ADVENTURERS! Balance Thread

The full set of ADV has been out for nearly two months, and I think it's high time we started discussing balance. It'll be quite the undertaking, but there are way too many strips that are either too funny or not funny enough for their costs.

Let's begin with the strip that prompted this thread. The only thing that the punchline accomplishes is reinforcing the already well-supported "how the spoon can we defeat Eternion" strategy, and it doesn't even do it that well.

Compare it to the previous and following strips. The previous strip costs the same number of panels and roughly the same number of words, but the expressions in the last panel when they realise what Ker just said are far more useful, laughter-wise.

The following strip is even funnier, and in fact is probably too funny. The word cost is significantly less, and yet it presents the overly hilarious notion of using legendary weaponry to replace a can opener. I propose that "open cans" be changed to "slice vegetables". This will almost completely remove the humour, which we can then compensate for by using a particularly funny vegetable, such as an eggplant, or if this proves to be too weak, a rutabaga.

I think it's fine just the way it is.

There's no need to change how funny strips are. We should just balance out their costs by making the funnier ones take longer to load. The really funny ones should have a chance of randomly crashing your browser... I think 2% or 3% would be balanced, what do you think?

Gah! Adding random chances is *not* a good way to balance things. Next you'll be suggesting that we balance them by rarity!

Edit: Also, while an eggplant is not as funny as a rutabaga, keep in mind that it has more synergies.

Asparagus.

Frankly, I'm of the opposite party, and think that making use of it as a vegetable cutter will emphasize the hilarity of it being used as a utensil and mismatched function. If it were utilized such as cutting wood, that would dramatically reduce the funny factor by several fold.

This stuffs all over

Let's rate funny on a scale of Pythons. For example: The Black Knight Sketch from the Holy Grail is 10 Pythons. A typical Futurama episodes averages at about 12.76 Pythons.

Using this scale, we can safely rate this comic as 10.2 Pythons.

However. The previous comic barely registers a 3.14158 on the Python scale. This must be remedied, preferably with a chainsaw.

FOR GREAT JUSTICE

3.13158 does not do it justice. Any comic with which references and parodies FF (namely, any) must be at least five pythons. Only way for the comic to register lower on a funny scale is if it were actually serious.

Serious doesn't necessitate a low Python score; for instance, I would say comic #592 to be funnier than #219.

THE WHOLE COMIC: SERIOUS BUSINESS.

alphamai1300 Wrote:3.13158 does not do it justice. Any comic with which references and parodies FF (namely, any) must be at least five pythons. Only way for the comic to register lower on a funny scale is if it were actually serious.

But even if they're not funny, serious comics can be devastatingly useful in certain kinds of decks. This is not to be ignored in their value.

I'm wary about using an absolute scale as the only method of gauging the humour of a comic. Many comics require the synergy of previous comics in their storyline for the humour to be effective, and are much less funny on their own (for instance, #214. Also, the ones based on running gags, such as bards being weak, increase in humour based on how many were seen previously.

Also, one comic that particularly needs to be balanced is #615. At only a single panel, you can pay its cost with just one cop-out, and yet it creates multiple giggles, even after repeated viewings. The trouble will be in coming up with a costume for Spybot that is of an acceptable humour level for the cost, which will be difficult, as Spybot in any costume is a very powerful laugh creator. Any suggestions?

Milo Wrote:

alphamai1300 Wrote:3.13158 does not do it justice. Any comic with which references and parodies FF (namely, any) must be at least five pythons. Only way for the comic to register lower on a funny scale is if it were actually serious.

But even if they're not funny, serious comics can be devastatingly useful in certain kinds of decks.  This is not to be ignored in their value.

Actually, what Ultros said, using one absolute scale like the Python scale is not enough. My referenced comic, though not funny at all, is very potent. I was not saying that it meant that the comic was not any good. Like any system, each comic can be rated in various ways, and then have an overal rating. They Python system is just an aspect. If I were to give an overall rating, the referenced comic would be much higher than what I gave it under the Python system.

#615: Since webrunner left it open to interpretation, it allows for repeated views and new concepts to be brought in. If we as the fan community could agree on a singular view, this would allow for an expected result from anyone, new or old, to view it and force one interpretation. That is my suggestion.

If we as the fan community could agree to a singular view, I'd be shocked and scared.

masa is correct; take a simple, comic-proven idea such as Argent being dead. If everyone can't agree on that one fact, how can we be expected to agree on the significance of Spybot's class change?

It's unavoidable that Argent is dead (shadow can come in here as he pleases). Whether or not the community agrees with what the author is not much of a factor when it becomes absolute, fact, and canon. And repeated.

This thread in trying to come with concensus with comics that either are too funny, not funny enough or just damn confusing. Many comics will never be balanced due to discension. Ever.

Someone probably has this in the ADV! Apocolypse thread, probably?

What I'm saying, though, is that not everyone can even agree on given facts.
There's absolutely no way that we can all agree on relative funniness, or any other subjective measurement.

Aw, now that's killing the thread. (much too lazy to find another comic to discuss)

Just because we can't agree doesn't mean we can't argue violently about it, though.

All right, how about #60? I consider it to one of the absolute funniest strips, but is it too funny for its cost? The cost is 8 panels (7 yellow, 1 gray) as well as quite a bit of text, and it also has the "bad art" penalty. Personally, I think this is balanced strip, and would be a good standard against which to measure other strips of its humour level.