Our rules regarding composite profiles (Staff only)

[Antvasima]

Here is the text that DarkGrath suggested in the other thread:

"Do not create composite profiles, as they contain highly inflated statistics and do not represent a reasonable, canonical version of the character at any given point in time. Profiles for entire species may be acceptable, if it can be shown that the species in question would potentially be capable of having any and all of it's potential characteristics at once. In the event that a character has no linear canon, but rather treats all of the related works as being canon without much context as to the order of events, a profile detailing all of their feats at once may also be acceptable."

Maybe we could use a combination of that and Agnaa's suggestion?

"While some verses may have a lot of stories written by a lot of different authors over a wide span of time, as long as these are all considered canon to each other, their feats can be used together without being considered a composite."

 

[Ricsi-viragosi]

Honestly, I would argue that composites aren't characters and that no-one would really make them a profile here without seeing other profiles do it, so I'm not sure a rule is absolutely needed for it...

But better safe than sorry, so it should be fine. DarkGrath's suggestion seems more clear about things, tough Agnaa's version would be fine too.

 

[Antvasima]

Does somebody have a suggestion for how we should combine the two versions?

 

[DarkGrath]

It'd be easy enough to simply add the two together, which would look something like this:

"Do not create composite profiles, as they contain highly inflated statistics and do not represent a reasonable, canonical version of the character at any given point in time. Profiles for entire species may be acceptable, if it can be shown that the species in question would potentially be capable of having any and all of it's potential characteristics at once. In the event that a character has no linear canon, but rather treats all of the related works as being canon without much context as to the order of events, a profile detailing all of their feats at once may also be acceptable. While some verses may have a lot of stories written by a lot of different authors over a wide span of time, as long as these are all considered canon to each other, their feats can be used together without being considered a composite."

Would simply handling it that way be a problem?

EDIT: Crzer07 made a slightly better formatted version of this in the comment just below mine.

 

[Crzer07]

Do not create composite profiles, as they contain highly inflated statistics and do not represent a reasonable, canonical version of the character at any given point in time. Profiles for entire species may be acceptable, if it can be shown that the species in question would potentially be capable of having any and all of it's potential characteristics at once. In the event that a character has no linear canon, but rather treats all of the related works as being canon without much context as to the order of events, a profile detailing all of their feats at once may also be acceptable. In addition, while some verses may have a lot of stories written by a lot of different authors over a wide span of time, as long as these are all considered canon to each other, their feats can be used together without being considered a composite.

 

[Antvasima]

I do not know. Maybe structuring it like this would make it easier to read?

"Do not create composite profiles, as they contain highly inflated statistics and do not represent a reasonable canonical version of the character at any given point in time.

• Profiles for entire species may be acceptable, if it can be shown that the species in question would potentially be capable of having any and all of it's potential characteristics at once.
• In the event that a character has no linear canon, but rather treats all of the related works as being canon without much context as to the order of events, a profile detailing all of their feats at once may also be acceptable.
• While some verses may have a lot of stories written by a lot of different authors over a wide span of time, as long as these are all considered canon to each other, their feats can be used together without being considered a composite."

 

[DarkGrath]

Yeah, that'd make it easier to read. That's far better structured and formatted.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Thanks. Let's wait to see if Agnaa and other staff members consider it acceptable.

 

[Agnaa]

I don't have much of a preference for either. I think the bullet point version is kind of cleaner but I'm not a huge fan of the trend in our rules where multiple subsections of the same topic are split up without the overall topics being separated.

Basically, I find stuff like:

• Rule A
• Rule B-1
• Rule B-2
• Rule B-3
• Rule C-1
• Rule C-2
• Rule D

A bit unappealing visually, since it's not clear when the topic of the rule changes. I realize that this would require a fair bit of restructuring on the pages, but I'm still not super gung-ho about either proposal.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, that is a comparatively minor issue. What do you think about the regulation text itself?

 

[Agnaa]

I don't see issues with the regulation text itself.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Thanks. Can you or somebody else ask Promestein, Ryukama, and some of our active administrators to come here and evaluate it please?

 

[Joaco0902]

I will do so. (Kinda late, but I always want to help!)

 

[Joaco0902]

Asked Soldier Blue and Celestial Pegasus along with Promestein and Ryu to come.

 

[Celestial_Pegasus]

The regulation text seems fine to me.

 

[Joaco0902]

Unfortunately, Ryukama has informed me that he won't be taking place on this thread due to personal IRL issues.

 

[Promestein]

That looks fine to me.

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for helping out. Is it fine if I apply the modified rule then?

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

I posted some commentary on the other thread for this, although I might be a tad too late due to being busy with testing.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. Thanks.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Here's said commentary, since this thread seems better to discuss it:

*Profiles for entire species may be acceptable, if it can be shown that the species in question would potentially be capable of having any and all of it's potential characteristics at once.

I mean, this kind of principle is what makes stuff like Composite Human possible, which we've removed previously. Even if we exclusively apply this to fictional universes, you have some verses where the power system is technically usable by any living human being (for example, it could theoretically be possible in many Fantasy verses for a single human to have mastery of all magic, despite no human actually achieving it in-verse), which would justify a loophole of making a "Composite Human" which is actually more of a proxy for "Composite character in X-verse".

*In the event that a character has no linear canon, but rather treats all of the related works as being canon without much context as to the order of events, a profile detailing all of their feats at once may also be acceptable.

This kind of contradicts with our other rules of canon and plot requirements. We disallow verses that don't have continuity, and this seems to just provide a workaround where "well, the verse doesn't have a linear canon/continuity, but it's fair to slam everything under the same IP together and make up our own continuity".
Apologies on not commenting sooner; I've been busy with testing, which just finished, thankfully.

 

[Agnaa]

@Dargoo Do you have any ideas on how that first point could be reworded to explain that verses like Pokemon can have profiles for their species, without enabling other verses to have "Composite character in-verse"?

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

@Dargoo Do you have any ideas on how that first point could be reworded to explain that verses like Pokemon can have profiles for their species, without enabling other verses to have "Composite character in-verse"?

It would have to be vaguely worded to the point where we determine the acceptability of species profiles on a case-by-case basis, as there's not really much distinguishing a Composite Pikachu from a Composite Hylian, both of whom have ranges of strength, skill, and ability, but the latter of which was determined to not be accepted.

Perhaps an extra line like this might be helpful:

• Profiles for entire species may be acceptable, if it can be shown that the species in question would potentially be capable of having any and all of it's potential characteristics at once. However, these profiles would not include exceedingly extraordinary and exceedingly underwhelming feats and abilities from notable individuals of a species, and the viability of these profiles are determined on a case-by-case basis.

Still has some of the above issues, just more flexible.

 

[Antvasima]

@Dargoo & Agnaa

Thank you for helping out.

 

[Antvasima]

I cleaned up the language a bit:

"Profiles for entire species may be acceptable, if it can be shown that the species in question would potentially be capable of having any and all of it's potential characteristics at once. However, these profiles should not include exceedingly extraordinary or underwhelming feats and abilities from notable individuals of a species, and the viability of these profiles are determined on a case-by-case basis."

 

[Andytrenom]

Had to skim through this thread so apologize if I missed anything, but I have something to say about species profiles

I think they should not be useable in vs threads. Listing all abilities a species is capable of learning is useful for indexing purposes, but allowing one combatant to have access to all these abilities just seems ridiculous in a match-up context. You should be discussing actual characters in a thread anyway, not hypothetical concepts like a character that represents his entire species, and if it's a random instance of a species you're using, then they shouldn't be treated as having all abilities available to their kind

Maybe it's possible to have something similar to a "notable members" section which the civilisation pages have to make matchups easier, but I don think treating these species profiles the same way as character profiles is a good idea, which unless things have changed since i last visited, is something I feel Pokemon experiences

 

[Starter_Pack]

 

[Agnaa]

@Andytrenom I was vaguely under the impression that Pokemon doesn't really face an issue of creating impossible characters from its profiles, and that they do reflect common traits that all members of a given species would have.

I believe that in media aside from the games Pokemon can have more than four moves, so that limit isn't really notable. I also don't think that members of a species are generally exceptional enough to have feats wildly above what others of the species are capable of.

The only thing I could imagine being contradictory are in-game "Abilities", since I'm not sure if they're often acknowledged outside of the games, but even there I don't think many Pokemon would have two abilities that are relevant for indexing/battle purposes.

 

[HenryWong122]

@Andytrenom I was vaguely under the impression that Pokemon doesn't really face an issue of creating impossible characters from its profiles, and that they do reflect common traits that all members of a given species would have.
I believe that in media aside from the games Pokemon can have more than four moves, so that limit isn't really notable. I also don't think that members of a species are generally exceptional enough to have feats wildly above what others of the species are capable of.

The only thing I could imagine being contradictory are in-game "Abilities", since I'm not sure if they're often acknowledged outside of the games, but even there I don't think many Pokemon would have two abilities that are relevant for indexing/battle purposes.

Here are the appearances of abilities in the anime https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Ability#In_the_anime and right below that is the manga appearances.

 

[Antvasima]

I think that Agnaa seems to make sense.

 

[Andytrenom]

@Agnaa It's not about creating impossible characters, it's about using species pages like pokemon in the same manner as profiles for individual characters. This probably won't be too much of a problem when a certain species is depicted as super uniform in how they act and what their abilities are, but for pokemon incredibly crucial things like tactics and moves depend on the specific individual, especially moves. You cannot exactly determine a "normal" set of techniques for a pokemon to possess, and I think a normal personality is also only possible for a select number of pokemon, which means you either give a pokemon all abilities it can learn or arbitrarily single out some of them, neither of which seem appropriate to me. That's why I have a problem with their use in vs threads

Never said anything about the four move limit, but even with that no pokemon would really know all moves they can potentially learn (might be some exceptions in legendaries) so the problem still stands, can't have a pokemon with access to all its learnable moves when that wouldn't at all be general member of its species (which is what I feel you would even use a species profile for)

And yeah abilities exist in the anime, even if they are more than a little inconsistent

 

[Starter_Pack]

Pokemon can harness all of their abilities at once, if we go by the logic of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. For instance, Bronzong has access to Heatproof and Levitate in that game, meaning he's immune to both Fire and Ground attacks. So that's not an issue.

As for the Pokemon learning all of their moves, I believe Cal said it best the last time this argument was made, as he said this is basically a particular member of said species hitting the genetic lottery, being able to access all of their moves at once through its pedigree and other unmentioned factors. This is also why we only allow level-up and egg moves with very special exceptions, because it is assumed that there isn't any human interference with these Pokemon either.

 

[Antvasima]

@Andy

So do you have any suggestions regarding what we should do here?

 

[Andytrenom]

"I believe Cal said it best the last time this argument was made, as he said this is basically a particular member of said species hitting the genetic lottery, being able to access all of their moves at once through its pedigree and other unmentioned factors."

That's essentially just making up a character that doesn't exist, and I do not see how that is at all excusable in a vs debating context. I do think all learnable moves should be featured in a profile since the purpose of those is being a database, but I do not see why we have to do so via the premise that a super member of the species who has accessed all possible moves its species is capable of, and is purely hypothetical in nature, is what is being indexed as its own character

I feel for species that can be so diverse in aspects important for debating (moves in this case), its better to only consider specific established members for a thread, and not allow the result of compiling all these possible abilities to be used as an individual combatant in a thread. I'm sorry, but the "genetic lottery" thing to me sounds like nothing more than a path to serious exaggeration that is completely unnecessary

 

[Andytrenom]

@Andy

So do you have any suggestions regarding what we should do here?

It might be good to just get solid guidelines on species profiles as a whole, not sure if that would require its own thread though

If that isn't necessary, I think use of pokemon profiles in a way that they get all abilities listed on their profiles in a thread, should be prohibited. This only affects vs threads if we go with a simple ban for pokemon profiles, but if we try to find a way for specific members to be included within the profiles, who are useable in threads, the discussion will probably shift to standard formats

 

[Sera_EX]

I think a Pokémon should be understood to have all of their abilities. Pokémon is an RPG first before anything else and if the Ashen One for example gets all of their abilities (all the magic, pyromancy, weapons, etc.) I'm not sure why a Pokémon (chosen as representative of the entire species capabilities for our purposes), wouldn't also get that same treatment. Especially when doing so doesn't go against canonicity like traditional composite profiles do.

 

[Antvasima]

I agree with Sera. Sorry Andy.

 

[Dragonmasterxyz]

i am also in disagreement with species file not being usable in vs battles as well.

 

[Sera_EX]

I should note that I do agree with Andy about species in general (if any have those issues), but Pokémon is an exception due to being RPG-based.

 

[Starter_Pack]

Digimon as well, for similar reasons. But, I also agree with Andy in general on that topic.