unnecessary. The remastered version allows the player to perform the Pogo Jump by just holding B.
- The first two Fallout games won't give any description or indication of a usable object in the environment without first switching to the "look" cursor, something that was remedied in later installments.
- Early adventure games by LucasArts (Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) didn't give an item's name when mousing over it unless the "What Is" verb was in use, making it very hard to distinguish that some background objects are usable. Starting with The Secret of Monkey Island, an item's name would always be given in the status bar when mousing over it.
- Early MechWarrior titles with directional Jump Jet Packs required a separate suite of movement controls for controlling the jets, necessitating that players shift between the arrow keys and the numberpad when shifting between walking and jetting. MechWarrior Living Legends nixed the separate controls, along with making the default control scheme more in line with modern standards.
- Pac-Man level patterns work because, although the game has RNG, it's reset to the same initial value at the beginning of every life. 'Ms. Pac-Man'' solved this problem by not doing that and randomizing the ghosts' movement for the first 7 seconds of each level.
- Pokémon:
- In the first two Generations, filled up a box meant the player couldn't catch any more Pokémon until another box was selected. Starting with Gen III, when a box was full, it simply put the new Pokémon in the next box in order.
- In order to transfer Pokémon in Generations IV and V, the player needed to complete the game to gain access to a specific area where this process could be done, then play a minigame where the Pokémon would need to be re-caught. A limit of six Pokémon per transfer, as well as a restriction of one transfer every 24 hours, was also enforced. Starting from Gen VI, the process was streamlined and the amount of Pokémon per transfer raised.
- Hidden Machines allowed the player to perform certain actions in the overworld like flying to previous locations, but had to be taught to a Pokémon, taking up one of its four move slots, and the action could only be done while the Pokémon knowing that move was on the player's team. Pokémon Sun and Moon made these actions run off a separate system that didn't take up move slots and could be done at any moment.
- StarCraft limited selecting units to a maximum of 12, which doesn't account for the unit's relative strength and buildings could only be selected one at a time, taking up time due to viewing your base to go through your production facilities. StarCraft II made this system less convoluted.
Edited by FernandoLemon on Jun 13th 2021 at 3:34:47 PM
I'd like to apologize for all this.Since there hasn't been any discussion in the last three days, I believe it's now time to put this in the Salvage Yard, cutlist, and close. Shall I?
I'd like to apologize for all this.
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
I'm on board. Requesting more input though.
I'm OK with that.
Yarded, and the page, Laconic and sandbox have been placed in the cutlist
.
How sweet it is
Okay, it's closing time.
she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report
Crown Description:
What would be the best way to fix the page?
Can anyone make sense of this one, from the web series Forgotten Weapons?
I labeled it as misuse because the entry implies that effort is proportional to quality; but I've been told it doesn't say that? Does the entry even make sense, or is it too overlong?
I'd like to apologize for all this.