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Last time on OFF Revisions
Most of the points brought up have already been refuted thoroughly, but there are two things in particular I would like to address since I didn't have the chance then.
One: the use of E=mc^2 for the calculations of Japhet, Dedan, and Enoch's planetary creation feats was seemingly contested primarily upon three seperate notions. A: That E=mc^2 can't be used for converting energy into physical matter, only the other way round, B: that E=mc^2 isn't justified, and C: That Enoch's statement implies that they gradually take from the energy of the Sun to create their worlds.
A: As for Mass-Energy Conversion Feats, this claim is demonstrably false. Every single example given on the page is an example of energy being made into mass, not the other way around, and it is called "Mass-energy conversion feats" rather than anything more specific because of the idea that this has to work both ways. I do not believe that this requires any more explanation.
B: "Mass-energy conversion isn't justified here"
"My role consists, like the one of the other guardians', of forming the energy sent by the Queen Mother to a solid context. I am the living engine of Zone 3. We are a little like gods, drawing the infinite power of the Sun to sculpt our power into the nothingness." -Enoch, Guardian of Zone 3
There's a lot to unpack here that seems completely overlooked, so I'll go ahead and do it-
The Queen Mother referred to by Enoch is either the Sun itself, or else lives inside of and controls it. "...forming the energy sent by/from the Sun into a solid context" sounds like Energy-Mass to me...
"...drawing the infinite power of the Sun to sculpt our power into the nothingness." Here, we even see that there was only Nothingness around them prior to them pulling off this feat, important here since it demonstrates that there was nothing else they could have made it out of physically except the energy given off by the Sun. That, and it's another oddly specific statement...
How explicit can people expect fiction to be? Do they expect it to break all mood entirely and go "Hey, look Vs Battles, we used Energy-Mass conversion here!" This is about as explicit a statement as we're ever going to get, and two such statements of directly converting solar energy into physical mass- along with the copious contextual evidence and lack of any viable alternative explanations- seems indicative to me that this is definitely just fine to use.
C: But it was gradual, one might argue?
Not that we eeeever use that as a reason to count Creation feats as being far lower than we would, otherwise, but just to humor the argument some,
"drawing the infinite power of the Sun to sculpt our power into the Nothingness" If the action is first "drawing" something forth, and then sculpting something from that power, with no additional steps mentioned, there isn't a reason to assume it wasn't completed in a single "attack."
However, whether this is or isn't the case in the first place doesn't matter, either, as Enoch is Zone 3's living engine, i.e. continuously supplying his power to it to sustain it. Without said power, there's nothing stopping the Batter from purifying the entire Zone. That's the entire reason you're helping the Batter kill them in the first place, the Zone guardians being there stops The Batter from purifying everything and being done with it.
So yeah, I fail to see how its use violates Site Rules in any meaningful way, nor do I see how it supposedly makes no sense.
Two: ...Another, seperate thing I have an issue with is the use of "Photographic Blur" to supply the early-game characters with a blanket FTL speed rating. This seems flawed for a number of reasons.
First, it is specifically a Competence, a combat technique that requires the consumption of SP and thus not sustainable over a large distance. This, at bare minimum, invalidates its use for travel speed. However, it also seems flawed to me to assume that the characters in game are automatically able to react to this attack at point-blank range just by fighting a character who uses it, especially in OFF's case, as characters in the game barely ever dodge, to the point where what little times they do (if they do at all, I don't recall noticing anything dodge even once in my three playthroughs) can easily be chalked up to luck/aim-dodging. (And gameplay mechanics are constantly referred to in-depth as a canon part of the story, so that's not really a viable counter-argument for this being "just gameplay mechanics".) Finally, even if it was still usable after all of this, we tend to round down to Relativistic+ rather than up to FTL, usually, and the fact that the characters seem to stand some significant distance away from one another supports this...
On top of all of this, The Batter having light speed travel speed directly contradicts the plot itself. The entire point of having the red plastic cubes was so that The Batter could use the Nothing to travel at light speed from one Zone to the next, as at this point he could not otherwise. So, all in all, I see little point in trying to use it in place of Early-Game Batter's Speed of Light reaction feat.
As for travel speed, admittedly, yes, my old calc that we used for that was... bad. No way around that. I will, however, attempt a revised version of it in the meantime...
Other things I feel need to be addressed:
Three: I already explained why the Batter can be safely assumed to correspond to the cursor for his speed feat in the blog itself, and no one really contested the actual reasoning so much as argued from incredulity. Even aside from this, however, remember that the in-game gameplay is constantly talked about by The Judge, especially in the early game in which he walks you through and quips about the gameplay mechanics.
It is demonstrated that The Batter physically travels to the places the in-game representation of him travels to, consistently throughout the game, this isn't any different.
Four: The Batter is precisely the same sort of entity as The Queen, who was also created by Hugo as a stand-in parental figure as the first inhabitants of the world, and so they likely scale to one another in most regards. It isn't unreasonable, at least, to say they likely have similar range.
Five: Being nitpicky here, I guess, but it is in fact established that things such as save files are in fact a canon part of OFF lore, as Zacharie tells you that, in order to complete one of the last puzzles required to beat the game, The Player has to help The Batter by, in real life, digging through the game files to find the answer to a puzzle.These would include the game's save files and other code.
However, in the Queen's specific instance of "Save File" screwery, it seems to line up a lot more with Reality Warping/Information Manipulation/Time Manipulation with multi-universal range than Multi-Universal AP, since only the Player has the power to split any of these save files into a new timeline/reality, and the characters in each file are seperate people- they don't remember what all happened in other playthroughs like they do in, say, Undertale. I guess it should also be specified that The Batter has Resistance to these things with The Player's help. Like a mini Khorn's collar, haha.
I guess I could see a 2-C page made for The Player... maybe.
So, yeah, that's my argument I guess. Any objections?
Most of the points brought up have already been refuted thoroughly, but there are two things in particular I would like to address since I didn't have the chance then.
One: the use of E=mc^2 for the calculations of Japhet, Dedan, and Enoch's planetary creation feats was seemingly contested primarily upon three seperate notions. A: That E=mc^2 can't be used for converting energy into physical matter, only the other way round, B: that E=mc^2 isn't justified, and C: That Enoch's statement implies that they gradually take from the energy of the Sun to create their worlds.
A: As for Mass-Energy Conversion Feats, this claim is demonstrably false. Every single example given on the page is an example of energy being made into mass, not the other way around, and it is called "Mass-energy conversion feats" rather than anything more specific because of the idea that this has to work both ways. I do not believe that this requires any more explanation.
B: "Mass-energy conversion isn't justified here"
"My role consists, like the one of the other guardians', of forming the energy sent by the Queen Mother to a solid context. I am the living engine of Zone 3. We are a little like gods, drawing the infinite power of the Sun to sculpt our power into the nothingness." -Enoch, Guardian of Zone 3
There's a lot to unpack here that seems completely overlooked, so I'll go ahead and do it-
The Queen Mother referred to by Enoch is either the Sun itself, or else lives inside of and controls it. "...forming the energy sent by/from the Sun into a solid context" sounds like Energy-Mass to me...
"...drawing the infinite power of the Sun to sculpt our power into the nothingness." Here, we even see that there was only Nothingness around them prior to them pulling off this feat, important here since it demonstrates that there was nothing else they could have made it out of physically except the energy given off by the Sun. That, and it's another oddly specific statement...
How explicit can people expect fiction to be? Do they expect it to break all mood entirely and go "Hey, look Vs Battles, we used Energy-Mass conversion here!" This is about as explicit a statement as we're ever going to get, and two such statements of directly converting solar energy into physical mass- along with the copious contextual evidence and lack of any viable alternative explanations- seems indicative to me that this is definitely just fine to use.
C: But it was gradual, one might argue?
Not that we eeeever use that as a reason to count Creation feats as being far lower than we would, otherwise, but just to humor the argument some,
"drawing the infinite power of the Sun to sculpt our power into the Nothingness" If the action is first "drawing" something forth, and then sculpting something from that power, with no additional steps mentioned, there isn't a reason to assume it wasn't completed in a single "attack."
However, whether this is or isn't the case in the first place doesn't matter, either, as Enoch is Zone 3's living engine, i.e. continuously supplying his power to it to sustain it. Without said power, there's nothing stopping the Batter from purifying the entire Zone. That's the entire reason you're helping the Batter kill them in the first place, the Zone guardians being there stops The Batter from purifying everything and being done with it.
So yeah, I fail to see how its use violates Site Rules in any meaningful way, nor do I see how it supposedly makes no sense.
Two: ...Another, seperate thing I have an issue with is the use of "Photographic Blur" to supply the early-game characters with a blanket FTL speed rating. This seems flawed for a number of reasons.
First, it is specifically a Competence, a combat technique that requires the consumption of SP and thus not sustainable over a large distance. This, at bare minimum, invalidates its use for travel speed. However, it also seems flawed to me to assume that the characters in game are automatically able to react to this attack at point-blank range just by fighting a character who uses it, especially in OFF's case, as characters in the game barely ever dodge, to the point where what little times they do (if they do at all, I don't recall noticing anything dodge even once in my three playthroughs) can easily be chalked up to luck/aim-dodging. (And gameplay mechanics are constantly referred to in-depth as a canon part of the story, so that's not really a viable counter-argument for this being "just gameplay mechanics".) Finally, even if it was still usable after all of this, we tend to round down to Relativistic+ rather than up to FTL, usually, and the fact that the characters seem to stand some significant distance away from one another supports this...
On top of all of this, The Batter having light speed travel speed directly contradicts the plot itself. The entire point of having the red plastic cubes was so that The Batter could use the Nothing to travel at light speed from one Zone to the next, as at this point he could not otherwise. So, all in all, I see little point in trying to use it in place of Early-Game Batter's Speed of Light reaction feat.
As for travel speed, admittedly, yes, my old calc that we used for that was... bad. No way around that. I will, however, attempt a revised version of it in the meantime...
Other things I feel need to be addressed:
Three: I already explained why the Batter can be safely assumed to correspond to the cursor for his speed feat in the blog itself, and no one really contested the actual reasoning so much as argued from incredulity. Even aside from this, however, remember that the in-game gameplay is constantly talked about by The Judge, especially in the early game in which he walks you through and quips about the gameplay mechanics.
It is demonstrated that The Batter physically travels to the places the in-game representation of him travels to, consistently throughout the game, this isn't any different.
Four: The Batter is precisely the same sort of entity as The Queen, who was also created by Hugo as a stand-in parental figure as the first inhabitants of the world, and so they likely scale to one another in most regards. It isn't unreasonable, at least, to say they likely have similar range.
Five: Being nitpicky here, I guess, but it is in fact established that things such as save files are in fact a canon part of OFF lore, as Zacharie tells you that, in order to complete one of the last puzzles required to beat the game, The Player has to help The Batter by, in real life, digging through the game files to find the answer to a puzzle.These would include the game's save files and other code.
However, in the Queen's specific instance of "Save File" screwery, it seems to line up a lot more with Reality Warping/Information Manipulation/Time Manipulation with multi-universal range than Multi-Universal AP, since only the Player has the power to split any of these save files into a new timeline/reality, and the characters in each file are seperate people- they don't remember what all happened in other playthroughs like they do in, say, Undertale. I guess it should also be specified that The Batter has Resistance to these things with The Player's help. Like a mini Khorn's collar, haha.
I guess I could see a 2-C page made for The Player... maybe.
So, yeah, that's my argument I guess. Any objections?
