Dumb Question: Cosmetic Stoner Change: How hard would this be to implement?

Okay, one of the big complaints people have about stone/* or */stone is that once they hit Granite, barring size-differences and visual differences in attack powers, all Granite tanks and Brutes look the same.

How difficult would it be to introduce something like a texture change for the skin/hair that replaces the current skin/hair color/texture with a "stone" texture? So, instead of a pile of boulders, the person simply becomes a fossilized version of themselves?

Not talking about altering Granite's game-mechanics effects in any other way, shape, or form. Just altering the appearance.

Especially with the upcoming i16, I'm wondering how do-able this sort of thing would become.

Also, what kind of downsides would this introduce? Mechanics-wise? RP-wise? General gameplay-wise?

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

so long as it's a choice and not a change, I chose stone armore BECAUSE granite looked like that.

As I understand it Granite Armor is not your character encased in a power effect but a complete change of skin. You can kind of see that when you activate the power and the camera shifts slightly based on the larger character model.


>

Another interesting option would be for the character's fists and feet encased in the Granite stone, leaving the rest of the body uncovered.

Female Granite Tankers need a more feminine figure..that is all.

Didn't BABs hint at some musing of possible future customisation available to the Stone Armour set?

The aesthetic annoyances of Stone Armor are a major reason why I lost interest in my stone/axe tanker. I have Swift three slotted, took Teleport in addition to another travel power to let me get up the step, but I have never gotten interested enough in the character to replace the old SO build with an IO build.

This is probably the same reason why I have never tried to polish my Ice tanker after i9, and never gotten a Kheldian past level 16.

<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

It would be nice if there was going to some better customization, even if it was limited to scaling to character size in Granite. I'm hoping, but certainly not holding my breath.

Maybe instead of a customizable granite costume we could have an option through the tailor to not wear the granite at all, just let me have granite stats and my regular costume when I turn on the toggle.
Or a choice of Legacy Granite, one of the DE models that are already in the game and Stone from the costume set. To my non-programmer brain that seems like it would be reasonably easy to implement. That would give at least two fixed looks to granite plus a color tintable option that would allow different body types and auras.

I personally like the Granite look, it's one of those visuals that, as a noob player many years ago, I saw and said, "I neeeeed that.", but it would be nice if every stone tank didn't have to look exactly the same.

Considering they let you customize the Phantom Army NPCs, I don't think it's impossible to customize the Granite Armor NPC model. Why you can't, though, is a mystery to me. Probably because the PA NPCs use existing PC costume options and were already set up to be colorized, while the GA NPC, well, doesn't and isn't.

The reason I made my tank Stone/Stone when I made his was for bubble underpants in the reactor of a respec.