Well, the main issue is that Superman would never use his full power in a manner that would blow opponents right through populated buildings, for example.
I mean, if we turn off morals towards bystanders one could think of those as non-populated buildings. One could put it as all humans in the area having been replaced by
philosophical zombies.
Honestly, I wouldn’t care so much if we were talking about location profiles alone. If you are making an effort to pick a location, it's on the thread to consider what population that location has (although anyone beyond basic humans and animals should still be banned for a match that gets added).
However, if we're talking SBA then choosing a massively crowded area like central park with morals towards bystanders turned on would be a mistake. The most important thing in choosing a standard location (along with it being well known) was to let as many characters as possible fight at their normal potential. If we have tons of characters pull their punches to not hurt the bystander 3 meters left from them, that isn't given. In that case, we should change the standard location, but that would be a massive revision as it affects virtually all vs-threads (and the central park was otherwise an excellent location to boot).
Not to mention that just moving to a depopulated area helps nobody, since the morals then don't come into play, even if technically there,
and users of nearby humans have no humans to use.
For SBA just turning morals towards bystanders off entirely, or at least in Central Park and vicinity seems definitely like the best choice. Or just turn all nearby bystanders into philosophical zombies as I suggest at the end of this post.
Actually they were, we've considered characters thinking of collateral very often.
I've also seen tons of battles where that was entirely and completely ignored. In fact, as often as that was a factor I'm pretty sure it was much more often ignored, i.e. assumed to not be a factor, than it was taken into account.
Like, virtually every fight tier 7 and up would probably kill thousands of bystanders when fighting full force. I bet the majority of those fights never bring it up, even with good guys fighting.
Unless people like seeing their characters lose, don't see why this would happen
Yet it does happen all the time. I could probably dig up the 10 most recent hero vs villain fight threads and none would mention the hero trying to protect innocent bystanders from the consequences of their superpowered battle.
Actually, I just looked for the first fight of that type in the list which was this.
Almost everyone Marisa loves will probably die during that match, yet there is zero mention of that.
Or if you want a match with more replies take
this one. There's talk about the monster throwing buildings around, yet no mention of the heroes trying to save people.
Or
here people argue that the hero creates kilometer big explosions in a village without a second thought.
People just naturally don't think about bystanders, because we are having characters duel. We are trying to have fair 1-on-1 fights, which most people don't assume liabilities like bystanders to be involved in, unless a character actually tries to use them.
Central Park isn't the end-all be-all perfect location. There are better ones.
There being better ones is your opinion. In any case, there's nothing wrong with changing the location. Fact is, however, that Central Park is our standard location.
It becomes bothersome when the location is changed in the middle of the thread. And that is what probably happens when anyone stops ignoring the bystanders and tries doing morality arguments. The SBA was made because thread makers tend to not think stuff through that far.
As I said in my reply to Antvasima, for locations outside SBA I don't care too much. Who bothers to use those probably considered population too. We, quite frankly, wouldn't even need to specify what the assumption is, but could just let them specify which option they want. But for the SBA treatment of bystanders, this is a different story.
Point is, very few people actually intend to make matches that involve bystander morals in the middle of an extremely crowded area, so the assumption upon no further specification being that a battle involves bystander morals and is in the middle of an extremely crowded area is unwise.
You can change assumption of thread my scenario too... except it isn't leading to character breaking
The difference is how many people wish to make which. Default to character morals in a crowded area and you get way more threads that didn't intend to nerf the fighters that way, than you would get threads that wanted to include that element but accidentally didn't, if you don't default to it.
No, that's the difference between our definition of
Bloodlust and our SBA mindset. That's literally just the comparison of the current state.
Saying the two states of mind are the same is objectively wrong.
Arbitrary conclusion reached from unapparent logic, there is ZERO reason to think this way eith the solution you've proposed
So you think Superman and the Hulk would instantly blow up Earth, if all humans they cared about would temporarily not be present? 'cause no morals towards random bystanders doesn't equate to no morals towards humanity in general. It's not like I suggested to retroactively make them evil.
...just change the location. End of story. Never have we once asked the OP to lock them in Central Park, and you know, maybe Central Park isn't such a good starting location afterall then, change it to one of those Chinese ghost cities where no one lives, or a forest somewhere or wherever else.
In general I feel the things you state as "trade-offs" aren't as agreeable as you may think, I feel it's poor representation of the character
Never have we once asked anyone to not put characters completely in-character either. So just do that in the 1% of matches where it's intended and leave the SBA as is. Spares you from all the work that comes with changing the standard location, too.
Not to mention changing the SBA location solves nothing. Forest? No electricity, no metal etc. Chinese Ghost City? Better, but still no humans for human users to actually use.
If we simply wanted a deserted location we could just say that no bystanders were present instead. That would be much easier. And the worst solution, since the in-character morals would still be irrelevant and there would be no humans to be used around.
Honestly, I'm somewhat surprised that you suggest that at all. If you think the character's morals are something that should absolutely show in the fight I would have thought you really want it to take place in a populated area so that the morals are actually relevant. Suggesting to move it to an abandoned place makes me think that maybe it's less that you like that aspect being relevant in matches and more that you don't want to adjust the state of mind a little to make it not relevant?
How about this suggestion then: Every human in New York City gets safely transported elsewhere and is replaced with a
philosophical zombie version of itself, which can be mind controlled, have their mind read, be turned into undead and also otherwise interacts with all powers exactly like the original would. The characters keep their morals towards bystanders, but also get the knowledge that those people in New York City aren't the actual bystanders, but just unfeeling not truly sentient bags of flesh that happen to look like them.
That way they can be in character regarding bystanders, while the bystanders at the same time are no hindrance and there are people like things for human users to use.
One could do something like that for the other locations, too, if standard assumptions for those need to be formulated at all.
