Arbitrary and Unsourced Tier Ranges (Staff Only)

If you look at the Attack Potency page you can see how we define tiers, talking particularly about the stuff below tier 2 and above 11 they are defined by a range of numbers which corresponds to a type of object that is destroyed, 0.25 tons to 2 tons representing building destruction, 11 tons to 100 tons representing City Block destruction, 5.8 kilotons to 100 kilotons representing town destruction etc. A natural conclusion from this type of classification will be that all these values have a logical reasoning for being used and perhaps, they were determined to be the standard energy output that can be associated with feats corresponding to different objects? Unfortunately this isn't entirely the case.

The Problem
I won't dance around the problem any further, the truth is a good chunk of our attack potency borders come from nowhere. 5-C and above come from destroying real life celestial objects chosen on basis of what best represented each tier, as well as what mode of destruction was appropriate and all of this is explained by blogs and articles linked on the page (You all probably remember the celestial revisions); 10-A, 9-C and 9-B are similar. However, between 9-B and 5-C there is a noticeable lack of explanation for how the tiers are obtained and why they are what they are. Let me stress this last point, one of our absolute most important pages in the wiki that we expect everyone contributing to the wiki to be acquainted with, doesn't have citations for a substantial portion of its information, the most basic thing to take care of when presenting information in general. To make things worse, it's not the only problem, there is something else which I'll get into shortly

Regarding the lack of citations, as I was told a while ago, most of our borders are supposed to come from this article on narutoforums. And going through it, it appears at least some of the tiers such as 7-C, 7-B and 6-B do come from this source since their figures exactly line up with ours. At the same time, a lot of the other calculations don't seem to. Linking this article or maybe creating a blog adapting parts of the article, in case the entire thing isn't legit, should be one step in solving the issue

But leaving aside the values that do seem to have sources, there are also values that are straight up, how do say this, made up. Yes, ever noticed how a lot of baseline values listed in the AP chart are oddly round numbers? Examples include 8-A being exactly 100 tons, Low 7-C being exactly 1 kiloton, High 7-C being exactly 100 kilotons etc. This is no coincidence, the reason there are so many conveniently round figures in the chart is because certain tiers were added without any logical basis and had their borders chosen arbitrarily. Basically, a select number of tiers are only named a certain way with no genuine correlation to the type of feats you would assume they are representing

Measures
What should be done about this? Well, the most ideal solution would be to change the borders to something more sensible but, it doesn't seem that little idea would ever take off so I'll propose a different solution. Any tier whose borders are without sources should only be assigned if there is a calculation putting a feat within that tier's border. This shouldn't need much explanation, if we cannot prove that a type of feat should typically belong within a certain energy range, then we shouldn't assume it is fine to put it within that energy range, just basic logic. Statements and estimations should be fine in case of tiers that do come from somewhere, let me make that clear, it is only the ones that don't that should receive this treatment

Here are the tiers that face the problems explained above

Now, what will need to be done if this revision is accepted? Well first of all The Tiering System page would need to be edited. Currently it explicitly mentions that the aforementioned tiers are based on destroying certain objects when in reality this is either false or lack the proof to be taken as truth, so while I won't ask for the individual descriptions to be modified since it will likely end up looking ugly, I would suggest that a note be added which clarifies that tiers without any sources are not to be given out without calculations. Maybe something along these lines?

"Contrary to the individual explanations, various tiers don't correspond to the destruction of their namesake in any provable manner. What this means is that certain tiers require proper calculations to be used rather than rough approximation. Any tier range which hasn't been sourced or explained in the Attack Potency page would fall under this and users should take care that only characters whose energy output is confirmed to fall within a certain range are listed as belonging to that tier" (Open to suggestions)

We also either need to link the Narutoforums article or a blog based on the article in the Attack Potency page as mentioned above

As for what changes it would bring to the profiles, any character that get their tier via uncalced feats or statements of destroying mountains, small/large <insert geographical area> and whatever else is included in the revision; will have to be re-examined and tiered off of a different feat, or a calculation of the original feat if that's possible. Instances of rating characters as building level via being building sized, which is very common, will also probably have to be looked into. It will also affect several creation and pocket dimension feats because a lot of them do fall under "it is as large as this object so it will be this tier" which, as the thread has showcased, being as large as an object will not automatically correspond to a tier in quite a few cases now. The last one is what I'm most worried about since I haven't figured out a good alternative method to evaluate creation feats in those cases and while I don't want to create any trouble, I also feel this revision is too important to back down on because of this complication

I think that about sums it up.

Pretty sure that 0.005 tons of TNT was confirmed by several calc members to be more than enough to blow up a small shed.

Didn't we already have a bunch of threads going over this?

DarkDragonMedeus said:

Didn't we already have a bunch of threads going over this?

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Yeah, I think we did.

The last one died. And this one's focus is different anyway since it doesn't aim to change the borders themselves

Didn't this same concern arise among staff like 5 months ago? Did that end out going nowhere? Anyway, agree with this.

I thought DonTalk already went over the Tier 6 ones at the very least. And the other ones don't have to be 100% exact, but there was plenty of note worthy statements. Gigatons being inherently in the Island range, Teratons being in the Country range, ect. But our baseline for Country level was nuking all of Japan.

@Dark I laid out all the tier ranges that would be affected or have a chance of being affected, and "Country level destruction being normally in teratons or island destruction being gigatons" wouldn't justify taking arbitrary figures in that unit.

6-B also seems to come from average country destruction, not Japan

An explosion covering the average country was like Low 6B+ IIRC

KLOL506 said:

Pretty sure that 0.005 tons of TNT was confirmed by several calc members to be more than enough to blow up a small shed.

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Whether this is due to 0.005 tons actually coming from a source related to destroying small buildings or if it's just a coincidence matters. The figure would still be baseless and inappropriate to present as a standard value for Small Building destruction feats if it's the latter

Mr. Bambu said:

An explosion covering the average country was like Low 6B+ IIRC

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Probably a different method and set of assumptions than the OBD article

I remember Spino recalced some feats for this project sometime ago

Not this project

Let me make it clear one more time that this is about adding citations and clarifying standards regarding tiering, not changing the tier system itself

Ooooooooooooooooh.

BTW, could you link me to the OBD article?

I already linked it in the OP...but sure

https://www.narutoforums.org/xfa-blog-entry/destruction-chart.16119/

It would be preferable if somebody calculated new borders for the tiers, but this would obviously result in an absolutely massive revision project.

I asked DontTalkDT to calculate better approximations in private several months ago, but he does not seem to have had the time, and I think that he also stated that the borders would still be subjective and arbitrary depending on the chosen size and used method of destruction.

Btw: Should we insert a "Staff Only" text before I highlight this thread? It seems safest to do so.

Going by The UN Environmental Programme's definition of a mountai,

4.31×10^6*8=3.448×10^10 joules, Large Building level.

Where does 8 Joules/cc come from, by the way?

@Ant If you feel it's necessary

I have highlighted the thread.

@Andy oh I see

Is it alright if I add something onto this?

Posting on a staff's message wall would probably be better

Fr 8-B, we could use Manhatan vallues of city blocks and see the values of that

Tier 9-6 of the Tiering System covers the subjects of architecture, urban design, geography/geology and we do not have any experts in these fields or anyone studying them.

I think Manhattan Blocks were calced by Kepekley

Antvasima said:

I asked DontTalkDT to calculate better approximations in private several months ago, but he does not seem to have had the time, and I think that he also stated that the borders would still be subjective and arbitrary depending on the chosen size and used method of destruction.

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Oh, I was still supposed to do that? I thought we had settled on doing a massive revision project for this purpose being absolutely not worth it since it has no real advantage.


To reiterate what I said in the last threads regarding this: Town, Cities, Mountains, Islands and Countries vary so heavily in size that it is completly irrelevant whether the values we take are that of some randomly chosen model object or not. We can not default to ranking feats of destroying one of these to be any of these either way.

E.g. if we say the standard for city level is destroying London, then the 99.5% of city destroying feats that aren't about destroying London can still not default to City level because the city might be way larger or smaller than London.


So in regards to the OP: Yeah, I agree. You need calculations to land in this tiers due to the nature of these tiers, regardless of the border placing. That was pretty much always the case, though. We have a mountain and island level requirement page for basically that very reason.

The destruction of the City block of Manhatan is around 1 kiloton, unless i maked a mistake

Destruction or explosion

There isn't a way to calc general facts like creating/controlling/destroying a town, city, building, island, etc, case in point

@Donttalk Even a lot of experienced members seem to accept that contrary to what you said, these tiers can be used in the absence of a calc, and it's even justified because the tiering system actually describes all the tiers as directly relating to their namesake and many of the unsourced tiers being commonly used as default assumptions for certain feats also set a precedent

So even if it was supposed to be the case, it's clear it all too often isn't

@DontTalkDT

Well, maybe I misremember. I have so many tasks to do all the time that it is hard to keep track of all of them.

@Andytrenom

I think that you seem to make sense.

Mr. Bambu said:

Destruction or explosion

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Explosion, how would we calc destruction for that type of feat?

I agree with DontTalk that there are too many variable sizes of cities, countries, mountains and islands which makes it hard to set up a standard value and even then most of the feats wouldn't correspond to that value.

But I think that the values in our tiering system should correspond with energy required to destroy its namesake. It will be beneficial when there's only a statement about a character destroying a city with no calc. In that case, even if we directly place that character in City level tier, it would actually correspond to its destruction value.

I actually do want to revise mountain baseline in the future, but am not too optimistic about the other currently arbitrary tiers.

The reason for the arbitrary tiers is that we never properly revised all of the values originally set up by Polar-kun. I would very much appreciate if they turn considerably more reliable at some point though.

I should note that it's supposed to be a staff only thread.

Causality is right. Constructive comments are of course always welcome, but do try to acknowledge that little detail