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Categorically Verbose and Obnoxiously and Unbelievably Long Powers & Abilities Lists on VsBattles Characters Profiles and How To Perhaps Make Them a L

Doesn't Oryx basically resist everything anyone else in the verse can do?

it already says that he resists everything that the Hive, Taken, Vex and Guardians can do, which is most powers iirc
 
Not quite. He also has the issue that we haven't made the rest of the verse yet, so explanations for his resistances definitely need to be on the profile which entails explaining the power he resists, more often than not.
 
until the profiles for the other factions have been made, Oryx should likely stay how he is, as there's not exactly another way to reasonably list his resistences without basically going "resists this"
 
Matthew Schroeder said:
It would result in a mess with certain files having keys at the top and others at the bottom. It's much better to leave keys as they are, in the bottom, as they would otherwise break a natural flow of information related to the characters abilities, and just look ugly with their all caps format on the top or middle.
I strongly agree with this. It is definitely not worth creating a massively time-consuming revision project for minimal payoff.
 
Dargoo Faust said:
I'd call it displacing rather than trimming.

I think the purpose of this is to keep the powers abilities like more of an index, where Notable Attacks/Tecniques acts as the encyclopedia.

Take something like a One Peice character for example. They have like a bagillion different tecniques for around one or two powers.
Yes, notable attacks/techniques is used more as a list of commonly used attacks, not an indepth list of all powers.
 
I couldn't read through the whole thread, sorry about that but here are my thoughts on the matter.

  • The tabs will be helpful since for characters with multiple keys and a huge wall of text, it becomes straight up irritating to find out what abilities a specific version of the character has. Anything that eliminates this problem, is a welcome change to me.
  • "The all previous abilities" thing is something I do as well even for non wall of text characters and encouraging it is in my opinion a good idea as well.
  • While we are on the topic of structuring power and abilities in a proper manner, can we make it a standard to list resistances in parenthesis? As in Resistance (Void Manipulation, Causality manipulation) instead of Resistance to Void Manipulation, Causality Manipulation since imo currently it can be unclear as to whether a power listed for a character is a resistance or his own power. Sorry if this is a non issue.
 
I like Andy's idea as well. Especially for the resistances section.
 
I always thought the "All previous abilities" was a good solution though I can see Matt's point with the example (Divine Angels) he pointed out in the OP.

I personally think that if characters have 4-5 keys and apart from the first key, their later keys only have a handful of powers and abilities, they can be listed with "All previous abilities". That is a better option than having the same stuff repeat in all the tabbers with only a few differences.

But if a character has 7-8 keys or if their later keys also have long sections of new powers and abilities, then the "All previous abilities" stuff also becomes quite repetitive and doesn't solve the problem of excruciatingly long powers and abilties section which is very hard to read. In that case tabbers are the way to go.

That is just my opinion on the matter. I also agree with Andy about the resistance stuff.
 
DMUA said:
I've seen this with King's pet project
*******. Bigmouth.

OT: I'll go over this in a little while, when I'm less busy. This seems like something I'm going to need to involve myself in, for numerous reasons.
 
I do have one suggestion on this problem:

Powers and abilities are hard to read (especially for "magic" users and "broken hax" users). However, whether it is readable is another question.

It is important to include powers and abilities only for characters that truly are understood to practise them. However, for characters with a wide range of arsenal and skills (from Mario, Sonic and Kirby to Cole MacGrath and Alex Mercer to Doctor Strange and Doctor Fate) a better classification of the categories of powers is much more important.

Using categories or even sub-categories to group key phases for a character is one direction.

Having better classification of abilities is important as well. For example:

  • manipulation of fire, water, grass, ice, rock, etc. can be under the branch of "elemental manipulation"
  • time travel, time stop, time rewind, time fast-forward etc. can be grouped under "time manipulation"
More examples can be thought of - but we need to first discuss how to classify ability branches.

Cramming abilities into one profile can be challenging even for the scholars and real life HR professionals. (And Screwattack Death Battle is basically doing this to appeal to millions of viewers worldwide.) But we ned to work together to get the solution.

Otherwise? The sitre is still there, viewers just come and go.
 
I'd much rather like to see a justification for every ability instead of having to go around and ask people for it
 
Konaguna said:
I'd much rather like to see a justification for every ability instead of having to go around and ask people for it
Not many people are saying we're going to snip out all the descriptions and leave it as that.

I think we should move them to Notable Attacks/Tecniques. So you'd just have to scroll down a bit more.
 
Andy's resistances look fine. As for Kona... I believe this change will limit that immensely. You may need to still go around asking people.
 
Acausality/Causality Manipulation: Was totally immune to the true implications of the text, and thus can alter the true meaning of said text
 
Yes, it makes it longer, but it is better to read a 1,000 word text if it is broken into 5 paragraphs than read a 500 word text that's one paragraph only.
 
To summarize it, I am fine with keeping things as they are, but separating resistances from abilities would be jolly
 
Meh, I know what's aesthetically pleasing can be quite subjective, but personally I prefer keeping the powers close to each-other and not in separate rows.
 
Often with resistances, they need parentheses for justifications and stuff. Again with the Oryx, the Taken King file, he resists abilities from 4 different races and they're separated out accordingly. Would I make all those parentheses into brackets under Andy's idea?
 
Wokistan said:
Often with resistances, they need parentheses for justifications and stuff. Again with the Oryx, the Taken King file, he resists abilities from 4 different races and they're separated out accordingly. Would I make all those parentheses into brackets under Andy's idea?
I would say take everything that is currently in parenthesis in the resistances and move them to one or multiple bullet points in the Notable Attacks/Techniques section (under a separate sub-header maybe). Then put just the names in parenthesis.

Somewhat like the resistance section here.
 
His resistances aren't really due to an ability of his, though. He just doesn't get affected by a lot of things.
 
Wokistan said:
His resistances aren't really due to an ability of his, though. He just doesn't get affected by a lot of things.
Sooo... just call the subheader "Resistances" instead of "Resistance & Nullification Skills". That it isn't some specific skill doesn't really make a difference for the layout...
 
@Jasonsith

Well, as I think Kepekley mentioned, the problem with restructuring too much is that it sets a precedent that starts to gradually be applied to several thousand profiles, and this would completely overtax me and the few other staff members who monitor new edits, and are already very overworked.

There is also a risk that we would constantly have to correct errors in the formatting if it is not kept very simple.
 
Allowing references to be added to pages could be a gradual change that can be applied optionally to profiles by editors.

If it becomes a trend that more people pick up on, then gradually it will spread across the site to profiles where it is needed.

I don't think all changes like this need to be mandatory and enforce on all of the thousands of pages.
 
@Damage3245

If it is kept optional, I suppose that it could be a good idea, but it is not a workable solution to the problems outlined within this thread.
 
It isn't a solution to all of the problems, but if put together with other solutions like the tabbers I think it would help.

The Notable Attacks section is already optional for profiles, so it could be implemented like that.
 
I suppose that you have a point.

However, somebody (Kepekley perhaps?) would have to appropriately adjust the Standard Format for Character Profiles page. Possibly other standard format pages as well.
 
So many solutions were suggested, I loved the list based one, but what was the standard for wall of text profiles, aside from tabs when they have multiple keys? Are we using tabs to separate different abilities such as primary ones, ones that are applications from different skills and mere resistances and such?
 
About the Resistances in the P/A section, I actually have my own method to order those.

Instead of adding parenthesis to separate the powers, I always put the resistance at the end of the P/A section or at the end of a Key to note the main powers.

Here, you can easily see that all the resistances are at the end Powers and Abilities section, just before the Attack Potency, and you can clearly difference which one is which.
 
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