Severe Misuse: Violation Of Common Sense

Looks good to me.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

I mostly like that division, but I'm not sure why it needs to be limited to harmful things. (That would exclude the "fake moustache to imitate a person without a moustache" example.) I'm also not sure how this division is consistent with your earlier statement that rocket jumping isn't an example of Violation of Common Sense.

Finally, am I the only person who's been reading this thread and wondering how Press X to Die is a trope at all? In Super Mario you can choose to just plow right into the enemies or jump into a bottomless pit, and you'll die if you do. That's the game giving you the opportunity to do something stupid and punishing you if you do, right there, but I don't think it's particularly interesting to note.

Press X to Die is more like when the game has a Schmuck Bait button that says "Suicide button: Press this button to commit suicide" and if you press it, it kills you.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

In Adventure Games, where every action is more based on situation, character and story, Press X to Die is very definitely a trope. I think the distinction should be that the game acknowledges the stupidity of the action. (In that case, ploughing through enemies in Super Mario World doesn't count.)

edited 11th Nov '10 3:47:57 PM by arks

Video Game Census. Please contribute.

| I mostly like that division, but I'm not sure why it needs to be limited to harmful things. (That would exclude the "fake moustache to imitate a person without a moustache" example.)

Ah, I agree with you, but that would have confused the definition. In fact, to start with, I actually was trying to make this about _just_ solutions that wouldn't work at all, not ones that would work but harm you in the process. But I gave up on that strictness, and thinking about it, I'm not sure that's a large enough example set anyway.

But I agree, this trope not only should cover 'harmful' solutions that the game thinks are a good idea and work to solve the problem , but _useless_ solutions that do the same thing.

If, in the 'raging river' example, the solution is to dump ice cubes into the river to freeze it, and walk over that, that's this trope also. It's not 'harmful' to attempt, but it requires just as badly a broken brain to think would work.

In fact, I think this trope could be divided into sections based on why the 'bad idea' wouldn't really work. One being 'Because it would kill or main you' and another being 'The laws of physics do not work that way', and another 'Because the people you're trying to fool would have to be very very very dumb, so dumb they would not understand the concept of car rental, or even breathing'. (The infamous mustache.)

However, every time I try to explain this, I get bogged down and people don't seem to understand.

Press X to Die and Stupidity Is the Only Option don't need to be so broad. No one cares if you can Press X To Do Useless Thing that the game treats as a useless thing. Actually, now that I think of it, that's The Dev Team Thinks of Everything, so it is a trope.

And of course Useless Thing Is The Only Option is almost the definition of adventure games. ;)

| I'm also not sure how this division is consistent with your earlier statement that rocket jumping isn't an example of Violation Of Common Sense.

Rocket Jumping is a genre convention at this point, and hence is an example of Video Game Physics.

If some game had just invented the idea and you were supposed to use it to solve a puzzle, without any indication that it's possible, it would indeed be a Violation of Common Sense, but rocket jumping is more an Ascended Glitch at this point. (In fact, adventures games in the past have used such concept, although usually with a bit more plausibility like standing on a trashcan lid you put a cherry bomb under, and those should be listed here, as that would be almost as idiotic to do.)

This trope should be limited to things that only exist in a few games, and, more important, that are actually confusing when you encounter them.

Although it might be reasonable to provide a list of Video Game Physics that are a Violation of Common Sense in the trope description, if only to tell people not to put those here because each would have dozens of examples.

Remember, we have Moon Logic Puzzle as well, which does cover the fake mustache.

Video Game Census. Please contribute.

We've been through this earlier in the thread. Moon Logic Puzzle does *not* cover the fake moustache example.

A Moon Logic Puzzle is distorted, weird, but in the end it makes *some kind of sense* — even if it's totally bizarre and off the wall. A Violation of Common Sense does *not* make any sense at all.

The difference is that after you learn the answer, a Moon Logic Puzzle makes you say "I might never have got that in a million years, but it makes sense", while a Violation of Common Sense makes you say "Even now, it makes no sense at all!"

Unfortunately, this is definitely subjective. Freezing a river with ice cubes makes some kind of sense; but it makes less sense the more physics you know.

But, despite the subjectivity, there's definitely a distinction, albeit on a sliding scale. The moustache example doesn't make sense even to six-year-olds — it's a Violation of Common Sense. Freezing a river with ice cubes might make sense to six-year-olds but not to sixty-year-olds — to six-year-olds it's a Moon Logic Puzzle, to sixty-year-olds it's a Violation of Common Sense. And collecting animal skins to assemble an inflatable floating bridge over a river might be wacky but makes sense to six-year-olds and sixty-year-olds — it's a Moon Logic Puzzle. (This solution is mentioned in a contemporary book of Roman war machines!)

I think a better way of looking at it is not how much 'sense' it makes, but whether or not it would actually work to do the thing you're trying to do.

...and not kill you, or something equally bad. Because all puzzles have an implicit 'without getting killed or maimed' attached to them.

So this trope is 'Solutions to puzzles where what happens in the game doesn't match what happens in real life'. Which includes things that kill you in real life, but are just fine to do in the game, but also includes things that just plain wouldn't work _at all_, but work in the game.

But this trope notably doesn't include a Broken Bridge, where you have to talk to some random person about strawberries, and can't leave town until you pick one because 'the bridge is out'. While that's what fixed the bridge in the game code, the game isn't trying to imply that fixed the bridge in the game universe.

As for where the line is of 'plausibility'...it doesn't really matter unless this page is absurdly large. If an electrical engineer wants to explain why a circuit you build in a game wouldn't work, whatever. That's a problem for a later date.

"So this trope is 'Solutions to puzzles where what happens in the game doesn't match what happens in real life'."

We don't judge computer games against real life; we judge them by their own rules. Acceptable Breaks from Reality are not Violations of Common Sense, even if they don't match real life.

How about "Scripted events where what happens in the game violently disagrees with reasonable expectations about what should be possible in the game". We don't need to restrict this to puzzles, but it does seem that most interesting examples are scripted events (of which puzzles are a subset) rather than general gameplay.

No. It's not just puzzles, and it's not just "doesn't match reality". It's "player actions that you would reasonably expect to have negative results that instead have positive ones". The example we keep using is rocket jumping: you'd expect setting off an explosive at your own feet to do nothing much but damage you, but instead it allows you to leap great distances.

How did we get confused again? I thought we were pretty much in agreement and then suddenly we weren't anymore.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I never liked the rocket jumping example. It's nonsense in real life, but given the knowledge of the workings of the game physics, it's a pretty logical consequence of rockets which are nonlethal and explosion knockback. To me, it's an Acceptable Break from Reality rather than a Violation of Common Sense.

"makes sense within the context of the game mechanics" would negate any example from being added, given that (obviously) the game mechanics allow the example to happen. But then, I see no reason why Violation of Common Sense and Acceptable Break from Reality have to be mutually exclusive.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

| "Scripted events where what happens in the game violently disagrees with reasonable expectations about what should be possible in the game".

How about 'What happens in the game doesn't match what should logically happen in the game, even after considering all Acceptable Breaks from Reality and Video Game Physics and other tropes'.

Although, as was pointed out, this needs to be in the positive direction. If doing things that appear like a good idea yields illogical bad results, it's probably Everything Trying to Kill You or Nintendo Hard.

| It's "player actions that you would reasonably expect to have negative results that instead have positive ones".

No, we're just saying "player actions that you would reasonably expect to have negative _or non-helpful_ results that instead have positive ones".

You're right in that 'positive results' needs to be in there, but I'm not seeing why the expected results have to be 'negative' per se...they just can't reasonably be positive, and yet end up being so.

And it's a pretty fine line, anyway. I mean, if you dump ice cubes into a river...you no longer have ice cubes, do you? That seems like a negative result. That's a difficult line to draw.

Just go with 'things that shouldn't work, but do'. The reason can be 'it would kill you' or 'physics doesn't work like that', but the reason isn't important.

| I see no reason why Violation Of Common Sense and Acceptable Break From Reality have to be mutually exclusive.

If it's 'acceptable', then it happening is common sense. Or, to put it another way, Violation of Common Sense is an Unacceptable Break From Reality...that you personally have to figure out. (As opposed to just viewing it, like in other media.)

You're right, to tell those apart we're not even looking at the game anymore...we're looking at how people _expect_ the game to function. But isn't talking about how people expect fiction to work the entire point of this site? ;)

If it's 'acceptable', then it happening is common sense

Um... no it's not. Acceptable Breaks from Reality is "things that are unrealistic, but get a pass for making the work better". Violation of Common Sense is "something that you wouldn't think would work, but does". They're not really related.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

The Moon Logic Puzzle has a reference to the fake mustache as the page picture.

| The Moon Logic Puzzle has a reference to the fake mustache as the page picture.

Yes, but it shouldn't.

Moon Logic Puzzle require an intuitive leap, they require you thinking 'outside the box', to use an overused expression. And some of them require a degree in cryptology. And some of them are weird fourth wall breaking, where the information you need is not in the game itself.

But the fundamental difference is that a Moon Logic Puzzle, when solved, has you go 'Oh, I get it! How tricky and evil and complicated.', whereas a Violation of Common Sense has you go 'Um, that solution wouldn't work, because you'd end up dead/people are not that dumb/fire does not work that way/cats are not made of foamboard/etc.'

A long time ago, I proposed renaming this trope to 'This Makes No Damn Sense', because that's what people say when they finally give up on Violation of Common Sense puzzle and read the walk-through.

A Moon Logic Puzzle doesn't have to make sense afterwards. A well-done Moon Logic Puzzle can, but even the page says that many will still leave you scratching your heads afterwards going "Where did THAT come from, and HOW did that work?" That, and if you left Moon Logic Puzzle open to any puzzle that still made sense afterwards, I suspect a lot of people would add every puzzle that has ever stumped them. I know I've been stopped by quite a few puzzles, yet after succumbing to temptation and seeing a guide, thinking "Oh, right, of course, that makes sense." While other puzzles I'd qualify as Moon Logic made me go "What the crap? THAT'S the solution?"

Violation of Common Sense, however, doesn't even have to be a puzzle at all, just an action that, by all rights, shouldn't work. And yet it does.

Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.

| A Moon Logic Puzzle doesn't have to make sense afterwards.

| Violation Of Common Sense, however, doesn't even have to be a puzzle at all, just an action that, by all rights, shouldn't work. And yet it does.

Yeah, there's a difference between incredibly weird logic that almost no one understands in advance, and people are even confused afterward...and things where the actions are 'understandable' by themselves, but no person would think that would actually solve the problem.

I mean, when you're faced with a stone keyboard in a tomb that you can push symbols on, clearly the solution to get past is to...push certain symbols.

It's a Moon Logic Puzzle if the way to figure out what to push requires figuring out the phases of the moon, or looking on the back of the game box, or it was the solution to a riddle some guy said eight hours ago. You know how to solve it, you just don't know what the solution is. It might also be a Moon Logic Puzzle if it just looks like a puzzle, complete with buttons to press, but the actual way past is to go around that door.

But it's a Violation of Common Sense if the solution is to poor soda into it to 'short it out', which open the doors, despite it clearly being a _mechanical_ puzzle.

So, back to this trope's description:

What is wrong with the description we have? I don't like the way it starts with the wrong trope, and it needs to mention that the 'fatal flaw' in the solution the game thinks is correct is that it would be, indeed, fatal.

Anyone got a rewrite? Of a paragraph or the whole thing?

We need to ensure this trope isn't being duplicated by other tropes. If a Moon Logic Puzzle doesn't have to make sense, then it overlaps massively with this trope, and I'm not sure that Violation of Common Sense is distinct enough to be a separate trope.

I think Moon Logic Puzzle should be distinct; that Violation of Common Sense is the correct trope for puzzles which make *no* sense at all, while Moon Logic Puzzle is the correct trope for puzzles which make sense in a *warped* way. This requires fixing both Violation of Common Sense and Moon Logic Puzzle.

Otherwise, if Moon Logic Puzzle covers even puzzles which make no sense, then I think Violation of Common Sense isn't distinct enough and should be cut.

Either way, we need to agree on the boundaries before we start any rewrite.

Thats what I was saying 2 pages ago!

Still, I'm happy with the definition we have now as 'things you can do in game that make no damn sense'. Maybe we should add a caveat about Rocket Jumping and things like it being Videogame Physics and not this trope.

Can't think of anything witty, so have this instead...

Why all this focus on puzzles? Violation of Common Sense isn't even primarily a puzzle trope. Look at the examples on the page — things like rocket jumping and bunnyhopping are game mechanics, not puzzles. Violation of Common Sense is a sister trope to Press X to Die and Stupidity Is the Only Option, not Moon Logic Puzzle.

But Videogame Physics is exactly this trope when they're used... non-commonsensically. (ie, Rocket Jumping is, because it requires you to take an action that should just kill you, but something like Frictionless Ice isn't, because it doesn't involve the player taking action that should directly harm him.)

I still like Press X to Die (stupid things that hurt you), Stupidity Is the Only Option (stupid things that you have to do), and Violation of Common Sense (stuid things that help you). First suggested ages ago and generally agreed on, but then the conversation kept going about Moon Logic Puzzle and other random crap instead of moving on to the "actually fixing tropes" part of TRS. Can we get some concensus here, please?

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

I, as always, have agreed with your assessment, Native. Also, Rocket Jumping is a Violation of Common Sense.

Video Game Census. Please contribute.

I'm all for moving ahead, we've discussed this to death. A Violation of Common Sense is when you have to do crazy stupid stuff that apparently works in the game, but shouldn't. That's it, we've got it. We can debate individual examples later, but we really need to fix the thing in general before worrying about that.

There is a _very_ slight overlap with Moon Logic Puzzle, but that's not really important, and I think that's more a problem with Moon Logic Puzzle being unclear than anything.

For the 'Rocket Jumping' issue, we can simple have a 'Violations that appear in a bunch of different games, so please don't list each individually' section.

So, again: Any rewrites of the description?

We could make Rocket Jumping and similarly common forms their own articles and list them as subtropes, I guess.