Can we make assumptions about a species based on the act of one?

[RothX]

So, looking over the pages for different Kirby characters, I'm noticing that a lot of characters get scaled from Knuckle Joe, who gets 5A from cracking Popstar in Megaton Punch.

Knuckle Joe is almost certainly a species, not an individual being. We have no reason to believe that a standard Knuckle Joe can get even close to this level of power. This is probably the strongest Knuckle Joe in the world, and there's no reason I can see to scale every Knuckle Joe to this level.

This would have massive implications on the tier of many Kirby characters, since so many are scaled to Knuckle Joe, but this honestly makes a lot of sense. It's ridiculous to think that literally every inhabitant of Popstar has the capability to crack the planet in half.

It's also possible that this falls under the classification of an outlier, since no Knuckle Joe (besides helpers, which are likely just an extension of Kirby) has ever done anything else comparable to this. You could say that in some sense he should scale to Kirby, but he's so massively inferior to Kirby, and really has no chance of being a threat unless Kirby is already on the brink of death, that there's no reason to scale him to Kirby (he's already not scaled to Kirby anyway, since he's 5A). But, I know outliers are reserved for the most extreme circumstances, and I think that the Knuckle Joe participating in Megaton Punch being an extraordinarily exceptional member of his species is a satisfactory explanation.

I'm kinda new here, so maybe I've said something silly or wrong, but if so, I'd really like to hear the justifcation. If nothing else, random Waddle Dees being planet level doesn't sit right with me.

 

[Eficiente]

I'll answer here tomorrow. Since now I'm gonna say that this thread's based on one big headcanon, and has another one less bigger on it.

 

[Eficiente]

We have no reason to believe that a standard Knuckle Joe can get even close to this level of power. This is probably the strongest Knuckle Joe in the world

This is the "big headcanon" I said before. Nothing at all indicates that this is "the strongest Knuckle Joe in the world" nor anything remotely close to this, it was a Knuckle Joe that looks like all Knuckle Joes with no further information beyond that, to say that he's different than any other Knuckle Joe is something unreasonable.

>"It's ridiculous to think that literally every inhabitant of Popstar has the capability to crack the planet in half"

In a vacuum, sure, but every inhabitant of Popstar and in Kirby in general can end up becoming an ally to Kirby who can assist him fight foes of even power to Knuckle Joe and beings way above that, as well as 4-A beings which are outliers to them. This could maybe be different those doing that were notable individuals of their species having their own names and such, but that's not the case, be it via summoning Helpers or making allies via Friend Hearts Kirby allows everyone to have feats.

>"It's also possible that this falls under the classification of an outlier, since no Knuckle Joe (besides helpers, which are likely just an extension of Kirby) has ever done anything else comparable to this."

For it being an outlier: Pre-Return to Dream Land Bandana Dee did the same to a lower scale seconds before, Iron Mom did the same to a higher scale seconds after, the mini-game is repeated in the remake of the game, Schwarzs, other minor foes, can create black holes which I calc'd at Large Planet level, which is in all profiles that scale to Knuckle Joe.

For Helpers being "likely just an extension of Kirby" (which in turn it's a + on why this isn't an outlier): This is also something unreasonable and a headcanon. Look at all the info we have; Kirby eats foe, gains his ability, and sacrifices that to get a Helper. Just that. What's going on here is what's more logical to believe; The Helper is the same foe Kirby ate, now helping Kirby. The Helpers being "an extension of Kirby" is overcomplicated, especially if we add the assumption of this making them more powerful than their normal selves when none of this was ever stated.

 

[RothX]

Well, this all seems reasonable, but I have an issue with this:

.For Helpers being "likely just an extension of Kirby" (which in turn it's a + on why this isn't an outlier): This is also something unreasonable and a headcanon. Look at all the info we have; Kirby eats foe, gains his ability, and sacrifices that to get a Helper. Just that. What's going on here is what's more logical to believe; The Helper is the same foe Kirby ate, now helping Kirby. The Helpers being "an extension of Kirby" is overcomplicated, especially if we add the assumption of this making them more powerful than their normal selves when none of this was ever stated.

You're implying that it's silly to say the helpers are more powerful than their normal selves when that's the exact assumption this wiki uses. Every enemy that can be summoned as a helper, such as Knuckle Joe, says "5A normally, 4A when summoned as a helper" or something to that effect. So you can't say this is silly when the wiki already runs on this assumption. I admit them being "an extension of Kirby" is headcanon, but I more meant anything to that effect. They get to share in Kirby's power, etc. The mechanism doesn't matter. It's just that they're more powerful as helpers.

So, under the current assumptions the wiki makes, we can't use helper feats to scale the normal enemies. So, that's what makes Knuckle Joe's feat in Megaton Punch an outlier. Sure, we don't have proof that that Knuckle Joe is exceptional, but that's just a way to reconcile the outlier with the lore so that we don't have to completely disregard it.

If you disagree with this idea, it sounds like you should make a thread proposing that every normal enemy who can be a helper should be upgraded to 4A, if you're saying the helpers aren't more powerful than the normal forms.

.For it being an outlier: Pre-Return to Dream Land Bandana Dee did the same to a lower scale seconds before, Iron Mom did the same to a higher scale seconds after, the mini-game is repeated in the remake of the game, Schwarzs, other minor foes, can create black holes which I calc'd at Large Planet level, which is in all profiles that scale to Knuckle Joe.

For this bit, we do have reason to believe that Bandana Dee is an exceptional Waddle Dee. Star Allies basically says this explicitly. Even if it didn't, it would still be reasonable to assume, as he's an actual character who regularly helps Kirby, instead of just some random wandering Waddle Dee.

As for Iron Mam, she's a mini-boss, and I don't see a reason to scale Knuckle Joe, or any normal enemies to her. Schwarzs is also quite powerful, but there's still no reason to scale Knuckle Joe to it. Which is why the Megaton Punch feat seems like an outlier to me.

 

[Eficiente]

The profiles say "Multi-Solar System level via summons", not "4A when summoned as a helper". "Via summons" refers to the Helpers themselves summoning allies, which they can do with the Dream Rod, and all the characters they can summon with that are 4-A.

That's why it says "Pre-Return to Dream Land", in Super Star Ultra Bandana Dee fought Kirby, who could insta kill him just by sucking him, or just defeat him with some attacks. Not even as much hits as any boss, just.. some attacks.

 

[RothX]

I feel like there's some kind of contradiction here...

The helpers are clearly higher than 5A. In Super Star, you could have Kirby sit in the corner while a helper beats Marx, who is 4A.

Further, the helpers are explicitly more powerful than the regular enemies. Say you summon a Knuckle Joe helper, and it meets a Knuckle Joe enemy. The helper can beat the enemy with a single attack, whereas the enemy can barely make a dent in the helper's health bar.

So that's why I'm saying that we can't use helper feats for the tier of the regular enemies. The helpers are clearly more powerful, and it's unknown how much more powerful they are, so there's not even a point trying to find a conversion.

So given that, cracking Popstar seems like an outlier for the non-helper Knuckle Joes. From the page on outliers, it sounds like this wiki tries to avoid them at any cost, only resorting to them when the feat is so irreconcilably inconsistent. That's why I suggested that maybe the Knuckle Joe participating in Megaton Punch is an exceptional member of his species. Sure, it's headcanon, but it avoids having to mark the event as a ridiculous outlier.

 

[Eficiente]

@RothX None of that are contradictions at all s of them have reasonable explanations.

>"In Super Star, you could have Kirby sit in the corner while a helper beats Marx, who is 4A."

There are a number of this feats, with Helpers and foes turned allies in Star Allies, they all contradict the notion of powerscaling the verse itself, not even us, has. This being; Minor enemies<Mid-Bosses<Bosses<Final Bosses<Bosses and Final Bosses in future games. It makes no sense for a minor enemy to defeat a final boss. And then we have the special treatments some characters have that minor enemies don't, like "oh wow this character can destroy planets!". And much more, but I hope you get the point from this.

>"Further, the helpers are explicitly more powerful than the regular enemies. Say you summon a Knuckle Joe helper, and it meets a Knuckle Joe enemy. The helper can beat the enemy with a single attack, whereas the enemy can barely make a dent in the helper's health bar."

This are Game Mechanics. But would be the case if we have at least one statement saying that they do become stronger.

>"From the page on outliers, it sounds like this wiki tries to avoid them at any cost, only resorting to them when the feat is so irreconcilably inconsistent"

Not really, using Star Wars as an example, Jedi getting harmed by less-than-tier 8-stuff is super consistent, but they have a higher tier than that due to a simply decent number of feats above it, making the anti-feats just meaningless. Even when we know more anti-feats will come in the future, it's just how the verse works, same here.

>"That's why I suggested that maybe the Knuckle Joe participating in Megaton Punch is an exceptional member of his species. Sure, it's headcanon, but it avoids having to mark the event as a ridiculous outlier."

Making headcanons to justify not giving characters higher stats or not having lines of scaling with everyone sharing something is nothing but a fallacy.

 

[RothX]

>"This are Game Mechanics. But would be the case if we have at least one statement saying that they do become stronger."

Well, I guess this is the key here. I wasn't aware of this policy. This kind of invalidates my whole argument. I guess if this is your policy, then I agree with this ruling.

However, I find this to be really vague. I think this Game Mechanics page could use updating. I guess that's an entirely different discussion, but I'll say my thoughts here for now. In many games, the majority of the game is not story-driven. Honestly, Kirby is a pretty good example. Like, are we only treating cutscenes and explicit story as canon? In that case, this entire argument is kind of moot. For example, some characters wouldn't even really exist in the canon. If this isn't what this page is trying to say, it really needs to updated.

Further, I'm not even sure that the wiki really follows this policy. I can find several things alone on Kirby's page that only come from game mechanics, and I'm sure most other game characters are similar.

For example:

• Kirby's level of Regenerationn comes from this gif, where he is able to regrow a large part of his body. This never happens in a cutscene, and I don't think there's any kind of official story statement talking about this (and if there is, shouldn't that be cited instead of this gameplay gif, if gameplay doesn't matter?). Under this policy of gameplay mechanics, I'm not sure Kirby gets any significant level of Regenerationn at all.

• There's tons of stuff on the page talking about Ghost Kirby, who has never really shown up in a cutscene or official story statement that I'm aware of. There have been descriptions of Ghost Kirby of course, but those are gameplay descriptions, and I'm not sure why they would count with this policy.

• Kirby has "transmutation" because he can turn enemies into star bullets when inhaled. This seemed very based in gameplay mechanics to me, for the same reasons as the first two.

I've barely gone through a fraction of the Kirby page, and I've already found 3. I'm sure I could find many many more if I went through the entireity.

It's believeable to me that these things are allowed under what the gameplay mechanics policy is meant to be, but just based on what's written there, it's not clear why they're valid.

If this policy is correct as written, then the wiki just doesn't follow it in practice at all, and it kind of feels like it's cited for some things but not other arbitrarily. It either needs an overhaul or should be scrapped altogether.

 

[Eficiente]

It's not really a "policy", it's about what ultimately makes more sense. Look it like this; Kirby can summon the foes he eats and make them help them, and can also use Friend Hearts to make them his allies. By going on your proposal, Kirby can now also power up the foes he eats while summoning them, which was never stated, and the Friend Hearts can power up foes turned allies, which again was never stated. And all why? Scaling getting crazy on stuff what fits Game Mechanics perfectly? It is better to just not make up that Kirby can power up foes.

>"However, I find this to be really vague. I think this Game Mechanics page could use updating."

I mean, it's pretty old and kinda doesn't need to. As it's just a reminder for others to use common sense when analyzing verses, and that Game Mechanics can very well be used to justify something. This in turn is usually rarely a problem for common users.

>"Like, are we only treating cutscenes and explicit story as canon? In that case, this entire argument is kind of moot. For example, some characters wouldn't even really exist in the canon. If this isn't what this page is trying to say, it really needs to updated."

Uh, again, common sense makes it very easy to differentiate what we can or can't say a character can do. We also make a distinction in words; We use "Defeated" or words like that when a character was able to beat someone in the canon, and "Able to defeat" or words like that when a character is able to beat someone in a mini-game or can optionally be part of a team that beats said someone in the canon.

>"Kirby's level of Regenerationn"

"Never happens in a cutscene" and not being "any kind of official story statement talking about this" aren't impediments to deny what we outright see. If there is any statement talking about this we wouldn't need to show it as the gif is the only thing people needs. Game mechanics are stuff that realistically makes no sense in the reality of the verse, stuff done on purpose aren't game mechanics. If the explosion of the part of his body he throws were the same as the explosion when he beats an enemy then, idk, maybe it would have been game mechanics, but instead we see a pink explosion which had to be done just for that.

>"about Ghost Kirby"

When again, it's not a policy. "Never really shown up in a cutscene or official story statement" isn't relevant, (the mini-game from where it came from had its own game and Ghost Kirby is there but that's not the point), it comes from a mini-game that shows what Kirby characters are capable of, it has statements on how it works, and, most notably, it's its own Transformation, kinda hard to miss.

>Kirby's transmutation

That's more reasonable and it would normally be considered game mechanic on other cases. Thing is, for more than 20 years he was doing that with many, many statements of him turing his foes into stars, with the technique itself being called "Star Spit" (think of the implications his leaves), and with special variants on the stars Kirby can spit.

On the last thing, no, it's not arbitrarily. Even if I'm repeating it again, it just follows common sense.

 

[RothX]

All of your explanations and justifications make perfect sense. And it makes more sense that the game mechanics is less a strict policy and more of a rough guideline. But on the other hand, it leads to these pages being more opinion based then they probably should be.

I have to disagree that this is "common sense." All 3 of those things being allowed makes sense to me, but I just feel if they are allowed, then helpers being more powerful should also be true.

You say the game mechanics thing is reserved for stuff that "realistically make no sense in the reality of the verse." That's fine, but it seems like to a stretch to me to say that helpers being powered up makes no sense at all. Sure, it's never stated explicitly, but throughout the game, the helpers are stronger than the common foes. You can disregard this as "game mechanics only," but to me, a completely reasonable inference seems preferable to saying that the game's mechanics make no sense, and something that happens consistently throughout the game isn't canon.

If there was some kind of contradiction, I would agree with you. Like, if something in the story contradicts some kind of game mechanic, I agree that the story should take priority. But there is no contradiction here. Your only real reason to deny seems to just that it is never stated. And it's exactly the same for the Regenerationn thing. It's never stated that Kirby can grow back large portions of his body, but that looks like what's happening visually throughout the game. But that's not the only possibility. Maybe Kirby just throws a pink fleshy boomerang and shrinks. But that's more of a stretch. So we make the most reasonable inference. That Kirby can regenerate.

All I'm saying is we should do the same thing here. It's never stated that Kirby can power up helpers, but it matches what we see in the game (whereas saying he doesn't actually contradicts it). So we make the most reasonable inference.

Considering how much you keep going on about how this is just common sense, I think you might be getting frustrated, so I'm really sorry. But I maintain that this doesn't feel like common sense, and feels kind of arbitrary.

 

[Eficiente]

Well, nothing else to say more than that I assure you that don't giving Kirby a new power is the more reasonable way to do this. And that this type of consistent outliers are very common.

 

[RothX]

Fair enough. I know outliers are common, but that doesn't mean they're good. It seems like they shouldn't remain if they can be easily explained, but I understand being fed up with this thread.

Well, hopefully, some other people will weigh in on this. I'd like to hear some other perspectives.

 

[Kirby71]

Im right now neutral on this.

 

[RothX]

Well, could you at least then elaborate on the other side? Because right now, I'm not getting why having contradictions is better than making reasonable inferences (especially when I feel like that already happens).

 

[RothX]

Just to summarize the discussion so far, we're discussing whether or not helpers are more powerful than their normal enemy counterparts.

My argument is that we clearly see this in game, where helpers are roughly comparable to Kirby, and can defeat the enemy versions of themselves in a single hit, while taking an insignificant amount of damage themselves.

The counterargument is that this is never stated in game or by any other official source, and we can disregard the strength of helpers as game mechanics.

This doesn't sit right with me, because it feels like this is being denied arbitarly, as the counter-arguments apply to powers that Kirby already has. For example, Kirby's level of Regenerationn comes from the way one of Kirby's copy abilities works in Kirby 64. However, no official source says Kirby has this level of Regenerationn.

So here's how I see it:

Kirby's Regenerationn: Something we see clearly in game and makes sense in-universe, but is never stated explicitly in any official source.

Helpers being more powerful: Something we see clearly in game and makes sense in-universe, but it is never stated explicitly in any official source.

So you can see why I find it arbitrary that one of these is denied and the other is accepted. So what is the difference here?

 

[Eficiente]

I'm going to unfollow this. I'm not needed where any average non-expert of the verse can deduce what's wrong on its own.

 

[RothX]

Well, if they can, I hope they do soon.