It was already available through the failed Korean "City of Hero" edition.
This would be *great* to have. Unfortunately, it's very unlikely to become real unless they feel like hashing out another lawsuit with anyone about how to patrol the use and display of the results from the generator.
In the game, they can patrol for copyright and trademark infringements, which was the central problem they had with Marvel Comics. Without going in the game, *anything* might be made and subsequently displayed and distributed online. THAT is something that I'm sure their lawyers want to avoid, since it's THEIR product making money - not anyone else whose costume or signature looks might be seen using the tools.
Yes. It's stupid. However, that's largely why we don't already have one.
Myself I'd pay full price, 30-50 bucks, for something like it.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
actualy, there couldnt be any copyright infringment.. the devs would have to reveiw and approve the designs first. so if the dev doesnt say it is good then it doesnt go in and no one, not even the builder of it can use it. once the devs say it is good they just release it as an optional patch or something. and on a similar note, a slight change in the models would be nice so that a catgirl could have short hair and NOT have human ears showing still.
[ QUOTE ]
actualy, there couldnt be any copyright infringment.. the devs would have to reveiw and approve the designs first. so if the dev doesnt say it is good then it doesnt go in and no one, not even the builder of it can use it. once the devs say it is good they just release it as an optional patch or something. and on a similar note, a slight change in the models would be nice so that a catgirl could have short hair and NOT have human ears showing still.
[/ QUOTE ]
Apparently you weren't here for the Marvel Lawsuit. YES, they DO have to monitor it.
Since they are making money from this product, EVERYTHING done with it must belong to them. If you create something which is clearly a rip of another company's work, NC still made money off it. Not that other company.
The only reason we have "wolverine claws" and other such items still in the game, is in large part due to the *reporting and eula-enforcement* removing the 'clones' in the game. If we didn't have those things to an adequate degree (which the judge in the case determined they did, that was one of the things thrown out of the full case since they claimed it DID adequately patrol/enforce) then how many things couldn't go in the creator?
Purple pants and green skin? Nope.
Red Blue and Yellow tights? Nope.
Basically, there is a good, legal and compelling reason why we have a EULA that's enforced in the game, and why there isn't a standalone offline creator.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
Also, there would bound to be players that would create nipples and skin tones for costumes and we would have a bunch of naked women running around again. This is a Teen rated game. We can't just allow any puberty stricken moron to make whatever costume they want.
And remember if the devs have to review everything that goes through this system before it goes in the game, when are they going to have time to develop the game? They would have to hire all new staff just for this system.
And then of course players would complain that it takes too long for their costumes to be approved. A player doesn't want to sit down and create a costume and then wait in a queue for their costume to be approved. They want to play the game immediately.
While it's a nice idea, it's simply not feasible nor cost effective.
Which's why I have wondered if it would be possible to enforce a user related fee for submitting a piece for review.. with the idea being, "it" would, ideally, cover the cost of the additional staff needed for reviewing. It's not without precedent, exactly. I know a play by mail game which charges a dollar just to contact another player through their game. I won't mention which game it is since it's fairly scammeriffic, though.
Then again.. I'm not really sure how many people would pay money just to get a piece reviewed and potentially rejected- nor can I imagine the whining from our mature, intelligent fan base when their cra.. um.. their work is inevitably rejected. As I'm afraid most it it would be, thanks to the infamous Strugen's Law.
Unfortunately, that's the only way I can really see it working..
I actually came up with this idea in relation to the Challenger's Offering, when they flat out rejected custom chest emblams.. I really should post it over there sometime.. heh
J/ Wilde
Still hate the visit Winscott mission- make it dropable, have it give actual exp or remove it altogether. PS- Down knows who you are.
J/ Wilde/ / AIL - Celebrating five years!
Given the way that people in the game break the eula, I can't see them following the rules if they had to go through another hoop to see their work.
Best just to use the ingame stuff, or heck learn to demoedit and run without 'actually' playing.
I mean, like I said, I'd pay 50 bucks for a fully updated costume / character generator which could show emotes and attacks. I'd LOVE it.
But ... it's just not likely to ever happen because of the eula aspects. I spoke with Brian the head guy at last year's comic con, and he pretty much admitted it wouldn't be likely.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
I think you guys are missing his point. He's suggesting that players make costume pieces themselves, then submit them for approval and inclusion into the game.
That said, I find this to be badly unrealistic. Unless the developers hire someone to review costume pieces full time, that's not going to happen, and that in itself is highly unlikely. And, as was already said, paying money to have your costume piece reviewed is just a giant can of worms.
What's more, as the many skins, mods and other custom stuff for game that allow it shows and, hell, as our very own Architect shows, 90% of everything players make is crap, and probably half of the authors that make this are convinced it's the greatest thing ever! Even the stuff that's actually good always needs work to both bring it to the standard of items and to work out all the niggling issues the player didn't think to check for.
I don't believe it will happen.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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>_>
reading comprehension for the win, eh?
Still, I'm reminded OF the Freedom Force sites that were shut down because they were making rips of copyrighted things. It would just take so much more effort to work with this kind of thing. I'd rather see one or two of the forum goers here who have skills we can all admire, suggest a few things to them or get hired to do it professionally.
Good as he is, Jay (though sexy) is understaffed and overworked. But ... allowing anyone else to put stuff into the generator on OR off line would be mostly a mistake.
Please read my FEAR/Portal/HalfLife Fan Fiction!
Repurposed
Oh, I agree. It's more trouble than it's worth. I'm not sure why they got in trouble for the offline editor when it didn't come with a game attached to it and was little more than a blank sheet of paper with a few stencils, but I acknowledge the precedent. Letting people add content to the game unsupervised isn't something that I can agree with. Even when it's legal and reasonably good, it creates a MESS. I've been trying to play Half-Life 2: Death Match recently, and it seems half the maps are someone's heavily-altered mod or stupid cube map because people can run servers of whatever they damn please.
And when we get into players submitting material for review, this just becomes unworkable. The developers can hardly find enough time to have a look at a player arc a day, let alone costume item submissions that I'm sure would take more than a passing glance to examine for compatibility.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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[ QUOTE ]
actualy, there couldnt be any copyright infringment.. the devs would have to reveiw and approve the designs first. so if the dev doesnt say it is good then it doesnt go in and no one, not even the builder of it can use it. once the devs say it is good they just release it as an optional patch or something. and on a similar note, a slight change in the models would be nice so that a catgirl could have short hair and NOT have human ears showing still.
[/ QUOTE ]
Apparently you weren't here for the Marvel Lawsuit. YES, they DO have to monitor it.
Since they are making money from this product, EVERYTHING done with it must belong to them. If you create something which is clearly a rip of another company's work, NC still made money off it. Not that other company.
The only reason we have "wolverine claws" and other such items still in the game, is in large part due to the *reporting and eula-enforcement* removing the 'clones' in the game. If we didn't have those things to an adequate degree (which the judge in the case determined they did, that was one of the things thrown out of the full case since they claimed it DID adequately patrol/enforce) then how many things couldn't go in the creator?
Purple pants and green skin? Nope.
Red Blue and Yellow tights? Nope.
Basically, there is a good, legal and compelling reason why we have a EULA that's enforced in the game, and why there isn't a standalone offline creator.
[/ QUOTE ]
And APPARENTLY you did not read what he just said. The DEVS would have to review all designs before they go live. So that would prevent infringement.
BUT IT STILL WON'T WORK.
The Devs just don't have enough time.
Btw, OP...Frredom fore came out nearly a decade before CoH.
A good idea though would be a "Player -created Content Contest" once per year, where the Top 5-10 custome items are added to the game.
This would minimize the time investment for the Devs
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Actually, there couldn't be any copyright infringement.. the devs would have to review and approve the designs first. so if the dev doesn't say it is good then it doesn't go in and no one, not even the builder of it can use it. once the devs say it is good they just release it as an optional patch or something. and on a similar note, a slight change in the models would be nice so that a catgirl could have short hair and NOT have human ears showing still.
[/ QUOTE ]
Apparently you weren't here for the Marvel Lawsuit. YES, they DO have to monitor it.
Since they are making money from this product, EVERYTHING done with it must belong to them. If you create something which is clearly a rip of another company's work, NC still made money off it. Not that other company.
The only reason we have "wolverine claws" and other such items still in the game, is in large part due to the *reporting and eula-enforcement* removing the 'clones' in the game. If we didn't have those things to an adequate degree (which the judge in the case determined they did, that was one of the things thrown out of the full case since they claimed it DID adequately patrol/enforce) then how many things couldn't go in the creator?
Purple pants and green skin? Nope.
Red Blue and Yellow tights? Nope.
Basically, there is a good, legal and compelling reason why we have a EULA that's enforced in the game, and why there isn't a standalone offline creator.
[/ QUOTE ]
And APPARENTLY you did not read what he just said. The DEVS would have to review all designs before they go live. So that would prevent infringement.
BUT IT STILL WON'T WORK.
The Devs just don't have enough time.
Btw, OP...Freedom Four came out nearly a decade before CoH.
A good idea though would be a "Player -created Content Contest" once per year, where the Top 5-10 costume items are added to the game.
This would minimize the time investment for the Devs
[/ QUOTE ]
ZI, you don't seriously think JUST having green skin and purple pants, all by itself, would void a character's originality, do you? It sounds like you do- and I'm pretty sure in the eyes of the GM's, it wouldn't, unless the character had a name overtly similar to Hulk. Which is far from a given.
Anyway, since it seems to have been ignored, I did mention another idea for dealing with it would be simply attack a fee of five or ten dollars to it. Which would both help cover the cost of reviewing and cut down on potential low level material.
Anyone care to comment on that aspect of the idea?
J/ Wilde
Still hate the visit Winscott mission- make it dropable, have it give actual exp or remove it altogether. PS- Down knows who you are.
J/ Wilde/ / AIL - Celebrating five years!
Problem with paying for a review:
What if you pay for a review and it is declined?
They can't allow just anyone to pay 5 bucks and add any old crap into the game, which is what people would be expecting since they PAID for it.
So, you would have to spend real, hard earned money to get the costume generator in the first place. Then you would have to spend MORE money just to get a review of your creation. And THEN there's a high likelyhood that your design will not meet the developer's standards and will not be approved.
If something like that were to happen I could just see all the ragequits occurring because someone's Wolverine clone costume didn't get approved after they paid for a review.
The things we pay extra money for are guaranteed. If you buy a Booster, you are guaranteed to get all the costume pieces you paid for.
They cannot make the same guarantee with player created costumes for any number of reasons including copyright/trademark infringement, indecency/nudity, and the worst one, just plain poor quality.
Would anyone in their right mind pay $5 to possibly get a cheeseburger? Of course not. But most people are willing to pay $5 for a cheeseburger that is assured.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
Yeah, so many people would be submitting outfits. Even though CoH has such a great customization system, I think it'd be great to expand it a little more. Being able to use the same color system as the speech bubbles to color our outfits would fix so many of my problems for one thing. Id also like it if we could section the body off a little more for customization like coloring the eyes, more accessories (wrist bands separate from gloves, necklaces, rings, tails being separate from belts, etc). This has been said over and over again.
As for your question, joshdex: I adore making every costume slot as individual, original and detailed as I can relative to any of my other characters and other characters I have seen. As for paying a fee to submit my own costume design, I wouldn't. For one thing, sooo many people would be submitting pieces. In order for anyone to see your custom costume pieces, youd have to upload it to CoH and then the Devs would have to send it through patches to the users. Custom costume pieces would be the same thing as a font on a website - if you don't have that font on your computer, it will change to a default font such as Arial or Verdana. Not to mention the ratio of badass costumes versus goofy crap costumes on this game are completely unbalanced. In the end, I personally wouldn't want to give the people the power to create their own costumes. There are enough monotonous or simply the run of the mill black and bright red costumes running around. Call me an elitist, but Id love this tool for myself and I would pay for it if a select few could use it because I specialize in designing original characters in and out of CoH. I just wouldnt want to be forced to download everyone crap who wants to make a multicolored Mickey Mouse. I say forced because everyone would be making their costumes in vain if no one could see them. Therefore, itd be pointless if we werent forced to download it. Thered be so many bugs in the game if you had the option to not download custom outfits.
I would pay to get an additional costume slot though!
[ QUOTE ]
Problem with paying for a review:
What if you pay for a review and it is declined?
They can't allow just anyone to pay 5 bucks and add any old crap into the game, which is what people would be expecting since they PAID for it.
So, you would have to spend real, hard earned money to get the costume generator in the first place. Then you would have to spend MORE money just to get a review of your creation. And THEN there's a high likelyhood that your design will not meet the developer's standards and will not be approved.
If something like that were to happen I could just see all the ragequits occurring because someone's Wolverine clone costume didn't get approved after they paid for a review.
The things we pay extra money for are guaranteed. If you buy a Booster, you are guaranteed to get all the costume pieces you paid for.
They cannot make the same guarantee with player created costumes for any number of reasons including copyright/trademark infringement, indecency/nudity, and the worst one, just plain poor quality.
Would anyone in their right mind pay $5 to possibly get a cheeseburger? Of course not. But most people are willing to pay $5 for a cheeseburger that is assured.
[/ QUOTE ]
Well if this was a fact, I'm sure they would charge you after your costume was approved.
I understand the idea of charging people for the "privilege" of submitting items for review from the point of view of motivating the Devs to consider the idea and pay for their time and effort. But I honestly don't see any player so excited about wanting to submit items for review that they'd be willing to pay for it, especially when there's the implied possibility of rejection. Maybe if the act of paying for it would 'guarantee' that the Devs would add these things to the game it'd be worth it to players, but of course we know that'd run counter to the whole premise of getting these things approved in the first place.
I think it would be awesome if the Devs allowed player submissions for review. But I think the only way it would work is if instead of charging players they imposed a limit of say one submission per person per week or some such. This would keep the Devs from getting overwhelmed with submissions and encourage players to only submit what they consider to be their best work. With that control on player submissions in place then the Devs would be free to handle the items anyway they want like American_Angel's "Player-created Content Contest" idea.
Loth 50 Fire/Rad Controller [1392 Badges] [300 non-AE Souvenirs]
Ryver 50 Ele� Blaster [1392 Badges]
Silandra 50 Peacebringer [1138 Badges] [No Redside Badges]
--{=====> Virtue ♀
Thank you all for your feedback!
Lothic's idea might be the best take on this so far.. although I'd suggest that it be more along the lines of once per 2 weeks. Maybe once per a month.. You don't think there should be a badge for being approved, do you? 
(I bet you say no.) 
Since I was asked about my version.. I'll throw this idea out for you.
Someone's going to have to review the outfits, be it current staff, or someone entirely new.. And I'm sure they'd expect to be compensated for the work. That's the main reason I can't see it working- some of the submission fee would have to go to the right to be reviewed and possibly rejected.
Meaning most likely, they'd have to take the time to very clearly spell out their standards, which would drain even more of their time, writing up said guildelines..
That said, the best proposal I could think to address those concerns is two-fold.
1) 9.99 USD for a submission. If rejected, you'd have the option of submitting a refined piece for review, without an additional cost.
2) If you decide not to use that option, you'd get a partial refund. (I'm thinking it would be half or more of the original fee.)
You'd still lose out on a potion of the money (say, a couple bucks?) But it would be clearly stated in the guidelines. And promotional material. I doubt it'd stop complaining, but it should minimize it. Of course, you'd be highly encouraged to display the piece for feedback on the forums.. but only a minority of us read them, so that's a drawback to that suggestion.
As for the sheer volume of submissions- that is a problem for the reasons you stated. To be honest, besides the 9.99 price tag, I can't think of very many (any?) ways to minimize the number of pieces to a manageable level, other than to restrict it to a higher price.. which might cause more complaints than it would solve. And if you dont minimize them, the amount of costume options you have to download, even with professional guidelines, could be quite overwhelming in terms of downloads.
The quality issue is a big one.. If it was limited to 'just' chest icons/ emblems, it might not be so bad. The tradeoff being, it would also be less useful for most of us.
Anyone got an idea for that problem?
J/ Wilde
"Now, if they'd just make a Sims version of City, we wouldn't need it. :P"
Still hate the visit Winscott mission- make it dropable, have it give actual exp or remove it altogether. PS- Down knows who you are.
J/ Wilde/ / AIL - Celebrating five years!
My 2 cents:
I'd kill to at least be allowed to make custom textures. I don't know how to edit meshes, but gimmie a blank texture to open up in any old image editing program so I can make unique patterns.
If that's too much to ask, I would sell my liver for the ability to make custom chest emblems.
Alas, neither of these are likely to be made, lest we end up with 5000 variations of "Phallus Man" roaming the streets. Thus the creative suffer to stifle the ignorant...
The off-beat space pirate...Capt. Stormrider (50+3 Elec/Storm Science Corruptor)
The mysterious Djinn...Emerald Dervish (50+1 DB/DA Magic Stalker)
The psychotic inventor...Dollmaster (50 Bot/FF Tech Mastermind)
Virtue Forever.
On top of it, if I wanted to design something, most of it would be signature to my characters only.
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On top of it, if I wanted to design something, most of it would be signature to my characters only.
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Now this idea I could maybe support. The ability to design a custom costume piece for just YOUR character. Within reasonable guidelines (once again, copyright/trademark, indecency/nudity come into play) It saves the devs the time and effort of putting a costume piece in the costume creator because only one character would ever get it.
Downside to that particular idea though: You would probably not be able to change your costume without losing your custom piece. This would be because of the aforementioned "not in the costume creator" issue.
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
[ QUOTE ]
ZI, you don't seriously think JUST having green skin and purple pants, all by itself, would void a character's originality, do you? It sounds like you do- and I'm pretty sure in the eyes of the GM's, it wouldn't, unless the character had a name overtly similar to Hulk. Which is far from a given.
[/ QUOTE ]
Here is an example to help illustrate your point. As is obvious, the little Goblin on the left despite having green skin and purple pants does not bear any resemblance to the Hulk. So you are quite correct in that green skin and purple pants does not automatically mean a Hulk ripoff.
That is true.
Green skin, purple pants, no shirt, Huge model, SS/WP or SS/Invuln means a Hulk ripoff.
The GMs won't care if you're making a Supa Troll, you will probably get genericed.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
I realize you are still concerned about the idea behind motivating our Devs to want to provide this service by making it something that they could potentially earn money for. I'm not against the Devs having a new way to earn money per se. But I still highly doubt that most people will want to do any design "work" for the Devs AND pay -them- for the privilege of being able to submit it. The "business model" if you will for this scheme simply doesn't make any sense.
Bottomline I think the idea of having money involved in this or worrying about a convoluted system of partial refunds or whatever isn't really going to be the answer. I doubt the Devs would be confident enough that they'd make enough money off of this to make it worth the effort to charge for it in the first place. Remember it'd cost money for them to support the infrastructure to handle all these new microtransactions and whatnot. The idea that they could actually make a profit on any of this would be questionable at best.
Basically the only way this thing is going to happen is for the Devs to be willing to offer a content submission service for free as a community involvement/appreciation effort. I understand that it would represent extra time and effort they'd have to account for on their own. And for that critical reason I also realize this will not likely ever happen either. *shrugs*
Once again I'd love for there to be a system in place to be able to submit player created content for review. I just think the Devs are going to have to see the value of supporting the idea without making it a new kind of microtransaction.
If it were limited to say only one player submission a week or even one a month then I think the Devs would not get overwhelmed with submissions and allow them to organize some kind of periodic "player submission contest" that people could vote on and be involved with.
Loth 50 Fire/Rad Controller [1392 Badges] [300 non-AE Souvenirs]
Ryver 50 Ele� Blaster [1392 Badges]
Silandra 50 Peacebringer [1138 Badges] [No Redside Badges]
--{=====> Virtue ♀
[ QUOTE ]
I realize you are still concerned about the idea behind motivating our Devs to want to provide this service by making it something that they could potentially earn money for. I'm not against the Devs having a new way to earn money per se.
[/ QUOTE ]
With all due respect, where'd you get that opinion from?
I'm not against the developers of this game making money via transactions. I think generally speaking, more money going into the game is a good thing- although clearly, it's something they have to be careful about- since most people obviously expect a value out of the money they're asked to spend on extra goodies.
To be honest, I don't see the money back as that convoluted - it seems pretty straight forward to me.. but far be it from me to argue semantics.
J/ Wilde
Still hate the visit Winscott mission- make it dropable, have it give actual exp or remove it altogether. PS- Down knows who you are.
J/ Wilde/ / AIL - Celebrating five years!
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Actually, there couldn't be any copyright infringement.. the devs would have to review and approve the designs first. so if the dev doesn't say it is good then it doesn't go in and no one, not even the builder of it can use it. once the devs say it is good they just release it as an optional patch or something. and on a similar note, a slight change in the models would be nice so that a catgirl could have short hair and NOT have human ears showing still.
[/ QUOTE ]
Apparently you weren't here for the Marvel Lawsuit. YES, they DO have to monitor it.
Since they are making money from this product, EVERYTHING done with it must belong to them. If you create something which is clearly a rip of another company's work, NC still made money off it. Not that other company.
The only reason we have "wolverine claws" and other such items still in the game, is in large part due to the *reporting and eula-enforcement* removing the 'clones' in the game. If we didn't have those things to an adequate degree (which the judge in the case determined they did, that was one of the things thrown out of the full case since they claimed it DID adequately patrol/enforce) then how many things couldn't go in the creator?
Purple pants and green skin? Nope.
Red Blue and Yellow tights? Nope.
Basically, there is a good, legal and compelling reason why we have a EULA that's enforced in the game, and why there isn't a standalone offline creator.
[/ QUOTE ]
And APPARENTLY you did not read what he just said. The DEVS would have to review all designs before they go live. So that would prevent infringement.
BUT IT STILL WON'T WORK.
The Devs just don't have enough time.
Btw, OP...Freedom Four came out nearly a decade before CoH.
A good idea though would be a "Player -created Content Contest" once per year, where the Top 5-10 costume items are added to the game.
This would minimize the time investment for the Devs
[/ QUOTE ]
ZI, you don't seriously think JUST having green skin and purple pants, all by itself, would void a character's originality, do you? It sounds like you do- and I'm pretty sure in the eyes of the GM's, it wouldn't, unless the character had a name overtly similar to Hulk. Which is far from a given.
Anyway, since it seems to have been ignored, I did mention another idea for dealing with it would be simply attack a fee of five or ten dollars to it. Which would both help cover the cost of reviewing and cut down on potential low level material.
Anyone care to comment on that aspect of the idea?
J/ Wilde
[/ QUOTE ]
Actually...yes. Green Skin with purple pants, would likely get you genericed.
I had...
Belly Tee Long (Blue), Vindicator Logo Chest Detail (Red and Yellow), Banded Gloves (Heavy Buckles...Gloves Red, Buckles Yellow), Spiked Collar (Red with White Spikes), Simple Belt (Red), Mini Skirt (Blue), Fishnets (Red), Large Boots (Heavy Bucles...Gloves Red, Buckles Yellow)...
...and my costume was genericed (actually they screwed up and genericed the name too...they said it was an accident for the name...Void-Girl).
Now last I knew...close to supergirl look, but not copied 100%...the homage should be seen there, but the actual look should of been different enough imo...but genericed none-the-less.
So yes. I think the devs would generic someone with green skin and purple pants.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
I had an idea regarding the costumes and the endless requests for new parts that everyone has been waiting for. It seems like there's never enough parts for every idea we all have. I thought of a possibility, and I think... it would work pretty well.
There was a game made about the same time that City of Heroes was first released, titled "Freedom Force." Also a superhero game, but not an MMORPG by any means... but the players were able to make their own characters to insert into the game. And they were able to make these characters using programs made available by the game developers, so that they could share meshes and skins and animations with other players.
The CoX graphics engine for the characters is very modular. That is to say, we have the basic figurine (male/female/huge), and then each individual part is then "hung" on that figurine to create the overall appearance. This is why, back before custom weapon appearances were available, I predicted that it was possible to make them so. A broadsword is still a broadsword; only the polygons and color scheme have changed.
What if the developers were to release a costume parts creator program that players could download, and then use to create their own costume parts to submit for approval? I say approval because costume parts have to be in everyone's "library" to be seen by them, and developer approval would prevent the release of horrid and poorly rendered parts, or offensive parts.
I know that a number of players have been wanting to see wolf/fox tails to go with the lion, tiger, rabbit, etc tails. This would allow them to make the parts for themselves; the developers could then just pick the best of what comes to them rather than having to make it themselves.