(Warning: Highly Volatile Topic) Is Ghost Widow a Mary Sue?

You call her 'Better than an electric armor tanker vs Carnies but still susceptible to faceplanting if too many +1 Master Illusionists join in the festivities'.

Or 'Softcap Sunshine'.

Or 'Miss Inspiration'.

I decided to make her an omnipotent clairvoyant lycan invulnerability tanker instead. "Hairy Sue" wasn't taken.

That would be Marty Stu*

* Caution: TVTropes. Enter at your own risk

Edit: Nevermind. I guess TVTropes lists Gary Stu as an acceptable alternative. I've never heard that one.

No. WHat they're doing is making tough enemies for your character to fight.

Oh yes, totally worth the fight if Statesman was hard to beat up, but the blaster stood there taking the punches, due to a low damage mod.

Come on now. Think McFly, think.

All signature chaacters are going to be tough opponents, or else they're just not a challenge. Even if some of the challenges are considered just plain boring.

Well... here's the problem I have with that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C...me_designer%29

He was known as Zeb, not Lord Recluse.

From the information we have, Lord Recluse was created as a retro-active continuity opponent for Statesman. Lord Recluse, as far as any of the information we have suggests, was not a David Cook character inserted into the game.

So... the Mary Sue angle on Lord Recluse doesn't hold up. Is Lord Recluse a badly written character? Oh hell yes. Is Lord Recluse an overpowered Git? He's that too.

Is he an representation of the author of the character inserted to stroke the authors ego? I haven't seen any evidence to suggest this.

From the information that's available, David Cook simply used the name of a canon lore character, similar to how current developers Television, Black Scorpion, Dr. Aeon, and Noble Savage use the names of canon lore characters. Now, if somebody brings up an interview, statement, forum post, or some other source of information where Zeb says that Lord Recluse was originally one of his characters that he (Zeb) introduced into the game's canon lore because he wanted to introduce a character into canon lore, hey, fine, I'll recant and say Lord Recluse is a Mary Sue.

He still wouldn't be one, due to missing other prerequisites, but don't worry, you'll never be called to recant. The wikipedia article for Lord Recluse lists the creator as "Sean Michael Fish" aka Manticore. Since they credit Jack for Statesman, I'd wager that this wasn't a generic attribution.

Poor Sean was probably going nuts looking for names for this one. He managed to finally find the only venomous North American spider that didn't have a corresponding comic book character named after it.

I'll tell you exactly what I've told others before:

Singular characters shouldn't BE what the devs are throwing at us for team challenges.

Signature characters shouldn't bloat up to multiple times the power level of everyone else simply because having us stuggle against their Mary Sue Defender with more HP than a player Tanker is easier (and more fun) for the devs than giving us challenge worthy of a team of super heroes, like fighting a team of super villains or a Galactus.

When you have the keys to the sandbox, it's really easy to play corrupt GM and let your pet break the rules and hide behind "design limitations" as a justification. Because then your baby gets to one-shot Rikti motherships, have crash-less T9s and purple triangles.
"For challenge."


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Galactus is a singular character and we do fight teams of supervillians. I don't see what your issue is.

Galactus is a force of nature.


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So are incarnates.

... now I have this mental image of Manti desperately searching AskJeeves and Yahoo for spiders not in comic books.

I doubt a player Defender, even with Incarnate slots, will match Positron's Mary Sue HP.


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Well, that sorta stands to reason due to game mechanics:
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Archvillain
http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Hero_%28Enemy%29

There's no standardized system to separate NPC classes by archtype. Their are a few situations in the game where an NPC shows up with the Hero/AV description, but don't actually have Hero/AV stats. In most of these situations the NPC's are allies that help the player. In some cases, such as the Darrin Wade arcs, they are special con classes apparently with hand-edited stats.

That being said, when dual-builds were first announced, I still remembered getting a laugh out of the storyline posed to describe the new feature: http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/par..._journals.html

In the storyline, Positron supposedly changes his power load-out... then goes and solos Requiem... immediately launching another volley of attacks after using his Tier 9 nuke.

Yeah.

I. Don't. Think. So.

Of course. He's Positron, after all.



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lol boobcat

Uh, back on topic, um, uh, boobs... Wait, that wasn't the topic. Um, damn...

Dr Horrible has the perfect solution to such problems.

We only need some backup from Bad Horse.

No wait! The topic Was boobs! It was!
Please let's keep to the topic of boobs and not a dead horse that I have resurrected from making a post at six in the morning with no sleep!

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

Hmm how much boob talk are we allowed under the new rules?

you miss the obvious, make her kinetic melee with the natural booster stuff...and make her mary tsoo. or do a funny spelling of your first name, but what kind of egomaniac would do that?

Main characters generally possess some of the same traits as a Mary Sue, something you have to watch as a story writer at times. For example:

My character Lucretia from the Bystander book referenced below was designed before her world setting was. The world setting was, in fact, designed around her. On the one hand, that sounds like a Mary Sue, but it is HER story being told, so it is less so.

In addition, there are consequences to her actions. The first story is pretty much kicked off by her mistakes and efforts to correct them.

My decision to make her the most powerful being in the world (whether she knows it or not right now) is fine given that it's her story and the world is designed for her.

Statesman as well would be fine with just some moderate tone downs if this were a television series or comic book and the like. However, as an NPC he has always been in the "I'm the Hero!" stage for most of the time I've thought about him.

This game is NOT about Statesman, it's about the players. Hence why he enters into Mary Sue territory for the beginning of his career. He overshadows the players terribly in his original version and you start to wonder why he needs anybody else when he has the "I win" button that Jack complained that we all wanted.

Know what will happen if you throw a team of Boss or even EB rank mobs at a team of players?

You're not going to get eight one-on-one fights. You're going to get eight eight-on-one fights as the players focus fire on individual targets while the mobs flounder about helplessly because the CPU budget for AI doesn't give them a snowball's chance in hell of using teamwork.

That doesn't excuse the excesses in the fiction (if Statesman can survive getting hit with a tacnuke then nothing any player does should affect him at all) but there's no way the game is going to work if mobs are limited to PC power levels. If the computer isn't a cheating ******* the game will be very, very boring.

That term, you keep using it.

Hopefully enough that this thread stops...

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

He'd have been reduced to 1 HP, and I'm sure since he saw the debuff icon in his power list he had his mouse hovering over his respites to weather the DoT.