Longer Bios

I actually have bound the 'I' key on my keyboard to bring up the information of whatever I'm targeting, as I read the Bio's of *everything*. The first thing I do when joining a new team is look at the information of everybody on a team, and if they have a bio, I will take the twenty seconds to consume what information you have decided to put there. Even if it's horrible and filled with cliche's, I will read it.

So yeah, there's at least ONE person in Paragon City reading your bio's.


As for whether or not the limit should be increased, I'd rather they just fix it so that it doesn't randomly add characters, stop typing, lose text, and generally annoy the ever lasting **** out of me when I'm trying to use it. 1024 characters is a lot more when you can actually USE all of them.

I'm with the "Keep it shorter" crowd. You can do it without gutting what you're trying to say by sacrificing the unimportant things - really, I don't care that your character is supposed to be 5'5 1/2, etc, etc. If it's something that can't be done in game and is important, a quick description ("Has orange streak in hair" if that's what matters or is supposed to be "eye catching" or whatnot) is fine. I've seen THAT pulled out into a very tedious paragraph, though.

Write something that tells me the guts of your character. If you need to write a story, there are all sorts of free websites, blogs and the like you can fire up and do it in. Throw a link there.

As a roleplayer, I have to say I find myself keeping Bios short, to the point, and often deliberately vague, which sounds odd until you consider that what's going in there is the public info that people would have heard. There's no reason that anyone IC would know the full backstory until they were told it IC, so I don't waste time typing it there. I mean, consider how long it sometimes takes to explain to people that no, your name is NOT floating above your head IC, trying to explain that no, all that backstory isn't actually available to anyone who isn't actually intimate with the character is an exercise in frustration.

Keep it at its current limit. I don't care if you were "born a poor black child.." so you can leave that out. Just hit the highlights and keep the number of adjectives and adverbs down.

I've learned to be a better and more concise writer due to the limit. I use Notepad to reedit it as well as keep a longer bio if I want; and a couple of my characters are on VirtueVerse.

I always use the bio to describe the character's "secret origin." It would be nice to have more space.

Playernotes gives you close to twice the amount of space. I duplicated the same paragraph until I ran out of space for comparison:

I like lengthy bios and I really hate to see a cool character concept only to open bio and see nothing or something stupid. The first thing that pops into my mind is; "what a waste".

Teaser text with an option to click for the rest of the bio. It works for blogs rather nicely.

Honestly, it's redefining the field size in the database -- not the end of the world here. Why anyone should protest such a request is beyond me, especially when it's "I don't want to read more". Frankly, giving people the opportunity to make the game more immersive should be encouraged and this is an easy way to do it.

I would love more space to write for my bio!

Yeah it's always a little disappointing to check someone's info and I'm immediately dropped to their power selections.

I'd at least like the double space thing fixed, I don't mind working with a small text block because I have to consider what details are the most important that I want to convey.

Then again, I don't give all my characters elaborate details/origins, sometimes it's just a for fun thing I'll slap in, though I will go back and edit in something more serious/detailed sometimes.

As usual, this suggestion gets rabbit's seal of approval.

There's a case to be made for longer bios, but as many have pointed out, not everyone reads the longer ones.

Perhaps what could work would be an in game "extract" or short form of the bio, then a link to some web page where the longer form exists for those interested.

Sadly I doubt there's a cost benefit to Paragon Studios, but maybe that's something the team at Titan could think about?

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

I read bios a LOT. Someone whose name or costume catches my eye. Teammates in a PUG whenever there's a lull in the action. In particular if a costume looks like something the player spent some time and effort putting together but doesn't "say" anything about the character just a short paragraph or two of bio will tie a concept together. I hang around Atlas looking at bios for incoming new characters (moreso if they have "Help Me!" tatooed above their heads) and if I find one I actually like I'll send them a tell that their effort has paid off, or even give them a fat enhancement they can sell for some early extra influence, even just a cheap rez inspiration is often welcome to newbies. I'd just fork over raw influence if the Trade Window weren't such an intrusion when all I want to do is GIVE IT AWAY. Unfortunately, these days you're lucky if 1 in 40 people has a bio and 1 in 40 of those has a bio of any real merit. Almost makes it the better to find a good one.