Completely unofficial community challenge: Rewrite Kate!

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El Satanno
El Satanno Posts: 1,005 Chairperson of the Boards
edited August 2016 in MPQ Character Discussion
In round 2 of the current Simulator event, the final essential node pitted us all against a team which contained 4* Hawkeye; Kate Bishop. Besides the fact that she is yet another thoroughly mediocre character taking up space in our rosters, something about her has bothered me since her release day. Her appearance in the event kind of broke my brain for one very specific reason: Ruthless Precision.

This power is written so badly, it makes my eyes hurt.
ahem
To quote:

Ruthless Precision: 12 blue
Kate doesn't futz around. Deals X damage and creates an X-turn Countdown tile. While this tile is on the board, enemies cannot gain health.

"Kate doesn't futz around." What does that even mean? God kitty
 that is so bad. It's quite possibly one of the dumbest single statements I've ever heard. And that's it! The flavor text with exactly zero flavor. It's the tofu of text. It's like the epilogue to the crime against literature that is the script for the Loser Hulk event. (I bet the same guy was responsible for both.) The name of the power doesn't make any sense, either. The only thing that isn't gag-inducing is the actual effect of the power. It's niche as hell, but it's serviceable.

So! I bring to you a fun challenge: Re-write Kate's blue power. Leave the actual effect itself alone, though. Just gin up a power name and flavor text that doesn't make Pokemon slashfic look like Shakespeare. One entry per post, please. Upvote the ones you like, and in a couple weeks we'll see who has the best entry as selected by all of us. Whee!



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"Kate doesn't futz around." icon_rolleyes.gif

Comments

  • kobu
    kobu Posts: 165 Tile Toppler
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    That's one of my favorites. Adds great flavor. Hell, I don't know her from the comics and I feel like I do after looking at her powers. I didn't think anyone would be unfamiliar with "futz". It's like swearing for little old ladies (and apparently goofy teens) and has been around forever.
  • We_are_Venom
    We_are_Venom Posts: 308 Mover and Shaker
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    Pretty much everything about Kate is forced. Her "cool" shades symbol, her dog going by the alias "pizza dog", her pretentious power descriptions. It's like they tried to roll every movie female archetype into a singular character; a popular, funny, smart cheerleader do-gooder that spends her weekend helping the poor, drinking locally produced coffee at a poetry reading cafe with her equally impressive, handsome rich boyfriend. She's to cool by a full point, not just half.
  • ZeiramMR
    ZeiramMR Posts: 1,357 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Most of that, including the "bro" line in 2* Hawkeye's Speed Shot description, are direct references to Matt Fraction's Hawkeye comic. I DO think the references can read a bit obtuse to someone unfamiliar with that material, but I appreciate the effort more than if Demiurge just did standard flavor text.
  • Mawtful
    Mawtful Posts: 1,646 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I think what's interesting about Kate are all the trappings are from Clint's character. Pizza dog is Clint's dog. The Boomerang arrows are Clint's arrows. It's like they built the abilities around Clint and then drew the art for Kate and went "ah futz it, that'll do".
  • MarcusGraves
    MarcusGraves Posts: 495 Mover and Shaker
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    El Satanno wrote:
    Besides the fact that she is yet another thoroughly mediocre character taking up space in our rosters


    Mediocre? she's a friggen terrifying cannon of damage, her black is an insane 7.4k for 8 AP and blue is just shy of a 10k bomb for 12 AP.

    Her art design is disgusting (please redo) but power set is underrated not mediocre, if I had a finished kate I'd be quite happy because I don't futz around when she's on the board, everything she does hurts and almost needs a health pack if one power lands.
  • amusingfoo1
    amusingfoo1 Posts: 597 Critical Contributor
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    MarcusGraves wrote:
    El Satanno wrote:
    Besides the fact that she is yet another thoroughly mediocre character taking up space in our rosters


    Mediocre? she's a friggen terrifying cannon of damage, her black is an insane 7.4k for 8 AP and blue is just shy of a 10k bomb for 12 AP.

    Her art design is disgusting (please redo) but power set is underrated not mediocre, if I had a finished kate I'd be quite happy because I don't futz around when she's on the board, everything she does hurts and almost needs a health pack if one power lands.

    Yeah, her powers are quite good, maxed out (wish I had the ISO to champion her). And despite having read some of her comics (the All-New Hawkeye limited series, IIRC), the descriptions are pretty terrible.
  • carrion_pigeons
    carrion_pigeons Posts: 942 Critical Contributor
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    El Satanno wrote:
    Besides the fact that she is yet another thoroughly mediocre character taking up space in our rosters

    She's a legitimately good 4* character. I think you're probably overexposed to the 5* metagame.

    Kate's whole role in the comics is centered around taking things away from Clint, without really meaning to. The ability text and the art and the rest of it actually reflect this pretty decently. I don't particularly like her character, but I don't see anything gag-inducing about her in the game.
  • El Satanno
    El Satanno Posts: 1,005 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Nine replies, all of them missing the point. Sigh.

    Now I can already predict the response this will get, so let me spell it out again...

    Riddle me this: What is the relationship between "Ruthless Precision," "Kate doesn't futz around," and damage + prevent healing? (Hint: the answer is "abso-tinykitty-lutely nothing.")

    So here, I'll go first. This was what I had going around in my head while I was agonizing over the badness of the current description:

    Immunosuppressor Arrow: 12 blue
    Kate impales her opponent on an arrow laden with a immunosuppressive agent, compromising their ability to continue fighting. Deals X damage and creates an X-turn countdown tile. While one of these tiles is on the board, enemies cannot gain health.

    See? The power name, the effects, and the flavor text make sense. Now back to work, you heathens!
  • OneLastGambit
    OneLastGambit Posts: 1,963 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Shatter point arrow

    Kate pulls a shatter point arrow from her repertoire of fancy tips and fires it into her target. Causing damage to her target and preventing healing until the pieces are removed. Causes x amount of damage and creates CD tile stopping all healing to target until it's removed or expired.
  • MarcusGraves
    MarcusGraves Posts: 495 Mover and Shaker
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    El Satanno wrote:
    Nine replies, all of them missing the point. Sigh.

    Now I can already predict the response this will get, so let me spell it out again...

    Riddle me this: What is the relationship between "Ruthless Precision," "Kate doesn't futz around," and damage + prevent healing? (Hint: the answer is "abso-tinykitty-lutely nothing.")

    Ruthless (no compassion; cruel; merciless) Precision: aiming for a kill/crippling shot.

    Kate doesn't futz around: Futz is old slang for "to mess around" or "waste time". Kate doesn't mess around which ties in with the ruthless part of the name; she's not messing around, she's going to hurt you.

    The text makes sense, the only thing that doesn't make sense is absence of WHY they can't heal, are they bleeding, is the arrow stuck in them which is why they can't heal until they pull it out?
  • rc35
    rc35 Posts: 62 Match Maker
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    With apologies to OneLastGambit icon_e_wink.gif :

    Poison Arrow
    Kate pulls a poison arrow from her repertoire of fancy tips and fires it into her target. Causes x amount of damage and creates a CD tile stopping all healing to target until it's removed or elapses.
  • Vhailorx
    Vhailorx Posts: 6,085 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited August 2016
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    Add me to the chorus of "kate is a very good 4*," maybe even top tier (though it's a bit hard to tell with power creep. I count her with the early 2016 strong releases: pun max, nova, quake etc. Not sure if she is Peggy level).

    As for satanno's point, I am really not that upset by the flavor text. It doesn't seem significantly out of line with the accuracy of text for other characters. Futzing around seems like text designed to fit in with the style of the character (i am not familiar with her portrayal in the comics, so I don't know if this fits but it seems plausible), and "ruthless precision" seems like an appropriate name for a skill that does significant damage and otherwise cripples an opposing team.
  • Jarvind
    Jarvind Posts: 1,684 Chairperson of the Boards
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    I'm not a fan of Kate's descriptions either - every time I read them I picture some fat guy in a suit trying to figure out what those gosh darn whippersnappers think is hip these days.

    raw

    That said, her powers are pretty good overall. The only thing that really gets my goat about her is that the dog is not included in any of her powers.
  • carrion_pigeons
    carrion_pigeons Posts: 942 Critical Contributor
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    El Satanno wrote:
    Nine replies, all of them missing the point. Sigh.

    Now I can already predict the response this will get, so let me spell it out again...

    Riddle me this: What is the relationship between "Ruthless Precision," "Kate doesn't futz around," and damage + prevent healing? (Hint: the answer is "abso-tinykitty-lutely nothing.")

    So here, I'll go first. This was what I had going around in my head while I was agonizing over the badness of the current description:

    Immunosuppressor Arrow: 12 blue
    Kate impales her opponent on an arrow laden with a immunosuppressive agent, compromising their ability to continue fighting. Deals X damage and creates an X-turn countdown tile. While one of these tiles is on the board, enemies cannot gain health.

    See? The power name, the effects, and the flavor text make sense. Now back to work, you heathens!

    Well, sure, but that isn't a reference to the actual character or anything in the comics. It's just an ability that could belong to anyone with a bow. The point I think people were trying to make was that maybe the original doesn't make a ton of sense as an ability, but it does make sense as a reference to the character, and that, debatably, is more valuable? I mean otherwise, you could just add Noname the Generic Warrior to your roster with abilities Hack, Slash, and Yell.
  • DTStump
    DTStump Posts: 273 Mover and Shaker
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    Eh. Personally, I would go for a MtG-like approach (the cards, not MtGPQ) and just describe the powers in a very standardized and clean way instead of bothering too much with flavor. The primary objective should be to make the powers understandable - you should actually be able to look at a description for the first time and know what it does.

    As a side note, all that flavor content gets even worse when translated. I'm playing MPQ in French and it feels like 70% of the time it's just gibberish. It just does not make any sense. Same with the text in other areas of the game, especially when there are puns. Webbed Wonder is an absolutely tragic example. Try to imagine bad translators figuring out what to do with "Duck be a Lady".

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