Noble Savage

Hats are tricky. Some of the other stuff might be possible though.

Hey, Samuel.

Expanding the range of the sliders means changing the geometry of the model, and the more the geo changes, the more it starts intersecting badly with costume pieces and requiring more and more custom parts. So to really make the sliders accomplish what you want, it puts us back in that same boat where it would take too long to recreate everything.

Adding a new texture to the existing geometry, on the other hand, is relatively simple and doable because it's just one costume set. But then we get into an aesthetic issue: would a muscle texture even work on such a thin model? Personally, I think it'd look pretty awful. The female model's obviously exaggerated to be lithe and graceful, and slapping a muscle texture on it would look incongrous at best and downright jarring at worst. It's a move that has the potential to make the game look worse, so I'm not really in favor of spending resources there.

Sorry there's no easy fix here. We really pride ourselves in listening to player feedback and giving you guys what you want, but of course there'll be edge cases like this one where it's simply not possible technically.

If something is simply not going to happen, I'll always try to level with you guys and explain why it's the case. Thanks for understanding!

Creating alternate versions of a given costume part requires a character artist to rescale and refinish each one by hand. The process is repeated for each other category, so adding a 4th category would require that much more time for every single piece that's in the game. It's neither simple or fast.

So to get Female Huge, the tradeoff would've been losing at least a quarter of everything else in the game: 25% fewer costumes, 25% fewer enemies, etc. On top of that, you have to take into consideration the animation time involved. Every category receives custom-scaled animations whenever there's a weapon, cape, or other object involved (so the hands fit properly).

Bottom line, it's a massive undertaking that wouldn't really get us a lot of bang for the buck. Three scalable body types covers the vast majority of characters that players want to make, so while it'd be nice to have another one, the price is unfortunately too high.

Though it'd be cool to have additional body types available, the reality of the situation is that it'd take many, many months of Art time to go back and create Huge Female versions of the thousands of parts that exist in the game currently. Then consider that all future costume parts would have to be built with that fourth category as well, and you'll start to understand the problem: if we did this, all other character work would grind to a halt.

It's not that Huge Female is a bad idea aesthetically. Rather, the opportunity cost is just way too high. I'm sure you'd rather have a year's worth of new costumes, new enemy groups, and new allies than one Gigantica, right?

We want to give you guys as much cool new stuff as possible as quickly as we can, and that's why it's off the table. Hope that makes sense!

Cool, man. Tried to drop some confirmation for you guys, and I hope you enjoyed seeing the new hospital design as well.

I answered that one. For all I know, the rest of the team drinks nothing BUT vodka. I'm more of a pale ale guy in case you were curious. Cheers!

Seeya online--goodies will in fact be served. I guarantee it.

I got that--thanks! But what does it do?!

Did you guys check out DeviantArt yesterday? You could gift llamas to people, and everybody's icon was changed to 1 of 4 'Team Jacob' (from Twilight) pics or 1 or 2 Lady Gaga pics. There were probably more, but I didn't have the time to catalogue them all.

Doesn't beat the Mudkips joke from a couple years back, but it was pretty surprising!

If you haven't read 'em yet, check out the complete run of COH comics on this very website:

http://www.cityofheroes.com/media_an...c_archive.html

Is there a 'McDreamy' in the pantheon of COH signature characters? If a poll was taken, I'm not actually sure who the fans would pick. Psyche and Ghost Widow are obviously popular female characters, but who're the top two male characters? Surely there must've been a thread about this at some point, right?

lol. You win this round, Golden Girl. Wish we were still publishing a COH comic so we could give all the ladies out there some equal opportunity eye candy.

But before I throw in the towel completely, you might to check the last couple pages of Issue 8, where Back Alley Brawler suits up in his new uniform, or the first half of Issue 9, where he opens up a big can of butt-kickery on some goons. You have to admit that there's a certain beefcake factor to the proceedings.

Only in fanart, I'm afraid.

Ah-ha! So that's where 'Big McLargeHuge' comes from. Thanks for cluing me in.

I'm a night owl, and it's always nice to end the day on the COH forums.

Neat one. I check in at Deviantart and Kotaku once or twice throughout the day.

And a belated thanks for the bacon! How I missed you, imaginary internet bacon. Mmm...

lmao! Can't remember which one, but I was listening to some video game podcast a few weeks back, and they read off a list of similarly ridiculous names for male video game characters. Probably one of the IGN podcasts, but I can't say for sure.

You've seen Maelstrom, right?

You've seen Desdemona, right?

Don't mind if I do!

...But you'll have to wait for one more week, because that's when PAX EAST rolls around. Lots of details and announcements to follow, so stay tuned.

Actually, as a former comic book creator, I can tell you that villains pretty much MAKE the hero and, when you get right down to it, they're more important than the hero themselves in the overall structure of any good superhero story. What would Captain America be without the Red Skull, or Superman with Luthor, after all?

So rest assured--I love me some villains.

But if I ever change my red name to an actual character, I think I'd like something a little more...I dunno, awe-inspiring than 'Malaise.' Love the character and the art connection but honestly, malaise is defined as 'a general feeling of being unwell.' So really, at that point, I may as well go with 'Captain Sickday' or 'Barfy McBarfbarf.'

Pretty much the same effect.

Must...resist...temptation...to talk about Malaise!


*Whew* That was a close one!