LogFAQs > #970905431

Lopen posted...

To me it's not a big deal because it's not in the battle write-up but I feel like biography stuff is completely unnecessary and should be completely blatantly tongue in cheek if done. Legitimate research on combat abilities should be the leader's job.

I completely agree with this, but don't concur that the bios are a replacement for this at all. They're a very very shortform explanation of what the admins feel the character could do, presented in as favorable a light as we can manage (for every merc, with no exceptions) to entice leaders to look into them, and the reason they're here is, frankly, addressing an IRL concern. We are all older now, and have more life obligations, which means our playtime has, largely, gone down since Mercs' earlier days. On top of that, gaming is just much broader and expansive than ever before -- the idea that there was a game with really cool fighters everyone could miss was fairly alien ten years ago when everything went through Sony/Microsoft/Ninty curation, but PC gaming utterly exploded since then and the rise of the indie marketplace means we have far more games worth playing than ever before. As administrators, we have a duty as stewards of the game to ensure Mercenaries features the most famous and entertaining faces in gaming -- and part of that duty requires us to actually add new characters who've never before been seen. The bios are a way to give leaders just enough to work with that they may actually take the plunge and play/research new games and characters instead of sticking to only what they've already played coming into Mercs. The actual work of persuading people that a merc is worth their weight in GP is something that will be up to them, and require a far more persuasive sale than any bulletpoint list we make could ever manage.