Question about the Speed stat

[Lasatar]

I've been a member of this wiki for a few months now, and I've noticed a few strage things when it comes to character statistics. Most notably Speed. For an example, I'll base this off the Profile of Link from Ocarina of Time. In the profile, it states that he has Supersonic+ movement speed, with Hypersonic+ reactions and combat speed as a child, and Massively Hypersonic+ overall speed as an adult. Something about this doesn't make sense. Loading up an old save file in Ocarina of Time, it appears that Link can run a few times his height every second or so, and slightly faster while on Epona. Never did he ever show any proof of having MHS+ speed anywhere. It states him as Powerscaling to Ganondorf, but Ganondorf doesn't show any proof of moving at that speed either. Ganondorf is powerscaled to Onox, but Onox has a special ability that lets him travel at that speed, and can't otherwise. Ganondorf doesn't have that special ability, and was never shown to be faster than Onox in the first place. Only Stronger.

This begs the question: Are many of the Speed values on this wiki in much the same situation? Yes they are. Many characters show no proof of moving at such speeds, and saying they scale to a character with a proven speed is not legit, because they showed no proof of moving at that speed themself. Can a Boxer beat an Olimpic sprinter in a race? No. Can he beat one in a fight? Yes. It's not about speed when it comes to this sort of thing. I don't know where a lot of statistics come from, but many of them are pretty out there.

I'll use another example: RWBY. I was looking around the profiles of some of the RWBY characters, and noticed that most of them had the exact same Speed Stat. This is a bit strange, seeing as Ruby's semblance is speed, and is supposedly faster than any of the other characters (to the point where you can't see her when she moves), and yet the other characters have the exact same speed. Even Jaune. Something is clearly not right here.


If there's a valid reason for why some of the profiles have this sort of information in them, could I please hear it?

 

[DontTalk]

I don't know about any of those cases in particular and maybe some of them is wrong, but maybe a point that explains some things:

A character has not necessarily be shown to be faster. If a character can fight another character, with using special strategies or tricks, they have to be of similar speed. If that were not the case one character would just blitz the other one and never get hit.

Your boxer and olimpic sprinter example doesn't work out for fiction:

The speed difference in reality is probably less than times 2, with an absolute speed difference of about 3 m/s, normal human reaction time and also only if the runner can properly accelerate, not in a dynamic battle (in other words his dodging speed isn't very high). To that comes the fact that the human punch is simply way faster than a human can ever run.

For comparison our speed levels are between times 2 and times 10 for the next level, most having absolute speed differences of many thousand meters per second and combat speed is usually assumed to be useable to dodge on the spot.

So the differences that characters would have here to be on different levels are gigantic.


So while there are some characters that are canon wise explained to be capable of fighting way faster characters, most characters require comparable speed to do so.

 

[Lasatar]

If you put it like that, maybe. But I'm still a bit skeptical. This argument proves that combat speed can be scaled to other characters in a given series, but movement speed is still unaccounted for. Even if a character can react to a given speed, there's no proven way they'd be able to outmaneuver it. For example, characters with Precognition aren't always as fast as their opponent, but are still able to act in accordance to their opponent's actions.

In any case, I'm not entirely sure if we should base anything other than combat and reaction speed off other characters in a given series. Movement speed seems like it'd be pretty hard to measure, and unlikely be faster than Subsonic, unless a given character is specifically known for their speed.

 

[Antvasima]

I agree that the people writing the profiles in this wiki have made many mistakes in the regard of not specifying that it is the combat speed value that is intended, not the travel speed.

Unfortunately, we do not currently have the time and energy to read through almost 8100 of them to correct all of the mistakes. It has to be a gradual process.

 

[Lasatar]

Okay. Thank you for clarifying. That's all I wanted to know. We should make it a rule to specify what kind of speed certain profiles use when making new ones and changing old ones.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I think that it is already stated in the Speed page that contributors should make a distinction.

 

[Lasatar]

Okay. This seems legit. Thank you. It's just that most of the profiles on this wiki have a given speed value that would be massivly inaccurate if it were refering to Travel Speed.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, most speed values should be assumed to refer to combat speed, as that is most relevant for matchups.

 

[Lasatar]

Makes sense. Although, there are some cases where faster movement speed can come in handy.

 

[Antvasima]

Yes, but regardless, since the question has been answered, it seems best that I close this thread now.