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Or "The Problem With Long Powers & Abilities Lists" if you are a reasonable human being.
Yes, the title is intentionally unnecessarily big
Introductio
Alright, there is something which I feel has been plaguing our wiki for far too long, and which absolutely needs to be addressed. It is something that many have long begun to realize, and many more actively complain about - myself included - but which no one has bothered to provide a solution for.
Namely, Powers & Abilities Lists that are too. goddamn. long.
We've all seen this time and again, from Umineko no Naku Koro ni Characters, to Kirby to Sailor Moo to Rimuru Tempest to Uchiha Madara to Reinhard Heydrich and so, so, so goddamn many more.
They're aesthetically ugly, they're cluttered and messy, they're a pain to navigate through, they're comically ludicrously, and you'll often hurt your eyes looking upon them. As a poet once eloquently put it:
But how can we do this?
Well, we certainly cannot ban long powers & abilities lists, as they are a genuine necessity for some profiles. Specially when dealing with more overpowered cosmic characters whose abilities can best be summarized as "All of them".
But we must do something to fix the current state of such lists, and I have come up with two solutions for the problem. A Short Term solution, and a Long Term solution.
The Short Term Solution: Tabbers
Contrary to the powers & abilities lists this post deals with, this solution is simple and to the point. Hell, it's right there on the title.
Tabbers quickly and elegantly solve the issue of overly long Powers & Abilities list. It's quite obviously really. Much of these profiles have such horrendously long lists because they list all powers for each individual key, often making no distinction or break between them, or repeating the same powers over and over for each key. You can quickly imagine how writing "Superhuman Physical Characteristics", "Immortality (Types 1, 3, 4)", "Reality Warping, "Flight", "Energy Manipulation"... 6 times over in one profile alone would clutter things.
For that, use tabbers and break between keys. For demonstration, look at the profile for the Divine Angels from Shin Megami Tensei. At 30 kilobytes+, it is quite a lengthy profile, and yet its Powers & Abilities list is small and elegant, despite the profile sporting nine keys.
This is because instead of listing the powers all at once, it relies on tabbers to break it down, resulting in the following, as opposed to the sheer obscenely huge wall that would be generated were there not to be tabbers.
So these can be applied to all profiles that have overly long powers & abilities lists and are broken up into multiple keys.
But there's a second solution, more difficult to apply, but necessary all the same.
The Long Term Solution: A Cultural Change
Often times, these profiles will have such long powers & abilities list not out of necessity. Not because the character legitimately has so many different and varied powers. Not because they all need to be explained in such excruciating detail. Not because there's no two ways about it and there's nothing we can do. No.
The sad reality is that most often, such profiles will have these lists because the makers of the profiles want it.
They want their favorite characters to be as overpowered and jacked as possible, and since it's very difficult to do so through tier upgrades, as wank there is easily perceptible, it's far easier to do so with powers and hax. And so, we get ostentatiously huge lists that explain every single profile in the most inexcrutable minute detail even when there is no need, and the abilities are perfectly self-explanatory, while also adding superfluous and unnecessary profiles that repeat themselves.
The end is result is a powers & abilities list that's so big that literally no one will want to read it, and the character will artificially be considered haxed and OP.
This is a sad reality, but it is something that must be admitted and faced. This wiki is to stand for accuracy, not favouritism, and as such people need to have unbiased reason when making profiles. Listing every powers and ability of a character is nice, but is it really necessary to explain everything in a single paragraph list?
Why not do so in the "Notable Abilities / Techniques" portion below, which is what many profiles do. It's much more visually elegant and pleasing to read, and doesn't clutter the profile.
On a similar level, do you really need to list every single profile the charactr has ever shown in the history of everything. If you make an RPG character, do you really to list every single spell, skill, perk, ability and equipment item in the game on the profile?
No, of course you done, it's overbearing and superflous and it's done solely to add fat onto the profile, to make him artificially bigger. We're at a state where it's practically a cold war to see who can make the bigger and longer profiles here, and it's honestly sad.
"Brevity is the soul of wit", once said William Shakespeare, and I'm inclined to agree. Less is more. Quality should be prioritized over quantity, and that applies to not only number of profiles, but the content of individual profiles.
We must take that in mind throughout the future of VsBattles in more ways than one, but it can start with powers & abilities lists.
Yes, the title is intentionally unnecessarily big
Introductio
Alright, there is something which I feel has been plaguing our wiki for far too long, and which absolutely needs to be addressed. It is something that many have long begun to realize, and many more actively complain about - myself included - but which no one has bothered to provide a solution for.
Namely, Powers & Abilities Lists that are too. goddamn. long.
We've all seen this time and again, from Umineko no Naku Koro ni Characters, to Kirby to Sailor Moo to Rimuru Tempest to Uchiha Madara to Reinhard Heydrich and so, so, so goddamn many more.
They're aesthetically ugly, they're cluttered and messy, they're a pain to navigate through, they're comically ludicrously, and you'll often hurt your eyes looking upon them. As a poet once eloquently put it:
| IT'S TIME TO STOP. |
But how can we do this?
Well, we certainly cannot ban long powers & abilities lists, as they are a genuine necessity for some profiles. Specially when dealing with more overpowered cosmic characters whose abilities can best be summarized as "All of them".
But we must do something to fix the current state of such lists, and I have come up with two solutions for the problem. A Short Term solution, and a Long Term solution.
The Short Term Solution: Tabbers
Contrary to the powers & abilities lists this post deals with, this solution is simple and to the point. Hell, it's right there on the title.
Tabbers quickly and elegantly solve the issue of overly long Powers & Abilities list. It's quite obviously really. Much of these profiles have such horrendously long lists because they list all powers for each individual key, often making no distinction or break between them, or repeating the same powers over and over for each key. You can quickly imagine how writing "Superhuman Physical Characteristics", "Immortality (Types 1, 3, 4)", "Reality Warping, "Flight", "Energy Manipulation"... 6 times over in one profile alone would clutter things.
For that, use tabbers and break between keys. For demonstration, look at the profile for the Divine Angels from Shin Megami Tensei. At 30 kilobytes+, it is quite a lengthy profile, and yet its Powers & Abilities list is small and elegant, despite the profile sporting nine keys.
This is because instead of listing the powers all at once, it relies on tabbers to break it down, resulting in the following, as opposed to the sheer obscenely huge wall that would be generated were there not to be tabbers.
So these can be applied to all profiles that have overly long powers & abilities lists and are broken up into multiple keys.
But there's a second solution, more difficult to apply, but necessary all the same.
The Long Term Solution: A Cultural Change
Often times, these profiles will have such long powers & abilities list not out of necessity. Not because the character legitimately has so many different and varied powers. Not because they all need to be explained in such excruciating detail. Not because there's no two ways about it and there's nothing we can do. No.
The sad reality is that most often, such profiles will have these lists because the makers of the profiles want it.
They want their favorite characters to be as overpowered and jacked as possible, and since it's very difficult to do so through tier upgrades, as wank there is easily perceptible, it's far easier to do so with powers and hax. And so, we get ostentatiously huge lists that explain every single profile in the most inexcrutable minute detail even when there is no need, and the abilities are perfectly self-explanatory, while also adding superfluous and unnecessary profiles that repeat themselves.
The end is result is a powers & abilities list that's so big that literally no one will want to read it, and the character will artificially be considered haxed and OP.
This is a sad reality, but it is something that must be admitted and faced. This wiki is to stand for accuracy, not favouritism, and as such people need to have unbiased reason when making profiles. Listing every powers and ability of a character is nice, but is it really necessary to explain everything in a single paragraph list?
Why not do so in the "Notable Abilities / Techniques" portion below, which is what many profiles do. It's much more visually elegant and pleasing to read, and doesn't clutter the profile.
On a similar level, do you really need to list every single profile the charactr has ever shown in the history of everything. If you make an RPG character, do you really to list every single spell, skill, perk, ability and equipment item in the game on the profile?
No, of course you done, it's overbearing and superflous and it's done solely to add fat onto the profile, to make him artificially bigger. We're at a state where it's practically a cold war to see who can make the bigger and longer profiles here, and it's honestly sad.
"Brevity is the soul of wit", once said William Shakespeare, and I'm inclined to agree. Less is more. Quality should be prioritized over quantity, and that applies to not only number of profiles, but the content of individual profiles.
We must take that in mind throughout the future of VsBattles in more ways than one, but it can start with powers & abilities lists.
