Aight, hopping onto the thing going on. (plucking bandwagon.) Anyways, as stated as the thread title. Opinions on Felith, and how I RP him? How can I improve, and make him a bit less power-gamy/god-mody if he is at all. If you have valid points, I'll say so. If there is an explanation as to why he acts like he does for some things, I'll put that down. Otherwise, go at it. *Braces for Impact* Major Edit: Alright so, the following is about everything I can think of about Felith. Backstory: Born and grew up on Avos with his twin sister till they were 16. They both grew up in the slums (99% sure there would be slums on Avos somewhere), and had to basically fight for survival. Steal, scavenge, anything. At this point, Felith started to have a knack of putting -minorly- damaged stuff back together. However, they were kinda the punching bag of everyone else, constantly getting beat up over food, supplies, blankets, etc etc, getting it stolen (Forcefully and not), etc etc. So this caused Felith to start have to stand up to them, got into more fights, started winning some, etc etc. Anyways, continued till they were 16. At that point, they stowaway-ed on a ship that was leaving, and got the hell out of there. Ended up on a semi-decent planet, and of course, gravitated towards the slums. There the cycle resumed, this time however, they made friends, which lead to group stealing. (I think is what its called.) During this however, Felith started to have doubts about stealing, and started to gravitate towards a local engineer, occasionally talking with her, and eventually started learning from her, and started helping her with some simple tasks. He started spending more time helping with her, while Glethin and her friends continued to steal stuff. After about a year, he was helping the engineer full time. However, Glethin managed to drag him on one more heist (I think, I dunno these words man!) During which however, the owner of the house walked in. At this point, the leader of the group drew a pistol, and started to hold the man Hostage. At this, Felith tried to drag Glethin out, and started a long drawn out argument, that was abruptly cut off as the leader of the group shot and killed the owner of the house. By this time the local law enforcement had showed up. Felith and Glethin both fled, ending up at the engineer's workshop. They hid there until the morning, when the engineer arrived for work. With Glethin protesting, Felith confessed to her what had happened, she had them wait there, and then later came back with an officer. They were both detained for about a year. After they were let out, they said their goodbyes, and left. After that, they managed to get into a small time security job, and after a year of that, they left themselves, after getting themselves their own guns, and started off as small time mercenaries. This continued till they were 23, where things went south. On a world where Florans had started raiding nearbye towns, they were hired to help defend one. Felith heavily protested, as the pay might be good, but they were putting both of their lives at risk. After the argument, Felith left. That night however, Florans attacked, slaughtering/killing/capturing nearly everyone in the village. He only arrived near the end, and found no trace of Glethin. Panicking, he started running towards one of the known nearby Floran villages, only to start to hear his sister screaming in agony. He ran up to find the Florans eating her alive, but it was too late by then. However, he saw three men clad in crimson red armor nearbye, just watching, with the symbol of the pirate group the "Red Hawks", on their armor. As they had been supporting the Floran tribes, giving them weapons and land, if they raided the villages. The Pirates would then swoop in, and take any of the essential supplies that were left. Felith himself barely got out alive, and after that, started trying to Track down the leader of the Red Hawks, in a stupid attempt for revenge. During this however, he hooked up with multiple groups that were having to deal with the Red Hawks as well, and they all joined together, eventually finding, and assaulting, their main station. During this, Felith boarded the station, making his way to the main command center, to confront the leader. However, he was only able to take out one of her eyes before being forced to take her ship and flee, as the station was blown to bits. (I know it sounds bad, but its all of my thoughts combined horribly) Non-Physical Stuff: He appears stubborn, smart (At times), quick thinking, dumbass-like (Rest of the time), and confident. Physical Stuff: All four of his limbs, and eyes, are cybernetic.
I know. But at the time of making him, I had little/no actual information on how -exactly- Avians acted. And by now its too late. If I do ever have to make another Avian character, I'll make sure to keep that in mind. (A little bit of his back story -does- contribute to him acting not so avian, but not for why he acts almost entirely human, besides know-how of history n shit)
my big question is "how does this birdman relate to a song by some edgy christian rock band which sounds like it belongs in an AMV?"
Well the human wedding is cause neither know/care the customs of their own races. Felith wouldn't have a kluexian wedding Florans don't even have weddings So Felith asked about how humans do it from joshua
I suppose my biggest issue with Felith is how much money has been pumped into him, not to mention the fact that all his cybernetics dont' come with a downside, they're literally upgrades. Like losing his limbs was a favor. There was no recovery time, no physical therapy, no 'get used to your 90% robot body, birdbrain.' He simply... was. That and, given his rank, I have a hard time believing a military faction would pump all the resources into him to keep him on the field with military grade cybernetics. As for the 'feathersuit' stuff, See: Duskfeather. In concerns to a wedding: Why a Human wedding? Neither of them care about their own cultures (or at least the Avian traditions, as stated, Florans probably don't have weddings). But why does that mean they care so much about Human culture? Proximity? Convenience? Why not some kind of small, quiet ceremony? If it IS a Human wedding, what kind? There are about a bajillion different marriage traditions within Human culture.
My main gripes with Felith... Well, his un-avianness aside. He seems like one of those dull hero characters. the kind with "I just want to help people" as their motto. Which is an incredibly bland character type, really. You did a lot of powergaming with him back on tetanus, too, so when I heard he joined the uscm I wasn't surprised at all. Oh and let's not forget the period where it felt like you volunteered him for torture on a weekly basis, which seemed to have little purpose other than to shift the spotlight onto yourself, and gain shiny, shiny godmodey cybernetics in the process. You even go so far as to boast about it in your signature with "The universe has tried to kill me five times now, what makes you think you'll succeed?" Honestly, if someone said that to me during a fight, I'd be tempted to abandon ship right there. because it's obvious that no matter what, I'm not coming out on, or even close to, on top. In summary, from all my interactions/what I've heard, Felith is an uninteresting, somewhat tryhard self-proclaimed hero character, with little to no characteristics native to their own race.
His cybernetics actually do come with a downside. Although most aren't exploited/easily noticed. EMPs/Enough electricity do fuck them up. And right now my best idea for them is, they draw energy from Felith himself, which sounds power-gamy and all. Buuut, this means he has to eat -a lot- more, which lowers his time of survival with absolutely no food, to about a week/week and a half. Along with, if he starts to run out of energy, they start to not work so well. And as for the money thing, I was never told it -wouldn't- happen. At least with two of his cybernetics and his eyes. And as for the wedding, he did spend about 2 years among humans before he and his sister got off of the damn planet, so he would of at least hard of such, but never fully inquired. And when he asked Josh, answer he got was of a christian wedding. And as for the wound recovering, yeah. I know I need to work on that as well, I've been keeping that in mind for the next time he gets himself hurt. As to un-avianness, I know. As stated before, I didn't know enough about avians before to RP them correctly, and by now its too late to change. And as for the "I just want to help people", yeeeeah. That's a trend with all of my characters, and so far I haven't been able to break it. <.< But I'm too good of a person to have a char not be like that. And I don't volunteer him for torture, and defiantly not on a weekly basis. Literally every time (But two) times he's been injured, have not been planned. It just happens. He's just the dumb-ass that runs in guns blazing without thinking. And as for the quote, I felt it was kinda nifty, but I will change it. May be going a bit overboard (Well, is.) And its a quote from himself, not me. I am perfectly fine with Felith getting his ass handed to him in a fight (And possibly die). And I'd like to know -exactly- what type of power gaming I did on Tetanus, so I may not repeat it again. I've been trying to get better at that, and some pointers would be nice.
Other than what's stated previously (which I do agree with)- Felith seems to have anti-hero tendencies just for the sake of being brooding, with out any of the trials or drawbacks of such. From interactions, he levitates from "blunt by the books soldier" to "Punisher" randomly, with a dash of Frank Miller style immortality. Mostly? Kirby hit the right notes; he comes off as bland, predictable, and not very rewarding to RP with. And the only reason I say any of this is because I've seen you do better. Though the steam RP never took off, I know you can instill more depth in a creative work like a character. Alot of these issues seems to come from a timidness to lock yourself into anything, so Felith can be playable in alot of scenarios, or just simple stage-fright to break out of the mold, I'm not sure. Make some drastic decisions for his back story, have him make mistakes that aren't losing limbs. As far as costs for limbs; try scaling them back to dollar store quality that he works on once in awhile; not upgrades, but downgrades because, well, it beats not having that limb. Shorts, misprogramming, very-poorly timed crashes (as all technology is made to do), things like that. Also; refer to the advice I gave Angre on Dusk, as alot of those points apply here too; http://community.playstarboundrp.co...se-threads-so-heres-one-for-duskfeather.5745/
All noted. And I'd like to say thank you to everyone that's responded so far, you've kept your posts mostly simple and to the point. I will be doing my best to improve on all of the stuff I can.
Well, you have an IC basis for a Christian-style wedding, which is good. And you're considering your mistakes and taking criticism well, also good. Mostly what I recommend is this: Ground him. Instead of going big, super-hero, all-the-cybernetics, etc. think small. What makes him a person, rather than what makes him a hero. People are fallible, fickle things. And in a universe like SBRP, it's hard to forget just how complex we are, even simple people like most of us are in real life. On the server, things move quickly, the small things are forgotten, the pace of the world is basically turned up to 11. And this causes a lot of people to simply exaggerate the traits they LIKE, and forget everything else. It whitewashes characters, taking them from ideas to bland, try-hard parodies of life. Mix that with a bit of 'power fantasy' and you essentially have a vast field of... the same person, with tiny nudges in different direction. Let's see if I can think of an example, provide a bit of context... alright. The Den. Within it's confines are a vast menagerie of edgy assassin types. Mercenary cliches, katana wielding badasses. In the end 'Edgy badass' becomes their defining trait, and it becomes so defining it overshadows anything else they are. With Felith I feel a lot of 'edgy badass' has mixed with 'soldier boy' to create a hybrid. But even then, those two traits, even if they are the most outstanding, should be two of many. Ask yourself: "How did Felith live before all this?" "How did his life before shape him?" "How would he react to these situations?" "How would a normal person react to these situations?" One of the best ways to build character is to mess up. To have fears and flaws and doubts. Doubt is a big one. The sheer amount of indifference to violence in this server is a major issue. Followed closely by irrational reaction. As a player the best advice I can give is: Don't be afraid to lose. At this point, it might be hard to immediately fix Felith. He's been around a while. But instead of simply waving over his losses (limbs, cybernetics, recovery time), make them major parts of the character development process. Let them change him.
Agreed on basically.. All of that. Funny thing is, I already started doing some of what you suggested before I even read this. I'll keep the rest in mind and work on it. Hopefully the writing/character creation things I'll be attending next week will help. Otherwise, his mask will be coming off after the upcoming USAF deded event. (Metaphorical, not literal).
The Tetanus powergaming was, on several occasions, I saw you OOCly explain to people the punishments for a character's action after they had performed it, and then suggested that they void said action. Usually with some mention of "((Because I'm part of the militia, if you punch me, you get banned))" This is basically using OOC threats to get what you want IC, and thus, Powergaming.
