User:MasterKnightDH

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
The Master Knight rides again!

Basic info

I am Master Knight DH, an avid gamer who has taken interest in quite a few of the patterns in media, hence my interest in Tropes. My current interest is in tropes relating to game balance and handling, because that is an aspect I want to know how to handle in order to improve games.

I had been banned from TV Tropes for an opinion war where Battle Mage had been a dehumanizing jerk and said I had no opinion while not making the rule I had inadvertently been breaking clear. I will grant that at worst I was a Single-Issue Wonk but by that point in time, he should have messaged me on instant message considering he was one of the people who was claiming Meta Knight was somehow broken in Super Smash Bros. only to refuse my challenge even when I provided contact info for arranging a match for him to try to prove it. No, he wants to mock me, the miserable--(Technical difficulties)

Sorry about that round of cursing. Battle Mage and Fast Eddie pushed me around like a toddler. I'm not standing for it. Too bad I can't say the same about the rest of the TV Tropes userbase in general, too many of whom do not care. Not that people really care that much about how I feel. I swear, sometimes, I'm a Cosmic Plaything. I may have racked up some bad karma in the past to be fair, but you can say that about Lelouch Lamperouge, another victim of Disproportionate Retribution. At least he was lucky to get all the girls swooning over him. Me, I'm lucky if I get the time of day, rather than them being helpful instead of subjecting me to stupid use of Sleeps with Everyone But You like what had happened when a girl I had a legit crush on had stupidly accused me of raping her when I didn't even touch her and she was having sex with everybody else. At least her accusations never got off the ground, but tell me she didn't cross the Moral Event Horizon doing that.

(sigh) So anyway, I have a userblog here: http://tvtropesmirror.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:MasterKnight

Contact info

If you want to contact me, I recommend using any of the following instant message services, in order from most recommended to least:

  • Skype - mknightdh
  • MSN - mknight735@yahoo.com
  • AIM - Master Knight DH
  • YIM - mknight735

My email is mknight735@yahoo.com in case you couldn't tell. I also have a YouTube account, safe from troll shenanigans. However, I don't recommend using either for quickly resolving stuff.

Self-troping

Thought I'd do this. I will not permit unnecessary edits that aren't by me anywhere in this section.

Awesome moments

Waylon: Aw, nuts! I've heard enough! Folks like you never live very long, anyway. I'm gonna bury you, kid. Give my regards to Captain Courageous.
MKDH: No, I'M GONNA BURY YOU! And no girl in her right mind would touch you with a 10 foot pole! You abandoned your own men! You tried to glorify your own slimy skin! You served Greyfield! You reminded me of the San Francisco Bay Area residents by being apathetic! AND WORST OF ALL, YOU! KILLED! BRENNER!!! ...die now, and leave this world! You'll never belong here!
  • Destroying Caulder's CO Fighter on Day 12 in Sunrise. To elaborate, that's the very Day when Caulder tells the heroes to give up, and considering he has such broken stats that his CO Duster can munch anybody else's CO Fighter effortlessly even considering the self-repair costs, he's not bluffing, which makes seeing the CO Fighter go down right then VERY satisfying.
  • Doing the Majora's Mask 6 Day Run...collecting SEVENTEEN non-transformation masks. Made better by the fact that I accommodate it with commentary, albeit messy. What only makes this better is that I was planning for only 15-16 at the start, rather than 17.
    • Special mention to the Goron Race photo finish. It wasn't even intended to be done, it happened anyway.
  • 15 Minute Melees with everybody without abusing cheap stuff. Enjoy.
  • This humiliates Imprisoned round 1, as I destroy all 8 of the toes during the Turns Red phase in only 35 seconds. The kicker? As I point out in the description, I wasn't even meaning to do a time attack. What makes this even better is that I wasn't even using Skyward Strikes, I was using nothing but melee attacks and my wits to beat the thing.
  • In the final Kid Icarus Uprising multiplayer match at the Game Developer's Conference 2012, I was able to spearhead a comeback after my team had a very iffy start that caused our team's Pit to come out first, teamwork was very helpful. The guy who became Pit, who was sitting right next to me, was wary enough to keep himself alive, letting me gather KOs, and when he was in trouble, I came to his aid to mash the guy responsible (who I think was using claws but I wasn't paying attention) while the third teammate no doubt found and weakened the opposing Pit, to the point where when he and the third opponent came by to flank us, it ultimately proved fatal for them when he simply got rushed, all I had to do was at least shut out his escape options, and my teammate ultimately got the KO.
  • Chapter 7 of Revenge of Meta Knight. Not only do I beat Meta Knight AND his cronies (who I advertise as difficult) without getting hit, but I even make at least an educated guess at Meta Knight's actual motivation there with a simple observation.
  • Battalion Wars may be an all time favorite for me, but you can't deny that this is an accomplishment. Basically, this is doing one of the last few missions on a run with no casualties, all enemies destroyed, in under 2/3 of the time alloted for 100% Speed. Note that I did this run just to prove a point about why safe offensive tactics is good for single player gameplay, and I end up impressing Annihilator567, a fellow expert on the game, from the first 3 minutes alone. Also note the following, check Competitive Balance within Self-Troping to guess what's going on in the spoiler tags: Scorched Earth gives you just Glass Cannon units to work with. The room for error gets reduced, making both speed and a general body advantage preferable. Yeah.
  • Though this is a rant, it does have this gem of a Reason Smashboards Sucks Speech responding to a Stop Having Fun Guy calling me the cancer of Smash without thinking it possibly ironic:
MKDH: Oh God the stupidity. IF ANYBODY IS THE CANCER OF SMASH, IT'S YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS! YOU WANT PLAYERS TO BE PUNISHED FOR BEING CREATIVE! THAT ISN'T THE LEAST BIT WHAT SMASH IS ABOUT! IT'S ABOUT PLAYING AS YOUR FAVORITE NINTENDO CHARACTERS IN CREATIVE WAYS! NOT! CREATING! A SOULLESS! BREEDING! GROUND! FOR! **OVERTHINKING**!! OH MY GOD! (starts laugh-crying) ..oh my God.

Fridge Brilliance I have stumbled upon

I fashion myself an expert at the science of game balance, but there are some things I personally find brilliant on part of game developers. I do wish some would hire me...

Video games in general

  • Defense stat being a subtraction factor? Here's why: stronger power gaps means that Fragile Speedsters can't damage you nearly as efficiently, instead having to keep the inherent versatility of their mobility in mind.
  • Adding to it: if defensive power meets a happy medium that makes it VERY useful, don't be surprised if it is simply setting a good, working standard rather than being a cheap bullying tool.
  • Why do army-based games involve a Rock Paper Scissors system so often and in blatant manners? Here's a blatant example that should answer your question or at least clue you in: tanks are durable enough to sponge a whole army's worth of MG bullets. In effect, you need ways to address dealing with a whole army. Smarter games also make sure that each given unit type can shake off a simple numbers advantage led by a competent player to prevent easy domination from the first round of combat.

Super Smash Bros.

Melee Pichu

I'd like to be able to post this elsewhere on the Wiki, but the problem is the development issues going on. Right now, I'm keeping this here.

Recently (as of early-mid August 2011), I did 15 Minute Melee with Zelda, who as it turns out needs smart play to work properly. (See here for the run.) I talked with several friends about it, one of whom mentioned wanting to see 15MM done with Pikachu without Thunder spammage. Considering my KO count of 687 with Pikachu when I had breaking just 600 as standard, it occured to me that Pikachu is one of the better characters at doing the event without cheap stuff. But he had a counterpart who wouldn't have as easy a time with the event: Pichu, even indicated as a Joke Character by the game itself. So I try out Pichu and it turns out he has plenty of non-electrical KO moves on the Wireframes. And thank God Down Smash is non-electrical and KOs too, it's useful for clearing crowds, even if the hitbox duration is kind of blah. So Pichu's only real failing compared to Pikachu when it comes to 15MM is his awful range. Even then, Pichu is also smaller as well as faster. Makes you wonder, don't it.

The successful run is here, by the way.

Anyway, in one attempt, I saw my percentage at a high value and then realized: I could use my electrical attacks at a point where the next clean hit on me would kill me, causing my percentage to be no longer valid. This relates to all 3 cases of the Fridge Brilliance, as I'll talk about below. Keep in mind that I still think Pichu fails at being a Lethal Joke Character due to how par at best his electrical attacks are, but I thought I'd provide food for thought. Enjoy.

  • As we know, the commonly cited reason for Pichu being God awful is hurting itself when it uses electrical attacks. Now this seems like a bad idea until you realize: because getting KOed in Smash requires being ringed out, and the equivalent of losing Hit Points merely makes that easier, the self-damaging actually doesn't deter Pichu once Pichu is already at kill percentages. Pichu's electrical attacks are actually a pseudo-Turns Red method of attack.
  • Which brings up why he even has this in the first place. Notice how Pichu is basically a kid? This might tie in with his (Lethal) Joke Character status. Early on, you'd want to play smart so as to survive. This also applies to any kid with decent intelligence. If they live through rough stuff, they would naturally stand out and prove to be threatening. That's right: Pichu basically represents a logical kid who grows, and what doesn't kill him makes him stronger.
  • The third case relates to his origin game. Pichu is a young Pokemon. Pokemon learn their moves gradually. The electrical punishment is there to punish Pichu for using special moves.

Other

General:

  • Recoveries in Brawl were toned up from in Melee because there are more tools for gimping recoveries, Mario's FLUDD coming to mind.

Character specific:

1) Understand your character well. Don't focus purely on their strong area, because Meta Knight laughs at that logic. Figure out how your character's weak area works. You might find something surprisingly useful. :P
2) Tank efficiently. Meta Knight can't projectile you, and if he can kill you eventually? Just counterattack efficiently every time he attacks to ensure that you outlast him.
    • And ANOTHER case with Meta Knight, particularly how his moves have disjoint:
Mei Ling (in codec conversation): "They say his sword can break the sound barrier."
  • For some time, I was wondering about something: why is Link's recovery so horrible that he can die in recovery failure even if the opponent doesn't try to gimp him or doesn't manage to hinder his recovery. Unlike Olimar, Link actually has an exploitable conventional weakness, avoiding that Fake Balance bullet. But at one time, I was playing a friend as Link and tore apart his Link (his #2 character, my Link wasn't even close to that number at the time and the other player can frighten me a bit with Ike) with projectile usage, including bombs I get out when the other player cannot do anything to stop me, thanks to this same player giving me confidence about using them that I have lacked up until that point. Now I have no problem getting them out when the opponent is recovering at a distance from one of my attacks. Since I get an even further conventional combat advantage since I don't rely on the Down Air at all for kills (Forward Smash and Up Smash are fine for that, and Up Air even just for juggle-induced pressure helps), it sure would be really bothersome if Link could gimp people. But wait. Earlier the same day, I had made use of Kirby's extra jumps to gimp another player's character--who wasn't even Link. When I fought the Link player in an inbetween match as Kirby, I didn't gimp him with Kirby, because Link's recovery is just that bad and I'd rather beat Links conventionally instead of trying to be a one trick pony. (This same match is where I gained the confidence to use Bombs, as I inadvertently grabbed one and got to use it to my advantage.) What does this have to do with the subject at hand? Simple: I realized Link's awful recovery keeps him from gimping people. Oh, but his attacks still lag. Well, maybe that's the point: to keep his projectiles from being completely overwhelming in the right hands. Basically, Link is supposed to be played as a fairly conventional battle character but one who is a sort of CombatPragmatist. The key to mastering him is a right balance, just like with playing his games, which itself is another bit of Fridge Brilliance.
  • Mr. Game & Watch is a Glass Cannon because he's the mascot of arcade-esque games.

Kid Icarus Uprising

  • The power system is a very interesting happy medium for KB immunity:
    • First off, it makes sense to limit flinching immunity to flat effort. By doing so, the power guy has to expend stamina on something they need to survive decently.
    • Secondly, super armor using space means that other players can use other powers that they want. But the ability to use super armor by itself is still a very useful momentum increase for power weapon users: they no longer have to deal with attack interruption or being kept out of using other powers.
    • The important thing is, of course, that speedsters still get to live by their "don't get hit" logic, but now power guys can now afford to take hits and even push on that for momentum.
    • The funny thing? I figured all this out on the very first day of having played the multiplayer.
  • Super Speed and Black Hole exist to counteract the problem that KB immunity can effectively be traded for other tools to strengthen kiting, or outright strengthen Fragile Speedsters excessively. Here's how those problems get countered:
    • Super Speed allows the power weapon user to move frighteningly fast to a given location. Fragile Speedsters will burn themselves out because they're not used to having so much power, and Frail Snipers become much easier to melee lock if they don't use powers to protect themselves. Of course, they can use powers to stop Super Speed tags from working.
    • Black Hole fixes THAT: it draws opponents near the created Black Hole beacon right to it, allowing for an easy time hitting them with whatever the power guy wants to hit them with. It seems cheap, but in fact, there are plenty of powers that protect against Black Hole, even excluding Game Breakers like Warp. The powers, in turn, do not last forever, so they can't be wasted or the opponent becomes defenseless. So Black Hole turns out to reward tanking AND creates a bar for resource management to cut down the kiting to more acceptable levels.

Other games

  • Advance Wars Dual Strike made infantry defensive charging stronger probably to stop FTA shenanigans. But sadly, this becomes Fridge Logic when you realize that the game should have guarded better against Recon rushes in the first place.
  • Meta Knight looking like Kirby underneath that mask actually makes it clear that he's a Shadow Archetype to Kirby. Okay, that's not much? That's actually the indicator, as he's actually one on several levels:
    • First is the difference between their abilities. Kirby is known for being able to copy enemies' powers and turn them against them. Meta Knight, being a master swordsman, would have a simple skill set backed the experience to be able to combat various things and be able to adapt to anything he is unfamiliar with, as well as keep his own power from being used against him. This is why he's so dangerous as an opponent: he answers Kirby's abilities on a base level.
    • The two tend to have a good cause in mind. But where Kirby approaches situations with simplicity and optimism, Meta Knight makes use of experience and cunning to try to dismantle threats.
    • The fights with Meta Knight, especially on a no damage, no ability run, end up being all about striking a fine balance. Being too aggressive (idealistic) allows Meta Knight to use his superior speed much more easily, but being too passive (cynical) allows Meta Knight to control the combat with sheer ease. This is best exemplified in Amazing Mirror (via Dark Meta Knight, granted), but it applies in any other Kirby game where you fight him too. (More or less, anyway.)
    • Ultimately, Meta Knight is an ideal rival for Kirby. Not only does he teach Kirby to work with natural skill, he is ultimately answered by staying in tune with one's own ability and mastering one's own emotions rather than simply burying them.

Anime

  • Death Note - three cases:
    • Light's God complex and need to challenge AND kill opposition results from making sure that nobody else can silence him and derail his plans. In the end, Kira's ideology is its own worst problem, which justifies It Gets Easier at the same time.
    • (Major spoilers) Rem being arranged to kill L was so that L could not make his death proof of Light's guilt. Magnificent Bastard indeed.
    • Light probably thought only he would kill Takada as casually as he did. If that's the case, no wonder he failed to expect that Mikami would do so too. Though it still doesn't explain why he didn't use more caution so as to have Mikami act more cautious anyway, especially when Mello had proven too random for otherwise.
      • On second thought, that actually fits, surprisingly well. Light acted as a vigilante because he's not nearly as steadfast as he should have been. So a completely unpredictable enemy would have left him at a loss and the right answer would be less likely to occur to him. Once again, Kira's ideology is its own worst problem.
  • Code Geass - the show is likely a subtle parody. If it is, suddenly, having an Esoteric Happy Ending where Lelouch and Suzaku get more punishment than they deserve while characters who actually do deserve likely as much as the two of them got get their own happy ending makes a lot more sense.
  • Naruto - based on current information, Tobi is Obito works for thematic reasons: yes, he's an Uchiha, but that's the point: he was a White Sheep. From what can be figured, he was corrupted not for reasons starting with something akin to the Uchiha massacre (which had both sides being guilty, although still undeserving victims one way or another), but because he had a sense of virtue. Yes, Tobi is a case of Pure is Not Good. (Update: confirmed: nothing like seeing Rin die at the hands of Kakashi only a few days after Obito had rescue her to break his ability to care.)
  • Bleach - Aizen's search for a Worthy Opponent to alleviate his loneliness could have been dealt with by Yamamoto this whole time? Well, if consistently sparring with the guy who can destroy the world by accident when he doesn't hold back, such that the Wonderweiss shenanigans could be necessitated in the first place, when the Soul Society itself is corrupt is in the first place, is such a good idea then okay, sure. I buy that. (Ironically, this makes Aizen a Shadow Archetype to Yamamoto.)

Comic Books

  • Clark Kent being a reporter is awfully convenient: it means he can legally keep tabs on fellow reporters so as to know how close they get to finding out Superman's secret identity.

Western Animation

  • Ben 10 - The Omnitrix didn't make Ben change into an unwanted alien in the first 2 seasons of Alien Force, but in season 3, it sometimes did. It seems to be justified there simply by having been screwed up at the start of the season, but this wasn't a problem in the original series. But then I realized when Ben tried using Humongosaur in one episode and he ended up being turned into Lodestar: Ben habitually uses stronger aliens. And when his ego decides to be a problem, he doesn't give much thought of strategy. The Omnitrix most likely is trying to make sure Ben's ego doesn't get in his way.
  • Codename: Kids Next Door - Chad's true alligence (read: with the KND) was hinted as early as Op. END. In a show that parodies Xanatos Roulette mercilessly, giving freaking Nigel Uno a fighting chance by interacting with him to tell him that he's been framed is a good way to get detected in your (supposed) plans.
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