I hate Katie Douglas

I can understand it a little. It doesn't necessarily have to be 'the most powerful psychic'. The way Katie is written pretty much assumes your character isn't psychic in any way. Or that you have a human, organic mind that -can- be read (remember we've got -robots- for example). It's written in a way that it puts your character in a niche, even if they wouldn't normally occupy it.

Unlike say, the SSA1 finale where Lady grey says something along the lines of "I'm going to give you a spell to let you breathe in space, in case you can't already do that" (again, like, robots don't need to breathe, or you're a wizard already or whatever). There's ways to write this stuff that doesn't peg your character into any particular hole.

It's probably one of the biggest problems with some of the newer content. Twinshot/Graves arc tries to give you a 'voice' and treat you specifically as a young newbie. First Ward pretty much assumes you're a normal human that wants to help the Resistance/First Warders and Carnival of Light (and has never previously met Katie or Noble Savage) even if you're still a loyalist or villain or Resistance member that ran those very arcs.

Compare it to like Dark Astoria, which is a nice epic and magically oriented story but never tries to put your character into any specific cast except as the person that has to defeat Mot.

I definitely don't envy the writers though. it is a tough job and it can be hard to try to keep things accommodating to most (reasonable) character concepts. Generally they do pretty well, in fact Night Ward I think did a better job of leaving the player character more ambiguous, not trying to assign a particular voice or reactions [...well, except it continues on as heroic content villains can do, but that aside]. So it's not really an extreme problem to the power player RP'er folks or the guys that create Gods and Mary Sue characters, it can be a general kind of problem. It's generally pretty easy to handwave but it can break immersion when you -have- to handwave it.

I'm pretty sure we'd have heard about their reactions to meeting a player who'd supported the loyalists on Chimera's GR arc

And that's OK. You get access to the Twinshot arc at level 5, and lose it at level 10. If you flashback to run the arc later, you're taken back in time to level 9.

I guess I don't care what you say your backstory is; if you're a level 9 hero in a world with multiple level 50+ heroes, then you *are* a newbie. Anything else is like going into a fantasy MMORPG with the assumed backstory that 'I am the mortal incarnation of a god and the most powerful being in the world' and then complaining about why you can't solo all the endgame raids at level 6.

I'm not sure I'd go that far -- there are a lot of specifics about your role in the DA story arcs. It's just that many of those specifics are contained in the arcs themselves (for instance, your relationship with the Cimerorans, one in particular).

Nevertheless, one of the biggest reveals of the arc, the identity of the letter writer in the Ouroboros arcs, probably doesn't mean a whole lot to you if you've only ever done the basic arcs required to get your Ouroboros badge and never moved on to run the Ouroboros task forces.

I'll agree with you on the 'heroic content villains can do' point, because that's an issue for some folks that has nothing to do with making a Mary Sue or similar type of character. On the other hand, I don't mind so much having an assumed 'voice' in a particular mission arc, so long as there are options that involve being able to play a different arc if I don't like the 'voice' I've been assigned. Best example I can give is, ironically, on redside -- the Willy Wheeler arc. The first time I was assigned Wheeler as a contact came after my villain had failed a Mayhem mission, so being assigned to work with a self-deluded tool made sense. But if I had a villain that I didn't want to view in that light, being able to choose a different contact with a different 'voice' would be much better. The difference with First Ward and Dark Astoria is that the arcs are much longer and more involved, and the alternatives are fewer and, especially in DA's case, possibly much more difficult to accomplish. (DA, after all, is supposed to be for people who want a solo-friendly alternative to the iTrials.)

With that said, Katie is my favorite character in all of First Ward (with Master Midnight and his cartoon villainy a close second).

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Pauper

See I have to disagree. Because while level range assumes a kind of timeliness with the storyline, character level does not explicitly express -age-. There's a difference between someone that's new to being a hero in Paragon and someone that's new to life. It's not just a simple case of "My character was born a god". It's as simple as, my character was a retired cop that gained powers or a teacher or the like. Or is a robot. Or an alien. The beautiful thing about the concept and costume creator is that it lets you create almost anything.

What Twinshot does is assume you're young and human and new to everything. What the original Origin arcs did was assume that you were of your noted origin and that was it. They explicitly left it out to fit in any kind of character concept, they didn't try to give you a voice and they didn't try to assume anything about your character except your powers were based around your origin and even in that matter they gave leeway be being ambiguous. Twinshot just pares down a -lot- of that ambiguity. I mean it feels like it was written if you're an 18 year old that just developed their powers.

And the difference in how they teach you about the game. Twinshot assumes you don't know anything, again, because you're completely green. The only origin arcs assumed you were completely green -to Paragon City-, again giving leeway that your character was more experienced but simply from out of town.

Like I said, there's just ways to do it that allow for a broader character concept and Twinshot does not do that. It's not about power gaming mary sues with God concept characters, it covers even simple stuff like the middle aged scientist that had a lab accident or the FBI agent that delves into the occult. Etc.


That's different though. That's a timeline thing, not a character concept thing. That just assumes that you've previously done content. It's not trying to give your character any kind of voice it's simply saying "yeah you did these adventures" and the way City is set up that can still be true because Ouroboros let's you time travel, so when the Dream Doctor says you did something, you just may not have done it yet. That I don't mind so much because it's easier to assume these events happened than to assume you power leveled via AE or did nothing but street sweeping.

Well when I say it gives your character a voice I mean more specifically that in dialogue your response options are in a very specific voice, as in, the responses are from a specific type of person. For the most part, most of the game gives generic responses like "Sure" "Ok" or simple questions like "Why would he do that?". Stuff that doesn't give you any kind of speech pattern or specific inclination. However there is stuff that does try to change that like some of Twinshot or First Ward where your responses are dictated as a specific kind of character. Things like the SSA and Dark Astoria do this wonderful kind of trick where you're given -options- to allow you to choose an answer and pick your own voice or at least the closest option your character might say.

Well, count me among the folks who complained that, when my character was left ambiguous in the stories being told in Old Paragon City, it really meant that the stories weren't about me. I recently re-ran the Freaklympics arc, and while there's a lot to like about that arc, it's so generic that it doesn't feel as though it's about my character taking on the Freakshow -- it's about Generic Hero X taking on the Freakshow.

I'm happy with arcs that assume that you have a patriotic streak, or that you have an unsolved mystery about your origin that you want to pursue a story to help illuminate, or that you're a new hero, because my characters who fit those voices really feel connected to the story. As long as my characters who don't fit those voices can find other arcs to do, I'm not too disturbed.

I can accept that it feels that way to you. It didn't to me, but maybe that's because I didn't take literally Twinshot's calling me 'kiddo' all the time.

Examples? I've played the arc a few times, and while the arc is clearly a tutorial, I didn't get specific dialog from the characters that suggested I was a complete newbie. If anything, the characters seemed to assume that I knew where things like the police station and Wentworth's were, and the game helpfully pointed me to them if it turned out I didn't really know. The one in-character tutorial I remember was Proton's enhancement tutorial, and that's entirely skipable (and provokes a response that shows that Proton recognizes and appreciates that you are an experienced hero).

See, this bugs me for exactly the opposite reason -- if my character is level 50, and hasn't already experienced a particular piece of content intended for lower-level characters, I'm pretty sure that character isn't ever going to experience that content. So in that sense, someone telling me 'you did this' when I didn't do it is a much bigger irritation than someone telling me 'you're like this' when I'm not -- the latter I can just write off as someone who thinks they know me but doesn't (and a lot of those kinds of comments come from people who don't know me, yet -- kind of like Katie Douglas), but the former is just plain wrong.

I see your point, and it is nice that there are sometimes dialog options, but if you've got three different dialog options and they all go to the same response screen, you've really just got the illusion of choice. Unless you're actually tracking my responses for some purpose down the road that I don't know about yet, don't bother giving me choices just for the sake of pretending they make a difference -- give me one choice that fits with the feel of the story I'm in.

I'd rather be on a rollercoaster than in a hedge maze.

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Pauper