So when do you decide "It's a keeper"?

It takes me till around level 12 to decide if I want to push a toon to that all-important watermark of Stamina/SO's. If the toon is able to hold it's own at lower levels I'll keep them on probation, so to speak, 'till 20-22. If they make it that far they're pretty much in my permanent stable.

I have a weird set of standards for "keepers". Usually it's the moment when I use the powersets to do something insanely unbelievable because I put my *** in harm's way. Like... leaping around a corner with my plant/psi dom into a huge pack of Council, screaming like a little girl, and then flinching to hit the Seeds of Confusion.

Result? Hilarious. Total keeper.

I do have a couple of characters I rolled from concept and struggled just to finish - My MM, my stalker (GOD I HATE DARK AURA) and my Peacebringer. But the rest all had some moment where I said "That was awesome, you're never going away" and I kept to my word.

Edit: Oh! I remember why I kept my PB. I ran into a group and Nova'd with the teleport prompt from a teammate up - nuked the group and disappeared. It was a shining moment and I became enamored with the toon, even though her performance turned out to be sub-par.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deus_Otiosus This entire post should receive some kind of award for being both hysterical and fantastic. Well done.

About level 50. I've gotten characters to the high 40s, went 'eh, there's nothing else to do with this one' and abandoned/deleted them. Once there's really nothing interesting to explore on that character and I've gotten used enough to their fighting style that it's not particularly fun for me, I'm done with them, no matter the level. Often, I'll be enjoying a character for weeks, then suddenly realize that I've got all of the strategies for them down and the powers they have left aren't going to expand their abilities much and drop them for good. This happens a lot in the high 30s, since I don't care for most of the patron/ancillary pools. The one exception is if the character is just so damn fun to play that I don't really care if they get better or not. I've only got maybe three characters like that, but they're the only 50s I play regularly.

One thing I've learned is that I just can't force it. It's a game; if I'm not having fun, I just stop playing. If I don't adore how the character plays in every stage of their development, they're probably never going to see 50. Occasionally, I'll put some work into a character that will eventually blossom, but I usually try to avoid late-blooming sets for just this reason.

Playing up to level 6 is usually enough. When I started getting low on slots on Virtue, I got into the habit of rolling characters on other servers to see how they'd work out. It seems most characters rolled on Liberty are immediate keepers (rerolled to Virtue, my main server) while Justice seems to become the Graveyard of Bad Ideas.

When I create it. If I create it, it's a keeper. I've never deleted a toon so far, and I'm up to twenty level 50 toons.

Level 1 - 10 is to see whether i like the concept of the character.

Level 10 - 25 is to see whether or not i find the style of play for that character enjoyable or not.

Level 25+ is when i start the long journey of that character realising its potential.

So i would say the two stages up to 25 for me is the keeper or not stage

Interesting thread.

I'm in the "from the minute I create it" crowd. ALL of my toons have to have
a reason to exist, and consequently, ALL of them get a backstory from minute
one.

To the best of my memory, I've deleted just 1 character - a sonic blaster
(back in the day when the sounds were just awful - I haven't rolled sonic
anything since).

That said, I've got several characters that I don't play very often, but they're
still around, and unless I *need* a slot on that particular server, they won't
get deleted - probably ever.

I do have one I've intentionally left at a low level (7, I think) pending a
re-make, but until they actually allow a "Huge" female body shape in a
toon, it stays dormant (She needs to be short and wide for her storyline)


Regards,
4

Interesting responses, thanks peoples.

I generally reckon it takes a good 30+ levels to decide. I often decide when getting the Isolator (which I do on most toons) if I like the general feel but with 2 powers it's often not an easy call then.

Much of my decision making is how I "feel" about the toon. I've deleted technically competent toons, that worked well but with which I had no emotional connect. Conversely I've kept other toons that are pretty rubbish in game terms but conceptually sound - for example my PB who's languishing at lvl 15 but has an ace back story.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I'm torn. Because my standard is that by level 30, I know if they're a keeper or not. But realistically that's not the truth. I've deleted many high levels because they aren't right somehow (my Claws / SR, for example, was a good one, but I didn't care for it so they got deleted at nearly level 40).

Some I keep for nostalgia. My first 50 (Super Villain) is kept purely because they were my first 50, and even though I now have several that are more effective, more fun, and will never play SV again. Others are kept because they are a work in progress. "a little bunny" is my Purpled Out Warshade. I only need another 7-8 Purples to have 5 full sets, and one partial set. Expect me on the forums with pictures when that long awaited day comes! :P

But all in all, it's not a matter of when I know if one will be a keeper. It's a matter of when I get bored enough of one to delete it and move on. Most of the time that happens no higher then level 30.

I've usually made my mind up somewhere in the 14-20 range.

Usually, if I play a character enough to reach the level where they can buy SO's, they're pretty much safe from the chopping block. The only exception to this was my Dark/Stone Brute, who I rerolled at Lv. 26 from a Natural origin to a Science origin to better fit the revised backstory I gave him for my AE arc From the Abyss.

But even then, I'll only delete a character to make room for a new one.

for the most part I know almost immediately whether someone is a keeper or not. If the concept and the look feel good after a couple of levels it's probably a character I'll keep playing for a while.

Character concept. Really, I don't play ATs/powersets just to try them out, either; the only exception is my Widow who probably only still exists because she's on Triumph and I almost never play there anymore, so I have no desire to replace her with anything more awesome which would be better off on Virtue anyway. I've deleted a grand total of one character because I eventually decided the name "Plasmette" was too similar to Fusionette and I'll probably make her again when I think of a better name since I like the costume so much.

Sometimes at character creation, sometimes not until the 30s. A few characters I've made were fun right out of the box (my DB/elec brute for example) and never stopped being fun. Others were fun for a while, but then they hit a wall in the 30s and I stopped playing them (claws/inv scrapper). And some don't make it past level 1 (controllers/dominators).

A very few I keep as concept characters

When I've eaten a dozen cookies while playing them.

I would never commit to stating that a character is a keeper. Unthinkable awful things could happen at any time, and I might just have to remove them.

When characters are actual characters- not just powerset combos- that is when they're safest.

My 22 DB/Invuln Tanker? Probably going to be deleted. I like Dual Blades, I like invuln, I like tankers that are past 20... but she isn't a character. Just a datafile. Even if I were to come up with a story for her now, I would still recreate her. Hell, I probably won't come up with any concept I like until AFTER she's been deleted.

My Dark/Pain Corruptor? Probably going to stay. She cracks me up. She is the most cliche'd unoriginal character ever, and it is hilarious. I have a history of just being unable to enjoy Defenders/Controllers/Corruptors at all. But when I play her, I enjoy myself. Why? She's the Rouge Angle of Satin. She's a Healzor, she's both broody and snooty, she wears dark red and black and her breasts are on the obnoxiously high end of the scale. She's not leaving anytime soon.


Ah, another thing I realize: I don't much care about backstories. I live in the present. It doesn't matter how rich and detailed a backstory someone has, if the character as they are right now isn't interesting in some way or another, they just don't count to me. More than one of my characters has fallen to the old "Great backstory, not really much of a character" issue.

All in all though, it's a balance between gameplay and how... real they are to me. A good amount of both, and they're just plain fun to play! And having fun means being a keeper.

Because it's hilarious!

LEGION OF VALOR - Be a part of the Legend!

Stupid characters with stupid names, looks, and concepts (if there is a concept behind them) generally don't get played, and so I feel free to delete them if necessary. But I rarely delete toons, and never once they're up to level 15 or 20. I did that a couple of times when I was first playing the game, and I later realized in both cases that I shouldn't have.

Barring quick throw-together characters meant to be temporary (and named something like falkdsaji - though these are normally on test anyway) I tend to keep characters around. My forum-namesake character languished in the mid-teens for quite some time as I got other characters to 50, finally getting there last year.

About the only time characters get deleted is if I'm on a purging spree and have a bunch of some powerset combo. The lowbies/almost-never-played ones get trimmed, typically. If a character becomes, as mentioned above, a *character,* they're generally safe from deletion (or will get remade elsewhere before deletion.)

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