So why do people hate power creep, other than their favorite characters getting "left behind"?
>>283639792They heard some dumbass say it's bad and now they repeat it like the dumbasses they are for other dumbasses to hear and repeat, with not one of them understanding what they're talking about.
>>283639792Dragon ball presents a very good issue, the fear of slipping backwards made the strength of the next generation feel silly
The actual reason? It can make a story rooted in action and combat feel narratively inconsistent if it's handled poorly. The reason a lot of powerscaling fags have? See >>283639925
>>283639792I don't actually hate power creep. You can have a lot of power creep and have interesting fights and you can have a very well managed power creep and the fights be boring. I'm watching DBZ now and all of these powers are ridiculous even from the Sayian saga but somehow it works and the fights are fun. On the opposite side you have One Piece where all characters now do is become harder and predict the future for longer, the powers are not that insane, yet I am completely bored of it, even with all the wacky Devil Fruit powers.
There's a difference between characters getting stronger, and stacking more and more outrageous powers on top of each other.
>>283639792The world risks becoming meaningless if its fate can only be influenced by 1-2 people. Many anime do this of course, but shonen in particular seems to be plagued with poor execution. By the end of Dragonball Z nobody really cared if Earth blew up because you knew it would be brought back after the only person who matters triumphs.
>>283639982By the way if we're talking battle manga sins, any sort of invulnerability or rapid healing factor should be put on the no no list. Future vision as well. I mean for the good guys at least, the bad guys can have it but if the good guys have it than it kills any sort of feelings of danger or viscerality of the fights. Thats why Dragon Ball rules and One Piece drools.
Because it's stupid when you see a villain propped up as a major threat that has power beyond anything the main cast can handle, then after the main character gets up to his level and beats him, an arc or two later the villains and main characters are fighting at a level that makes the first villain canon fodder even though in his arc he apparently had unmatchable strength.Perfect example being Yu Yu Hakusho, where Toguro is apparently the strongest demon and his and Yusuke's fight is destroying the terrain and splitting the skies and whatnot, then you find out he's B class and by the last arc you see Hiei casually clearing a mob of A class demons as a training exercise.That itself is acceptable but it's worse when you see the power level jump drastically in the next arc, where the MC already became twice as strong as his friends but then the new villains are 10x stronger than the MC, yet through a dumb explanation (or worse, none at all), the whole crew somehow jumps to that level like nothing after the MC spent the whole last arc gaining that weaker power.
>>283639792The struggle is what's fun for me. I want them to be likely to loose and sometimes do. As soon as the characters are so strong/capable that most of the world isn't a real threat to them anymore it becomes more popcorn movie quality and lacks the emotional investment.
>>283639792>why do people hate power creepTwo words: atto-second
>>283640094Thats's more of an issue with "we have to save the world" trope story. If you do it four times in one series you stop caring about the world. The one thing you can do at that point is have someone likable be shockingly tortured. That way you start worrying about characters suffering.
>>283639792The androids being millions of times stronger than Frieza will always be the single most retarded power creep in the industry.
>>283640655Those piece of shit cyborgs were the point of no return for Dragon Ball.
>>283640655Gero would have had Frieza's data after he visited Earth, and the theme of Dragon Ball is that something stronger always exists.
>>283639792Goku using SSBSS and Kaioken at the same time results in such a ridiculous power increase that it really should be put in the right context. Using these techniques together would mean 1 of 2 things.>Goku briefly became more powerful than any other character in the series>Goku was never close to someone like Beerus in the first placeAnd both result in shitty storytelling.
>>283640810Gero never knew about Freeza, that was all his supercomputer making Cell running on autopilot as his ultimate backup plan.
>>283640094>By the end of Dragonball Z nobody really cared if Earth blew up because you knew it would be brought back after the only person who matters triumphs.That has nothing to do with power creep.
>>283640655Why is it retarded?
>>283640851Except that Goku explicitly created the technique specifically to close the gap between Beerus and himself, and its clear by the end of the ToP arc that hes at least on Beerus' level, more or less
>>283639792I don't get what the point in complaining about power creep in a story that will eventually end.
>>283640908Nta, but>a single Earth scientist, using only Earth based materials and knowledge, somehow manages to shit out not one but TWO artificial beings that are *somehow* not only stronger than anything Earth itself has ever seen but even more powerful than the explicitly stated most powerful being in the entire universe who can pop whole freaking planets like its TuesdayIm a DBfag to the bone but yeah, its kind of dumb
There's no power creep in HxH. There's a handful of characters that are leagues above everyone else but the story goes well out of its way to establish that they're untouchable freaks of nature that nobody else can reasonably catch up to.
>>283639792it largely exists just to invalidate those who don't have protagonist might
>>283640851And Ultra Instinct is 3 times stronger than 20x Kaioken SSBSS. It's retarded
>>283639792It's not inherently bad, but it is usually handled poorly and ends up killing stakes and other sorts of things that all weaken the story. Naruto is a good example of it. The fights all got way less interesting when it turned into magic Kaiju battles and "What, my whole skill set? I'm just gonna hit him with a really big attack again"And the setting started off with so much potential for interesting types of stories but it over time crowded out all the complexity with every single interesting thing that happened in history and every single place you'll ever go to only matter because some guy or other was strong enough to throw nukes
>>283639792>peopletrannies aren't people
>>283640979Since when has Dragon Ball ever been steeped in logic?
>>283641799what do trannies have to do with power creeps? and im pretty sure they are considered poeple??
>>283640979Aliens in Dragon Ball being less advanced than Earthlings in everything but space travel has always been consistent
>>283641917There's stretching logic for the sake of narrative, and then there's just strait up pulling shit out of the ether because fuck it
>>283642196what about the laser guns, healing pods, super agriculture, cybernetics, robots, memoryfoam clothing....
>>283642225Dragon Ball has always been style over substance so this isn't a stretch for the series.
It's probably because they are dumb mexicans who don't understand the difference between stories and video games, and post screencaps of youtube thumbnails on /a/
Considering Bulma invents a shrink ray, can also make the Dragonball radar, along with the Capsules that can store any matter into a small pea sized device, the androids aren’t a major oddity
>>283639792Gurren Laggan is the best shounen to this day for only being 20 something episodes and avoiding al of this gay shit to begin with.
>>283639792power creep never a problem in dragon ball its the appeal of it you can go very creative with it with things like the visuals and actionsthe real problem is its creator just couldn't deliver the potential of the creativity and relies on their old gimmick
>>283639792Power creep isn't intrinsically bad, it just needs to stop at some point. Reading Ragna Crimson and watching shit escalate to the point where the MC fights a dragon in outer space was fun. But it also helped that the author pretty much confirmed that fight was the absolute ceiling of the power scale in that universe. It establishes an actual peak and makes you excited to see the next fight between character on that level. In comparison Dragon Ball just keeps endlessly upping the power scale with no end in sight. It numbs you to the "Climax" you're supposed to be excited by, because you know it's just gonna be outdone later anyways.
>>283639792>character makes an obviously hyperbolic statement in boastful jest>powerscalers be like "ayo dats valid!"God I hate them so fucking much.
>>283642014>and im pretty sure [HEADCANON]Done.
>>283642643Imagine thinking that managing stakes, having believable conflicts, and keeping things in line with what the story promises you it will be is just a video game issue
>>283643226I just can't stand Ragna Crimson anymore The narrative fell off hard after the first batch of villains were defeated, and the sexual humor got exponentially weird and off-putting
>>283644031That's not at all related to this conversation
>>283644143I know, just wanted that off my chest. Didn't feel like it deserved its own thread.
>>283644165Alright then Valid, I guess
>>283639792Gon's power creep was mega retarded
>>283644223It was fine, just imagine it as burning an entire candle all at once. The retarded part was wish loli (male).
>>283639792because there are so many inconsistencies in it
It defeats the purpose of having a huge cast of characters when the majority of them become completely irrelevant and unable to contribute anything
>>283639792I think powercreep becomes a problem as soon as any display of power is meaningless, and characters' power can only be measured in relation to each other.Dragonball characters are strong enough to destroy the entire universe by now. But they can't actually do that because then the story would be over. So the only way to establish that the new bad guy is stronger than the previous bad guy is by saying that he's stronger than Goku, who beat the previous bad guy.Whereas in something like Baki, Yujiro taking the wings off of a bee with one finger is still impressive because nobody in the setting is too powerful for a human to even comprehend.
>>283639792a related but seperate issue is the way series like dragonball and one piece eventually falling prey to pure stat battles with less palce for tactics making all fights the same and less intersting.
Power escalation is funMan rising to the level of the gods is funSpectacle is funAnd? It doesn't make the story less meaningful
>>283644637>falling prey to pure stat battles with less palce for tacticsDragon Ball fights have never been tactical unless it was for comedy.
Because it can change the entire feel and nature of fights in the seriesOG Dragon Ball fights and fights in DBZ do not feel like they come from the same piece of media, the escalation got so bigPlus, it can also raise the stakes of a series past the point of the suspension of disbelief or to where it alters the nature and worldbuilding in a similar way to changing the fightsGash/Zatch Bell is my go to example of a series that avoids this issue till basically the climax, while still having plenty of escalation and also not abandoning it's side cast
>>283639792Because the stonger the characters are the harder it is for people to comprehend, both the audience and the author.e.g. No one who works on current dragon ball has any idea how strong the characters actually are.
>>283644975>OG Dragon Ball fights and fights in DBZ do not feel like they come from the same piece of mediaYou did not watch anything past the Red Ribbon saga.
>>283639792Because it's boring to have something so central to the story be so one-dimensional. It's especially annoying when you have characters that are interesting because they are different, but who end up falling to the wayside because of the primacy of raw power.I mean it's fine, stories that fall into this trap are written for teenage boys, not exactly the most analytical crowd, but it does kinda ruin things once you see this.
>>283639792When you start a story you set expectations for the audience as to what the general power levels will be. The audience can then build a framework for who is weak and who is strong. Oftentimes in a well written story, some level of power creep is to be expected, and is even a good thing. The protagonist needs to have stronger and stronger foes to fight against and they themselves will always get stronger, so in order to ensure they always have a challenge the enemies have to get stronger too. You can also play with audience expectations by introducing an enemy that is much stronger than everyone else as a surprise.The problem with most shonen specifically is that they execute power creep very poorly most of the time. It is not uncommon for them to give the protagonist a power boost to get them out of a crisis in a big fight (Dragon Ball is very guilty of this) and then as a result everyone has to get stronger so the protagonist can still have a challenge. There is also the aspect of how exactly you can make a character stronger- how many evolutions or new forms can you give them before it starts to get stupid?For the record, I don't blame most shonen authors. They are usually on a very tight schedule and don't have time to consider the long reaching ramifications of upping the power level of their protag so they can make this week's deadline. HxH is often lauded as having a robust power system that is very power creep proof, but that's because Togashi has unlimited time to think about it, which is a luxury 99% of manga authors don't get.
>>283639792It is bad when the whole setting’s versatility ends up being bottle necked into boring fights.For example, look at Naruto. Part 1 you had all these crazy jutsus all specialized in different effects, versatility and concept.End of Shipputen , everything reduced to MY STRONGER CHAKRA, MY EYEHAX, MY GIANT BEAST.Or one piece that used to be people using all that weird stuff like the clima tact etc…now it’s everything MHU STRONGER HAKI, Luffy going gear 5 for le cartoonish memes and half of the crew being useless if not just for cheap melodrama (still seething for how Nami and Usop jobbed to Ulti and Page one, it was such a boring way to make them lose. Old oda would’ve made a great and fun fight out of it)Mha is one of the most egregious: all started with all these heroes with different unique abilities since birth… just to forget any kind of teamfight and reducing everything to PUNCH HARDER , QUIRK SPAM HARDER or NOW YOU SEE THIS GUY HAS 10 GORILLIONS OF QUIRKS INSIDE HIS BODY SO HE IS STRONGER.It broke the setting so hard it became boring.
>>283647103One Piece doesn't suffer nearly as much as the others
>>283647103>Or one piece that used to be people using all that weird stuff like the clima tact etc…now it’s everything MHU STRONGER HAKI,Do you literally speedread these chapters?
>>283647166All the current soro fights are literally the same and are fucking boring.Sanji had to asspull “actually my father’s experiments worked on me” out of is ass because apparently he could’t fight queen without it (just use the stealth suit, asshole!).The rest of the crew is virtually useless and either they need a power up never foreshadowed before (robin) or stay useless and jobs (nami ,usop and chopper).The nikka shit has completely inglobed everything that was cool about the gomu gomu, to the point Gear 2nd, gear 3rd and Gear 4th feels useless and not needed despite being more fun and interesting than the Nikka crap.Now ever single high ceiling fight involves people clashing their blackened fists/blades with big thunders in the back ground and nothing else..any sense of versatility , strategy and creativity is rendered meaningless with just two guys clashing their haki weapons.Compare it to how creative the fights used to be pre-timeskip…or even compare it to Luffy vs doffy or Katakuri
>>283647263Didn't you just say all modern One-Piece fights were boring because nothing but people using stronger Haki?
>>283647238Why you pisstard are uncapable to understand how low OP is falling?Like oda could literally throw a turd in your face and you ‘d slurp it while screaming “Sasuga oda-sama SLURRRP”
>>283647313It is literally what i said. Even comparing them to WCI arc, it was more creative there than now in GUANO, Eggland and godvalley
>>283647263They're not fantastic but it's nothing like the nonsense that happened to Naruto
>>283647325>Why you pisstard are uncapable to understand how low OP is falling?Why are you reading One Piece if you hate it to begin with?>Like oda could literally throw a turd in your face and you ‘d slurp it while screaming “Sasuga oda-sama SLURRRP”Not really, I'm perfectly capable of admitting that something I like is flawed, won't stop me from being a fan though.
>>283647263>Compare it to how creative the fights used to be pre-timeskip…or even compare it to Luffy vs doffy or KatakuriGood thing the fights are not the appeal of One Piece then.
>>283647404> Why are you reading One Piece if you hate it to begin with?That massive turd that was the first whole Nikka fiasco ruined one piece for me. It was one of the worst twist oda could’ve pulled and it damaged the story in a very very unreparable way (now everything is about Joyboy and Imu, imu is basically Kaguya 2.0, the WG going full retard , El hermano de shanks, now the only fruits that matters are the boring zoan God God ones etc…)>i continue liking it even if it is flawedThis is the battered wife’s mentality.I already lived through this thanks to SnK’s awful final arc , so now i can understand when a story is going to shit.Enjoy when OP will get a boring and bladly written ending but you will still love it just for the sake of your own Sunk Cost fallacy
>>283647494>This is the battered wife’s mentality.How can it be when I don't hate One Piece?
>>283647451>IT WAS NEVER ABOUT THE FIGHTS,FOR THIS REASON THEY BECOME SO SHIT FROM GUANO TILL NOW, PLEASE FORGET THE THOUSANDS OF GOOD FIGHTS HAPPENED BEFORE>IT WAS NEVER ABOUT THE CREW SO IT IS A GOOD THING MOST OF THEM ARE IRRILEVANT CAMEOS UNLESS YOU NEED TO SHOEHORN ANOTHER “I BELIEVE IN LUFFY” MOMENT, PLEASE FORGET HOW THEY USED TO ACT AND HAVE FOCUS DURING PRE-TIMESKIP>IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT GOD GOD NIKA LIBERATION FATE AND IT IS A GOOD THING NOW NIKKA AND IMU TOOK THE MAIN CONTROL OF THE STORY, PLEASE FORGET HOW LUFFY WAS MORE INTERESTING AND FUN WITHOUT THE NIKKA STUFF AND HOW IMU IS ONE OF THE LAMEST VILLAIN EVER EXISTED>IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT THE SUPER BORING ZOAN GOD GOD FRUITS AND THESE WERE ALWAYS FORESHADOWED TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES, PLEASE FORGET HOW THEY ARE SO FUCKING BORING AND PARAMECHA AND ROGIA ALWAYS MOGGED THEM HARD IN CREATIVITY AND FUN>THE WG WAS ALWAYS SUPER RETARDED EVIL AND THE GENOVIDES ALWAYS HAPPENED IN FACE OF EVERYONE, PLEASE FORGET THE 1000 INCONSISTENCIES THAT THE CURRENT REVEALS BROUGHT UP FROM THE PREVIOUS ARCS…TO THE POINT THIS SEEMS LIKE COMING FROM A YA WHATPAD NOVEL INSTEAD FROM ONE PIECEWill you ever stop sucking Oda’s dick?
>>283647596Can you type that again, but this time speak like you have a brain in your head?
>>283639792I only hate interesting powers with strengths and weaknesses you can strategize against being reduced to me playing by bumping two cars against each other. The whole power surge screaming beam nonsense gets old very very quickly to be where a system ends up for most of its dragged out lifetime.
>>283648358Avatar the last airbender is the only piece of media that has made good use of a power system by basically stablishing limitatons early on and not turning their characters into a bunch of weirdos in a freak show like HxH.
>>283639792It's an invitation for cheap filler training arcs and exposition on new powers that won't matter the next arc anyways.
>>283639792it's just boring to see everything eventually mull into power tiers until someone breaks it because advantage, rule breaker, holding back, etc.it's one thing to serial escalate, it's another when everyone's a demigod/god, because then no one really is distinct besides their presence at that point.
Which is worse:>series that obsesses over linear powerlevels and is entirely based around who can shoot the bigger beam>series that dumps fifty billion gimmick powers on you and tries to be smart by introducing mechanics that are dealt with in similarly bullshit ways.
