Why is everyone able to put up a fight against anyone now?

[Svenerator]

Has been going on for some time now, but the recent episode of DBS made me think about it. So we have Golden Freeza in trouble due to the sheer speed of Dyspo which is fine, but Dypso's punches actually seem to hurt Freeza as well. That seems to indicate that Dyspo has to be quite strong anyway, at least SSG tier. Then Gohan comes up and Krillin says he can beat Dyspo in a straight up 1v1 brawl, I mean I know Gohan is strong, but not that strong right? And then we still have Jiren who still brushes off everything not giving a fuck, he is just that much stronger to justify that I guess.

[Polyphase Avatron]

Well you have to consider that speed means the punches will hit harder. Force = mass x acceleration.

[buutenks]

Has been going on for some time now, but the recent episode of DBS made me think about it. So we have Golden Freeza in trouble due to the sheer speed of Dyspo which is fine, but Dypso's punches actually seem to hurt Freeza as well. That seems to indicate that Dyspo has to be quite strong anyway, at least SSG tier. Then Gohan comes up and Krillin says he can beat Dyspo in a straight up 1v1 brawl, I mean I know Gohan is strong, but not that strong right? And then we still have Jiren who still brushes off everything not giving a fuck, he is just that much stronger to justify that I guess.

Dyspo was able to hurt ssg Goku using his regular attacks. So ye, Dyspo is also strong, just his speed is much higher. Gohan is ssj blue level and very close to Golden Freeza in power. And so could Freeza beat Dyspo in a enclosed space where Dyspo cannot use his speed properly. That is what Piccolo meant.

As for Jiren, Whis stated that Jiren while being suppressed was at the level of the GoDs if not even above it. That is a suppressed Jiren. Basically full power Jiren is a behemoth and would proly crush Goku n Vegeta as they are now with his pinky. This is basically the Namek saga with Freeza vs Goku all over again.

[precita]

This isn't DBZ. In DBZ if you were much stronger than anyone your attacks would literally do nothing and not even scratch an opponent.

In Super they basically changed the whole way of fighting and power levels where much weaker characters can still hurt stronger characters. You have to remove DBZ's fighting mentality from your mind when watching Super.

[Night Owl]

I have been a Dragon Ball fan for about 20 years and have only recently returned to the online community due to Dragon Ball Super going onto Crunchyroll in the UK and the imminent release of Dragon Ball Fighterz.

Things have changed quite a bit since back in the day, it would seem. I am enjoying Super but as you say, it has required a period of adjustment to understand that weaker fighters are able to inflict damage on just about anyone. This was particularly true for me when Gohan fought Ginyu (in Tagoma's body). In fairness, it makes sense that someone who hasn't trained for ages would weaken - but Gohan's power seemed to fall off at this point, even in SSJ form. My understanding from those days is that Gohan would have swept away any threat (much like you see in something like Fusion Reborn).

I am trying to keep an open mind when watching Super but I am having to do my best to forget what I always assumed. In 2001, I was obsessed with the Power Level chart that was on the Planet Namek website (may she RIP!). The chart clearly stated that any power levels after the Frieza Saga were strictly non-canon and were only estimates. Being 12, I treated that list like gospel, all the way from the Androids right through to Kid Buu...suppose that is my fault!

Enjoying Super, though!

[Gligarman]

This lack of extreme power gap is one of my favorite aspects of Dragon Ball Super. That's why so far the Tournament of Power is my favorite arc of DBS. I've always felt that the characters are what really drive the show so I'm glad to see so many of them getting the spotlight again.

[Android 21]

Bad writing.

[Xeogran]

Good writing.

Master Roshi's ToP episode was one of DBS' best and it wouldn't exist if we still kept the DBZ ideology. Honestly, I blame DBZ for going way too high the power pole and not letting everyone catch up. It limited too many characters.

[Night Owl]

Good writing.

Master Roshi's ToP episode was one of DBS' best and it wouldn't exist if we still kept the DBZ ideology. Honestly, I blame DBZ for going way too high the power pole and not letting everyone catch up. It limited too many characters.

Agreed. The trend of Saiyans being the only line of defence against villains became tired. Piccolo's fight with #17 and a couple of interventions from Tien were the last notable moments for non-Saiyan characters in Z and the show suffered for it.

[TheMikado]

Good writing.

Master Roshi's ToP episode was one of DBS' best and it wouldn't exist if we still kept the DBZ ideology. Honestly, I blame DBZ for going way too high the power pole and not letting everyone catch up. It limited too many characters.

Agreed. The trend of Saiyans being the only line of defence against villains became tired. Piccolo's fight with #17 and a couple of interventions from Tien were the last notable moments for non-Saiyan characters in Z and the show suffered for it.

Lack of consistency and throwing everything out the window without explanation is not good writing.
5 second examples of better writing:

Krillin/tien learn kaio-ken. Humans have a better disposition to kaioken and can push the multiplier higher.
Roshi does not fight hand to hand with Frost, but fights one of the dozens of scrub tier fighters to be relevant.
17/18 does not need to be dramatically powered up but rather utilize their unique status as androids which includes limitless energy. Also possibly give them the ability to fly as they would not use "ki" and its possible their form of flying could be considered "natural".

[BlueBasilisk]

It's something that should have been possible all along. Having a sufficiently strong villain shrug off a strong attack works to build their threat level at first, but it comes at the cost of greatly limiting what most of the cast can do against them. And once one that door is opened, subsequent villains follow until you end up with a situation where most of the cast are completely useless in a fight. The are other ways to show off power gaps.

[precita]

We did see villains taken unaware in DBZ. Kid Trunks kicks Fat Buu about 100 yards when he was standing over Vegeta's body before his sacrifice.

[Android 21]

Good writing.

Master Roshi's ToP episode was one of DBS' best and it wouldn't exist if we still kept the DBZ ideology. Honestly, I blame DBZ for going way too high the power pole and not letting everyone catch up. It limited too many characters.

That episode could exist with the characters still being consistent. It was not.

One of the problems with Super is that it bothers creating little to no original concepts. Why couldn’t we have been given a new concept that allowed the non-Saiyan characters to compete on a skill and strength level? Even an old concept with additional, up-to-date elements would’ve worked here, such as teaching them a Kaioken-like technique with god ki. There are ways to do this without being random and lazy.

You can say DBZ went in the wrong direction with combat competence, but that argument isn’t relevant. That’s a matter of opinion. Super can’t just follow Z’s logic for the first half of the series, then suddenly decide it wants to do its own thing halfway through.

[PerhapsTheOtherOne]

I'd say that, in order to have proper fully fleshed out fights between a wide assortment of characters, the "rules" have been bent and reinterpreted to allow for a wider variety of scenarios that play up the importance of martial arts ability that started to be phased out by the time Raditz, Nappa, and Vegeta started to show up.

There's still a place for no-selling and massive power levels being untouchable, but those are the exception rather than the norm, especially in a tournament with rules.

Is it inconsistent with previously established norms and ideas? Sure. But so was the very idea that simply being off-guard would allow your body to be pierced by a simple laser. For the most part, I think this change in fight scene mentality has produced more positives than it has negatives. Power-scalers have trouble wrapping their heads around it, but I'm enjoying it a lot personally. I've never liked the idea of a higher power level simply trumping anything that a lower one, at least most of the time. The fact that Jiren embodies this old mentality in spite of the changes in writing when it comes to fights makes him that much more imposing, for example.

It's not for everyone, I admit, but I think this direction has ultimately been for the best, if only so that we don't need to have "the other Z-Warriors can only fight scrubs" propping up all the time.

[rereboy]

Good writing.

Master Roshi's ToP episode was one of DBS' best and it wouldn't exist if we still kept the DBZ ideology. Honestly, I blame DBZ for going way too high the power pole and not letting everyone catch up. It limited too many characters.

If it was good writing there would be actual good and satisfactory explanations for the power up of the weaker characters and to the obvious inconsistencies in power compared to what came before.

This is not about power levels, this is about explaining power consistency... without explained power consistency we could get things like, for example, Ron Weasley being able to hold off Voldemort in a fair fight with no proper explanation for how or why. Or any other similar example you can think of from any franchise. And it would be terrible.

No one would have a problem with master Roshi doing what he has been doing... if there was a good and satisfying explanation for it. Super literally doesn't care about explaining stuff like that, it just looks at the end result that it wants (Roshi doing this and being more focused on) and at best provides with the flimsiest excuse, like a generic "he trained".

[Doctor.]

Good writing.

Master Roshi's ToP episode was one of DBS' best and it wouldn't exist if we still kept the DBZ ideology. Honestly, I blame DBZ for going way too high the power pole and not letting everyone catch up. It limited too many characters.

Having consistency and weaker characters becoming stronger are not mutually exclusive concepts and we shouldn't pretend like we need to throw one away to have the other.

[ahill1]

I'd say that weaker/minor characters being able to put up a fight against supposedly way stronger characters was always kind of a thing in Toei's land, where we have, for example, Kuririn dodging some attacks from Imperfect Cell and later punching him in the face, to which this latter couldn't completely tank him... or how in the Boo saga both Yamcha and Kuririn could also fight Paikuhan and Olibu (?), both whom were established as being strong enough to give a Goku apparently stronger than his Cell Games self a nice challenge... even when they animate "canon" fights, it's still generally more dragged out than the scene in the manga...

[Xeogran]

I'd say that weaker/minor characters being able to put up a fight against supposedly way stronger characters was always kind of a thing in Toei's land, where we have, for example, Kuririn dodging some attacks from Imperfect Cell and later punching him in the face, to which this latter couldn't completely tank him... or how in the Boo saga both Yamcha and Kuririn could also fight Paikuhan and Olibu (?), both whom were established as being strong enough to give a Goku apparently stronger than his Cell Games self a nice challenge... even when they animate "canon" fights, it's still generally more dragged out than the scene in the manga...

Yeah, I agree. Look at Buuhan injuring Vegetto a few times in the Anime, while in the Manga he was totally outclassed. Or Vegetto attempting to run away from Kamikaze Ghosts in a filler even though he had no reason to.

[Zephyr]

This is not about power levels, this is about explaining power consistency... without explained power consistency we could get things like, for example, Ron Weasley being able to hold off Voldemort in a fair fight with no proper explanation for how or why. Or any other similar example you can think of from any franchise. And it would be terrible.

Has Super really given us anything this egregious though? It's not like we had Krillin and Jiren going toe-to-toe, with nobody batting an eye, and no explanation, which is about what your example would be comparable to. Even when Krillin sparred with Super Saiyan Blue Goku, it was made abundantly clear, before, during, and after their fight, that Krillin was up against someone he stood no chance against. The "feats" are fucked, sure, but the basic scale isn't exactly incoherent or hard to follow. We know where Krillin stands relative to Super Saiyan Blue Goku: waaaaaaaaaaaay below him. The power relations that actually matter for the sake of the intended tension are pretty clear, I think, and that's about where power scaling's relevance to writing quality begins and ends.

Roshi and Krillin and the like are pretty much where they should be - moderately useful up until around the midpoint of the tournament. That's pretty consistent with where they should be. No, this doesn't mean that if we closely analyze every "feat" that they'll all fit snugly and coherently into a comprehensive tier list relative to one another. But I don't think they have to in order for the writing to be called good (not that I would call Super's writing good; it's pretty bad, but I don't think that has anything to do with power scaling). I think the online fandom's decade-plus of meticulous feats-based interpretation of the manga's art, choreography, and dialog has warped a good chunk of its collective perception of writing quality for the worse.

Like, I see the appeal of the grand-scale logic-puzzle of it all, but there's no way that it's what Toriyama had in mind drawing it 20 years ago, and it's definitely not what Toriyama with his bullet points, Toei's script writers, the storyboard artists, and the animators, etc. have in mind while creating Super today. And even if they had all of this in mind, the creative energy involved is different. You have one man 20 years ago, versus a committee in the present. Even if their goal was to present every second of combat with consistent feats in mind, it still wouldn't likely match up with the original manga, because it's a different team of creators, at a different point in time, working in a different medium.

This all reminds me a lot of the Super Smash Bros. Melee community being upset that Masahiro Sakurai didn't take their specific meta into consideration when making Brawl and Smash 4. Why would you expect him to? Why should he be obligated to? That was never necessary for the series to warrant acclaim in the first place. It'd be super cool if he did, but I can't see how that should now become a necessary condition for quality, when it never was to begin with.

[rereboy]

Has Super really given us anything this egregious though? It's not like we had Krillin and Jiren going toe-to-toe, with nobody batting an eye, and no explanation, which is about what your example would be comparable to.

It's common practice to use hyperbole while using an example to clearly the demonstrate a point, trying to leave no room for misinterpretations regarding the issue we are talking about.

Super might not have any situation strictly as bad as the example I used if we tried to use a rating system to classify all the different situations, but the lack of care regarding the explanation of power consistency and the departure from the outlook prevalent in the manga/DB and DBZ is obvious throughout Super. It's fine if people enjoy that, but it's abundantly clear that not bothering to come up with satisfying explanations regarding power consistency can't be considered good writing.