Also, this is super late, but the more I think about it, the more the talk of "lore-accurate" abilities feels off to me because why are we knee-capping ourselves to just stuff we need to bend backwards to prove exists when other video game verses, especially other Hoyoverse games, some already directly overseen by moderators, get to keep their gameplay kits in their abilities? It's very much a common thing for profiles to use a hybrid of mechanics demonstrated in-game and during stories.
Xingqiu's Healing was never elaborated on beyond being a part of his kit.
March 7th never had an opportunity to cast some kind of shield in a cutscene, yet it's on her profile. Should we wait for the
Warden to deflect projectiles in a cutscene because we're not so sure if that's actually an in-lore ability? Does
Kazuma Kiryu just straight up not get HEAT's gameplay benefits because there's no basis for them? Remember, for all intents and purposes, it's meant to be a mundane Japanese setting.
You could argue that this should be a measure only for games with absolutely zero story content or cutscenes, but that's also an unfair advantage for stories that get to keep their kits while others languish with barebones ass abilities because we're walled off by an arbitrary need for a solid in-universe basis for them to be usable. And you could also argue that it should be the standard for all, but that's frankly just an opinion on standards rather than an immutable law that must be followed religiously.
If we reversed this logic and demanded gameplay feats only, and believe me, games can be as much anti-feats as they are buffs, then suddenly profiles are barren in the other direction because suddenly characters that can tank nukes or create storms with pure strength or whatever get downgraded to 9-C because they died to a ten-foot fall in-game. The point is that sticking to either extreme is unproductive and just kneecaps a verse, and takes the fun out of indexing it. Frankly, everyone loses if we are forced to adhere to a standard that forces players to fulfill a set of criteria before implementing the unthinkable: an actual part of the game instead of fishing for crumbs from text descriptions and cutscenes.
And just a reminder that most cases of
Game Mechanics are addressed with the express purpose of explaining contradictions between lore and what happens in gameplay. This wouldn't target gameplay kits to begin with; it would target the fact that ZZZ characters can't jump over obstacles, need bridges to cross gaps jumpable by their normal selves, or destroy obstacles they would normally be able to with their power. There's a very high threshold for contradiction before you look at something that a character directly achieves in gameplay and think "this is too contradictory" with what's in-lore to really belong.
On that topic, if we are going through with a downgrade CRT at some point in the future, here are the following things I'll be alright with:
- Removing Vital View only for characters who don't demonstrate it in-game. Defensive Assist characters can take the kneecap. Evasive Assists, as well as Yixuan's and Hugo's own time slow, should absolutely stay.
- Removing in-game related stat buffs to in-game statistics like ATK, DEF, CRIT, etc., and just slapping a generic Statistics Amplification
- Removing Mindscape stat-related buffs
Others I will heavily argue against for the sake of precedent, as well as the fact that these changes are only being implemented to please one person in this verse.
