First off, there are different reasons that applications are going to get harder to be approved, and what qualifies as "exceptional" is going to vary a bit depending on the app.
General things that set a higher quality application apart in all cases are the sorts of things that set high quality writing apart from "ordinary" writing. Grammar and spelling, which we have touched on recently in the announcements section, not to mention general readability and clarity. Those, however, really only apply to writing that is 'technically correct,' and I think most people have experienced writing that is free of errors and not bad, but at the same time not particularly interesting or enjoyable to read. Here's where things get trickier, as some of it is subjective, but questions the app-writer might want to ask themselves include: How well does the writing flow? Does the writer engage in any clever word play while still making their point clear? Is it interesting to read, and do the words paint a picture of a character that would be fun to interact with? Does the thread starter itself invite interaction and encourage readers to jump in, or does it simply showcase how 'cool' or 'awesome' the character is? For a 'hard sell' app, it may even be worth while to ask a friend to look it over for you, and by friend here I mean "someone who is not an admin." We already have to read the app in order to judge it once it's submitted, so not only are we not a particularly neutral source, but coming to us to proof it for you is essentially asking us to double our work for your app.
Also important for "hard sell" applications are signs that a decent amount of thought was put into the personality section, the fears section, and the character goals section. The thread-starter question is also important. If the character is in a different faction than their "default," this section should be pretty fleshed out, too.
Personality: We keep emphasizing that this is one of the most important sections on the application, and we keep getting back these one-two line answers that don't really say much of anything, or these generic write-ups that do absolutely nothing to distinguish the character. Yes, we do realize that many canon characters are little more than two or even one dimensional sketches, but really, if you can't think about a character beyond what is presented in canon, you can't really play the character because it's guarenteed that the character will encounter non-canon situations. That's what roleplay is. This doesn't mean we want a mish-mash of random hobbies and extras tacked on, mind you, but players are not only allowed to but encouraged to add on to their personalities, provided the additions feel like reasonable growth and extrapolation based on what you see of the character in canon.
For a "hard sell" character, you're probably looking at
at least two decent length paragraphs for personality, and not just long strings of cliches. If we can look at the personality and immediately think of two or more other characters that every sentence would apply to, it's not going to meet our standards for a "hard sell" application.
For a "normal-sell" character, it's not unusual for a personality (or fears, or goals) section to elicit comments among the admin like, "Bland, but nothing denial-worthy," "Pretty formula stuff here, but not worth turning down," or something along those lines. We, as admin, should
never find ourselves thinking this about a "hard-sell" character, and in fact, with "hard-sell" characters, you do some times get comments like, "You know, I'd take this for another character, but it just doesn't have the sort of punch I want to see for a character like this."
Fears: We know fearless characters are bad-ass, cool, and awesome. They also tend to be boring. We also know that canon doesn't really delve into a lot of characters' fears. In that case, look at their personalities and their obsessions and from there, come up with fears that would seem reasonable with a character who thinks in that way. And then, don't just stop at what they're afraid of - tell us what they
do with that fear. Do they freeze up? Do they go beserk and dive into battle with a single-mindedness? Do they flee? Do they lash out? There seems to be this mindset that having a character that's afraid of things makes them "less cool," but the fact is that most of the more powerful characters in this game are going to have pretty substantial fears sections, and it's worth keeping in mind that for many characters, fear can be a motivating force to encourage that character to
try harder.Goals section: "Explore the game with this character and feel out how they fit in," or something similar, is actually not that bad a goal for someone's first character... if they're apping someone like Pipes or Skids. But we are specifically talking about "Hard sell" characters, so we very much want to understand both why you want that specific character and what you think that character can add to the game. An answer that says, "An impressive amount of firepower to the Autobots/Decepticons" and little else is pretty telling (more on this later). While this question is primarily asking why the player wants the character, this is also the area where the applicant has an opportunity to explain to
us, the admin, why
we want to play
with the character. This is where you can get us excited and interested in the character. Why do we want to have him or her around? "Because he's awesome!" isn't much of an answer. There are already a lot of awesome characters. In what way is this character's awesomeness different from the other, already awesome characters? Really, for "hard sell" characters, what you want to explain to us here is not just why your character will be fun for you, but why they will be fun for the rest of us, too.
Thread starter: Beyond the obvious, that we're looking to see if a person's actual roleplay sample portrays that character accurately, we are also here looking for hints as to whether they're just applying for the character to "showcase the awesome." Such applicants tend to have rather elaborate thread starters that read more like full stories, with heavy usage of NPCs who serve little purpose beyond getting knocked around by the character and not much in the way of "jumping on" points for other players (except, possibly, to also get knocked around by the character). Also, depending on why the character is a hard-sell to begin with, we might have higher than normal expectations for the character and the player when it comes to generating roleplay. The thread-starter is specifically designed as a thread-starter because we're not just trying to gauge their ability to roleplay but also to start roleplay and take some of the burden for creating scenes off the admin. We understand that not every one is cut out for creating threads on their own, but certain character types pretty much demand it, and if the player in question isn't good at it, they shouldn't be playing a character that calls for it.
All of that applies to most "hard sell" characters regardless of why they are "hard sells," but the fact is that there are different reasons one application might be held to higher standards than others. Your example seemed specific towards characters that call for higher quality applications due to sheer power level, but characters can also be hard sells either because they represent a certain trait or type that's already over-represented in the game or because they're simply more demanding or trickier to pull off. I'll try to address each of these issues.
First, high power hard-sells. We need to be clear here that when we're talking about a character that's high enough power level to be a hard-sell, we're not necessarily talking about Kup-level. He's considered high power in the game, and he's certainly pretty respectable on the battlefield, but he still falls on the very low end of "high power." No, when we're talking about someone who's powerful enough to call for the "exceptional application" phrase, we're talking characters who could give Rodimus Prime, Shockwave, Scourge, Starscream or the like a run for their money. To be completely frank, these characters are highly unlikely to be granted to a first time applicant at all. Yes, we allow players to take a "high power" character as their initial character, but that applies a lot more to Kup-level than Prime-level. Before we grant a character like that, we want to already have a feel for how they roleplay in combat situations. It's not enough to understand that when you describe your character firing at another character, it's up to that other character to decide if they get hit. How often do you allow your characters to take the hit? Are you prone to describing your attacks in such a way that the other character has little 'out'? Are you good at working with the other players OOCly through IM and PM so that both sides can have their fun/cool/awesome moments? These questions become very important with very high power characters, and to be honest, these are not things we can really judge until we've seen the player in the game and in battle. There are also certain special abilities that will pretty much never be granted to a first-time applicant for the same reasons.
It's been said before, but when applying for a character who is very high power, you really have to ask yourself, "What is it about this character that interests me?" If the answer is
just, "They are very powerful," that tends to show through in the application and the character will probably get denied.
Very powerful characters tend to be difficult to balance in the game. Currently, I believe that the factions tend to be decently matched on the battle-field. A complete analysis might reveal an edge on one side or another, but it's not so bad that we are specifically
looking for a heavy hitter for either side. I don't think it's so bad that we can't
accommodate new heavy hitters, either, but that's a lot of extra work for us, and if we're going to have to go through that balancing act, we want to know what we (the admin) and the game is getting out of it in return. This is where the goals section comes in. It's really surprising the number of applications (usually from newer players) who, in answer to, "What does this character add to the game?" tells us some variant of, "A considerable amount of firepower for the <faction>," without much explanation of what
else the character brings to the game. While we appreciate the warning that the character is going to bring with it an extra helping of admin headaches (which is what the act of accounting for a new, very powerful character ultimately amounts to), we really do need some indication of why the character is worth the headache for anyone besides the player. Some characters really are worth that extra effort, but we feel it's the player's job to tell us why, not our job to try and guess. If the
only thing that the player can see their character adding to the game is, "A lot of extra firepower," we don't really want them.
Now, to be completely clear, this is one of those areas where hard-sells are very different from easy-sells. If the only thing a moderate or low level character brings to the game is "another body on the battlefield," well, we're still going to want an interesting personality, but there is pretty much always room on the battlefield for those types of characters. They are easy to find opponents for when creating battles that are fun for both sides.
We also aren't saying every battle has to be evenly matched, either. Some times, players are willing to let their characters get mowed down for dramatic reasons. This is most likely to happen with plot characters - take a look at Rodimus Prime-3's run in the
Heralding the Fireblade battle as an example, and keep in mind that all of those players volunteered for that knowing they'd be taken out of the fight rather quickly.
Contains Its Own End is a more recent example, with some characters only posting in the thread once or twice before they're completely rendered unable to fight. In addition to drama, sometimes characters do this because they just want to show that hey, their character was there for the fight, but they're looking for an excuse not to have to run that particular character for an extended battle (busy in real life, focus on other characters, etc). There are other times when players enjoy "David and Goliath" type battles, where the underdog defeats incredible odds to come out on top (or, to subvert this, where the scrappy underdog gives it their all, and is tragically defeated at the end after a few rounds of inspiring but ultimately futile effort). And there are 'co-operation and teamwork overcome incredible odds' type battles. These can be fun, but they require a lot of extra OOC co-ordination and often a willingness on the part of the power player to see their battles end in draw or defeat.
There are also characters that are
so high power that they will flat never be approved as normal-play characters (though they sometimes receive approval as plot characters). Referencing your example above, Marvel Fortress Maximus would be a hard sell, but he's probably acceptable. G1 cartoon Fortress Maximus is just flat too big and too powerful.
The next type of hard sell are those who are hard sells because they represent some sort of particularly popular character type or trait. Ultimately, what we're looking for in these mirrors what we're looking for in the very high power characters: we want to know what this character has going for it
besides that very popular character trait, and we want to know how fun this character is going to be for other players' characters to interact with. There are a number of traits that get added to a character so often in order to make that character seem more cool, special, or unique that they end up having the reverse of the intended effect. Many of these traits are also (badly) vieled attempts to justify the character being extra powerful, too, adding the power balancing headaches mentioned above to every thing else (some apps practically play 'special trait bingo,' like the Animated-universe super-powerful special experiment martial artist turncoat technorganic app we once received).
For example, let's take the most recent addition to the 'overdone' stack, defector. I'm not picking on you here, Zippo, and in fact, comparing those qualities that Zippo has in common with other OC defectors with those that make him different is a pretty useful exercise.
The vast majority of OC defectors (and probably canon defectors, too) are evil-to-good. This means that a good-to-evil defector probably has a better chance of getting through, though it's not guaranteed. Why do good characters go bad? Maybe they've had so many encounters with aliens where the aliens have turned against them that they've decided the Decepticons are right, after all (a good option for someone who wants to come in the game with the defection in their past). Maybe they've been brainwashed/reprogrammed (a common canon excuse), though it will help the applicant's case if they make it clear that they have no intention of having their character 'fixed', since otherwise it's really just a history-defection
plus a planned defection, and defecting twice does not make your character twice as original. If they want to do a good-to-evil (or even evil-to-good) defection in game, some consideration for the fact that this type of plot takes a lot of admin effort is also appreciated: give a rough outline of how it's going to happen in the "goals" section of the application
and contact other players ahead of time OOCly and get their permission in help in working out the details. We'd be a lot more tolerant of a player who wants their character "corrupted to the dark side," if they've already found someone willing to do the corruption, versus a player that expects us to try to find/force another player into the roll. Also, in general, because we've already roleplayed out some plots that are effectively defections or similar to defections, we're more open to background-defections than planned-defections. This doesn't mean you won't see another in game defection, but it helps to let us know how
yours will stand out from the "standard" ones.
Evil-to-good defection is often used as an excuse to have an "edgier" Autobot/Maximal who's higher power level than the normal (like I said, many of the "special traits" are ultimately justifications for more power), since Decepticons "have the coolest toys." Thus, turncoats who are normal or lower than normal power level (Wheelie as a canon example, Zippo as an OC) can stand out this way. Original characters who do evil-to-good defections were usually originally duped into being evil in some way and were actually really "good" or "honorable" all along (canon characters are more evenly split), so original characters who do it for entirely self-serving reasons are more unusual (for example, Zippo strikes me as kind of Ferengi-like, in that he's pretty much a weak, greedy coward who's figured out that weak, greedy cowards get stomped on among Team Evil, and not some poor, innocent, noble dupe).
You can actually go through this for all the common traits, but ultimately what we're looking for is the same thing: what does this character bring to the game that's different than what all the other characters with that trait have already brought to the game.
Finally, there are characters who are hard sells just because they're particularly tricky to play. The most common example of this would be Decepticons who are undyingly loyal to some iteration of Megatron. We're going to want to know before they come in how that character will fare in the long term if there's no Megatron available, and how they deal with taking orders from a non-Megatron. Depending on why they're undying loyal, some might be willing to quickly accept another leader, but most aren't like that. There are other hard character types, though, like asocial characters. These are characters that actively avoid interaction, and the point of the game is to interact. Usually, we want some kind of assurance that the brunt of the burden for these characters is not going to be on the other players constantly going out and pulling that character into things. With other disruptive personalities we want some sort of assurance that the player is willing to 'put a lid on it' at times in order to allow the plot to advance or to keep from completely derailing every thread that the character enters in order to refocus the thread on that character. Sometimes with these, we may just flat be unwilling to grant these characters to a player we haven't yet gotten a feel for, and there are times when we will deny a very well-written application because the character calls for a lot of a certain type of interaction that the player has shown themselves bad at.
So anyway, I hope that helps and was informative, especially given how firking long it took me to type. ¬_¬ I'm afraid there are no clear cut answers, but a lot of that should provide some guidance. But what's more, there will be times when even a perfectly written application is not enough, because we really need to know that the player can be trusted with certain things first. Referencing back to your original example, it's worth noting that one thing that is likely to help a player going for an Ubermech is for them to have already taken a canon B-lister or C-lister like Seaspray and just blown the rest of us out of the water (no pun intended) with the quality of their writing and roleplay. An extraordinary player isn't the one who does a great job with a great character but the one who makes other players care about characters they'd never heard of, disliked, or had no interest in. It's like in comic books, where the truly great writers aren't the ones who make Batman and Superman into exciting characters, but the ones who make Catman or Animal Man or Booster Gold exciting. Making another player care about a random toy-only is one of the greatest accomplishments a roleplayer can manage.
