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Arguing Consistency: Rule of Threes

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Flashlight237

Flashlight237

VS Battles
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So, generally the members of the wiki argue for consistency after just two samples with similar results while I personally go by three. Why three? Well, here's the thing. Studies conducted by professional institutions (ex. NASA) and educational facilities (ex. like every university out there) generally go for a lot more than two samples in their studies. Heck, Project Farm, a reliable if generally more amateur entity, wouldn't argue for consistency unless similar results are achieved from three samples.:



Granted the wiki's members sandbag a lot of the time when it comes to this sort of stuff. People making calcs may sandbag by just using the generic 8-69-214 deal when calcing rock destruction as opposed to trying to see what materials the rock really is, and calc group members, myself included, may sandbag by using the wiki's internal Calculations page as opposed to finding a study that would boost the reliability of our stuff. Heck, DontTalkDT may sandbag at times. But here's the thing... Why are we sandbagging the most important reliability quality: sample sizes? We already had a whole staff discussion on inconsistent sizing due to sample size issues, so what's the hold-up?

Really, VBW kinda needs to up it's reliability game. I'm not expecting a Spacebattles deal here, but you bet your butt the guy who made a paper airplane for a calc or went out of his way to put all the data points of a study on latent heat of vaporization for 14 different fatty acids into a single easy-to-use Excel document on Google Drive is gonna have a good eye on where the wiki sandbags.

See, oftentimes two samples aren't going to be enough, especially when samples can be entire orders of magnitude off from one another. A good example of non-sandbagged consistency would be MinecraftHater2011's Pizza Tower calcs, which recently consistently showed Peppino's AP to be in the 0.1-tons range over four samples of him digging tunnels like meerkats from the Lion King 1 1/2.

So yeah, go for three samples instead of two before declaring consistency. Less sandbagging on the sample size front would allow us to have more reliable ratings in the future.
 
Yeah I have no idea what the practical implications of this would be.

It seems like it'd be, at best, an extremely annoying to implement cosmetic change; not allowing profiles to say a character is "consistent" in their AP section unless they have 3+ feats of it. Which seems pointless.
 
Also, when it comes to consistency, the biggest culprit here would be Tiers 2 and 1. Sometimes they have only one feat to their name but it has major consequences for the plot overall, or it is a franchise-defining moment that has major ramifications for advancing it forward. I think our Outliers page perfectly addresses this with its 5 criteria. Context is king ultimately.
 
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Ultimately at the end of the day, while we do try to strive for accuracy as much as we can, we ain't NASA and nor are we dealing with science. This is fiction, which is already notoriously subjective and has its own set of narrative, context and storytelling methods which trump conventional logic just to keep the interested parties engaged, or incite them into civil war. This is just being too overtly hyperspecific for absolutely no reason. Like bruh, it's a battleboarding site, people are tearing each other's throats out because their verse isn't reaching Tier 1.
 
To see just how much more hilarious this is, you could have a verse with over a hundred 2-C feats with massive narrative and character importance and people will still cry outlier or wank because "muh anti-feats higher than number of cosmic feats" bullshit. That is simply not the mindset we want to have.
 
KLOL506 said:
To see just how much more hilarious this is, you could have a verse with over a hundred 2-C feats with massive narrative and character importance and people will still cry outlier or wank because "muh anti-feats higher than number of cosmic feats" bullshit. That is simply not the mindset we want to have.
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I would. If a verse has 300 feats with narrative importance capping the verse at 9-B, you shouldn't put it at 2-C based on a third of those feats. That's asinine. Feats aren't more important because they're bigger, the importance is based on the plot relevance and quantity.
 
Agnaa said:
I would. If a verse has 300 feats with narrative importance capping the verse at 9-B, you shouldn't put it at 2-C based on a third of those feats. That's asinine.
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Keyword being narrative importance and context.

Whether or not it would get a legit 2-C feat, or whether people scale to it, will be determined based on the guidelines of the Outliers page.

Agnaa said:
Feats aren't more important because they're bigger, the importance is based on the plot relevance and quantity.
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I mentioned both quantity and narrative importance in my example, as well as context, I wasn't making a case for "make verse 2-C out of one feat automatically compared to hundreds of 9-B feats" if the story does nothing to elaborate on the narrative importance of the 2-C feat or what ramifications it has for the verse, and how or why it was obtained.
 
I'd argue for quality over quantity, simple having more feats is arguing for quantity rather than quality and pretty much every long running verse in fiction has far more low end feats than they do high end feats. If it was something along the lines of 300 feats consistently having plot relevance to 9-B and that's also the highest direct feat a character ever demonstrated with most of those consistent showings being either they struggled to break a wall or struggled in sparring matches with other pears. Where as the 100 Tier 2 feats are a "They were effortlessly curb stomped but survived encounters from Tier 2 god tiers." I could call those examples a hundred outliers.

Likewise, a character could have just one Tier 2 feat among the 300 9-B feats and that one Tier 2 feat not be an outlier. Perhaps all those Tier 2 feats were effortlessly stomping canon fodder, and the Tier 2 feat was either they directly destroyed and recreated the universe. Or they surpassed an all powerful god via progression and later became the new god of the universe.

Case by case and narrative is key. Not the sheer quantity of feats they have.
 
KLOL506 said:
So, @LordGriffin1000, @Maverick_Zero_X and @Just_a_Random_Butler, I assume you are in agreement with me and Agnaa on this, given you liked our comments?
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Yes. I'm all for consistency but at the end of the day some verses aren't going to be able to follow the standard of 3 for consistency especially depending on the feat. If they do, good for them it backs up their consistency but multiple other verses would be looked at with the suspicious eye because they didn't have that 3rd feat that would dub it "consistent".

For example a character could have 3 casual wall level feats in the same number area but then at full power he destroys an entire building with a punch. The wall level feats would be dubbed consistent but then we'd look at the full power building feat with an sus eye because while it was hid full power it only happened once? What about if a characters desplays 2 building level feats in their introduction but get killed off without showing anything else. We'd scaling them to building level but we'd be like "sure but we can't dub that consistent until someone comparable shows something like it".

Like, I get more feats in the range is better and it's not like the OP is saying remove feats that don't have 2 on the same level but it's basically like me walking up to a verse where the characters desplayed two mountain level feats but say "Yeah he has two mountain level feats but not three so I wouldn't call that consistent" then walking off. People would look at me like 'ok...'. But nothing would change, the character would still be mountain level.

I just don't see much use in what we'd get from the OP's suggestion other than a note that mentions... it's preferably that a verse have at least 3 feats of a close value before being considered consistent. However this would not immediately invalidate verses who have only two or one, as while we strive for accuracy, context matters and thus a case by case basis is considered when evaluating when feats are consistent or not. Technically we try to do this already but I just don't think applying a 3 feat minimum would change much in the grand scheme of our wiki. We got brains, we should know when something is consistent or not so it's whatever in my opinion, it really wouldn't change much in my eyes.
 
In the end, while quantity is all fine and good, narrative importance and context reign supreme. Always. Hence, the case-by-case basis here also reigns supreme as a result.
 
KLOL506 said:
Keyword being narrative importance and context.

Whether or not it would get a legit 2-C feat, or whether people scale to it, will be determined based on the guidelines of the Outliers page.

I mentioned both quantity and narrative importance in my example, I wasn't making a case for "make verse 2-C out of one feat automatically compared to hundreds of 9-B feats" if the story does nothing to elaborate on the narrative importance of the 2-C feat or what ramifications it has for the verse, and how or why it was obtained.
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You mocking people who cared about the quantity of anti-feats made it sound like you didn't care about the quantity of anti-feats.

If you actually do, and were just inventing a case where the swarm of anti-feats has no narrative importance, then fair enough ig.
DarkDragonMedeus said:
I'd argue for quality over quantity, simple having more feats is arguing for quantity rather than quality and pretty much every long running verse in fiction has far more low end feats than they do high end feats. If it was something along the lines of 300 feats consistently having plot relevance to 9-B and that's also the highest direct feat a character ever demonstrated with most of those consistent showings being either they struggled to break a wall or struggled in sparring matches with other pears. Where as the 100 Tier 2 feats are a "They were effortlessly curb stomped but survived encounters from Tier 2 god tiers." I could call those examples a hundred outliers.

Likewise, a character could have just one Tier 2 feat among the 300 9-B feats and that one Tier 2 feat not be an outlier. Perhaps all those Tier 2 feats were effortlessly stomping canon fodder, and the Tier 2 feat was either they directly destroyed and recreated the universe. Or they surpassed an all powerful god via progression and later became the new god of the universe.

Case by case and narrative is key. Not the sheer quantity of feats they have.
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I think quantity's still important (on top of context and narrative importance, with them balancing against each other), but that quantity only matters in certain directions, if that makes sense.

Effortlessly stomping cannon fodder doesn't imply that you can't be stronger than them, so that quantity can't be used to argue against higher tiers, only against lower tiers.
 
DarkDragonMedeus said:
I'd argue for quality over quantity, simple having more feats is arguing for quantity rather than quality and pretty much every long running verse in fiction has far more low end feats than they do high end feats. If it was something along the lines of 300 feats consistently having plot relevance to 9-B and that's also the highest direct feat a character ever demonstrated with most of those consistent showings being either they struggled to break a wall or struggled in sparring matches with other pears. Where as the 100 Tier 2 feats are a "They were effortlessly curb stomped but survived encounters from Tier 2 god tiers." I could call those examples a hundred outliers.

Likewise, a character could have just one Tier 2 feat among the 300 9-B feats and that one Tier 2 feat not be an outlier. Perhaps all those Tier 2 feats were effortlessly stomping canon fodder, and the Tier 2 feat was either they directly destroyed and recreated the universe. Or they surpassed an all powerful god via progression and later became the new god of the universe.

Case by case and narrative is key. Not the sheer quantity of feats they have.
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This. 100% this.
 
Agnaa said:
You mocking people who cared about the quantity of anti-feats made it sound like you didn't care about the quantity of anti-feats.

If you actually do, and were just inventing a case where the swarm of anti-feats has no narrative importance, then fair enough ig.
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From my experience it's pretty much the latter almost 90-99% of the time.

Agnaa said:
I think quantity's still important (on top of context and narrative importance, with them balancing against each other), but that quantity only matters in certain directions, if that makes sense.
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I personally disagree in this case, this would assume we somehow know more about the intent of the story than those who made the story themselves.
 
KLOL506 said:
From my experience it's pretty much the latter almost 90-99% of the time.
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Welp, guess we have different experiences.
KLOL506 said:
I personally disagree in this case, this would assume we somehow know more about the intent of the story than those who made the story themselves.
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What exactly do you mean by that? That kinda sounds like advocating for ignoring narrative importance since we wouldn't be able to discern that ourselves.
 
Agnaa said:
What exactly do you mean by that? That kinda sounds like advocating for ignoring narrative importance since we wouldn't be able to discern that ourselves.
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Sorry if it sounded like that, but nah, I was advocating to give narrative importance and context a higher degree of importance than hyperfixating solely on quantity alone, like what LordGriffin and DDM said.

Or you know, just stick with the case-by-case basis as we always have for these kinds of things.
 
KLOL506 said:
Sorry if it sounded like that, but nah, I was advocating to give narrative importance and context a higher degree of importance than hyperfixating solely on quantity alone, like what LordGriffin and DDM said.

Or you know, just stick with the case-by-case basis as we always have for these kinds of things.
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Meh, just sounds weird to say "That's wrong, we shouldn't hyperfixate solely on quantity" in response to me saying "Yeah, we shouldn't hyperfixate solely on quantity. Here's some cases where quantity doesn't matter."
 
Agnaa said:
Meh, just sounds weird to say "That's wrong, we shouldn't hyperfixate solely on quantity" in response to me saying "Yeah, we shouldn't hyperfixate solely on quantity. Here's some cases where quantity doesn't matter."
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I thought you were saying something about giving quantity more importance than either narrative or context. It certainly felt worded to me that way from your side, as compared to DDM or Griffin.
 
KLOL506 said:
I thought you were saying something about giving quantity more importance than either narrative or context. It certainly felt worded to me that way from your side, as compared to DDM or Griffin.
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I think it's weird to talk about quantity being given more or less importance than, say, narrative. Since the only way someone could truly give quantity more importance is if they only use narrative importance as a tie-breaker when quantity has no clear answer. After that, it's just a matter of how much quantity it takes to override something with narrative/contextual importance, when those anti-feats lack that.
 
I mean, it's a case by case sort of deal.

Let's say we have Spiderman with 3 or more 7-C feats prior and 2 7-A feats.

The higher set of feats isn't several tiers higher than the 3 or more consistency set like Tier 5 or something.

While I wouldn't personally call the 7-A feats the new consistency yet, I would still take them viable for an AP rating. "Typically X, At peak Y" sort of thing.

You could think two feats for a tier rating as "Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice."
 
Firestorm808 said:
I mean, it's a case by case sort of deal.

Let's say we have Spiderman with 3 or more 7-C feats prior and 2 7-A feats.

The higher set of feats isn't several tiers higher than the 3 or more consistency set like Tier 5 or something.

While I wouldn't personally call the 7-A feats the new consistency yet, I would still take them viable for an AP rating. "Typically X, At peak Y" sort of thing.

You could think two feats for a tier rating as "Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice."
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I mean, ultimately all your examples here end up being a case-by-case basis of which we can't just say "anti-feats" or "outliers" at face value without actually reading the story and figuring out how the feats even came to be in the first place.
 
Agnaa said:
Yeah I have no idea what the practical implications of this would be.

It seems like it'd be, at best, an extremely annoying to implement cosmetic change; not allowing profiles to say a character is "consistent" in their AP section unless they have 3+ feats of it. Which seems pointless.
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Qawsedf234 said:
In an ideal word having at least three feats would be great. But for the wiki there's just a vast array of franchises that mostly rely on a single impressive geat that everyone scales to. If implemented it would have some massive ramifications.
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This is true. I suppose that this thread has been rejected then.

Also, let's drop the mostly off-topic derailing please. Although for the record, I think that we have to look at the explicitness/reliability/quality of the available feats combined with what the narrative clearly tries to establish via consistency, at least for verses with lots of writers that have a tendency to severely contradict each other.
 
This is a very inefficient method, countless verses have 1 major feat that is used as a determiner for how strong the verse is, but if it’s only 1 feat on that level and countless weaker feats exceed it in quantity, we have to use those?

Yeah no way, this rule would effectively require us to redo ALL of the wiki’s tiers and feats… It’s just not an efficient method at all and accomplishes very little
 
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