Samuel_Tow
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Quote:I don't think the developers should be shooting for "evil" at all, so much as they should be shooting for villainy, and there's a fine difference between the two, at least in how people interpret them.Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay
So, on a scale of 1 - 10, at what level of evil do you feel the Devs should average when writing stories?
"Evil" as such tends to be interpreted as your classic puppy-kicking, or baby-eating, as Bubba explains. It's the act of being mean and malicious and causing others harm as the motivation itself. "Villainy," on the other hand, is kind of in the same vein, but it's more the act of forwarding your own agenda in distinctly unethical ways. The focus of this kind of villainy isn't really to cause harm or malice so much as to help yourself while not shying away from crime and wrongdoing.
To my eyes, the game shouldn't be shooting for an M rating with blood, violence and psychological torture, so much as it should be shooting at letting our villains feel more like the classic comic book bad guys with an agenda. Rule the world, save my wife, be the richest man on Earth, invent a death ray, avenge my father's death. That sort of thing. The game should be shooting at letting us be less like lackies and aimless monsters and more like driven villains with a mark to make on the world.
In terms of disgusting evil, I'd put that at around 4 or 5 - evil enough to be clearly wrong, but not evil enough to make a point. Keep your spines and your dead babies. Give me a volcano fortress, an army of faceless goons and a plot device death ray and I'll be happy. -
Quote:Hmm... And how high CAN you count?Originally Posted by Severe
too many nerfs to count
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I can actually answer a few of those questions:
Quote:While the "Plus" costume piece options have much higher quality, they trade quality for customizability. The old options are patterns over bare skin, which means that you could theoretically alter the underlying skin texture, accommodating my suggestion above. "Plus" items are actually all one texture, which means that you basically can't touch the skin without recompiling the whole image, outfit included. So if I wanted, for instance, "Angelic Plus With Muscles" that would have to be a brand new, entirely separate texture, whereas if I wanted "Angelic With Muscles," this is doable RIGHT NOW. In fact, one of the pictures my mysterious benefactor dumped on me was just that, but he asked me not to share it.Originally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
I think that many more costumes should get the "upgrade" that some of them got in the Marriage package. "Heart", "Angel" and "Excess" got bump-mapped and high-def versions that looked like actual clothes instead of painted-on patterns. Those were very nice additions to the generator. I would like to see more things like that: clothes with actual depth. A bikini that doesn't look like paint, for example.
In other words, currently the engine can swap base textures without affecting the pattern painted on them, which allows a collection of patterns to apply to a collection of textures without bloating the texture count sky high. 10 patters over 10 textures right now requires just 20 items - 10 patterns and 10 textures. 10 patterns and 10 textures with the "Plus" treatment would require 100 items - every combination of every texture with every pattern. And that's more than even just five times the work.
Of course, if I'm talking out of my ***, then I would humbly accept a browbeating from David or BABs or Jay and apologise profusely. I promise.
Actually, I want to sort of turn your argument on itself - I like the Gladiator shoulders, but is it possible to get a symmetrical pairs of both pieces? I mean, one pair that's just two of the big shoulders, one on either side? And, of course, a pair of two of the smaller pieces, one on either shoulder. That would actually ROCK! But again, I actually agree with you. More asymmetrical shoulders would be a big help.Quote:Shoulder pads: "Gladiator" is assymetrical. We could have more pads like that one. There are pads like the giant skulls (not as useful as a more generic shoulderpad would be, fyi) that only covers one shoulder. Etc. Shoulder pets only cover one shoulder. I think all the pads should come in three versions: right, left and both. That would really add options.
You know what just occurred to me? How about controlling our shoulders separately for each side? That way, we don't need to bother the developers to make combinations of this piece and that piece, but we can just mix and match whatever we want. One Medieval shoulder and one Gladiator shoulder? Why not? It'd look cool. One Tech Vegeta style shoulder and one bare shoulder? It'd look odd, but why not? A skull on one shoulder and a spiked rugby pad on the other? Sign me up!
This sort of walks into the area of technical limitations, though. BABs has already explained that there are only so many slots you can put things in, and most of them are already used up. I assume there's only one "shoulders" slot to put things on. But, hey, it's a good suggestion to lay down there and something that's probably worth looking into, at least.
I agree completely. It has always bugged me that our robotic arms are restricted to being JUST robotic, instead of anything inhuman. Maybe not tentacles per se, as tentacles don't have elbows, but why not a bony zombie upper arm, a hulking mutant monster arm, a wooden arm, a skeletal arm, an "ethereal" arm that doesn't have geometry but rather just an aura... There is much more to do with upper arms than JUST technology, much in the same way that there is more to do with lower arm gloves than just technology, as our current selection of gloves would suggest.Quote:Robot arms: We have robot arm 1, 2 and 3 as torso options right now. One of them has a solid robot arm replacing one of the arms. Would it be possible to add more arm options to that part, like for example "tentacle", or "normal arm" (with optional covering, like bare skin, short sleeve, long sleeve, etc)? If we could have a normal-looking arm there instead of a robot arm we would be able to make our own assymetrical costumes by coloring it differently, or leaving it bare.
In fact, let us keep the human shape of our upper arm and texture it separate from the body. That way, I can have a bare chest and a "red right arm" that's bio-organic from the shoulder down. I don't really mind keeping the disc at the shoulder, too.
In fact, next time you're in the Hollows, have a look at Foreshadow. Look closely and you'll notice that he's actually using the Robotic Arms torso, only his upper arms are actually human and more brawny than a model of his size and physique should have. That right there shows you what the technology can currently do, but just doesn't.
This brings us back to the first problem I mentioned - if you want to put anything over the skin in the form of "paint-on clothes," the skin needs to be smooth and lack details. That way, you can get a reasonable illusion that the pattern is actually very tight, very stretchy spandex that just happens to suck into every crevice on your ripped bod. Once you start adding details with colour to them, however, such as with most armour pieces, you lose that illusion completely. On a bare chest, you can get the illusion that the patterns which shine through are just contour lines. On an armour plate, it looks like transparent cellophane that shows not just shape but actually show the underlying patterns. In fact, pick a male bare chest (with nipples) and try to use paint-on clothes on it. It doesn't work, because the nipples ruin the illusion. They make the "clothes" feel transparent.Quote:Skins: It would be nice to have skin patterns that actually belonged to the skin of the character instead of the costume piece. This is probably completely impossible but it would really be cool if things like tattoos, tiger stripes, rocky skin, scales, etc could be selected where you select skin color, and then have those things "shine through" wherever skin showed on the other costume pieces.
Tattoos used with the current technology would have much the same problem. Suppose you had a girl with a large tribal tattoo running from the base of her neck all the way down to her pelvis. Putting an "athletic" top in the form of Tops With Skin over that tattoo would actually show the tattoo right through the top. And that's IF the tattoo were written into the skin texture the same way Tsoo and Yakuza tattoos are. That, in itself, creates the need for a massive number of redundant textures.
The problem, as I see it, is that the game can only apply one single-colour pattern to any one texture. You can't have two patterns on the same texture, because I don't believe the engine has any good way to overlap them, and the UI probably couldn't display them. Furthermore, even if you could, your tattoos would be uni-coloured.
The only real solution to this is to use the current technology for Female Shirts, which are actually not patterns at all, but are rather additional geometry laid about half an inch above the surface of the skin. On the one hand, this is good, since you can have whatever you want underneath and the shirt will still cover it with its own texture. You could potentially have a naked female torso under those shirts (you can't, but you could) and no-one will ever know because the shirt would obscure it. The problem with shirts (aside from men not having any) is that they are very BAD at mimicking skintight clothing like the kind of tights heroes are famous for.
I don't know what solution there could be to this problem, but it's not actually something the art team should be expected to handle. This is an engine functionality that should be down to engine programmers to supply the art team with that functionality, with which they can then make more costume pieces.
Yeah, I've spent some time thinking about these things
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The biggest technical problem, as I see it, is that this suggestion introduces not one, but a VARIETY of additional stances to the game. Currently, we have two that are functionally different - ground and air. You have two complete sets of every animation for every power ever made, one for use on the ground, one for use in the air. That's TWO OF EVERYTHING. Adding just one third stance would first require about as much work as redoing HALF of all the animations that currently exist, and in a non-trivial manner, because a bike stance would be significantly different from a standing one. Look at flight animations, and you'll notice most attacks are almost identical to their ground counterparts, but with the legs dangling down. A few are more diverse, like Air Superiority in the air vs Air Superiority on the ground (naturally, right?), but most are almost exact copies. Bike animations WOULD NOT.
And that's just bikes. If you try to invent any other kind of vehicle, like a car or a horse or a pogo stick, you're looking at ANOTHER unique stance, as well. That's enough work for BABs to have fits of rage and murder people who suggest it. He already mentioned mentioned that animation work of that scale scares the living daylight out of him in the EU show and tell. I'll find the exact quote later. It's basically a krappton of work that no-one at Paragon Studios is ever going to commission.
And then you have the other side of the problem - bikes don't strafe, bikes don't jump 10 feet up into the air from a standing start, bikes don't climb fire escapes, bikes don't sit on park benches. Bikes are also typically much bigger than regular human beings, so either they won't be able to fit through doors and roll down hallways, or you'd have a really weird form of constant clipping. What's more, bikes are long but narrow, and our collision "boxes" are actually defined as collision RADIUS, which doesn't work well on objects that aren't oblong. No doubt part of the problem Rularuu the Raveger had with his hit box that kept him out of the game.
This is a not-insignificant technical hurdle that really has very little merit in the actual game, at least as something added in as an afterthought. If this were Battlefield or GTA which was devised with vehicles in mind, then I wouldn't have a problem with it, but here you'll basically need a whole second game on top of this one to do vehicles, and that won't happen.
*edit*
Exact BABs quote, or close enough to it:
Quote:from this thread.However BaB did say "Alternate animations for powers scares the willies out of me." -
You have two inherent problems when you try to sell a "just armour" powerset, and none of them have to do with numbers.
1. What kind of armour are we talking about? Knight's plate mail armour? Iron Man's techno suit armour? SWAT flack jacket? Freakshow "junk strapped to your chest" armour? Standard fantasy chainmail bikini armour? Just armour in and of itself covers far, FAR too many concepts for this to be feasible without specifying it somewhat. It'd be like making an attack set and calling it "weapon." Duh! What KIND of weapon?
2. The only real way you can institute several different armour toggles is to make each toggle be a different armour piece, kind of like how Assassin's Creed handles it. One toggle is shoulder pads, one toggle is a chest plate, one toggle is leg guards and so forth. You really can't make an armour set that puts five vests on top of each other. The problem with that is you're basically getting down to basic costume creation, because that's what costume creation does - it allows you to pick your shoulders, vests, grieves and so forth. This becomes a set that swaps out your costume pieces and, given how I design many of my characters, possibly swapping them for smaller and less protective-looking ones.
I have a hard time imagining how one could overcome these problems, to be honest. As far as I can see, you're much better off just using costumes themselves to mimic that and not bothering with powersets doing it for you. Costume change emotes plus your five slots should offer more than enough variety in armour, and you can grab your first slot for money at level one. Money that you can now e-mail to yourself from more affluent characters you own.
I can honestly understand your desire to have armour on top of regular clothes, but to be honest, you already sort of CAN. We are still missing a few crucial pieces that could help with that, which are basically upper leg details and some kind of detail that first over lower legs and lower arms. You could probably bug Jay for this, or you can post in David's new thread on the subject and voice a request for detail pieces on more bodyparts. It should carry you a long way towards your ideal concept.
See, I've contemplated an "armour" set, myself. Many times, in fact. But I could never make it works simply because it was too redundant, too specific and too unwieldy. Costumes are very pliable exactly so they can take up just this kind of slack. -
Beholder, indeed
Yeah, that wasn't exactly what I meant by adding more colour, since I typically want to add ONE more colour to a colour scheme, not ALL colours to it
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Well, given that my mysterious benefactor decided to drop another sample image in my mailbox of a character that I don't even have, I thought I'd bring that discussion here:
I would like to request the addition of a more muscular, more ripped skin texture set for the female model, including upper and lower body, hands and feet. David has expressed some reluctance to go that route, citing legitimate concerns that it might not look good, which seems to have irked some unnamed person who's been flooding my e-mail with sample screenshots of my characters with more muscular textures like these:
I do not know who this person is or how he makes these probably illegal screenshots, but you his point, as I understand it, is that even reusing the current game's textures, we can create looks that, while they may not be everyone's idea of aesthetic beauty, still do work sufficiently well to pass off for intentional. He didn't explain the mechanics to me, but I believe what we are looking at is female models using the male skin textures with the male muscle definition. And I'd say they're not half bad, considering that's not what these textures are intended to be used for.
I believe my mysterious benefactor has a point, however - if the game right as it is now is capable of producing images like these with ZERO additional artwork (or so he tells me), then I'm sure that the awesome, cool, gifted people that are David, Jay, BABs and the rest of the art team, can do so much better and make this both work to the same effect and look SO MUCH BETTER!
As I've always suggested it, I'd like to see a selection of base skin textures for the female model featuring at least two options - Smooth and Muscular, just the same way men can choose between these options. Now, I know from my own personal observations of how the game handles "With Skin" items that ONLY HUMAN SKIN will really apply without massive system re-writes, so I'm restricting my request to just two skin options - Smooth and Muscular human skin. That all. Nothing more.
*additional note, skip if you don't care*
See, one of the things I've always always complained about concerning muscular female characters is that their waists and their arms are far too skinny for a truly stout fighter. The solution I used to suggest to this was to just extend the sliders to make them thicker, but David shot that out of the sky with a AAA cannon. And I agree - it's isn't needed. As my anonymous benefactor has shown me with his pics, making the female body texture more muscular makes the actual frame of the female look a LOT thicker than it actually is. Just look at those pictures and tell me - don't those girls look bigger than anything we can make in-game? Because they do to me, and my benefactor insists their models have not been altered, only their textures.
I say we don't need a "huge female" model, we don't need new meshes, we don't need larger arms or different physiques. JUST a more muscular texture for females, created by our awesome artists, would put a stop to practically all the requests for bigger females. And you can take that to the bank!
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If all else fails, just wrap the test tubes in red cellophane
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Quote:And before that, the Devouring Earth have always done this as a way to show them being destructive. They usually do it in hazard zones like Eden, but it can be observed in the hill areas of Founders' Falls. They'll pull out what looks like scrap iron from the ground, though, similar to what Jurasic uses for his caraxe.Originally Posted by Silver Gale
Tuatha lieutenants and bosses do a similar thing when they pull a large branch/root from the ground and throw it at your character.
I actually think the animation itself is really cool. If we ever get the ability to customize our weapon draw animations, I would DEFINITELY want to have this available. -
Quote:She does have a big honking sword, which I actually believe you've seen. It's the basic Legacy Broadsword, which ends up being the biggest sword a female has access to, and by a fair margin.Originally Posted by Serevus
Ah, Xanta looks complete! Well, almost. Give her a big, horkin' sword and I think she'd be about as close to your original idea as the game could come. She looks much better with that kind of definition.
Err... I can't post pictures of it because the mysterious stranger didn't include the sword in. If I had to guess, I'd say it wouldn't have made for as good a demonstration of the texture, but I wouldn't really know. I don't know this person, so I'm just guessing. He or she did send me an angry letter lamenting about how he or she wanted to put on the male upper legs texture on the picture, as well, but was unable to for reasons that weren't explained. I would guess technical ones, but I wouldn't know. I would never dream of doing any of this, myself, but I'm kind of sorry that my mysterious benefactor came up short. Oh, well
Here's hoping for the future, though. I honestly feel there is at least SOME leeway that can be had with this line of artwork. -
Quote:Originally Posted by GuyPerfect
Guys, you're posting pictures taken with the lowest possible quality textures and the shaders seemingly completely turned off. That actually has a profound effect on what colour things appear to be in actual practice. Remember the old "Black Helicopter Line is white!" argument from a couple of years back? Well, the Black Helicoters have always been black, but because some people were playing with their shader detail set to negative ten, the textures appeared odd and bleached.Quote:Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
I'll have to recheck Crab Spiders and the Tarantula, but this is NOT how they show up on my screen.
*edit*
OK, I admit, they're not EXACTLY black. Crab Spiders are a dark, greyish teal and Tarantula are a dark, greyish petrol. Drones also seem to have a dark, greyish lavender tinge. But seriously. Look at this and tell me if it couldn't as well be. This is a good cross-section of what I spend 50 levels looking at. Malta I can live with. They only exist for the last 10, but this colour scheme is basically ALL I'm going to see from level 1 breaking out of Breakout to level 50 finishing up Time After Time. Ugh! -
I honestly wouldn't know. I switched graphics cards and notched up the graphics when I17 launched, so I don't have practically any basis to guess at how the game ran prior to the Issue. I mean, it ran perfectly fine on my 9800 and it lags on my 285, but I'm using rather a lot higher settings now.
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I don't know why, but it's really comforting to know that, whenever the need arises, a community representative is usually on hand to jump in and lend a hand. I'm serious here. There was a time on the forums when I felt we were basically dumped here to sort ourselves out, but the red name posts have really picked up recently, and it makes me happy to see it.
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Would it KILL the guy to throw in a bit of colour in his repertoire? I mean, seriously, he's all black and red and black and red. Wolf Spiders are mostly black, occasionally with red insignias or details, Mu Mystics are predominantly red, with the occasional black tint, Seers of the Fortunata are all read with a hint of purple here and there which gets lost, Night Widows are predominantly black, with a bit of grey, Arachnobots ARE black the lot of them, though they do have the odd blue power effect, Arachnos Drones are all black with red blinking lights, the Tarantula are mostly black though their fire and toxins have some colour to them, but the Mistresses and Queens just have more red markings, Crab Spiders are all black and Bane Spiders are almost all black and red. I mean seriously. I'm starting to lose my colour perception from all of that monochrome.
See, I complain about the Isles being all white and black and brow, but at least they have COLOUR to them. Blue water here, green grass there, the neon lights of Jackpot, the colourful circus of the Carnival of Shadows, the awful pimp suits of the Family. It's not a lot, but it's THERE. And again, I'm not asking for the dude to go out and paint flowers on brick walls. But would it really hurt if his soldiers' uniforms or his architecture were a little less Saturday morning cartoon villain. What, does Lord Recluse have a red light filter in his helmet or something?
Seriously, leave those blue. They make Arachnos maps a LOT more interesting and a LOT less sterile (ironic with their cluttered design). -
Quote:See? That's what I was talking about. Even just using in-game resources, however that was done, the results are not TOO bad, and I'm sure David and Jay and the others are more than awesome enough to make it so much betterOriginally Posted by FredrikSvanberg
Yeah that muscular torso looks good enough to me; another one that was actually made for the female model would probably be better.
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Quote:Yeah, those I spotted, but I thought it was my video card glitching out. Huh... Well, I guess the solution is to make them blue, too, not to make the blue ones redOriginally Posted by Obscure Blade
I can certainly see that argument; some of them looked neat bug or not. However, something like this needs fixing:
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Quote:Wait, that's a bug? No! Don't fix that! It looks a lot better like that. It throws in a little colour in what is otherwise a basically monochromatic, boring tileset. Seriously, look at the tileset and tell me if you see anything that isn't a shade of red or a shade of grey. The blue-filled tanks surprised me VERY pleasantly when I saw them, because they brought the tileset to life.Originally Posted by Obscure Blade
For example, I notice they still haven't fixed the liquid filled tubes in Arachnos bases, which are filled with blue not red stuff
See, normally my eyes just gloss over Arachnos architecture because it's just an incomprehensible mish-mash of random-seeming devices that I cannot identify at all. It's like looking for a face on the surface of the moon - even if it's there, you can't really see it. Having something that catches my eye, that I can instantly recognise (well, as "blue vats," at any rate) and that I can use as a visual point of reference in that sea of red and black is a plus, in my book.
The red vats were cool, but really - there's so much red in that tileset I usually just run by the things without even realising they are there. These stopped me in my tracks and made me look. For the first time in a long while, I actually looked at the Arachnos tileset and I saw more than just random polygons. Seriously, that tileset looks like someone sneezed grates and pipes onto a 3D modelling programme and they decided to make a level out of it. A little colour goes a long way to hide this. -
You know, some anonymous person who I know absolutely nothing about and have never met before dropped this unusual, probably illegally-created image in my inbox. Apparently some kind stranger took pity on my poor argument and decided to something that I don't understand and know nothing about and apparently create a female model with what looks like a fairly muscular torso. I'm sure that whoever this person is could get in trouble, so it's a good thing he remained anonymous.
Let's look at the image, though. One of my bigger complaints with the female models in this game is that their waists are always too narrow and their arms always too skinny, but look at this. Even though the model geometry is exactly the same, both the waist and the arms look rather a lot more solid. It's an optical illusion, really, but being that this is a make-pretend game, do we really care? I understand this is probably not to everyone's tastes, but can you honestly tell me that this looks UGLY? Because I seriously doubt it.
Now, one would probably theorise that the breasts on the model may look really awkward with this texture, and I would guess that might be the case, but since whoever it was that made this pic didn't show me the model piece-by-piece, I wouldn't know. As you can tell, we can't see the chest area in this screenshot because my anonymous benefactor seems to have hidden it under the Enforcer chest piece. I have no idea why, but he probably had a reason. But even if there were a problem with it, one would assume that a graphic artist could probably fix it if there were an actual, supported, legal version of that texture.
I'm sure whoever it was that made this picture is very sorry for doing it, but we can't let his or her wrongdoing go to waste, so let's try and use this as a very rough example of what COULD be possible if ever there were a time when the art team weren't too busy with redacted work
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Let's see... Memorable Things.
The Character Creator. This is what sold the game to me, this is what made me love the game, this is what keeps me here. This and this alone is the cornerstone of my gaming experience in City of Heroes. From the very first moment I stepped into the creator, even as limited as it was back in 2004 as compared to now, I knew I'd found a game for life.
Sensei Lee, a curt powergamer who died a lot and only really seemed to care about doing Task Forces and levelling up fast, but he did end up introducing me to the very first good friend I met in City of Heroes, a kind Gravity/Bubble Controller who saved my *** from a bunch of irate Clockwork. He's still a good friend of mine, though he plays City of Heroes for about five hours out of each year
First time I met the great bunch of people who became my friends later on. I invited an Empath to a Manti TF, who offered to put a team together for me and eventually introduced me to a few more of his friends, whom I got along with. Most of them have moved on, but we still keep in touch.
Adversity, who asked me if I could pad their TF for them which I ended up staying for an apparently impressing them enough to be invited into their SG and forums. I keep wondering if they're not regretting their decision now
First time in Kings Row, where stepping out of the train station caused me to keep looking over my shoulder. People rag on the zone now, but it was such a whiplash mood shift from the gleaming and beautiful Galaxy City that it actually scared me. First time in Boomtown, when my initial reaction was "This is not a good place. I do NOT want to be here!" People are cynical about this today, but the zone's theme really did a lot to enhance the mood.
The first orphaned Forcefield Generator I found in Kings Row, about 20 levels higher than me, broadcasting a huge scary field. As soon as I saw its level, I ran away like a little schoolgirl, even though I had no idea what that was. The first time I saw an orphaned Tree of Life, more than 20 levels above me. My team and I approached it like cautious cats and proceeded to try and kill it, to no effect (couldn't hit or damage it). A passer-by level 20 Scrapper helped us out, taking out the tree which was +4 to even him, telling us heroes of our level shouldn't be facing off against the Devouring Earth. "Huh? The what?"
First and last time I had my *** handed to me by an orphaned Dark Servant about 30 levels higher than me. Back when pets still TRIED to zone with you, some Dark Defender had lost control of his fluffy and left, and it was murdering lowbies in Kings Row to shame the Elder Snakes. It scared the living daylight out of me, too, since it didn't insta-kill me. Dark Servants don't have a lot of damage, even at +30.
First time I saw another hero fly and another hero jump. That was the coolest thing ever. First time I learned to super jump. That was even cooler! First time I realised that my flying Blaster hadn't landed on the ground in over half an hour. That opened a whole new world for me.
First time in the old Faultline. Climbing the crane over the pit by the dam and looking down a drop HALF A MILE HIGH is an experience no other place in the game can replicate. Pity they flooded the place. We need more "big stuff" here. Speaking of which, first time in the Shard. That place is just breathtaking even five years down the line.
My first 50. It was a psychological experience, suddenly realising that there is no reason to rush through content for levels any more, and that it was more important to enjoy my time in-game. I'd seen the end, now it was time to do it all over again at my pace. And it's only been getting better.
My giant green swordswoman, done in a homage to a Lineage 2 character I had, a female Orc swordswoman. Thank the Lord for the Legacy Broadsword being so BIG on female models, and thank my epiphany for finding an outfit that looked even bigger than just the frame of the model. Also thank heavens for the Super Science Booster Pack for allowing me to change her height from above average to MAX GIGANTIC. It really fit the concept a lot better.
That's about all I can think of. -
Yeah, the interface IS clunky. Before when my transaction inventory was arranged horizontally with large icons, I could fit around eight items on the window size that I preferred, Right now, I can only fit about three, because it's arranged in wide rows vertically, on a section of the window that's vertically fairly small, to start. And to top it all off, when you click on an item, it opens in this HUGE tab of extra stats I don't care about, basically monopolising the entire "MORE" field, causing me to have to scroll the window a lot. Before, I barely ever had to scroll at all.
As well, there's a bug in there currently that won't show you how many bids and lists there are for an item in the MORE section of the window, displaying "0 Bids, 0 For Sale" despite there being both bidders and sellers. You CAN click the newly convenient "Search" button next to each item which will auto-find that item in the upper portion of the window, and it DOES show bidders and listers there, but that's a worse hack than we had to use before to get item stats to show up.
To be honest, the Market interface is now a lot more fat, and I regret not working with it in Beta now. Guess that goes to show why I don't get invited to regular Betas. -
Quote:Give Adam a pat on the back, then. He did a very good job! Thank him for silencing Demon Summoning, too, while you're at it. The set sounds wonderful nowOriginally Posted by David Nakayama
Glad you noticed Our Sound Engineer Adam Kay gets all the credit for these improvements, and he's devoted a lot of extra time above and beyond his regular duties to go back and enhance the overall ambient sounds. I'm constantly amazed how much the sound adds to the experience.
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Quote:Yeah, that's kind of what I was saying. The fight was to the point, as that's what a fight here often looks like, but it lacked any sort of... Punch that would make it look cool and exciting. That's a HUGE reason why I am very seriously against putting actual in-game footage in the trailer for ANY MMO ever. MMO just make for dull movies. You NEED to spice it up a bit with the right tune, a few cool camera angles and a few creative cuts and sequences. For instance, the one part that's embedded itself into my head from Samiraiko's I17 video is that swoop down over the reflective water. It's not really a very high-tech effect, but it's incredibly strong in the kind of impact it has on the viewer.Originally Posted by Zamuel
I think this may be the main issue. I think it can be mainly highlighted by the "Fight Your Doppelganger" section. It showed what it was supposed to with two characters fighting but standing there with PSW lacks any form of energy and life. Some form of strafing and jumping would have added a lot to that segment, even if it wasn't much.
In essence, all the official I17 trailer did was show us things, essentially in the same way that a tech demo does. What Samuraiko's trailer did and what the old I11 trailer did, was to make us EXPERIENCE the new content. There's a subtle difference there, but it's one that makes or breaks a trailer, at least in my eyes.
My respect for the Paragon Studios trailer designer. That person has a job doing work for a great company while I piddle about writing fan fiction and working a job I'm not too keen on. But I feel that trailer could have been a lot more exciting. -
Quote:Not that I want to dis the official trailer, believe me, because it did do a good job of highlighting the I17 features, but it's not what I'd describe as a trailer. Again, at most it's a highlight reel.Originally Posted by BackFire
That's why Samuraiko's vids seem better to us, because she understands the way we think and adds in little details that we appreciate. Well, that, and she has mad skillz ;P
And I have to disagree with BABs and BackFire here - I like Samuraiko's videos not because of how close they are to my sensibilities (truth be told, they're actually not exactly what I'd pick), but because they actually have the dynamics, pace and mood of an actual trailer, something that makes me get up out of my chair and go "Wow! That is so cool!"
I understand that the official trailer's job was just that - screencap all the new features and list them in a movie, and to be fair, Samuraik's videos are usually great for a lot of things OTHER than the actual features highlighted, such as proper choice of costume, location, powers and emotes, all of which are actually old content, so I can see why an official, "highlights ONLY" trailer would be less exciting and more informative.
Then again, their I11 trailer is probably the best official trailer I've ever seen of this game, and what I would consider a MASSIVE success. It's trailers like these that would convince me that a game is totally kickass. The subsequent I12 trailer wasn't nearly as good, both because of a worse voiceover, less "photogenic" names and... I honestly don't know why, exactly. But the I11 trailer had me in suspense the entire time. The I12 trailer and subsequent trailers have basically had me taking notes, and that's not the right approach, as far as I'm concerned.
Basically, I don't think any feature in any game is enough to impress me if you just show it to me and go "Here, see?" A trailer is less supposed to highlight as it is supposed to pump up. I don't know if that's acceptable for an official trailer, but I'd definitely prefer one like that. -
The official video was basically a tech demo and not really much of a movie. Samuraiko's video, on the other hand, was an actual video with dramatic effect and nice cinematography. Again, I have to wonder why the Paragon Studios people don't just get her to do their videos for them. This official one is basically as good as a series of promo screenshots. It's not BAD, but it's not a trailer by any stretch.
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The FTP link actually leads to a huge list of obscure-named files that don't follow any real convention, so finding the exact file in there is a bit of a challenge. They don't even seem to be arranged alphabetically. I did end up finding it, in the form of File:COH_Issue17.flv, COH_Issue17_1280.mov and COH_Issue17_1280x720HD.wmv. I just wanted to name those so it's easier for lazy sods like myself to get around