Marvel and DC Policy - Cross-Scaling Revision Proposal

M3X_2.0 said:

Bro I thought Planck had disagreed with the thread earlier but it wasn’t this thread it was the planet one I made some time ago LMFAO I’m sorry Planck

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M3X_2.0 said:

@Tomfer:

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M3X_2.0 said:

Before anything else, I want to be clear about what this post is: it’s a summary of the core arguments from the OP, not an invitation to quote every single point and argue it individually. If that’s your plan, don’t bother. This is my final response, and after this I think we’re ready for a vote count.

The Core Issue

This thread exists because of a problem I kept running into while working on Marvel CRTs: the scaling is a mess. What we currently have is an attempt to fit 150+ street level characters, written by dozens of different writers with different interpretations and ideas, into a single coherent scaling chain. That alone should be a red flag. But it gets worse. This chain actively replaces character feats instead of supplementing them. If character A gets a new High Hypersonic feat, upgrading them means instantly upgrading 150+ other characters along with them, regardless of whether any of those characters have ever demonstrated anything remotely close to that level. Nobody stops to check. The chain just moves.

Part of why this happens is crossover scaling. Characters interact across books, and those interactions get treated as scaling evidence even when the crossover has nothing to do with establishing consistent power levels. Most crossovers aren’t written with that in mind, and using them as a foundation for scaling 150 characters is exactly as unreliable as it sounds.

Actual Examples

1. Street Tiers Scaling to 9-B From a Handful of Calcs

Every street level character shares the same 9-B tier because they’re all connected to the same scaling chain. It doesn’t matter who actually performed the feat. Everyone scales to it automatically. There’s no consideration of whether the feat is consistent, applicable, or even relevant to a given character. The result is that everyone ends up identical on paper when they clearly aren’t in the actual comics.

2. MHS+ Removal

This was a thread I ran myself. When I removed MHS+ speeds from street level characters, the same problem appeared. Characters with no bullet-time feats whatsoever were scaling to the same speed as consistent bullet-dodgers like Elektra and Daredevil simply because they’re on the same chain. That’s not accuracy, that’s just inherited stats.

3. 72 Profiles Affected By 2 Calculations

During a recent revision thread to remove poorly executed calculations, I found that 72 character profiles were dependent on just two calcs. That alone is absurd. But beyond the number, the practical result was characters scaling to opponents far above them and weaker characters sitting at the same tier as someone who effortlessly one-shotted them. That’s what the chain produces.

4. The Low Tier Speed Upgrade

This one is the most telling. There’s an ongoing thread to upgrade characters like Captain Marvel to Sub-Relativistic or higher based on legitimate feats of flying to space and reacting at those speeds. It can’t pass. Not because the feats are bad, but because it would backscale to 9-Bs. Let that sink in. We’re rejecting decades of feats from dozens of characters because the street level scaling chain has to be protected. The chain has become more important than the actual evidence.

Proposed Addition to the Policy

Speed is still excluded from my proposal, but given how bad the situation is with the "Low Tier Speed Upgrade" thread, I'd rather include and make it all stats. Speed also works for examples regardless if they're being excluded here or not, given it highlights the issue even more.

The Scaling Chain Has Made Indexing Lazy

This scaling chain has made it actively less fun and less rewarding to research and index characters, because you constantly have to reconcile your character with people who have nothing to do with them. It’s made both supporters and staff lazy, because if a character fought someone who fought someone who fought Daredevil, they automatically land at 9-B and nobody bothers calculating their actual feats anymore. The scaling chain became a crutch. Characters who have legitimate destruction and durability feats that could define their tier properly are just left with inherited stats because the work of actually calculating them feels pointless when the chain already decided where they belong. That’s not how a wiki dedicated to accurate indexing should work.

And before anyone says the solution is just “do better research,” let’s address that directly.

No, This Is Not An Issue Of “Poor Research”

Poor research is a contributing factor, but it’s not the root cause of any of the problems I’ve described here, and treating it as such is just a way of avoiding the actual issue.

Think about it. The MHS+ removal was done with proper research. I went through the feats, identified the problems, made the thread. And yet the result was still 150+ characters being affected at once because that’s how the scaling chain works. The research was there. The problem wasn’t fixed because the system itself is the problem.

The same applies to the 72 profiles held together by two calculations. That wasn’t a research failure, that was the scaling chain doing exactly what it’s designed to do. Two calcs, 72 profiles, because everyone scales to everyone. More research wouldn’t have changed that outcome, it would have just meant someone noticed it sooner.

And the Low Tier speed upgrade is the most telling example. That thread isn’t being blocked because of poor research. It’s being blocked because upgrading legitimate feats from decades of stories would backscale to 9-Bs, so the 9-B scaling chain effectively overrides actual character feats. That’s not a research problem, that’s the system actively working against accuracy.

Poor research makes things worse. But even with perfect research, these exact same problems would still exist as long as the scaling chain structure remains unchanged. The research argument is a way of blaming the people doing the work instead of fixing the framework they’re working within.

And there are examples of this right here in this thread. I’ve argued that characters should scale to their own feats without interference from characters that have nothing to do with them, and that was pushed back on. So even when the research is done, even when the feats are there, the scaling chain still takes priority. At that point the argument that this is a research problem completely falls apart. You can do all the research in the world and still not be able to apply it correctly because the system won’t allow it.

The Benefits

We already do what this thread proposes, but only for one character. Moon Knight.

Moon Knight was stuck in 9-B jail for years because he was listed as “comparable to Daredevil and Punisher” without any real proof backing that up. It took someone actually sitting down and going through all of his appearances, counting his fights, and realizing that he not only had multiple variable power mechanics at once, but also had significantly more High 8-C fights than 9-B ones, and those fights were against characters from his actual core stories, his own villains, his own mythology. Not random crossover appearances. His own world.

So I guess the issue is indeed just a lack of proper research, right? Obviously not.

Once that research was done, Moon Knight was quietly removed from the 9-B scaling chain, and his High 8-C ratings are now based entirely on his own feats and the feats of characters from his own mythology like Jack Russell. His profile is massively better for it. His villains have their own profiles now, his abilities are properly indexed, his mythology is represented. That’s what accurate indexing looks like.

But here’s the thing: if someone had noticed that silent scaling chain removal and pushed back on it the same way the Low Tier Speed Upgrade gets pushed back on, none of it would have passed. The research alone wasn’t enough. It only worked because the scaling chain removal went uncontested. And we can still scale that version of Moon Knight to 9-B through Gambit keeping up with him, and through Jack Russell who is High 8-C fighting characters in that range. The connection exists. It just isn’t the foundation of the profile anymore.

That’s exactly what this proposal formalizes. The research matters, but without a policy backing it up, it can be undone the moment someone decides to push back. If it worked for Moon Knight, it can work for everyone else.

This is also a direct reply to @NaturalDestroyer, who asked me what the practical effect of the proposal would be and then went to Discord to say it “appears” I wasn’t interested in answering him. The answer was right there the whole time with Moon Knight. Maybe if we actually paid attention to our own profiles instead of waiting for someone else to spell it out, we would have figured that out a lot sooner.

Community Voice

The people most affected by this proposal aren’t staff, they’re the members who actually maintain these profiles day to day. They’re the ones reading the comics, doing the research, running the calcs, and then watching their work get overridden by a scaling chain they had no say in. Their perspective matters here, and I want to make space for it.

I reached out to some of the members who work on Marvel and DC profiles directly and asked them how the current system has been affecting their work, and how this proposal would change things for them going forward. Here’s what they had to say:

@Tomfer:

@Rex_Eckles already voiced his opinion above, and there is also @Eseseso as well.

I also invite the members mentioned above to further express themselves here in the thread before we move to a staff vote count. They’re the ones closest to this material on a daily basis, and their perspective on how this proposal would affect their work is something staff should have the full picture of before making a decision.

Also, I want to address what @Rgerdeena said on Discord. Nobody got kicked out of anything. What I said was that I respectfully asked him to stop commenting until he had actually understood the proposal or had something useful to contribute, given that his comments up to that point were textbook stonewalling. That’s not banning anyone, I don’t even have that power. The thread is open to everyone. The only thing I asked is that people actually engage with what’s being proposed before commenting on it.

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M3X_2.0 said:

Before anything else, I want to be clear about what this post is: it’s a summary of the core arguments from the OP, not an invitation to quote every single point and argue it individually. If that’s your plan, don’t bother. This is my final response, and after this I think we’re ready for a vote count.

The Core Issue

This thread exists because of a problem I kept running into while working on Marvel CRTs: the scaling is a mess. What we currently have is an attempt to fit 150+ street level characters, written by dozens of different writers with different interpretations and ideas, into a single coherent scaling chain. That alone should be a red flag. But it gets worse. This chain actively replaces character feats instead of supplementing them. If character A gets a new High Hypersonic feat, upgrading them means instantly upgrading 150+ other characters along with them, regardless of whether any of those characters have ever demonstrated anything remotely close to that level. Nobody stops to check. The chain just moves.

Part of why this happens is crossover scaling. Characters interact across books, and those interactions get treated as scaling evidence even when the crossover has nothing to do with establishing consistent power levels. Most crossovers aren’t written with that in mind, and using them as a foundation for scaling 150 characters is exactly as unreliable as it sounds.

Actual Examples

1. Street Tiers Scaling to 9-B From a Handful of Calcs

Every street level character shares the same 9-B tier because they’re all connected to the same scaling chain. It doesn’t matter who actually performed the feat. Everyone scales to it automatically. There’s no consideration of whether the feat is consistent, applicable, or even relevant to a given character. The result is that everyone ends up identical on paper when they clearly aren’t in the actual comics.

2. MHS+ Removal

This was a thread I ran myself. When I removed MHS+ speeds from street level characters, the same problem appeared. Characters with no bullet-time feats whatsoever were scaling to the same speed as consistent bullet-dodgers like Elektra and Daredevil simply because they’re on the same chain. That’s not accuracy, that’s just inherited stats.

3. 72 Profiles Affected By 2 Calculations

During a recent revision thread to remove poorly executed calculations, I found that 72 character profiles were dependent on just two calcs. That alone is absurd. But beyond the number, the practical result was characters scaling to opponents far above them and weaker characters sitting at the same tier as someone who effortlessly one-shotted them. That’s what the chain produces.

4. The Low Tier Speed Upgrade

This one is the most telling. There’s an ongoing thread to upgrade characters like Captain Marvel to Sub-Relativistic or higher based on legitimate feats of flying to space and reacting at those speeds. It can’t pass. Not because the feats are bad, but because it would backscale to 9-Bs. Let that sink in. We’re rejecting decades of feats from dozens of characters because the street level scaling chain has to be protected. The chain has become more important than the actual evidence.

Proposed Addition to the Policy

Speed is still excluded from my proposal, but given how bad the situation is with the "Low Tier Speed Upgrade" thread, I'd rather include and make it all stats. Speed also works for examples regardless if they're being excluded here or not, given it highlights the issue even more.

The Scaling Chain Has Made Indexing Lazy

This scaling chain has made it actively less fun and less rewarding to research and index characters, because you constantly have to reconcile your character with people who have nothing to do with them. It’s made both supporters and staff lazy, because if a character fought someone who fought someone who fought Daredevil, they automatically land at 9-B and nobody bothers calculating their actual feats anymore. The scaling chain became a crutch. Characters who have legitimate destruction and durability feats that could define their tier properly are just left with inherited stats because the work of actually calculating them feels pointless when the chain already decided where they belong. That’s not how a wiki dedicated to accurate indexing should work.

And before anyone says the solution is just “do better research,” let’s address that directly.

No, This Is Not An Issue Of “Poor Research”

Poor research is a contributing factor, but it’s not the root cause of any of the problems I’ve described here, and treating it as such is just a way of avoiding the actual issue.

Think about it. The MHS+ removal was done with proper research. I went through the feats, identified the problems, made the thread. And yet the result was still 150+ characters being affected at once because that’s how the scaling chain works. The research was there. The problem wasn’t fixed because the system itself is the problem.

The same applies to the 72 profiles held together by two calculations. That wasn’t a research failure, that was the scaling chain doing exactly what it’s designed to do. Two calcs, 72 profiles, because everyone scales to everyone. More research wouldn’t have changed that outcome, it would have just meant someone noticed it sooner.

And the Low Tier speed upgrade is the most telling example. That thread isn’t being blocked because of poor research. It’s being blocked because upgrading legitimate feats from decades of stories would backscale to 9-Bs, so the 9-B scaling chain effectively overrides actual character feats. That’s not a research problem, that’s the system actively working against accuracy.

Poor research makes things worse. But even with perfect research, these exact same problems would still exist as long as the scaling chain structure remains unchanged. The research argument is a way of blaming the people doing the work instead of fixing the framework they’re working within.

And there are examples of this right here in this thread. I’ve argued that characters should scale to their own feats without interference from characters that have nothing to do with them, and that was pushed back on. So even when the research is done, even when the feats are there, the scaling chain still takes priority. At that point the argument that this is a research problem completely falls apart. You can do all the research in the world and still not be able to apply it correctly because the system won’t allow it.

The Benefits

We already do what this thread proposes, but only for one character. Moon Knight.

Moon Knight was stuck in 9-B jail for years because he was listed as “comparable to Daredevil and Punisher” without any real proof backing that up. It took someone actually sitting down and going through all of his appearances, counting his fights, and realizing that he not only had multiple variable power mechanics at once, but also had significantly more High 8-C fights than 9-B ones, and those fights were against characters from his actual core stories, his own villains, his own mythology. Not random crossover appearances. His own world.

So I guess the issue is indeed just a lack of proper research, right? Obviously not.

Once that research was done, Moon Knight was quietly removed from the 9-B scaling chain, and his High 8-C ratings are now based entirely on his own feats and the feats of characters from his own mythology like Jack Russell. His profile is massively better for it. His villains have their own profiles now, his abilities are properly indexed, his mythology is represented. That’s what accurate indexing looks like.

But here’s the thing: if someone had noticed that silent scaling chain removal and pushed back on it the same way the Low Tier Speed Upgrade gets pushed back on, none of it would have passed. The research alone wasn’t enough. It only worked because the scaling chain removal went uncontested. And we can still scale that version of Moon Knight to 9-B through Gambit keeping up with him, and through Jack Russell who is High 8-C fighting characters in that range. The connection exists. It just isn’t the foundation of the profile anymore.

That’s exactly what this proposal formalizes. The research matters, but without a policy backing it up, it can be undone the moment someone decides to push back. If it worked for Moon Knight, it can work for everyone else.

This is also a direct reply to @NaturalDestroyer, who asked me what the practical effect of the proposal would be and then went to Discord to say it “appears” I wasn’t interested in answering him. The answer was right there the whole time with Moon Knight. Maybe if we actually paid attention to our own profiles instead of waiting for someone else to spell it out, we would have figured that out a lot sooner.

Community Voice

The people most affected by this proposal aren’t staff, they’re the members who actually maintain these profiles day to day. They’re the ones reading the comics, doing the research, running the calcs, and then watching their work get overridden by a scaling chain they had no say in. Their perspective matters here, and I want to make space for it.

I reached out to some of the members who work on Marvel and DC profiles directly and asked them how the current system has been affecting their work, and how this proposal would change things for them going forward. Here’s what they had to say:

@Tomfer:

@Rex_Eckles already voiced his opinion above, and there is also @Eseseso as well.

I also invite the members mentioned above to further express themselves here in the thread before we move to a staff vote count. They’re the ones closest to this material on a daily basis, and their perspective on how this proposal would affect their work is something staff should have the full picture of before making a decision.

Also, I want to address what @Rgerdeena said on Discord. Nobody got kicked out of anything. What I said was that I respectfully asked him to stop commenting until he had actually understood the proposal or had something useful to contribute, given that his comments up to that point were textbook stonewalling. That’s not banning anyone, I don’t even have that power. The thread is open to everyone. The only thing I asked is that people actually engage with what’s being proposed before commenting on it.

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Firestorm808 said:

Has this thread reached any conclusion?

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Firestorm808 said:

Has this thread reached any conclusion?

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Eseseso said:

So how many staff agree with this thread so far?

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FroYoSans said:

Counting Calc group members 8, without 7

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Eseseso said:

So what's stopping this thread from being accepted?

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Antvasima said:

Can somebody write a summary of each side of the arguments here, please? I think that it would help a lot with reaching a conclusion here.

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M3X_2.0 said:

Before anything else, I want to be clear about what this post is: it’s a summary of the core arguments from the OP, not an invitation to quote every single point and argue it individually. If that’s your plan, don’t bother. This is my final response, and after this I think we’re ready for a vote count.

The Core Issue

This thread exists because of a problem I kept running into while working on Marvel CRTs: the scaling is a mess. What we currently have is an attempt to fit 150+ street level characters, written by dozens of different writers with different interpretations and ideas, into a single coherent scaling chain. That alone should be a red flag. But it gets worse. This chain actively replaces character feats instead of supplementing them. If character A gets a new High Hypersonic feat, upgrading them means instantly upgrading 150+ other characters along with them, regardless of whether any of those characters have ever demonstrated anything remotely close to that level. Nobody stops to check. The chain just moves.

Part of why this happens is crossover scaling. Characters interact across books, and those interactions get treated as scaling evidence even when the crossover has nothing to do with establishing consistent power levels. Most crossovers aren’t written with that in mind, and using them as a foundation for scaling 150 characters is exactly as unreliable as it sounds.

Actual Examples

1. Street Tiers Scaling to 9-B From a Handful of Calcs

Every street level character shares the same 9-B tier because they’re all connected to the same scaling chain. It doesn’t matter who actually performed the feat. Everyone scales to it automatically. There’s no consideration of whether the feat is consistent, applicable, or even relevant to a given character. The result is that everyone ends up identical on paper when they clearly aren’t in the actual comics.

2. MHS+ Removal

This was a thread I ran myself. When I removed MHS+ speeds from street level characters, the same problem appeared. Characters with no bullet-time feats whatsoever were scaling to the same speed as consistent bullet-dodgers like Elektra and Daredevil simply because they’re on the same chain. That’s not accuracy, that’s just inherited stats.

3. 72 Profiles Affected By 2 Calculations

During a recent revision thread to remove poorly executed calculations, I found that 72 character profiles were dependent on just two calcs. That alone is absurd. But beyond the number, the practical result was characters scaling to opponents far above them and weaker characters sitting at the same tier as someone who effortlessly one-shotted them. That’s what the chain produces.

4. The Low Tier Speed Upgrade

This one is the most telling. There’s an ongoing thread to upgrade characters like Captain Marvel to Sub-Relativistic or higher based on legitimate feats of flying to space and reacting at those speeds. It can’t pass. Not because the feats are bad, but because it would backscale to 9-Bs. Let that sink in. We’re rejecting decades of feats from dozens of characters because the street level scaling chain has to be protected. The chain has become more important than the actual evidence.

Proposed Addition to the Policy

Speed is still excluded from my proposal, but given how bad the situation is with the "Low Tier Speed Upgrade" thread, I'd rather include and make it all stats. Speed also works for examples regardless if they're being excluded here or not, given it highlights the issue even more.

The Scaling Chain Has Made Indexing Lazy

This scaling chain has made it actively less fun and less rewarding to research and index characters, because you constantly have to reconcile your character with people who have nothing to do with them. It’s made both supporters and staff lazy, because if a character fought someone who fought someone who fought Daredevil, they automatically land at 9-B and nobody bothers calculating their actual feats anymore. The scaling chain became a crutch. Characters who have legitimate destruction and durability feats that could define their tier properly are just left with inherited stats because the work of actually calculating them feels pointless when the chain already decided where they belong. That’s not how a wiki dedicated to accurate indexing should work.

And before anyone says the solution is just “do better research,” let’s address that directly.

No, This Is Not An Issue Of “Poor Research”

Poor research is a contributing factor, but it’s not the root cause of any of the problems I’ve described here, and treating it as such is just a way of avoiding the actual issue.

Think about it. The MHS+ removal was done with proper research. I went through the feats, identified the problems, made the thread. And yet the result was still 150+ characters being affected at once because that’s how the scaling chain works. The research was there. The problem wasn’t fixed because the system itself is the problem.

The same applies to the 72 profiles held together by two calculations. That wasn’t a research failure, that was the scaling chain doing exactly what it’s designed to do. Two calcs, 72 profiles, because everyone scales to everyone. More research wouldn’t have changed that outcome, it would have just meant someone noticed it sooner.

And the Low Tier speed upgrade is the most telling example. That thread isn’t being blocked because of poor research. It’s being blocked because upgrading legitimate feats from decades of stories would backscale to 9-Bs, so the 9-B scaling chain effectively overrides actual character feats. That’s not a research problem, that’s the system actively working against accuracy.

Poor research makes things worse. But even with perfect research, these exact same problems would still exist as long as the scaling chain structure remains unchanged. The research argument is a way of blaming the people doing the work instead of fixing the framework they’re working within.

And there are examples of this right here in this thread. I’ve argued that characters should scale to their own feats without interference from characters that have nothing to do with them, and that was pushed back on. So even when the research is done, even when the feats are there, the scaling chain still takes priority. At that point the argument that this is a research problem completely falls apart. You can do all the research in the world and still not be able to apply it correctly because the system won’t allow it.

The Benefits

We already do what this thread proposes, but only for one character. Moon Knight.

Moon Knight was stuck in 9-B jail for years because he was listed as “comparable to Daredevil and Punisher” without any real proof backing that up. It took someone actually sitting down and going through all of his appearances, counting his fights, and realizing that he not only had multiple variable power mechanics at once, but also had significantly more High 8-C fights than 9-B ones, and those fights were against characters from his actual core stories, his own villains, his own mythology. Not random crossover appearances. His own world.

So I guess the issue is indeed just a lack of proper research, right? Obviously not.

Once that research was done, Moon Knight was quietly removed from the 9-B scaling chain, and his High 8-C ratings are now based entirely on his own feats and the feats of characters from his own mythology like Jack Russell. His profile is massively better for it. His villains have their own profiles now, his abilities are properly indexed, his mythology is represented. That’s what accurate indexing looks like.

But here’s the thing: if someone had noticed that silent scaling chain removal and pushed back on it the same way the Low Tier Speed Upgrade gets pushed back on, none of it would have passed. The research alone wasn’t enough. It only worked because the scaling chain removal went uncontested. And we can still scale that version of Moon Knight to 9-B through Gambit keeping up with him, and through Jack Russell who is High 8-C fighting characters in that range. The connection exists. It just isn’t the foundation of the profile anymore.

That’s exactly what this proposal formalizes. The research matters, but without a policy backing it up, it can be undone the moment someone decides to push back. If it worked for Moon Knight, it can work for everyone else.

This is also a direct reply to @NaturalDestroyer, who asked me what the practical effect of the proposal would be and then went to Discord to say it “appears” I wasn’t interested in answering him. The answer was right there the whole time with Moon Knight. Maybe if we actually paid attention to our own profiles instead of waiting for someone else to spell it out, we would have figured that out a lot sooner.

Community Voice

The people most affected by this proposal aren’t staff, they’re the members who actually maintain these profiles day to day. They’re the ones reading the comics, doing the research, running the calcs, and then watching their work get overridden by a scaling chain they had no say in. Their perspective matters here, and I want to make space for it.

I reached out to some of the members who work on Marvel and DC profiles directly and asked them how the current system has been affecting their work, and how this proposal would change things for them going forward. Here’s what they had to say:

@Tomfer:

@Rex_Eckles already voiced his opinion above, and there is also @Eseseso as well.

I also invite the members mentioned above to further express themselves here in the thread before we move to a staff vote count. They’re the ones closest to this material on a daily basis, and their perspective on how this proposal would affect their work is something staff should have the full picture of before making a decision.

Also, I want to address what @Rgerdeena said on Discord. Nobody got kicked out of anything. What I said was that I respectfully asked him to stop commenting until he had actually understood the proposal or had something useful to contribute, given that his comments up to that point were textbook stonewalling. That’s not banning anyone, I don’t even have that power. The thread is open to everyone. The only thing I asked is that people actually engage with what’s being proposed before commenting on it.

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Armorchompy said:

The crux of essentially all of these arguments is based on incredulity rather than actual issues. Let's take a look at the 9-A/8-C downgrade to 9-B, for example.

28 are X-Men characters that scale directly to Wolverine/Cable, 14/9 are Captain America/Avengers characters respectively who'd scale to Cap no matter what. Remove the handful of characters that scale to their own value and we've already covered 54 characters who NO MATTER WHAT should scale to Cap/Wolverine tiers. The rest is a handful of characters who scale with means other than physicals (meaning scaling revisions won't affect them), Black Panther characters or characters who scale to Iron Man mk. 3, both under-researched, and a few more profiles that are just bad.

How would these characters be affected by M3X's revision? ... Almost not at all. Almost all of them have clear scaling to Wolverine and/or Captain America and that is their best avenue of scaling no matter what. The ones that could do with rescaling are poorly researched and just changing the standards won't do anything - with or without them anyone is perfectly capable of going through a bunch of Black Panther comics, collecting evidence and then rescaling them.

A standards revision doesn't help in the slightest because our standards aren't in the way of that - no matter how much you might try to shift the blame, they have never been the issue, what IS the issue is that most of our files and revisions are just poorly made, pretending that's going to be magically changed just by touching up the rules is wishful thinking. Hell, the issue with 72 characters being affected by 2 calcs isn't that it was too many characters, it's that it wasn't enough calcs. Had the people who made or approved the 8-C thread done due diligence and gotten enough good feats in place this would've never been an issue. And for the record, we have never opposed characters being rated off their own feats if it's the best option [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]. Despite the attempts to make it seem like Moon Knight is somehow an example of M3X's new standards, the revision was accepted under the current ones, and it fits them perfectly. It is, indeed, a matter of research above all else. No change in standards is going to do a thing for a bad profile, and no existing standard is going to oppose a well-made thread with good arguments.

One more thing I want to mention is that the idea of characters existing in separate "clusters" of scaling that rarely interact is basically a myth. Some people seemingly believe that important characters are part of the massive 9-B scaling chain just because of one or two random interactions. This isn't true at all! Most of our profiles don't give the whole picture. Gambit has three instances of AP scaling on his profile... but even other fan blogs one can find online list WAY more showings for him. Just reading through these, the amount of instances this character has of scaling to other 9-B is well in the double digits, and I'm sure that if you went through his 873 appearances that number would skyrocket. What few characters exist with just one or two instances of scaling are themselves completely unimportant to the actual power tier of the verse. Do you want to say Doorman isn't 9-B? Knock yourself out, I guess. Is he going to be at all an issue for Daredevil's power tier? Er, no. It's Doorman.

I'm going to respond to the rest of the thread all at once because it all stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how Marvel Comics handles crossovers, because the concept that solo runs are somehow "more important" is wrong. Let's just take a look at Spider-Man's solo/protagonist runs:

Spoiler: Peter Parker's Solo Appearances

• 996 + 47 Annuals Amazing Spider-Man
• 6 Giant-Size
• 313 + 22 Spectacular Spider-Man
• 19 Spider-Man UK
• 131 + 10 Web of Spider-Man
• 4 is some advert crap
• 167 + 5 Spider-Man
• 4 is some weird oneshot collection
• 2 halloween specials
• 4 issues of lethal foes
• 22 Spider-Man Unlimited
• 16 Spider-Man Classics
• 3 Mutant Agenda
• 6 Arachnis Project
• 3 Web of Doom
• 4 Friends and Enemies
• 4 Power and Terror
• 3 Funeral for an Octopus
• 25 + 2 Untold Tales
• 76 + 2 Marvel Knight/Sensational Spider-Man
• 58 + 3 Peter Parker: Spider-Man
• 3 Mysterio Manifesto
• 3 Lifeline
• 6 Blue
• 6 Get Kraven
• 4 QoL
• 6 Spider-Man/Black Cat
• 22 Tangled Web
• 38 + 1 Friendly Neighborhood
• 17 Digital
• 1 EotE
• 53 + 2 Superior Spider-Man
• 12 Who Am I? Infinite
• 1 Kingpin hawaiian shirt
• 50 Infinite
• 5 Spine Tingling
• 36 Astonishing Infinite

These total at around 2223 appearances out of 4910, 45.27%. Less than half. And Spidey is far from the best example! Let's do the same with Captain America.

Spoiler: Steve Rogers' Solo Appearances

• 75+2 Captain America Comics + Weird Tales
• 784 + 18 Captain America
• 4 Falcon
• 2 2000s oneshots
• 4 What Price Glory
• 15 & Falcon6 Reborn
• 3 Newspaper strip
• 4 + 1 Super Soldier
• 5 Man Out of Time
• 5 Hail Hydra
• 9 & Bucky
• 5 Corps
• 6 ANCA:FH
• 6 White
• 5 Sam Wilson
• 1 Generations
• 5 USCA
• 4 Infinite Comic
• 13 SoL

982 solo appearances out of 3872 total. 25.3% of total appearances. What the proposal here is saying is that these 25% issues are somehow the 100% most important part of the character, to be valued way more than a whole three fourths of his gallery.

And again, Steve Rogers is far from the worst offender of this. Scarlet Witch has 1394 appearances. Out of these, a total of around 65-70 are her own solo/team-up stuff, that's 5%. This isn't a rare case! There's a massive amount of characters, some very important, whose bulk of appearances is in crossovers, team books and so on. And no matter where you look, you constantly get dialogue like this:

Marvel characters live in a shared universe and we are constantly reminded of it. It's critical to a vast amount of plotlines. Plenty of rogues get passed around by just about every street tier hero, crossover fights are dime a dozen even in solo books and there is a MASSIVE amount of runs dedicated to team-ups. Look at Defenders, a book created with the specific intent to give Marvel's infamous loners a chance to be in a team-up, look at Marvel Team-Up, books about Spider-Man and Johnny Storm's partnership, two characters from allegedly "different" parts of Marvel scaling showcasing that they very much share a lot of their history (and this just so happens to be a crossover book, where they together interact with just about every part of the Marvel universe). Look at the Avengers! From day 1, the whole reason the group ever came to fruition was that fans loved watching characters cross-over, and ever since then has only become a more important aspect of Marvel comics:

M3X's proposal is based on what is fundamentally a misconception: The idea that a character's personal portrayal must be the most important thing to their scaling. This is true to an extent, and for some characters the best way to scale them will be to prioritize their own showings. But it absolutely does not work as a guideline. These are characters that live in a shared universe and writers constantly make use of that fact in a myriad ways, ways that are often critically important to entire plotlines. Just for example the entirety of Siege, a major event plotline, hinges on Sentry and Thor being comparable. So it's extremely important for our profiles to reflect that fact. To rate them as different tiers would be to contrast a very critical part of their history, just as it would be to list some of the street tier mainstays as tens of times weaker or stronger, faster or slower than most others when they consistently interact, and so on.

(EDIT: I forgot to harp on this some more but events are really important to Marvel storylines, they affect even solo runs and they basically universally rely on certain power tiers being fairly consistent even among cast members that'd normally never meet)

Sure, scaling must be split when appropriate, of course, but that is something we do already. It's just rarely going to be the correct course of action when looking at many mainstay characters, because there are so many instances of scaling that attempting to cut them off would cause massive issues when looking at the source material.

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The_Impress said:

Said acceptance came before Armor and M3X actually framing their pitches.

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M3X_2.0 said:

Yes. And more importantly, you wouldn’t have to rate dozens and dozens of characters as “unknown” despite having feats, just because they supposedly backscale to the 9-Bs.

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Antvasima said:

@FinePoint

What do you think about the arguments presented in the last post above?

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Antvasima said:

What do you think about the arguments presented in the last post above?

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Antvasima said:

Can you remind us a summary of what each of them contain, and what the differences between them are, please?

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M3X_2.0 said:

The Proposal

I'm suggesting we expand the existing criteria with three more specific principles:

1. Contextual consistency over numbers: We shouldn't assign a fixed minimum number of feats to determine what's representative for a character. Instead, representativeness should be evaluated based on the narrative scope of the character's own books. A character whose solo runs are consistently street-level doesn't get a cosmic feat treated as representative just because it technically happened once.
2. Narrative centrality as the standard for cross-scaling: Cross-scaling should only be valid when the comparison between characters is a central element of the narrative, not incidental. Sharing a scene, appearing on the same team, or fighting in the same event is not sufficient justification. The story needs to explicitly treat the characters as comparable in a specific stat for that scaling to hold. Daredevil fighting alongside heavy-hitting Avengers doesn't scale him to Avengers-level speed, or whatever they have now. Moon Knight interacting once with a higher-tier character doesn't anchor him to that tier.
3. Own feats always take priority: When a character's own demonstrated feats contradict what cross-scaling would suggest, the own feats win. External scaling is secondary evidence at best, never the primary justification for a stat.

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M3X_2.0 said:

"Cross-scaling is only valid as a secondary form of evidence. A character's own consistently demonstrated feats within their own narrative context take priority in all cases. Furthermore, cross-scaling between characters is only applicable when the narrative explicitly frames the characters as comparable, not merely because they interact or appear together. Incidental interactions, team appearances, and event crossovers do not constitute sufficient grounds for scaling without additional support from the characters' own feats."

An exception applies to characters who exist exclusively or primarily within crossover narratives, events, or team books, and have no meaningful solo history to draw from. In these cases, cross-scaling from their appearances remains valid as it constitutes their primary source of feats.

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M3X_2.0 said:

Proposed Addition to the Policy

A character’s primary source material is defined by the books in which they hold notable plot relevance. This includes solo runs, team books, and events where the character plays a significant role, not merely appears incidentally.

Cross-scaling remains valid, but a character’s own consistent portrayal across their primary source material takes priority in cases of contradiction. Cross-scaling is only applicable as primary justification when the narrative explicitly frames the characters as comparable, not merely because they interact, appear in the same event, or fight alongside each other incidentally. Particular care must be taken when a character would scale to a feat that doesn’t reflect their own portrayal, especially when they have no consistent narrative relationship with the character who performed it.

Anti-feats are part of a character’s consistent portrayal and should be weighed alongside positive feats when determining their statistics.

Characters whose primary showcase comes from team books or events due to having little to no meaningful solo history scale normally from those appearances, as that constitutes their primary source material.

These guidelines apply specifically to Attack Potency, Durability, Lifting Strength and Striking Strength. Speed is excluded from this framework given the lack of meaningful granularity in how Marvel and DC portray it at most tiers.

Speed is still excluded from my proposal, but given how bad the situation is with the "Low Tier Speed Upgrade" thread, I'd rather include and make it all stats. Speed also works for examples regardless if they're being excluded here or not, given it highlights the issue even more.

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