Deleting a 50: What did you feel?

I did something last night I thought I would never do: deleted two level 50 characters (two tanks actually).

I had tried to play them both earlier in the evening and I had become increasingly irritated at them because they *felt* inferior to the tanks and brutes I had leveled to 50 since then.

I wondered if I was just in a bad mood, but I could not come up with a slotting combination that let me enjoy them and as I thought about it, I really stopped enjoying them when I could never get them to "mature" for me.

So...I carefully denuded them of expensive enhancements, sold some of it and mailed the rest off...and I deleted them.

"I needed the space," I told myself, and it was true. I didn't want to spend the PPs to transfer them to another server (I have ranged characters who need decimation sets). It was still an odd sensation. Two characters who I worked pretty hard to get to 50 rolled under because they were, in effect, training wheel characters for the tank and brute I feel absolutely super playing.

In the aftermath, I felt guilty, if not to the work than to the character concepts. "Maybe I should have been more flexible or something." Or, "I got you to 50, it just didn't work out."

Time to play with the new hotness.

There are too many servers and free transfers for me to ever feel I need to delete a 50. Though some of them I just don't ever play.

Hehe...

I can't even bring myself to delete a level 4 I made 5 years ago!

I would never delete a 50. Though I've only got 3 so...

The only time I ever deleted a character is when I had no choice on my home server, even then it was only on a toon I had no good concept for. Since Freedom, I've used countless transfers just to clear room on my home servers without having to delete the various level 20's and such.

I was happy to delete my level 50 peacebringer. Until I came back this last time to find out that they can now have perma-capped dam-res.

I was happy to delete my very first villain to 50 because EM/FA became a complete joke. I was not happy that EM/FA had become a complete joke. I didn't enjoy getting all the accolades on him the second time. Ok, I hate badging... I didn't enjoy that the first time.

I didn't delete Bill Z Bubba the scrapper to make him into a brute. I just moved him. He will never be deleted by me.

First time I deleted a 50 it was hard but deleting 50s is like a lot of things in life. It just gets easier the more you do it.

After the Summer of Doom (Global Defense Nerf, Great Controller Nerf, Enhancement Diversification) I deleted every level 50 character I had. That consisted of 5 or 6 controllers and a tanker, I think.

No real regrets. It cleared my head.

Every other character I have thought about deleting since, I have moved, because the option exists now..

I did delete a level 45 or so earth/cold controller and an earth/electric assault dom a year ago, with no regrets, because I realized I find Cold Domination boring and Electric Assault abysmal.

Lewis

A pang of regret; however, I realized it was for the best because I would replace it with with an improved character.

although I have deleted every other character except my current main, which I expect to eventually delete - my one and only lvl 50 is not deleted.

It is on a different server with my defunct old super group, but I keep him in case I ever see them on and can then go play with them.

it is an ill/rad controller who I found insanely boring to play so I am never tempted to play him. I could delete him without caring, but since I don't play on that server it makes no difference.

I've done it a couple of times and have regretted it each. The toons in question weren't performing how I thought they should and I deleted them with the expectation of rerolling them with different powersets or something but it never happened that way.

Won't do it. I'd transfer and mothball them, but I won't delete.

Much like I wouldn't put a pillow over the face of an actual child, I couldn't imagine putting one over the face of my digital children.

I crush them. Implode is actually closer to the process. I use vet respecs to strip all valuable enhancers off, sell the SOs or standard stuff on the respec process. i spend all merits, emps, A-Merits, AE merits, everything. I e-mail proceeds to myself and DELETE. And yes, i'm taking 50s. And yes, multiple. It takes me about 5-7 days to 50 a project and sometimes thats the characters whole run. No reason to keep it around once I learn what I needed from that process. Irecently imploded my 1st Incanate Tank. i spent about 4 months on him. He was a beast in his day. All incarnated out. I e-mailed 1300 threads from him that I am still using. Nom Nom Nom.

If I like the name I immediately re-roll a 1st level as a name holder.

I delete characters often, no matter the level. I don't feel a thing.

I've been playing RPGs for over 30 years. I have a long list of character sheets I've never kept, although I did keep a couple for a long time.

It's no different with video game characters. They're bits of information on a platter somewhere. It's what I keep in my memories that's important.

So far, I've deleted four level 50 characters. None of them were particularly hard. The first three were actually immensely easy.

I deleted a level 50 Assault Rifle/Devices/Munitions Blaster, a level 50 Fire/Fire/Flame Blaster and a level 50 Energy/Energy/Force Blaster. I deleted all of them because after seven ******* years of trying to make Blasters work and failing hard AND pissing myself right off, I essentially lost patience with the whole AT and resolved to reroll ALL of my Blasters as something else. Three of them just happened to be level 50.

The above three are now a Bots/Traps Mastermind, a Fire/Fire Scrapper and an Energy/Will Brute, and I'm having ten times more fun with those by not living in constant fear for my life. Once upon a time, I put up with Blasters' fragility because they got about enough damage to compensate. But after so many fixes to Scrapper and Brute protection sets so the ones that used to suck no longer do and ESPECIALLY after Inherent Stamina, my Blasters were simply lagging SO far behind everyone else I felt it was a massive disservice to the character concepts behind them. The three I rerolled are now much better off. They're no longer afraid of bosses and they can approach fights with confidence, as opposed to abject terror.

The other one I rerolled was a level 50 MA/Inv/Weapons Scrapper, who is now a level 50 SS/Inv/Energy Brute, and I couldn't be happier for it. She may actually have been my first 50 delete, but it was SO worth it. I originally made her back in 2004 when the only Melee AT I wanted to play was a Scrapper and Martial Arts was the closest Scrappers had to anything super strength like. Since then, I'd built up her concept significantly, and made her into a character out-and-out defined by being effectively indestructible. Of the three melee ATs I want to play now - Stalkers, Scrappers and Brutes - Brutes are the AT defined by being hard to kill, so she's a Brute now. And I love it. She's still damn strong, she's very tough and she's my favourite Incarnate, as well as the one I tested the waters in the new Dark Astoria with.

Oh, right! There was a fifth level 50 I deleted. My old level 50 Sword/Inv/Fitness Scrapper, whose picture you've probably seen me post all over the forums. Well, Xanta's a level 46 Titan/Inv/Energy Brute now. Check it, old vs. new!



I made Xanta back in... Oh, man... 2005? 2006? Back when the only two weapon sets Scrappers had were Broadsword and Katana. I originally just wanted to remake my Orc girl from Lineage II (cool orcs, horrible game) who used a giant two-handed sword and was fairly scantily clad, but the Legacy Broadsword was the only thing I had access to. I got her to 50 way, way back when, but when Titan Weapons came out, I HAD to reroll her, I just had to. No choice, no option, no other way. That's what she was born to be, and I couldn't be happier with it.

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Occasionally, people ask me... Why delete a 50? Why not just start the character over on another server or move or rename the old one? I don't want to start on another server because I can't get the name on another server and I'm not looking to expand out of Victory and Pinnacle any time soon. As for the others... Because they cost money.

Really, though, the bottom line is I play for concept and I play for story. Once I've taken the concept out of a character, why keep it? What good is it to leave a character just sort of there if I won't do anything with it? Why would I want to hold up a slot with an old, useless character when I can make a brand new one in it? Why, so I can ret-con that character into a completely different concept and save myself the levelling process? Why would I do that? To me, a character needs to play through all of his or her levels personally, because those are the levels that sell me on the concept and flesh out the character as it interacts with the game world. Besides, the game's there to play it, not skip playing it. If I have another Sword/Inv Scrapper I want to make at some point, I'll start over. It's all part of the game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I've never deleted a 50, but I've got a 44 Claws/Elec brute that I *might* delete, or at least move - I leveled him in about 10 hours, and I have no idea how to play him in the high ranges. I've also got a Grav/Psi dominator who I've shelved since I don't find him fun. At all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shubbie Im very good at taking a problem and making it worse.

The only 50 I ever deleted was a Tank . he was an alt and my first and only tank 50. I will not delete a brute or scrapper 50.

I've deleted over 70 lvl 50s.




I feel nothing. They weren't worthy of being in my roster.

I know if a character will be sustainably enjoyable before the character enters the game for the first time, but I pay a price for this.

Whenever a new idea for a character hits me, it's like a meeting convenes between all the facets of my brain. The writer brings his notepad. The artist brings his sketchpad. Inks, marketing, shareholders, editors, publicists. This is an analogy, of course, but a lot of questions will arise, and I'll inevitably surprise myself. I couldn't explain the specifics of it, because I'm not consciously aware of the entire creative process. Suffice it to say, when I signed up for City of Heroes, I had no idea what I was in for.

Unlike so much other entertainment, City of Heroes turned out to be exercise for my brain, not junk food. My first few characters were long standbys, childhood comic book character creations. But on the day of my very first new character concept, my brain introduced me to my editorial staff. It was pure frustration. I didn't yet know why, but I couldn't bring myself to just "make it look cool, with some cool powers and stuff". Believe me, that was my intention. But the muse wouldn't let me off the hook. Not with the opportunity for such a wide open canvas. Not just another video game, this would be art.

My editorial staff wanted to know why I was doing this. What need is this character satisfying? I wish I could say this was fully analogous. But my inner self really demanded an answer from my outer self. "I...uh..." wasn't good enough. How would I feel about this character in a month? Six months? Was this idea sufficiently different, or was I falling lazily back on already-explored territory?

Well, it turned out, my brain was right. After seeing a movie, I really just wanted to play Iron Man that week, and the editorial board saw right through me. A couple of weeks later, after some negotiation and compromises, Moravec Man was my compensation prize. A former cop, one of the first disabled in the Rikti War, given a second chance through a donation of old power armor. No millionaire playboy. Just a good cop, dealt a bad hand, in a big metal suit. Two years later, I still love this character. He has a story now. A long story. He's not Tony Stark.

Since then, I've discovered, the difficulty in bargaining with the editorial board varies, depending on the character concept. Mostly, I just daydream, sleep on it, pace around the room for a while, write and doodle--Several days of this, before I even open the character editor.

Around the time Going Rogue came out, the muse upped the ante. A new idea had begun to gestate somewhere inside my brain, but after a couple of weeks, it was still trapped on the tip of my tongue. So I tried something new. I went to my local comic book shop, bought a guide on how to draw anatomy, and started learning how to sketch my ideas, not just see them as murky ideas in my mind. A few characters have come out of this, and many hours of enjoyment, and I learned how to draw a little.

The average time it takes for me to create a character in City of Heroes, from first thought to character registration, is between two weeks and six months. I have 25 characters. They are like little pieces of art. I enjoy playing them all, and they all bring something new and different to the game world. I have never gotten bored with any of them.

I will never delete a level 50, ever.