- 8,827
- 9,403
Thats the problem though, its not quantifiable in the first place and therefore not a good feat. You cant tell me how much concrete growth he gets through that thingy (I dont know the concrete context so bear with me, I dont do Ben10) other than that he gains skill through it. Does he gain skill with every fight? How much does he get? If its a liniar mathematical formular, for how long did he get skill through that method? I will elaborate on that issue down on my Experience point, because they are pretty similar in their issues. But it basically boils down to "How big is the difference in skill from before he started to improve (Skill level starting point) to the end". And you will realize that it basically boils down to concrete skill feats in the end,
Experience is the most widespread "Skill-Fallacy" out there, for a good reason, but still a fallacy nonthenless. It makes sense intuitivly, but if you ponder over it longer, the more unrelated to skill it will be.
To illustrate this, lets assume a fictional verse. Its setting is the 100 Year War and our main character is a skilled warrior fighting in said war. To make it clear that he is a succesfull warior because of his skill, lets make him below average in physical stats. Now the gimmick of the series: Our main character is stuck in a timeloop and has to forever fight in the 100 Year War. No substential changes happen in the loop other than things caused by the maincharacter personally through different choices. In his first loop, he went from a recruit to a succsesful soldier and retains his skill and experience in the next loop.
Now the easiest thing to assume is that he would scale so long he is in the loop right? And that in a VS battle, Character B would have to fight against our main character with experience worth in the 1000's of years and that would make him really skilled right? But thats not the case, because you would have to assume multiple things for that to be true;
1. That the MC can grow endlessly
And
2. That the MC faced an endlessly growing threat for himself to grow.
What do we actually have here? A Medieval soldier that outskills other medieval soldiers. He does that for multiple dozens of loops. We dont know if he could growth through every loop in the first place, and we cant argue that he could utilisize said potential growth because nothing in that series gives us reasons to believe that he would grow through each loop.
"But Witch!" You might proclaim: "The example is unfair and heavily gimps Experience. In another more varied setting Experience would be worth more!" And thats exactly the problem. Experience in verse Example is obviously less worth than Experience in for example WH40k, but why? Because Warhammer has far more skill feats, a general far higher skill ceiling etc. Experience has no intrinsic value, because its value is directly tied to what was accomplished in that time.
You can be a thousand year old swordmaster, but you are still capped by what you actually accomplished in that time. The only time in which Experience MIGHT be a deciding factor would be when comparing 2 compareable characters. If both Characters can Analytically Predict 1 step and nothing more, the character with more experience is likely the better utiliser of said AnePre and is therefor slightly more skilled. But thats it.
