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Reality Equalization: A compromise of arbitrarity

Bobsican

Bobsican

He/Him
21,177
6,089
Has anyone noticed that tier 0 has nearly as many character as tier 11? No? Well, make a wild guess how.

As some may be aware, Reality Equalization has been a tiering semantic on the site for years, but there's some issues I have with the reasons for it existing as it currently is, I'll start by quoting the thread that made it in the first place.

And while yes it is rather unusual, I do think we should keep allowing it for a few reasons. The most important of which is that refusing to do it would remove tons of character from any relevant matches due to the unfortunate status of their verse. Stuff like the Matrix, SAO or Code Lyoko would be reduced to 10-B or 11-A matches forever, despite the fact that the focus of their series is actual, 3-D combat, just set in a virtual world.
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Nowadays ironically this is the most irrelevant reason to keep something like this, matches are a low priority that don't correlate to how we index stuff on the site, by that logic we may as well allow just equalizing stats in general, which has been a consistently denied idea whenever it has been brought up.

Secondly, there is the fact that oftentimes in fiction, "reality" is subjective. Plenty of fictions have the real world as fiction to a greater being. This is even more blatant in fictions like SCP (be ready to see this verse pop up a lot here), which has basically endless layers of fiction, with no definitive "baseline". In those cases, we just decided to choose the most prominent "level" of reality as the baseline. While the comparison with virtual worlds isn't exactly proper, it at least proves that we're willing to somewhat arbitrarily define a baseline if it's prominent enough within a given work of fiction.
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Now, this is a better reasoning, but on the other hand we don't really care about how authors intend to rate their characters compared to our own standards (as much we don't make the logical extreme by rating as tier 0 any character constantly stated to be "omnipotent"), heck, authors often can't even do math, why make an exception here?

That said, what constitutes as the "baseline reality" is indeed a very variable thing, but arbitrarily picking what constitutes it without specifying that such act was done in lack of better options is not good.

Currently several pages relying on Reality Equalization rate characters without making it clear on the tiering description of every involved page that Reality Equalization is a factor, nor note the "real" tier they'd be without it (namely anywhere from tier 11 to 10-C), in turn misleadinly exaggerating the ratings of these characters.

So, what'd be my proposal? Modify Reality Equalization standards to force pages that rely on it to list the following details, preferably also including the "Power of the Verse" section in verse pages:

- The tier the characters affected by Reality Equalization are without it, usually anywhere from tier 11 and 10-C by being data, drawings or otherwise fiction like dreams and "normal" imagination/delusions.

- The tier the characters affected by Reality Equalization are if we take the lowest "relevant" layer as the "baseline 3D" one, such layer must have characters that play an impactful role (more than background characters) and are explicitly portrayed as "real" in their perspective, this is to avoid arguing for 99% of characters into tier 1 just because they can dream (or dreams "existing" in the setting at all), and acts as a sort of compromise between some of the old reasonings and minimizing subjectivity to ease users into getting more detailed evaluations for the given characters.
Naturally this one can be skipped out of redundancy if it'd be the same tier as the one with Reality Equalization.

For example, most (if not all) Sword Art Online characters would have each "in-game" key going like "X tier (insert feats/scaling here), 10-C without Reality Equalization (Is made of data)", while most SCP characters could potentially be argued to go like "X tier (insert feats/scaling here), 0 in comparison to the lowest layer (insert explanation on how there's infinite lower narratives that are basically tier 0 structures in relation)".

I'll reiterate those are just examples to illustrate the idea, I'm also aware this can considerably raise and lower the tiers of multiple characters, but also note that the entire premise for this relies on how this kind of stuff is ultimately subjective, and so just listing multiple ends in such cases is best to remain clear to the userbase, instead of just trying to adhere to what an author wanted for no real reason as said before, without even making that clear either.

Pages like Higher Dimensional Existence and Immersion may require being updated if the above is accepted in some manner, but I'd rather keep that for another thread after this.
 
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I kinda like this idea. Characters that are code, dreams, fictional inverse, and stuff like that should get one key that says how they scale with Reality equalization and another key that says where they scale without reality equalization. That could give the tier 11 characters more characters (As it should, there should be more tier 11 characters) and be more realistic in a way, It can make up for different and fun debates.
 
Actually, I would argue that the first argument is the most relevant, as we wish to rate the characters in the sense we experience them as. So ranking a video game character by something other than the feats we see in its story due to a technicality is rather meaningless. It would in essence just be making a profile for the wrong character, as it indexes a character from a perspective we never have. You could just as easily make a 10-C version of every human in a verse with Tier 1s, under the assumption that we equalize to Tier 1s in perspective. But nobody would do that, because that's not a perspective we tend to operate under as reader.

I don't think there is any need to make an irrelevant featless 10-B key, just because reality equalization is involved.
Nor do I see a reason for the other... whatever that layer is supposed to be for. The reality equalization rules we have deal with the "in-fiction" layer better from what I see.

The only thing I can agree with here is that profiles using reality equalization should make it at least implicitly clear that it is being done. For me personally, the key being "inside the game" or something similar would be enough for that, though.
 
Well, as said at the end of the OP, the proposal goes more into not only listing what'd be the tier 10 key here, but also listing the tier 11 one as well, as much we list the tier of a pilot and the tier of what they're piloting, instead of only the latter and unintentionally implying the pilot is of the same tier.

It wouldn't be irrelevant per-say as much it'd make clearer the capabilities of the characters, instead of implying they're this tier "naturally".
The idea of the "other layer" proposed is for a more neutral and less subjective take on dimensional layers, namely for cases where what's the "baseline reality" becoming rather inappropiate to pick out of multiple "layers" overall qualifying to some degree on stuff like notability, especially in cases like SCP where there's no real "baseline reality" per-say beyond what a given plot focuses on (and so wildly changes depending on the article).

TBH that's still a bit vague IMO, some verses have stuff like dreams and whatever as proper real universes or the like with just unusual names out of their nature, so being clearer for cases that rely on Reality Equalization would be appreciable.
 
DontTalkDT said:
The only thing I can agree with here is that profiles using reality equalization should make it at least implicitly clear that it is being done. For me personally, the key being "inside the game" or something similar would be enough for that, though.
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Ya this is fair request, similar concept to EE and environmental destruction.
 
DontTalkDT said:
Actually, I would argue that the first argument is the most relevant, as we wish to rate the characters in the sense we experience them as. So ranking a video game character by something other than the feats we see in its story due to a technicality is rather meaningless. It would in essence just be making a profile for the wrong character, as it indexes a character from a perspective we never have. You could just as easily make a 10-C version of every human in a verse with Tier 1s, under the assumption that we equalize to Tier 1s in perspective. But nobody would do that, because that's not a perspective we tend to operate under as reader.

I don't think there is any need to make an irrelevant featless 10-B key, just because reality equalization is involved.
Nor do I see a reason for the other... whatever that layer is supposed to be for. The reality equalization rules we have deal with the "in-fiction" layer better from what I see.

The only thing I can agree with here is that profiles using reality equalization should make it at least implicitly clear that it is being done. For me personally, the key being "inside the game" or something similar would be enough for that, though.
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I agree with this.

Thank you for helping out. 🙏
 
TBH after thinking about it for a while, I'll concede on most points.

I'd still think a character should be specified to be tiered with reality equalization, be it on the page or on the verse page.
Sure, merely checking the premise may imply that'd be the case for verses that heavily rely on it for their ratings on the site, but it's not really inherent and we're here to make stuff clear to visitors in the first place.

Perhaps we could start by writing a standard for that bit? DT already appears to somewhat agree on this bit in particular.
 
Bobsican said:
TBH after thinking about it for a while, I'll concede on most points.

I'd still think a character should be specified to be tiered with reality equalization, be it on the page or on the verse page.
Sure, merely checking the premise may imply that'd be the case for verses that heavily rely on it for their ratings on the site, but it's not really inherent and we're here to make stuff clear to visitors in the first place.

Perhaps we could start by writing a standard for that bit? DT already appears to somewhat agree on this bit in particular.
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@DontTalkDT

What do you think should be done here?
 
I will mention some anecdotes related to this topic. I have been to other sites and places of the internet and most of them don't use reality equalization.
I've seen it several times like when I saw some people debate characters like Monika from DDLC. They argued she would lose to characters like Sans or Jotaro Kujo simply because she is a character from a video game in her own story.

I think that reality equalization can sometimes make characters stronger than how they really are. This is an issue specially when you're trying to find who would win in a fight between some characters or which characters are the strongest because you would be buffing a character from a lower level of reality just to pit them against someone from a higher level of reality when they would realistically be weaker.

Of course, I am not saying reality equalization lacks uses. It opens the possibility for more debates. But I think it can portray a disingenuous portrayal of the strength of a character in comparison to other verses.
 
I would like to offer my opinion on this topic if that's okay. The way I see it, there are two different types of reality equalization being tackled here - the type where things like Sword Art Online and The Matrix are made of data or dreams but have a separate tier for their appearances in-universe, and the type with things like the SCP Foundation that employ literal metafiction as part of their fantasy cosmology. I would argue that the policy for instances with and without qualitative superiority should be different and that the RE policy needs a serious overhaul like we're currently doing with the RFT page.
  • For the former with dreams and data, I could see it working because data and dreams are objectively fairly normal physical matter regardless of what it's simulated as inside digital worlds; also, there's already some precedent for it in stuff like SCP, like with CORE.exe, which is High 1-A in the digital world but Tier 9 in the physical world (its data is Tier 10 but it's ranked as Tier 9 because it can possess devices that are that powerful). As such, a tier like 10-C (Made of data/dreams), <INSERT TIER> in the digital/mental world (<FEAT JUSTIFICATION>) for them is likely well-justified.
  • For the latter with cases of genuine RFT, I'm still fresh off a Q&A thread about this topic where someone brought up some r/CharacterRant posts to argue that we should tier cases of proven RFT by always treating the top layer as the baseline and tiering everything below that as Tier 11 because most stuff is real in-universe despite being fictional while verses with RFT are fiction within fiction. I and a few other people, including some staff, quickly shot down that idea because it amounted to a gross misunderstanding of how RFT is supposed to work, given how this stance seemed to be a misinterpretation of the rule that RFT can't make you interact with the real world to say that it must instead make you inferior to verses that don't have it. Not to mention, it would flood the wiki with unreliable profiles because most authors consider incorporating transcendent layers to be an upwards climb, not something that pushes their power levels down (If proven, the second type of metafiction would actually cause the characters to be Tier 11, an example being the narratives in the SCP Foundation cosmology that are explicitly portrayed as inferior to the main narrative). I would argue that reality equalization as a policy shouldn't even be related to this type of genuine RFT, as to say "reality equalization" implies that the obvious baseline realities in types of verses like SCP are inherently unequal to verses that don't use RFT and we have to use a convention to make them equal, which provides ammunition to ranters who hate on our Tiering System. When I tried to argue for a more comprehensive note to guard against this misconception, DontTalkDT told me the reality equalization page covered it, and though I didn't agree, I didn't push the issue at the time because Ant agreed with him and I had already gotten the Q&A thread to say that VS Battles Wiki doesn't recognize r/CharacterRant's butchering of our RFT policies.
TL;DR: I believe Reality Equalization should be deleted and split into two different policies, the first being something like "Existence Equalization" that would cover dreams, data, and the like receiving different tiers for their data and their "internal" portrayals, and the second could be incorporated into the RFT page as a more comprehensive policy to determine which layer in a metafictional reality-fiction hierarchy we treat as the baseline.
 
IdiosyncraticLawyer said:
I would like to offer my opinion on this topic if that's okay. The way I see it, there are two different types of reality equalization being tackled here - the type where things like Sword Art Online and The Matrix are made of data or dreams but have a separate tier for their appearances in-universe, and the type with things like the SCP Foundation that employ literal metafiction as part of their fantasy cosmology. I would argue that the policy for instances with and without qualitative superiority should be different and that the RE policy needs a serious overhaul like we're currently doing with the RFT page.
  • For the former with dreams and data, I could see it working because data and dreams are objectively fairly normal physical matter regardless of what it's simulated as inside digital worlds; also, there's already some precedent for it in stuff like SCP, like with CORE.exe, which is High 1-A in the digital world but Tier 9 in the physical world (its data is Tier 10 but it's ranked as Tier 9 because it can possess devices that are that powerful). As such, a tier like 10-C (Made of data/dreams), <INSERT TIER> in the digital/mental world (<FEAT JUSTIFICATION>) for them is likely well-justified.
  • For the latter with cases of genuine RFT, I'm still fresh off a Q&A thread about this topic where someone brought up some r/CharacterRant posts to argue that we should tier cases of proven RFT by always treating the top layer as the baseline and tiering everything below that as Tier 11 because most stuff is real in-universe despite being fictional while verses with RFT are fiction within fiction. I and a few other people, including some staff, quickly shot down that idea because it amounted to a gross misunderstanding of how RFT is supposed to work, given how this stance seemed to be a misinterpretation of the rule that RFT can't make you interact with the real world to say that it must instead make you inferior to verses that don't have it. Not to mention, it would flood the wiki with unreliable profiles because most authors consider incorporating transcendent layers to be an upwards climb, not something that pushes their power levels down (If proven, the second type of metafiction would actually cause the characters to be Tier 11, an example being the narratives in the SCP Foundation cosmology that are explicitly portrayed as inferior to the main narrative). I would argue that reality equalization as a policy shouldn't even be related to this type of genuine RFT, as to say "reality equalization" implies that the obvious baseline realities in types of verses like SCP are inherently unequal to verses that don't use RFT and we have to use a convention to make them equal, which provides ammunition to ranters who hate on our Tiering System. When I tried to argue for a more comprehensive note to guard against this misconception, DontTalkDT told me the reality equalization page covered it, and though I didn't agree, I didn't push the issue at the time because Ant agreed with him and I had already gotten the Q&A thread to say that VS Battles Wiki doesn't recognize r/CharacterRant's butchering of our RFT policies.
TL;DR: I believe Reality Equalization should be deleted and split into two different policies, the first being something like "Existence Equalization" that would cover dreams, data, and the like receiving different tiers for their data and their "internal" portrayals, and the second could be incorporated into the RFT page as a more comprehensive policy to determine which layer in a metafictional reality-fiction hierarchy we treat as the baseline.
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@AKM sama @DontTalkDT @DarkDragonMedeus @Mr._Bambu @Celestial_Pegasus @Wokistan @Ultima_Reality @Elizhaa @Qawsedf234 @ByAsura @Sir_Ovens @Damage3245 @Starter_Pack @Abstractions @LordGriffin1000 @Colonel_Krukov @SamanPatou @GyroNutz @Firestorm808 @Everything12 @Maverick_Zero_X @Crabwhale

What do you think about this?
 
I personally wouldn't want all the verses that rely a lot on reality equalization to fight other verses to be nuked. But I'd prefer a lot of they had 2 different keys. One for showing where they're realistically at and one for reality equalization (Where they were)
 
Tllmbrg said:
I myself think reality equalization should be nuked and verses like the Matrix be indexed as 10-C while SCP and other metafiction heavy verses as tier 11
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This would flood our wiki with extremely unreliable profiles for the reasons I explained above. Verses like the Matrix should have separate tiers for their data and their simulated portrayals to allow for more matchup diversity while verses like SCP, which any reasonable reading of their metafiction would make them more powerful, not less, being relegated to tier 11 would shamelessly betray the whole purpose of RFT and make our tiers for them essentially a joke. Introducing layers that see the primary narrative as fiction introduces layers above the baseline; it doesn't retroactively make the main narrative inferior to the baseline. Introducing layers that the primary narrative sees as fiction would be creating narratives below the baseline.
 
Tllm is making a joke, which is what a lot of us think about this proposal.

This proposal is grossly overlooking the fact that context is important when we evaluate verses. Sure, Monika is 11-A outside of the world she inhabits, but the experience offered to us does not come from the context outside the fictional world she inhabits, it is within.

The layer of reality from which a fiction is presented to us should always be set as the baseline and it is dumb to require our pages to insinuate otherwise due to a technicality.

Remember kids, context is key.
 
Sir_Ovens said:
Tllm is making a joke, which is what a lot of us think about this proposal.

This proposal is grossly overlooking the fact that context is important when we evaluate verses. Sure, Monika is 11-A outside of the world she inhabits, but the experience offered to us does not come from the context outside the fictional world she inhabits, it is within.

The layer of reality from which a fiction is presented to us should always be set as the baseline and it is dumb to require our pages to insinuate otherwise due to a technicality.

Remember kids, context is key.
Click to expand...
Then make that clearer when you're joking.
 
Sir_Ovens said:
Tllm is making a joke, which is what a lot of us think about this proposal.
Click to expand...
No I'm not
IdiosyncraticLawyer said:
This would flood our wiki with extremely unreliable profiles for the reasons I explained above. Verses like the Matrix should have separate tiers for their data and their simulated portrayals to allow for more matchup diversity while verses like SCP, which any reasonable reading of their metafiction would make them more powerful, not less, being relegated to tier 11 would shamelessly betray the whole purpose of RFT and make our tiers for them essentially a joke. Introducing layers that see the primary narrative as fiction introduces layers above the baseline; it doesn't retroactively make the main narrative inferior to the baseline. Introducing layers that the primary narrative sees as fiction would be creating narratives below the baseline.
Click to expand...
I just don't agree with this. If your story/cosmology goes on and on about how it's a story/data I just find it ???? on why we are giving the hogher rating, when it in fact ignores the intent of the work.
I fail to see how a page being only tier 10-11 8s unreliable.

If the point is "This would kill matches" yah idc lol
 
Would using two separate tiers for characters from such verses be a good idea or not? I am mostly neutral to the idea myself so far.
 
Tllmbrg said:
No I'm not

I just don't agree with this. If your story/cosmology goes on and on about how it's a story/data I just find it ???? on why we are giving the hogher rating, when it in fact ignores the intent of the work.
I fail to see how a page being only tier 10-11 8s unreliable.

If the point is "This would kill matches" yah idc lol
Click to expand...
The point isn't that this would kill matches. It's that the real way of ignoring the intent of the work is to say "oh, this work acknowledges that it's fiction, so let's make it extraordinarily weaker than works that don't acknowledge this" when both works are very clearly set in baseline 3D realities that are predominant within their verses and whatever's viewing the first work as fiction is clearly portrayed as above the baseline. What you're proposing would entail a massive rewrite of our reality-fiction transcendence policies as a whole, which are set to treat the most prominent layer in a reality-fiction hierarchy as the baseline so that the reality shown to us has the same tier as the real world.
 
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Antvasima said:
Would using two separate tiers for characters from such verses be a good idea or not? I am mostly neutral to the idea myself so far.
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My proposal was to use them in cases of data, dreams, and illusions but not in cases of genuine metafiction, the reasons for which I elaborated on in my previous post.
 
IdiosyncraticLawyer said:
What you're proposing would entail a massive rewrite of our reality-fiction transcendence policies as a whole, which are set to treat the most prominent layer in a reality-fiction hierarchy as the baseline so that the reality shown to us has the same tier as the real world.
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We should, yes
 
That we don't treat the layers most explored within a setting as the baseline of reality.

If your cosmology acts like the highest layer is just some regular IRL dudes I think it's bizarre to act like they're some higher d entity instead of saying the layer we explored is tier 11.
Same thing with narratives like the Matrix where it being code is a heavy part of the story to then be treated as regular reality instead of 10-C
 
Tllmbrg said:
That we don't treat the layers most explored within a setting as the baseline of reality.

If your cosmology acts like the highest layer is just some regular IRL dudes I think it's bizarre to act like they're some higher d entity instead of saying the layer we explored is tier 11.
Same thing with narratives like the Matrix where it being code is a heavy part of the story to then be treated as regular reality instead of 10-C
Click to expand...
Except it's equally bizarre to say that regular IRL dudes should be treated as lower-d entities. In a scenario where two people exist when one has RFT over the other, whichever one we choose as the baseline, the other will have to be treated as a different dimensionality than portrayed. Bizarreness is inherent to our tiering system, and our current policies ensure that as few characters as possible have to be treated bizarrely. As for cases about code and dreams, I did agree with them receiving separate tiers for their code and subjective portrayals.
 
IdiosyncraticLawyer said:
Except it's equally bizarre to say that regular IRL dudes should be treated as lower-d entities. In a scenario where two people exist when one has RFT over the other, whichever one we choose as the baseline, the other will have to be treated as a different dimensionality than portrayed. Bizarreness is inherent to our tiering system, and our current policies ensure that as few characters as possible have to be treated bizarrely. As for cases about code and dreams, I did agree with them receiving separate tiers for their code and subjective portrayals.
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Them being treated as lower d does not go against how they're portrayed at all. In fact with stuff like The Matrix, the plot hinges on them ******* with stuff from the outside to win. Other examples like Monika also hinge on the whole interaction being around data and not some dimensional stuff.
 
Tllmbrg said:
That we don't treat the layers most explored within a setting as the baseline of reality.

If your cosmology acts like the highest layer is just some regular IRL dudes I think it's bizarre to act like they're some higher d entity instead of saying the layer we explored is tier 11.
Click to expand...
Well, I think that our current rules seem good in that regard. The baseline for the setting is used as just that.
Tllmbrg said:
Same thing with narratives like the Matrix where it being code is a heavy part of the story to then be treated as regular reality instead of 10-C
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The same as what I said above applied here, but perhaps we could create inside of baseline setting and outside of baseline setting statistics for these types of characters?
 
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Tllmbrg said:
Them being treated as lower d does not go against how they're portrayed at all. In fact with stuff like The Matrix, the plot hinges on them ******* with stuff from the outside to win. Other examples like Monika also hinge on the whole interaction being around data and not some dimensional stuff.
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You're conflating the two topics being discussed here. The Matrix and Monica, which are data instead of metafiction, wouldn't qualify for RFT in the first place, and I've already said I have no problem with separate keys for their data and their in-setting stats.
 
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