SBA change that should have happened forever ago (stopping the hyper active murder man)

I have finally been peeved enough into making this thread as this part of the SBA, under mindset, has been the bane of versus battles for like two years and I can’t believe it hasn’t been changed yet. “Each character will view their opponents as enemies, who they have to assume wish to cause them severe harm such that losing could have any range of dire consequences.”
As every staff member I have ever talked to has said, this section is supposed to have it the characters have the bare minimum reason to want to fight. It was worded this way so it wouldn’t be so bare you could argue they would walk away. However it should absolutely be changed to a more matter of factual “they have enough motivation to stay and want to fight and nothing else” as every single time this section has been read or brought up in a versus thread ever it’s always been a pseudo bloodlust that has every character be murder mans who just want to kill. Like even to the point I’ve seen people argue Superman will just lobotomize someone on the spot and Luffy will explode a random good guys organs. That is absolutely not what it’s supposed to be, but that is clearly how everyone always reads it every time. So it really needs a rewrite and has needed this since forever.

Shouldn't this be in the Staff Discussion Section?

Maybe, I never know what type of thread something like the base rules goes under. I would have assumed CRT since it is changing content.
Edit: Thanks for however changed it to the correct thread type.

I moved this to staff discussion, and I agree characters shouldn't use their best hax right away. Good characters are more so assuming the fight is out of self defense and/or to protect environment but have no knowledge of opponent's powers and abilities outside of other resources character have to figure out right away. And not so good characters assume opponent is in their way or interfering with plans.

I still think that is too particular of a way to put it. It shouldn’t assume anything, it should just say they are fighting with the bare motivation to keep them there. What that means would then vary character to character but should stay most in character as possible while still having them fight.

I disagree for three reasons.

1. We don't want character to fight with bare minimum motivation. We want characters to fight seriously. And very much seriously. We pretty much want death battles, just in-character death battles not OOC bloodlusted ones. Bare minimum motivation would mean many characters start to fight like they are in a martial arts tournament they don't even particularly plan to win. That's just not what we want as state of mind. Characters that frequently kill without great morals certainly are supposed to kill in these matches, not perform like in the cases where they don't for various reasons.
2. This would be unbalanced in a very weird way. Good in-character fighting style is a victory criteria. To that belongs how serious they start battles. For that to be a sensible criteria the characters must start in the same situation. Saying "least motivation to fight" essentially puts each character in a different situation, in accordance to what the minimum need of them to fight is. One character may be a habitual murderer so they go into battle as if they are just trying to kill a random civilian. Another character might be a pacifist that only ever fights if all their loved ones are about to be murdered and hence goes on enraged. As this example shows, this ruling would in-fact punish characters that easily start fights, even though that should be an advantage, as in an actual situation those would be the ones that usually strike first.
3. This isn't an objective definition. The reason the current rule is complicated in such a weird way is that it must be universally applicable and simultaneously in almost all cases result in a clearly defined state of mind. Most characters on here have fought a battle against someone who wishes to kill them before, so we generally have an idea how the current criteria works out. Even for those that haven't we usually have some idea. Meanwhile, the proposed criteria would lead to endless debates on what the least motivation for a character to fight even is.

So yeah, I think the current ruling is pretty much the perfect balance between serious and in-character, as well as having the advantage of being clear and rewarding good fighting behaviour.


Incidentally, if someone argues "Superman will just lobotomize someone on the spot" they either haven't read or haven't understood the rules. Superman is facing characters that would kill him if he lost on the regular. He doesn't go into his fights like that. There is a difference between "He tries to seriously harm me and if I lose bad things happen" and "if I don't go all out I will lose and bad things will happen". Our assumption is the former. If Superman fought someone that as far as he can tell is a regular guy he will go into the fight knowing they want to do seriously bad things to him, but also assuming that he will win without that happening and do his hero act accordingly.
Let's not make the rule worse just because people don't use it right. If anything we should clarify what it actually says, but I feel like it actually is clear. In vs-debates rules tend to never be universally understood.

I was told many times by a ton of other staff that’s specifically not what we wanted, so I would find it very weird if now that’s what they want.

It doesn’t punish the character if they don’t want to fight; that’s specifically is what they want to do. That’s not us putting anything into them.

Even what you are saying is different then people interpret it, people absolutely view it as the worst case scenario and have done so for years constantly in dozens of fights. Even if the bare minimum is too weak, the current is still way too high and needs better clarification.

If you want them to have the motivation to just fight seriously, just reword the rule “the character wants to fight with a serious mindset, though they are not intensely more murderous or aggressive than normal. Nor are they out of character.”