Season 58, Week 6: Ted used EVERSION! Isolde turned into Profound Darkness!

[Dark Holy Elf]

WA4 characters usually just run around when confused, too! They'll sometimes attack random targets, yes, but many games vary exactly what the characters do in their respective confusion statuses, from nothing to always attacking their own allies and everything in between. This is generally not seen as a good enough reason to distinguish between confusion statuses for blocker purposes.

I also think that in general we should err on the side of seeing two statuses from different games as equivalent, so that blockers can actually do things. You can almost always nitpick to find minor differences between statuses from different games, otherwise.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Well, if you can Move, but not Act, I'd wager it's more like a Disable/Don't Act status rather than Confusion. And the HP/MP drain being attached seems like a pretty big difference from any other Confusion-like status... >.>;;

[Dhyerwolf]

In many other Confusions, you can hit yourself! This isn't practical in SO 3, but HP/MP damage+running around wildly could do that on a status called Chaos doesn't feel like a bad comparison to Confuse.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Just programming an AI to attack random characters/enemies would be a lot of work in SO3, and it's understandable that the designers didn't want to do this for a status I remember being hit by once or twice the whole game.

[Luther Lansfeld]

If you split hairs on every little thing a status does to try to justify that a status blocker can't hit it, status blockers are devalued a lot and status is overinflanted more than it already is. Chaos and Confusion are very obviously the same idea with different implementations based on the game's design. It is not the same as Don't Act because you can't even control your character! To me, it's like saying FF6 Confuse isn't the same as, say, FFT Confuse because you attack allies instead of whoever. They have a different function in game, thus they should not be blocked by the same thing.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I'm not suggesting to split hairs on 'every little thing'... Clearly FFT Confuse and FF6 Confuse are basically the same thing. But there's a pretty appreciable difference between "Can't Act+Can Move+Continuous Percent HP/MP Damage" and "Randomly Attack Allies".

I can sort of see your point about them being vaguely thematically similar... but if you follow this suggestion, it is practically a proposition that -all- vaguely similar statuses should be condensed. Petrify and ID are basically the same thing. Stop and Paralyze are basically the same thing. Chaos and Confusion are -far- different statuses from either of those examples, and yet you're insisting that they are 'clearly the same' and that I'm 'splitting hairs'?

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

I'm not suggesting to split hairs on 'every little thing'... Clearly FFT Confuse and FF6 Confuse are basically the same thing. But there's a pretty appreciable difference between "Can't Act+Can Move+Continuous Percent HP/MP Damage" and "Randomly Attack Allies".

I can sort of see your point about them being vaguely thematically similar... but if you follow this suggestion, it is practically a proposition that -all- vaguely similar statuses should be condensed. Petrify and ID are basically the same thing. Stop and Paralyze are basically the same thing.

Petrify and ID are often separated by tiers of status - status immunity, more often than not, catches petrify but misses ID, and there are many lesser forms of Petrify that aren't an instant win - meanwhile, ID is always ID - it's a guaranteed victory when it hits. It makes sense to separate them, although there are a few games where immuning ID also immunes Stone, IIRC. Stop and Paralyze are treated by some as the same status, however (thus the Shania > Virgil argument, which I think I'd buy myself - there are very few games that share Paralysis and Stop, and they are mechanically the same). Chaos and Confusion aren't far removed at all in practice, and even are united by a semantic theme and a basic idea (whereas turning someone to stone and causing instant death are two different ideas in the semiotics realm).

[superaielman]

I'm not suggesting to split hairs on 'every little thing'... Clearly FFT Confuse and FF6 Confuse are basically the same thing. But there's a pretty appreciable difference between "Can't Act+Can Move+Continuous Percent HP/MP Damage" and "Randomly Attack Allies".

Chaos makes you lose control of your actions, same as confuse .Some games (DQ4) make you randomly act, some (FF6) make you only target teammates, some (FFT) are outright useless in a duel since the confusion AI will always attack the enemy one on one or when they're no allies left, some let you break it by doing damage (CT), some only give you a chance of breaking it when you do damage. (XS1). There is a lot of variance there, but the basic theme is an attack that makes you lose control and either sit around and do nothing, or attack your teammates. SO confuse is nastier since it has the HP/MP damage aspect, but that isn't different enough from the rest of the typical confusion skills to make me think it deserves different classification.

Chaos is even a fairly common alternate name for confusion or the status, see early DQ games and CT off the top of my head.

I can sort of see your point about them being vaguely thematically similar... but if you follow this suggestion, it is practically a proposition that -all- vaguely similar statuses should be condensed. Petrify and ID are basically the same thing. Stop and Paralyze are basically the same thing.

Stop and Paralyze are commonly split in at least the Suikoden and FF series, off the top of my head. XS1 has a sort of split there (Between attack disable and outright stop). There is some grey area/overlap there, but it isn't like Chaos/confusion, where I can't think of a game with both statuses.

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(Though for the record, I don't allow Jude Black Market equips.)

[DjinnAndTonic]

Petrify and ID are often separated by tiers of status - status immunity, more often than not, catches petrify but misses ID, and there are many lesser forms of Petrify that aren't an instant win - meanwhile, ID is always ID - it's a guaranteed victory when it hits. It makes sense to separate them, although there are a few games where immuning ID also immunes Stone, IIRC. Stop and Paralyze are treated by some as the same status, however (thus the Shania > Virgil argument, which I think I'd buy myself - there are very few games that share Paralysis and Stop, and they are mechanically the same). Chaos and Confusion aren't far removed at all in practice, and even are united by a semantic theme and a basic idea (whereas turning someone to stone and causing instant death are two different ideas in the semiotics realm).

Yeah, I'm not sold by this logic at all. If the only thing that separates Petrify and ID are 'tiers', then Confusion and Chaos (and Charm, I suppose?) are more different than a simple 'tier' list.

Also, I may be remembering incorrectly, but I thought that under SO3 Chaos, it was pretty easy to continue to direct your PC whereever you chose, and Enemies tended to just not move at all under the effect. If it really -does- cause random movement, I can at least see the connection to Confusion, though the HP/MP drain still makes it unique enough that I'd see it as a unique status. ...Maybe I'd let someone block it with Confusion/Poison blocking? (Or Paralyze/Poison or Disable/Poison, not quite sure which is most appropriate?)

[Dark Holy Elf]

So you need two blockers to block one status? That really makes little sense to me. SO3 confuse is not some super-status that deserves this kind of treatment.

[Dhyerwolf]

I don't really buy the tier thing, but thematically at least ID and Petrify are somewhat different. Thematically, Chaos and Confuse are pretty similar (And Charm...is kind of similar. Some games kind of mix Charm and Confuse, and if a game had a Confuse blocker and Charm didn't exist in it, I'd certainly see the argument that it could get Charm too). Really, the only extra effect the SO 3 Chaos seems to have is HP/MP Poison (A lot like WA 1 Confuse without it), which isn't really it's key facet anyways. Now, if SO 3 called the status "Burn" and the effect was the same, then it would really feel like a wholly separate status. But Chaos that makes characters act unpredictably feels pretty dead on for Confuse.

I don't think Suikoden has Stop, Super? Do you mean Stun and Paralyze? S3 has them both, but grouped under the same check (Which is to say that a Yellow Scarf does nothing, but the skill that reduces Unbalance chances also reduces Paralysis chances). Not sure any other Suikoden has Paralysis until Tiekreis, which makes them fully separate statuses and isn't a Suikoden any ways.

[superaielman]

Yeah, I was thinking of S3's split there. My fault.