MelonHead

Arena Chat Thread

<Snipped quote by MelonHead>

I'd imagine a straight shot to the jaw would take even a trained fighter down if another trained fighter of equal skill delivered it (note how I didn't mention how said opponent would handle the punch, as I'm not actively trying to reason out how one character can evade or alleviate the damage of a punch, which is a whole different matter), in a reasonable roleplay. I'm not talking about pure skill and how it can change the tide of battle. Skill is an assumed constant. That's just one scenario one that I proposed initially. The addition of armor changes the circumstances. Regardless, a blade through a joint can end a fight as quickly as a blow to the jaw. Superhuman characters tend to be able to tank what normally would be lethal otherwise, via enhanced durability or other means.

@Doc Doctor

Your point was that a fight is over quicker at lower tier levels, though if you believe that because you can physically disable a human by delivering a super precise and powerful blow, that's faulty reasoning. A human being could also be disabled very quickly by punching them as hard as you can in the throat or being kicked in the bollocks, but the likelihood of a blow like that landing clean in the first few seconds of a fight between two roughly equally skilled fighters who are aware they are fighting is almost non-existent, especially in the narrative format of an arena fight.

Besides which, there are plenty of examples of non-super-humans (unless you believe Shaolin monks to be superhuman, which is perhaps a matter of debate) taking blows exactly like that without being incapacitated. The danger of a blow of that kind is that it rocks the brain in the skull, rendering the person unconscious, but it is never a sure fire knock out. In fact, it rarely is at the higher levels of combat sport, unless the fighter in question is one with a 'glass' jaw. Its notable enough (being vulnerable to that sort of strike) that there is a name for it, and therefore a high likelihood that some people are quite the opposite and can take it.

Here, wikipedia talks about it. In ordinary people, who don't fight for a living, you might be right. But Arena combat is seldom about ordinary people scrapping, and when it is, it's rarely got one person who can deliver a pin-point knock out blow to the chin against a man who can't.

Fights in the real world are often quick because of a huge skill disparity, or luck. Neither of which should really be a factor in arena fights, which are more like formalised duels in structure.

Arena Chat Thread

@MelonHeadYour entire demeanor is that of someone who has had bad experiences(or at least seen a few?) and you allude to that even in your previous statement but I’ll take your word for it that you haven’t had many. I will say this however. Whether you personally see a style of fighting as completely pointless due to your own experiences is entirely irrelevant. You essentially say that you do not personally take high tier bouts seriously and that’s fine. Just don’t try to justify the reason to why as it can’t be done any other way. It’s somewhat lazy and disrespectful to people who put in the effort to play and participate in stories that involve those level of feats.

@Liaison

It would be irrelevant if I didn't explain in a fashion you haven't actually refuted why I believe its pointless. You just told me 'actually you do need to know all that stuff to fight at such an advanced level.'

Why do you need an advanced knowledge of physics at higher power levels? Characters at this level by their very nature bend and break the laws of physics, they are naturally outside of it. Give me an example of how your advanced knowledge of physics has allowed you to gain a credible advantage in a fight at higher levels?

How do you determine the skill of two competitors at a level of combat where there is no reasonable way to ground the fight in real world logic? In the real world, people have a set number of limbs, gravity acts upon them, there are only certain moves that work, there is a limited time-frame in which they can act, react, there are restrictions on their sensory capacity. You could reward someone for effectively using cover, for blinding an opponent, for misdirection. There is no way to do these things at a level of power where human physical restrictions are completely non-existent, this is the level of power I refer to as 'shit' for determining skill in combat. Every character at this level can sense actions around them, they use magic rather than physical actions, they are not reliant on restrictive biological sensory capacity, and more importantly, they have a range of magical powers they can pull from that offers them a solution to almost every problem they can encounter with a flick of their wrist.

If you box in characters as shit because you personally do not see it possible to play them at a high skill that is entirely on you. They take skill, knowledge of physics, logic (especially) and forethought, just a type you are not currently aware of or maybe had the pleasure of being introduced to. They are not how you stated often “Shit.” Then again, if that’s what you normally see it’s not my place to tell you that’s not what you have been exposed to because that’s possible as well.

It's not just I that do this, if you were to actually look, you'd find a vast number of people are critical of characters at higher power levels when they are made the 'main character' or the 'hero'. The main example, Superman, most people consider his power-set the worst thing about him as a character. There's a good reason why Batman is widely preferred to Superman, and it's not just because he appeals to everyone's inner edge-lord. They like the fact that he is human, and out-thinks his opponents (with a little bit of plot convenience, of course.)

And I agree with them, Batman is the more interesting character because he does have to think his way through problems that Superman can lazer through, punch through, fly through, tank out, freeze, whatever.

Anyway, as I said, my opinion, but not an uncommon one either.

Arena Chat Thread

@MelonHead

Hey, maybe it's just me then. I do love high risk/high reward. I'd imagine that it is possible to go either way depending on how confident one player is on their ability to get a fast kill.

Typically though, I see folks playing up high tiers to be extra durable, hence longer fights. Clock a man in the jaw real good and he goes down. Watch two superheroes have an exchange, they shrug it off with perhaps but a moderate bruise to show.

@Doc Doctor

Well, that's more of a fictional thing. People tend to be just as durable as they need to be for the most satisfying cinematic or narrative experience. In reality, some people are extraordinarily tough, even without armour. They carry a lot of mass and muscle and know how to roll with the punches and that's where you get twelve round boxing matches or absolute brawls in MMA matches, two trained fighters hitting as hard as they can, neither going down.

In other words, there's no particular reason why a low tier fight has to end after one or two blows. Maybe you're fighting unarmed, in which case the human body can take a lot of punishment, maybe you're fighting with weapons, in which case you should really have some armour.

Arena Chat Thread

@MelonHead You are biased. That you have made clear but its not something I take offense to. Usually negative views on high tier combat derive from bad past experiences. I assume you had many and its very common since its so easy to abuse them. I've played against characters who can manipulate matter. It's pretty fun under the right rules but I digress. I also enjoy hand to hand and "semi realistic" styles of fighting and I can see the pleasure in both.

While lower tiers of combat require more understanding of the physical limits of the human body it doesn't compare to the overall amount of knowledge needed to fight competently when large scales of powers are involved. Someone could be throwing Psuedo science at you in one fight and then testing your ability to counter fantasy magic in another. It is simply the more unpredictable and entertaining experience in my opinion.

I'm not trying to debate over specific examples due to myself being on a phone currently but I'd be more than happy to introduce you to some of the themes I've worked with and how they can be used to tell stories which lower powers cannot necessarily replicate. Maybe we can even have a spar later on.

@Liaison

Oh no, most higher tier fights I've had were pretty fun. They're completely stress free, absolutely pointless though. They always looked cool, but the characters were shit, no human can portray a near omnipotent being in a convincing fashion, almost everyone falls laughably short. Also, you don't really need to know jack-shit about physics or how physical combat actually works to write higher tier battles, in fact, you'd be wasting your time even trying to apply real world physics with such powerful characters. That usually tells in the end, as the person with the biggest dick comes out on top, rather than the person who clearly knows what they're doing and put some forethought into their moves.

I'd rather see smart play rewarded, I'd rather see fights grounded in real world logic, I'd rather see characters that are portrayed in a convincing manner and are interesting to read in the medium of combat. Higher tier fights can be pretty fun, but they're still quite often shit.

Doc, that is only the case if the two characters are piss-poorly equipped for actual combat, stupid, or carrying guns. Besides which, ordinary humans can only carry out so many actions in a short period of time, every post tends to cover just a few seconds of time, so a fight that lasts thirty seconds, relatively short by movie standards, is still covering fifteen posts of action from both sides.

If two people who knew what they were doing somehow got into a fight with chainsaws (evidently they don't know what they're doing for bringing such a shit weapon into a fight) the only thing likely is that their chainsaws collide and both break. That doesn't strike me as a fight that's going to end quickly, unless neither cares about actually living. I know some people fight like that, because they forget their characters aren't suicidal.

Unless they all are, who knows.

The Rook Versus the ROCK: a Tanking Slugfest.

Rook would have grinned at the man if he wasn’t wearing a mask, in fact, he still did anyway. The man was going to get his wish, in a sense, because by-passers were starting to give the duo a wide berth, and many more were stopping to watch the show. They seemed visibly nervous, as was Quebra though he concealed it better, about the weapon Rook had hoisted onto his shoulder.

“What’s the problem, you never seen beanbag rounds before?” He ribbed the wrestler for his remarks, but his call was as much to inform the people around them that a lethal gunfight wasn’t about to ensue. He wanted them to watch, it was good for business. “Alright everyone, you better be watchin’ and listenin’, my name’s Rook, I represent the Kingdom Merc Group, tell your mates about us!”

And without further ado, he flipped the shotty off his shoulder and fired, as quick as that, a one two motion that caused one of the barrels of his weapon to fire and expunge a non-lethal projectile at wicked speed towards the wrestler’s centre of mass. It wasn’t so fast as a bullet, not even close really, but at around three hundred feet per second the impact could break a rib or put a fully-grown man on his ass. Not to mention it’d cover the scant thirty feet between them in a tenth of a second, not bad at all. The only chance the wrestler had was recognising the round was coming before Rook pulled the trigger.

Then, Rook’s demeanour shifted significantly. Gone was the almost casual stance, replaced with a dangerous focus. His left leg led as he presented the riot shield forward, holding the shotty to the right of the obstruction and leaving only the very top of his head and the bottom of his legs exposed other than that. That was about all he had to do, for now.

Arena Chat Thread

I believe this really boils down to communication between those involved. I recall when I first started out with combat role-playing that I encountered a situation where my character was described as being thrown into the bottom of a spacecraft flying overhead, then slammed into some sludge on the ground... Granted, the entire thread was to be judged upon the conclusion of the fight to see the overall victor, but I just could not wrap my head around someone else doing that. What I took away from it, however, was that I required better communication with those I am sparring with... And that such situations just push my creative talents to a new level... Simply because I myself aim to never do something like that on my end unless it serves to further the narrative and has been agreed upon by those participating in the thread ahead of time.

@Glass

That's a special level of rule-breaking. There's non-interactive attacks and then there's literally force hitting your opponent, which is not allowed at all here in the main fighting system we use. My points about non-interactive attacks is that they're akin to force hitting, because they don't offer your opponent any further option than 'well, that magic attack you pulled out your ass does exactly what you said it did, guess I lose.' In the vast majority of situations.

Arena Chat Thread

@MelonHead

Spawning fire on even some of my most basic characters wouldn’t be that much of a threat and it’s not because of strength. Some are better at combating it than others. Like some people say guns are overpowered but an easy counter to them is an advanced view of perception. If you have outterworldy eye sight you can judge the trajectory of any bullet before the shot is even fired out the nozzle.

Personally, I think using what you identified as “Non interactive” attacks are broken rather they just take skillful and considerate roleplayers to execute properly. When it's done right threads are really fun to read as they tend not to become a dodge-fest where no one gets hit or hurt.

@Liaison

I don't think you fully appreciate what being in a fire does to the majority of characters, then, to be honest. If someone can cause fire to ignite the air around you, your lungs will incinerate from the inside, your eyeballs will melt, your skin will melt, your clothes will ignite and you will asphyxiate and you will die painfully and in some cases immediately. Perhaps your basic characters aren't in anyway linked to real life physics, or perhaps you underestimate how bad it is to be directly inside a fire.

I've already said that fire alone isn't necessarily going to be super effective if used at the higher tiers, but the ability to generate it directly on a person is still broken in Arena combat in the majority of circumstances. Not every higher tier character is going to be inherently immune to burning to death, and as that's the only reasonable way to survive if you're suddenly and inexplicably engulfed in fire, it becomes non-interactive.

As for your gun example, people believe guns are overpowered because they share a wide range of similarities with non-interactive powers at the majority of power levels. It's only as you move out of the medium power level into the higher power levels that you have characters that can reliably dodge bullets, so you're left with pre-empting the pull of a trigger. The problem with this is that the speed at which people can aim and fire reliably increases with the speed at which characters can dodge and perceive actions. At the level your character is capable of avoiding a firearm, your opponent is going to have similar supernatural advantages, unless you agree that a firearm is unbalanced and that only an ordinary human should be allowed to use them at that power level. In reality, it takes no effort to simply point a gun in someone's direction, and with that you have cut off their ability to move in a wide range of fashions. Using guns is easy in arena combat, because no one ever misses their target. Also, when you actually translate what a firearm can do to cold-hard statistics, you would be highly dubious of a magical power capable of the same feat.

I think that personally if you need to rely on an attack your opponent couldn't conceivably avoid in any fashion, they just have to take it, then you're probably not a very good fighter to begin with. The entire point of the Arena is to manoeuvre your opponent into a situation where you can land the hits, disable their characters over time, back them into a corner and then finish them off. I don't really see any merit in 'My character incinerates the air around your own, this will result in your immediate death.'

Then again, I may be biased because I think the higher tiers are pretty worthless as Arena fights, they only really serve as fun mess around battles. There's no real skill involved at those levels, other than in writing interesting scenes of combat. You can only really have skill in a fight that is still at least partially grounded in real world logic. This is just been my experience over the years, but as the largest arena tournament currently being run has been and is run at the lower power levels, I think that pretty much speaks for itself.

I suppose what I'm saying is I completely disagree with everything you said, but you're entitled to your opinion.

The Rook Versus the ROCK: a Tanking Slugfest.

My character is still inspired by Gigue, armour wise. Not much else though. Your character has double the rock arms Sigurd has.

Arena Chat Thread

@MelonHead, I don't think gravity should be on that list. In that case you could say any type of magic, like advanced fire magic that spawns at your opponent's location at a glance. Time and teleportation is more inherently op, although any type of magic wouldn't be with certain restrctions. We're assuming a whole lot, but of course its much easier to generalize magic types rather than list all the possibilities.

@ImportantNobody

Like I said, most powers can be raised to the extreme at which it becomes non-interactive, and therefore broken. Most are expected to have a travel time for this reason, but gravity manipulation is usually direct, you change the force of gravity acting directly on a person, which can quickly allow you to kill them. The ability to generate fire on a person's location is also an example of an ability that is overpowered at any level. Sure, many higher tiers might not be overly bothered by fire but if they were they would die without being able to interact with it.

Arena Chat Thread

He's technically correct on this matter from a certain point of view. In my multiverse there are plenty of op people but are not op against each other. They are simply unfair to fight against for anyone who's not at their level. If someone has an attack that always hits, someone with an op dodging ability can counter him. My guy with infinite attack power can still be stopped by someone who's also op. Someone who stops time in my setting is countered and defeated. An immovable object and and unstoppable force are both op but can still fight on equal terms depending on what laws govern your setting.

@ImportantNobody

That's because you wrote your setting. Your setting is completely irrelevant to the medium of arena roleplay, which is what this discussion is about, and what my point is centred on. Arena combat does not entail people crafting characters with hyper specific powers to combat every variety of opponent, its about compromise and working through disadvantages and out-thinking an opponent. Some abilities will always be inherently overpowered, broken in other words, for the medium of arena combat, especially in T1 Eden. If an ability completely shuts down all avenues of further action unless one happens to have an ability that directly prevents it, the ability is broken.