SilverAgeFan

Musical instruments, rayguns, arm cannons, thrown items such as playing cards, hand fans, bowler hats, dice, skulls... all sorts of props could be used to diversify most ranged set concepts. Hella mountain of work there that. The aesthetic results would be pretty damned amazing though.

As far as your violin idea goes, time to go camp "Emperor Nero" for a new concept fire/fire dom... :P

was wondering if this is what was going on for me. would love to know what energy morph's prompt is then. the others are simple direct translations of their name.

and as others have reported, having the defensive toggle issue with rapidboil and dimensionshift

What? No time for a good spitball war over the cubicle walls? Sheesh. Paragon sounds like a dreadful work environment. Where's your guys dot com era zest?

In the future booster pack ideas thread in general discussion, I did suggest a Kawaii themed Booster, complete with floating heart auras. Butterflies would work too. Because it's cute, sadly the devs might dismiss it as a joke. As a challenge, though, I dare the devs to think about serious characters with cute or beautiful aesthetics rather than just the sinister and edgy. Goddesses. Fountains of life. Animist spirits of the cosmos. Or of the planet. Children with unlimited powers (think Lama++).

I totally agree with Sam as he points out a page or so up, there has been a real hard edge to a majority of the costume releases over the past 3 years. When this first began, it was refreshing, welcome and quite arguably needed. But this hard edge does contribute to that sense of sameness I was speaking of.

Several ways to break this, none of these strategies are mutually exclusive:

- asymmetric models
- rounder more organic shapes
- convincing modeling and texturing of soft, organic materials
- more lighthearted themes

In addition to the often requested better furry bodies, shoulder fur, animal bits and bushy tails other possible options in no particular order:

- feather and fur boas that use cape physics, but are 3d capes essentially
- convincing feather and fur trim for tights, catsuits and existing clothing options
- shoulder pieces as asymmetric as the gladiator shoulder, but portraying large bushy branches, allowing players to make sentient trees. asymmetric boots and belts in this direction that are also ridiculously bushy with vegetation could work as well
- simple spherical, reflective heads, shoulders, elbows and knees
- GG and others (mostly female players IRL from what I could tell) went a bit gaga over Mother Mayhem's bosom. The only gathered and lifted bosoms we have are sharply framed by either the witch leathers or this new organic armor set. create some more generic gathered and lifted tights options, with and without keyhole cleavage reveals
- an "antoinette set" with powdered wigs for his and hers, tricorner caps, and a close approximation of a hoop gown slightly lifted and tilted forward, ala how the Warrior belt geometry from the martial arts booster currently works
- jewelry details of pendants, medallions and head details for earrings, including feathers and dream catchers

on the more sinister side--it doesn't all need to be cute or cuddly:
- a set that looks less like fractured hard materials and more like melted wax, with large gobs of ones body gathered up in big heavy drips that have hardened in place
- big bulbous boils or mud bubbles on the skin--not just as a texture, but a few large spheres the size of a fist, like on the back or chest or shoulders
- others already mentioned taking advantage of the robotic arm divisions to have mutated arms. what about just one big honking mega muscular arm? ditto in monstrous legs

Anyways, I'll still be getting this pack to support Paragon Studios. I definitely can use all three CC emotes and will use the growl as a bound stance emote for a few of my rooftop avengers. I also have perhaps one use for the bio-lum set. Still don't see how "hell-spawn" as David calls it constitutes a mutant. And though it is a very well done set, going to be stubborn on my opinion that it is very redundant with already existing demonic costume options and feels. And I'll begin the wait yet again and hope that booster pack VI or i19 has something that fills some of the standing gaps in basic comic genre themes and aesthetics currently in the CC.

Yeah. Feeling equally annoyed with this pack and what is a growing sameness from the character modeling department. From the outside, it feels like there is strong artistic resistance within the costume department, like there are themes that they love to work on vs. themes based on personal tastes that they all but refuse to work on. (i.e. if Sexy Jay for example really hates anthropomorphic animal characters and has decided "I'm not doing a furry set. No way.") I say this based on having witnessed heel dragging first hand in creative teams for both television and publishing. The results I witnessed in those arenas echo this growing pattern of sameness amongst costume option releases.

If there really is that much resistance to produce anything other than the same techy looking layered armors and demonic bits, then someone needs to get in there and either provide some tough love and art direction, steering the team into the areas that really are needing OR if the creative culture at Paragon is much looser and management doesn't want to stifle, then someone new needs to be hired--even if just on contract--who has a strong affinity for these other areas.

So with this set lacking the long requested (and teased at by Positron) animal parts, the clock resets for all of us who have been pining for: thongs and feathered tribal sets, more generic silver or golden age patterns including face masks in the glasses detail section, bushy tails, stubby tails, animal heads, new monstrous heads, bird sets, amphibian and aquatic sets, bubble helmets, gorilla heads, a good geomorphic set, a revisit to the plant based set, proper vines wrapping around limbs, and a litany of rigid back details from tech backpacks to dinosaur plates to geomorphic chunks to weaponry to jet packs to glider wings. And that is really what disappoints. Because those of us--who have been hoping and waiting patiently for YEARS for this range of items which are clearly missing (sometimes entirely) from our costume options--need to start waiting yet again for another 6, 12 or 18 months to hope that one or two of these themes might finally be touched in the 1 or 2 sets and details we get with updates and/or the odd booster.

And though GG strikes me as a sweet person the apologism here only stings. *sigh*

You were one of the lucky few that got to play with one of the forthcoming Omega Incarnate slot abilities. This one has been renamed to "Big Wet Smooch of Death." It's more useful but not as cool as the "Humpty Bump" omega power that works a lot like levitate, but with an AoE roughly the size of Atlas Park. Awesome thing is, you auto con as +50 to all baddies on the map while executing this ability. So every baddie gets at least 45' of air. Ba-Whump! Omega indeed!

And yeah, all of us in the i19 super sekrit beta are still getting the scientific notation for damage that you describe here. It's been flagged repeatedly. But Positron and Castle seem resistant to do anything about it. Something about rewriting entire systems. *shrug*

I think they were talking about in game, GG, not real life. What Castle tinkers with in his garage at home is his own business.

These all read like rigid costume items which I don't think falls under this subtopic for animations...

But it does remind me of a longstanding request I've made time and again concerning back details:

Chemical tanks with translucent windows and tintable contents. Similar to how the bubbles rise in the Warhulk cockpits, would love to see a rigid back item with animations that really conveys having a big tanks of something nasty on your back.

Additionally, other costume items that occasionally vent generic streams of gasses would be welcome, be they robotic, steam punk or geo/organic.

And I'm assuming such effects fall under the rubric of this particular thread, oui David?

...on Huge models.

Really really really like this idea. Earlier, I suggested power customization animations that convey a nonchalance.

This opens the door for another means of creatively looking at animations and concept options for characters... along a dimension of control and confidence. With nonchalance and utter control at one side and barely being able to contain the power within at the other extreme.

Nothing else to say other than to reiterate how much I REALLY like this idea, especially in light of how expressive all the most recent animations have been in game. I bet that BABs or one of the other talented animators could really nail this attitude given the production time and priority.

Sir, what server do you play on? Your character creation philosophy is delightfully close to how I've approached this game from day one.

Might be fun to try teaming some time...