Samuel_Tow

I was actually speaking of the game in broad terms, not just costume design in particular. For instance, your original concept art for the "dirty" Praetorian labs tileset was amazing and almost exactly what I was talking about, but it didn't make it in the game. When I say the game can "use more of this," I mean in general. Like, we could have a new zone that's themed like this, or a new instance tileset, or maybe even a new enemy group that like it... Although a new enemy group more or less means a new costume set for us. ... Right?

I would pay for that on the spot. Don't even care what it costs. That Nerf rifle in the pic above? That's out of production, so I ended up having to pay 80 Euro for the thing over e-bay. I'm excited and it hasn't even arrived yet. That's how much I love the look of the thing. That's how excited I am about new weapons. Please, please, PLEASE do this if you ever get a chance. Even just a couple weapons per set would be more than welcome

Actually, you know what? You can EASILY make this a running theme. A weapon set with, like, 10-15 new weapons, all for one set (and other sets which share the same weapons), released a few months apart. You could churn out a whole load of the things. In fact, let's count them:

1. Broadsword/Dual Blades
2. Katana
3. Battle Axe
4. War Mace
5. Claws
6. Dual Pistols/Thugs
7. Assault Rifle/Mercenaries/Robotics/Beam Rifle
8. Archery/Ninja

Am I forgetting anything? Either way, that's eight whole sets you could make, all of them fitting a fairly easy theme Or if you don't want this many, you can do one for manual weapons (swords, axes, bows, etc.) and one for firearms (pistols and rifles).

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Speaking of weapon sets, what could we say current weapon sets lack? Well, without going set-to-set and boring you to death I'll try to summarise.

1. Big weapons. I know Titan Weapons (that's what I forgot!) is coming out soon and that has all the big weapons we could ask for, other sets could still do with a few big pieces. Dual Pistols, specifically, can use something of the size of the Match Compensators, but tintable and less old. Broadsword is relatively good but Battle Axe and Mace could use weapons with longer shafts. Archery could use a few longer longbows and I think we're about due for another long rifle like the Vanguard Redding Rail Rifle.

2. Tech weapons. People make fun of the Tech Sword and "microwave on a stick" tech mace, but I've used both of them personally, and I'd like to see more. A tech axe, more tech swords and maces, too, more tech shields (we have two or three, counting the Vanguard shield) and, more than anything else, more tech guns. Beam Rifle went quite a ways for that, but Assault Rifle and Dual Pistols can use more sci-fi guns. "Square tech" guns, in particular.

3. Energy weapons. Seriously, aside from Vanguard, we have no energy weapons of any kind. We have a single Energy Shield, but that's about it. I'd love to see more swords and axes made of "hard light," and preferably some with actual three dimensions.

That's about all I can think of at the moment, and I apologise for turning this into a request. A weapons pack has me excited

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To prolong this a tad more, I think what you need to shoot for the most is themes we have the least represented. When making a new set, a new zone or a new enemy group, try to figure out what we don't already have and make that. Sure, over-saturating an existing theme gives people more control over the finer details of their characters, but a brand new theme gives people a whole new playing field. Think of the Think Tank and how successful that was, as well as how it stirred people's creativity. It was just one, single piece, and yet it inspired so many incredible costumes. That, to my mind, was an overwhelming success because you guys put in something that was completely different from everything we've had before.

I suppose there's a question here, now that I think about it: When given an equal choice, would you prefer to expand on an existing theme or introduce a brand new one?

What I want is for the developers to give me cool costumes and let me handle making them sexy if I choose. I'm wholly uninterested about which movie portrayed what character in what way and whose painting falls into which genre with what expectations. I want cool costumes for both my guys AND my girls. I don't want cool costumes for just the guys and sexy but impractical costumes for just the girls. I can make my own designs just fine. I don't need the art team choosing for me.

Furthermore, when it comes to "sexy," I've never seen that as "showing skin," at least not since I was 15. To me, "sexy" is a question of style, and thigh-high high-heel boots just ain't it. You know what I find sexy, personally? Something like this or, at a stretch, this. Definitely this, though. None of these characters show much skin in any place... None of these characters HAVE skin to show, but that's besides the point. None of them are dressed as saloon girls or go-go girls or schoolgirls. Because they don't have to.

Obviously, that's not to say I don't use the more extravagant costume pieces once I own them. Far from it. I still have characters like this, this and even this. My point is that it takes all kinds, and to think that all women will get in the future is the skirt-wearing, high-heeled, big-haired "sexy" version of a cool male design is just disheartening. I have a LOT of female characters. Some of them simply need other types of costumes. Cool costumes. And I'm looking forward to getting that.

First and foremost, something I can actually DO while solo without having my intelligence insulted with lrn2ply or rtfm. That's a starting point which has to happen if anything past that point will ever work.

Assuming the solo content isn't designed to exclude most solo players anyway (fingers crossed), what I want beyond that is at least enough content for me to unlock the slots it covers before I run out. Ideally, I'd like to see enough content to get me at least to T1 in those slots, but that's being optimistic.

Beyond that, I'd like to see both repeatable content of a Paper->Mayhem variety or Tip->Alignment variety, plus the ability to repeat arcs I've already run, including Ramiel's.

Overall, I'd like to see this content give me a path to T1 Incarnate boots in most if not all slots fairly easily and quickly, access to T2 in a reasonable amount of time with repetition, access to T3 in a fairly long amount of time comparable to progress through the high levels, and access to T4 either not at all or with the same accessibility as rares if not purples. I'm trying to not be greedy here.

Armour, yes. Medieval armour, not so much. There's all of one set and it's older than I am. We've had a few more that look like generic metal armour (Valkyrie comes to mind), but none of it really looks medieval.

That's good to hear. And that wasn't a trap, by the way

The reason I expanded on this so much is I just realised we're somewhat short of "square tech" in City of Heroes. It does exist and it's pretty good where it exists, but there isn't too much of it. The game has a lot of smooth lines and elegant curves, but I really wish we had more things like this:



Nerf make the best toys... Anyway, for some reason, that sort of tech just works for me. It's just contemporary enough to "get," yet just futuristic enough to be exciting.

To bring up movies for a while again: I remember watching Star Wars when I was a kid and being really excited about their blaster rifles that shot energy beam snipplets. It was something I hadn't seen and it didn't look like "Earth technology." However, as I grew older and rewatched Aliens for the umpteenth time, I realised that I far, FAR preferred the more contemporary pulse rifles and smartguns which shot real bullets with real propellant. There's something about a mechanical machine with moving parts which shoots physical bodies via mechanical force from chemical reactions which you just can't replicate with fancy technobabble sci-fi. To a large extent, I "get" the machine, which makes it more fascinating, whereas you can't really "get" lightsabres. But on a much more basic level, it's just a machine which looks physical, and that's what makes it so cool. It looks heavy, it looks sturdy, it looks tough.

By contrast, energy weapons like Star Trek's phaser never really connected with me. There's no sense of force, no sense of impact, no sense of power. It quite literally feels like a special effect. This sense of "force" is something that Street Justice got just right recently - the sound, the look, the feel of it. Sure, a fancy super sci-fi ray gun might be able to melt faces with nary a feedback nudge, but a big gun that shoots big bullets and kicks like a mule just "feels" stronger even if it ain't. It does to me, at least.

If you've seen my fascination with big things - big swords, big axes, big muscles, big boots - then that's part of it. Things which are big and chunky, things which look heavy and sturdy, things which seem to have heavy, fast-moving internal parts, things which make big explosions - those are the thing I find aesthetically pleasing, because those are the things that look like they have force behind them. These are the things that look powerful.

That's where all of this comes together. "Square tech" looks sturdy and over-engineered. It looks like it can take a beating and keep on working. Because it's so tough, it looks like it NEEDS to be tough as it's expected to endure a lot of force. Because it looks like it can endure a lot of force, it looks like it can produce a lot of force. This is the sort of thing I really want to see. Big guns, long barrels, fat swords, chunky armour and more

See, it's exactly this kind of cynicism that this sort of costume segregation breeds. And I do agree with you, because that's precisely what I expect any more. That's what we got the last three times, and I have no reason to suspect it will ever be anything else.

I think you misunderstand. I don't see Blasters as needing to have much worse status protection than Scrappers, myself. I'm merely speaking of what's reasonable to expect for them, because like it or not, the development team still seem to consider them a glass cannon in a game where a glass cannon really isn't all that necessary. If I had my way, I'd redesign the whole AT, or at the very least every one of its secondaries, and draw them up with much more self-protection inside. In fact, I might go whole hog and shoot for something like Fiery Aura - primarily defence, but with offensive capabilities.

The reason I mention Blaster status protection as needing to be a powerset pick isn't to make it weaker, but rather for two other separate reasons. One reason is because I want status protection to be written into the AT as it is for Scrappers. Having the power be inherent feels like a gimmick, and there's no way we'll ever see full inherent status protection. It will always be a gimmick, and therefore weaker. I don't want it to be weaker. I want it to be strong, which means it needs to cost at least one power pick. Blasters may be Range/Support, but they still have a very high melee proficiency and very few tools for self-preservation. I aim to give them ore tools, and more tools that are actually decent, not token. The ability to fire your first two primary powers and first secondary power is a token benefit. It prevents you from being permaheld by things that can't kill you anyway, like Sappers, but it doesn't prevent you from being held and killed because you can't defend yourself.

The other reason is I want to involve status protection into the Blaster sets, themselves. Scrappers, for instance, don't all have the same protection from status effects. Some sets lack knockback (BAD idea), some don't have much terrorize protection, for some it's a click, for others it's a toggle, Electrical Aura only gets knockback protection when near the ground and so forth. Putting status protection in the Blaster inherent power means all Blasters will have the same status protection using the same mechanism for the same values. Putting it in their sets means it can be unique to the set it's in, or at the very least somewhat variable.

When it comes to Blasters, I'm conflicted with myself. I'm conflicted between what I want to happen to them, which is quite extreme, and what I feel is the most that will ever be done to them, which is "not much." I want big changes, but I don't feel that these big changes will ever be accepted by those in charge. They're too big, too much work and stand to yank the AT from under people who, for some reason, enjoy it.

In other words, an Assault/Defence AT. Yeah, I've heard of the concept before, and even made quite a few suggestions about it. One I PMd to Castle by the suggestion of other participating in my suggestion thread, and the response I got from him was disheartening. While we argued mechanics, the bottom line was he simply didn't see a role for such an AT on a team and I, not having really even considered the need for one, had nothing to respond with. That was more or less the end of that, so every time such an AT has come up, I've held little hope for it.

That said, hell yeah I'd like to see it! I'd play that in a heartbeat. I like your suggestion and your reasoning, and I'd probably shoot for Stalker level survivability, speaking solely of defensive powers. I recall trying to come up with a gimmick which would encourage players of this AT to use their ranged attacks at range without really penalising them too much, but that was a long time ago. Instead, I'd be interested to hear your take on an inherent power for this AT.

To expand - the white gauge and red needle don't stand out in any designs because no-one sees the colour of the gauges and gauge needles as part of their colour scheme. It's a gauge, that's what it's supposed to look like. That one brown plate on the chimney, on the other hand, will always stand out because it's a major, undefined part of the superstructure and as such IS part of the colour scheme. It needs to be tintable because if I want a pure black backpack, I want a pure black backpack, not a black backpack with a brown plate on it. I can live with a black backpack with a white gauge on it because... Again, that's how I can tell it's a gauge from a distance.

And, really, the fact that not only are pieces of the Steampunk boiler backpack pre-tinted, the entire backpack is stained brown is the real killer. Make the pack white and it turns brown. Make the pack black and it turns dark brown. Make the pack blue and it looks dirty. There's no reason for this. If I want my backpack to be brown... I'll pick brown from the colour palette. That's just one hue. What if I want it to be anything BUT brown?

If you mean the lowest hit points of all the melee ATs, then yes, they do. But believe me when I say this - if Blasters were treated as a melee AT, this would actually help them tremendously. And again - personally, I'd like to see a root reimagining of their secondaries, with some defensive powers and some status protection put in there like in a de facto melee AT. That's what they should have had all along. That's what all combat specialists should have irrespective of their specific role.

Status effects may be Blasters' biggest weakness, but it's far from their only one. Trying to think up elaborate, unreliable status protection to give them by retrofitting them into existing inherents just strikes me as putting a bandage on a gunshot wound. I suppose for those who have already accepted the AT's failings, this might just be enough to make things GRRRATE! but for me, it just half-fixes one problem out of the many that I have.

I recall playing with reflection in an old 3DS MAX, and what I took away from that is 100% reflection essentially kills everything that's below it, meaning you could give the surface any colour or texture and it won't matter.

That said, I believe the request here is less for "more reflectivity" and more for a costume that's reflective, yet doesn't have the grooves of Metallic. Think something like the T1000 when it's fully molten. Metallic in this game is essentially Marvel's Colossus, but without saying that. It's metal with grooves painted on it so it's easier to tell it's metal, which was useful back when we didn't have even rudimentary reflection, but right now just makes it take away from the experience.

I fully believe that reflective tights, including a reflective tights face, would be a welcome addition.

That's what saloon girls were, in a lot of Old West saloon, that's the problem. At best they were showgirls, at worst "working" girls. The entire point of many of their dances was so women could lift their skirts and wave them at the faces of saloon attendees. That's where the resentment comes from.

Men get to be adventurers, women get to be exotic dancers. That's not fair.

It does when they're put in a costume set instead of what the set is named after. The set wasn't called "Gunslingers and Can-Can Dancers," it was called "Gunslinger," which none of my female characters can benefit from. I have more corsets than I know what to do with, and I'd personally want them punctuated by something else at least every other set. Because this set is less Gunslinger and more "Steampunk Again," at least for women.

There's nothing wrong with corsets, high-heeled boots or skirts, not on their own. What's wrong with this picture is they don't belong in this set. They could create a second Cyborg set and put skirts and corsets in there and you can still make the same argument as you are now. No, corsets are not bad in and of themselves. In THIS set, they are bad, specifically because this is now the third time my female characters are getting a corset when the set's marketing had me expecting something else. Like a longcoat.

This is a very crucial part. We don't just want a piece to not have specific hue baked into it, we also want the colours we pick for it to be the same on the costume as they are in the colour palette. What this means is we don't want a piece's base texture to cause selected colours to wash out or not apply fully. Don't mess with colour saturation and luminance, if possible.

Right now, the Celestial pieces look very good, but their base texture is horrible. If you colour it anything other than white (which is what I think it was designed to be), then you don't get the colour you wanted. If you pick black, you get a medium grey. If you pick a saturated blue, you get a white-washed blue. If you pick a red, you get a kind of pink. If you pick gold, you get rust. Not only do those colours look really bad on the costume, they also fail to match any other piece in the entire game BUT other Celestial pieces.

One day I took a screenshot of the colour palette we have access to and sampled all of its colours. Generally speaking, we mostly control Hue (row) and Saturation (column), with only the last two or three colours being of a variable, low luminance. When a costume piece kills the luminance on the colours you give it, yet you have no control of the luminance of the colours of your other costume piece, you simply cannot match that piece to any of the others.

I shouldn't be put in a position where I have to read up on colour theory just to figure out how to match my chest piece to my shoulders, only to find out I pretty much can't.

I also wanted to comment on this. Zwill, I don't think as many people here are offended as they may seem. We just tend to be a bit more of a... Vocal community. However, even if we do our best to be objective and see things from your perspective, the constant deluge of corsets for women just make your art team look bad. They're better than this. I know they can do better. They HAVE done better. Even absent of accusations and offences, we're getting almost the same costume for women for nearly the third time. The second time for sure, if you don't count Barbarian. From a fairness standpoint and from a creativity standpoint, this just makes the art team look bad.

It feels like you guys pick a costume set with a clear idea of what the male model will wear, then give the female model whatever is "womanly" and still at least somewhat relates to the topic at hand. I'm sure that's not how you do it, but again - that's what it looks like, and that makes the team look bad even when the actual end result of their work is good.

And that's before we get into pre-tinting.

I'm not sure. Each of those series has gone through so many alterations over the years they may cover all aesthetic types of sci-fi technology

Let's take Star Wars, since that's what I know the most about. Almost the entirety of the old series deals with square technology, for the most part. R2D2 is a trash can, the Millennium Falcon is covered in boxes, the Death Star is replete with trapeziod doors, rectangular bridges and pretty "low tech" devices like garbage compactors and pivoting turrets. By contrast, the prequels are chock full of sleek technology. Many people fly around in "balls," many shuttles are smooth, streamlined, shiny and reflective, many structures are tall and sleek and much of the grit and grime has been replaced with poetry and pretentiousness.

Actually, Star Wars is a good example in another way. The original trillogy is a mixture of sci-fi and fantasy, but most of the emphasis is on the sci-fi, with the jedi appearing almost anachronistic, preaching an ideology and religion that the world at large has forgotten. Most people are merchants, soldiers and engineers. The prequels reverse this, and represent a world which is much more fantasy than sci-fi. A council of veritable wizards rule the galaxy, they talk about destiny and fate, they wield magic and deal with philosophy. Most people are politicians, knights or peasants. The type of technology the trilogies represent is, thus, of a different style to match the thematic. Where the original trillogy is a sci-fi future with interesting technology, the prequels are a fantasy future with magical technology.

Honestly, I don't really mind fantasy tech much. The Final Fantasy games have done a good job of it. On the surface, it looks like magic artefacts, but it's still technology and supports an industrial world ruled by economics and invention. On the other hand, it still leaves the door open to a feudal world ruled by religion and royalty.

To be honest, Praetoria itself isn't all that far in the "sleek tech" look as most people make it out to be. Yes, it's white, clean and clinical, but for the most part that's just a façade over a much deeper whole, which is precisely why the Clockwork pieces are so awesome - they're a shiny metal exterior over an amazingly complex interior. I think Nightstar is as far along the shiny tech path as anything in Praetoria, and she still has her cables showing.

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Actually, I think WALL E is a very good example of the contrast between tough and sleek tech, now that I think about it. On the one side, you have WALL E itself, which is little more than a garbage compactor on caterpillar tracks. It is not a beautiful machine by any stretch, because whoever designed it wasn't concerned with making it beautiful. It's a tractor - tough, functional and ugly. WALL E is attractive not for aesthetic reasons, but for engineering reasons. It's attractive because it works.

EVE, by contrast, is the polar opposite. EVE is a sleek, stylised, bold statement of art within science - that the future is bright and hopeful, that in the future, our technology will be beautiful and refined. EVE is attractive because its appearance is aesthetically pleasing, and that's an intentional part of its design. True, EVE is generally seen as more capable than WALL E because EVE has the technology of the future, and that is part of the statement - future technology will look better AND function better. But EVE is still attractive not so much for its function, but for its form.

City of Heroes, I believe, is somewhere in the middle, but mostly leans more towards EVE and less towards WALL E. The Freakshow and Crey, to some extent, are more WALL E, but they're seven years old, if not more. A lot of the game's newer technological heroes and villains have almost always been sleek. City of Villains gave fake reflections, and thus the post City of Villains tech was shiny. Arachnos, despite being black, have refined, smooth, clean tech, even if it's somewhat chaotic and the remade Rikti, though visually complex, are still mostly sleek. Going Rogue gave us real-time reflections, and so most of the new technological characters were sleek. The Clockwork are shiny, the PPD, TEST, DUST and EDF are stylised.

Even the Resistance - the supposed rat revolutionaries - still keep themselves pretty tidy. You don't see them using robotic arms strapped to their chests with pistons exposed, you don't see them using dissimilar pistols... You don't even see them wearing different clothes. They have their uniforms, they have their polished shiny metal shoulders, they have their supposedly patched-up guns that still look purpose-built... Even at its lowest tech, Praetoria is still sleek.

Personally, I have nothing against skirts, really. I just feel that women haven't gotten a decent pair of pants or a decent jacket since Day Jobs.

More importantly, I want to push the breadth of themes we have. For the last, what? Three or four costume packs, women have gotten precisely the same one theme added to them - eyecandy. First they were the metal thong barbarian babes, then they were the fetish Victorian librarians, now they're the saloon girls whose primary job is to make cowboys horny. Women have gotten three costume sets, but they have gotten precisely one theme - sexy. In the meantime, men have been allowed to be barbarians, steampunk inventors, gentlemen and cowboys.

What I meant was that women have gotten enough skirts, corsets and thigh-high boots - enough sexy outfits - to last them for a while, and I wish they'd get a few badass outfits, instead. And to be quite honest... I doubt they will. I'm all but positive that no matter the costume set, the art team will find some excuse to put women in skirts, corsets and thigh-high boots.

My suggestion would... Well, play a Brute. If you see no reason to play anything but a Brute, simply play a Brute. That was the point of powerset proliferation - that you could play the ATs you wanted and STILL have access to the powersets you wanted. There's nothing in this game which says you need to play all ATs if you don't want to. With 14 of them, trying to play them all would be untenable. Simply pick the ones you like and stick with them. I, for instance, only ever play Scrappers, Stalkers, Brutes and Masterminds and have NO interest in anything else.

This is only really a problem if most people pick one AT and abandon another, and I don't believe that's the case with Brutes. Yes, they can be very strong, but they're also very stressful to play and actually not that good if you play them like I play them, which is to say slowly and with lots of pauses while I get distracted by my TV set. With a Scrapper, I can pick up where I left off even if I fell asleep at the keyboard (it's happened) for the last hour. First hit and BAM! I'm doing great damage. With a Brute... Yeah, they're strong once they get going, but getting them going and keeping them going is a chore, simply put.

So long as an AT isn't abandoned - and I don't think any of the generic ones are - then pick what you like and don't worry about the rest.