Am I the ONLY one...

You know, that's something that has always bothered me about City of Heroes - all of our original powers are done EXTREMELY on the cheap. By that I don't mean they were cheap or quick to make, but that they lack any sort of... Refinement to them. You point, emitter creates fireball, fireball flies. The end. And that's WITH the added spray of fire on impact from CoV. We didn't even have that before. By comparison, look at something as seemingly simple as the Necromancy upgrade. It's just a red cloud of mist, right? Wrong! Let's look at what it actually is.

First of all, it IS a cloud of mist, but unlike most other "moving cloud" powers, it's not just one emitter making a trail of sprites, it has several emitters moving around in a spiralling, zig-zagging pattern around each other, making the cloud a lot more elaborate and a lot more interesting. It's not just a fluffy cloud. It's magic! As well, the thing leaves a trail of bugs and beetles and worms on the ground, and they don't just stand around looking pretty (disgusting), they scurry about, each in their own way. The whole power's setup is so complex I've been unable to actually tell what any of the things involved in it is actually doing. THAT, to me, is an excellent power and how everything should me. It's not in-your-face flashy, but it is also incredibly detailed. Which stands to stark contrast with the Dark Blasts the very same set also has. Low-res bland-colour tendrils emitted in a line do not look impressive. Heck, I don't even think the tendrils sprites are even animated, but I could remember wrong.

I'm going to give you an example of what I mean - W.I.T.C.H. Specifically, the second season. There, chief protagonist Nerissa has a habit of using really flashy electricity, and it's flashy not due to big explosions or fanfare, but rather because of how much detail is put into it. It doesn't just shoot out of her hands, it always dose SOMETHING else. In one scene you see her hand flash so you can see the bones inside. In another scene the lightning she shoots strikes the ground a couple of times before whipping towards the target she meant to hit. It's not quite Avatar impressive in that it's not a flashy martial art, but the EFFECT is hugely detailed, and something I've always wanted to see in our game, at least as an alternate animation.

Easy example from in-game: Jacob's Ladder. Unlike most of the old powers, when you do that electricity travels down your arms until it reaches your fists, at which point you shoot the cone of electrical arcs. I'd LOVE to see something like that for older powersets, like fire travelling up your body when you're shooting Blazing Bolt. I would enjoy that.

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.

For extra added fun, use Stunning Shot on a giant monster, then play with the giant, leftover arrow when it's defeated.

What? My archer gets bored sometimes!

And Zombra laughed at me when I said I wished we had an attack called "Shoot REALLY BIG Arrow."

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.

I've already grabbed Pistol Packin' Panda.

Then I started thinking about that AoE/gun-fu silliness move and now I'm working on a Yosemite Sam idea... that seems like a very Yosemite Sam kind of attack. Even with Panda, I have a feeling I'm going to make a YEE-HAAAAWWWWW! emote and click it every time I use that attack.

So thought of Hot Shots Part Deus...

I was actually thinking about a power customization thing where you could change the bow to a harpoon/spear gun. Just need to make a new set of rifle-style animations that use the arrow emanation point. It would certainly relax the concept limitations with Archery and Trick Arrow.

That sort of thing is more or less the holy grail of power customization, in my eyes. The ability to pick to use different weapon classes (such as bow or crossbow), as well as weapons for inherently weaponless sets, like Fire Blast. I'm not positive it's even possible (no developer has ever commented on that), but it's probably the last big thing left in terms of functionality before my imagination runs out on more things to do with customization.

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.

Actually, all they really need is for some way for the custom weapon selector to communicate with the animation selector (because SS and MA shows that custom animations are a go), and we're off to the races.

If a "Wild West Cowboy" found himself in the 18th Century, he'd have already done some time travelling...

Either that, or he's a character from James Fenimore Cooper who's developed a sudden interest in cattle.

This reminds me of one of my favorite AE character bios. In an arc I wrote about Nemesis, in an attempt to make his huge invasion force interesting, I included a group of steam-powered Freakshow called "Mohocks." Their bios run something like, "When Nemesis assured the Freakshow that he was 'most assuredly "down with the street,"' he never expected to be saddled with these fools. Taking their name from the famous street gang of 18th Century London, they speak in affected Cockney accents (the differences between England and Prussia and the 18th and 19th Centuries are lost on them). The only reason Nemesis even keeps them around is that all they ask in payment are steady supplies of boiler-grade coke and racy engravings of Ada Lovelace."

The arc was groaning at 99.2% full, but I just had to include that entire bio.

Precisely. Just today I've already read 3 or 4 of these, and I'm already tired of them.

It's generally bad form to make "all they really need" arguments when it comes to the animations system, that's why I talk about this as a distant possibility. I went on about this at length in the past, but there is one key, crucial part missing - the ability to switch summoned weapon class. Right now, weapon powers always use a weapon, and non-weapon powers never do. Weapon powers unlock an extra costume slot, that for the weapon, and any power from a weapon powerset calls the same weapon.

Granted, the Spines customization seems to indicate that you can vary weapons between powers, causing redraw, but I'm not exactly sure what the relationship between spines ans weapons is, so I don't want to guess.

Basically, what you would need to do in order to accomplish this holy grail of power customization, is invent a way for powersets to have not just one class of weapon attributed to them, but allow you to select between several classes, and limit customization options to those weapons only. I've not seen precedent of that existing in the game, so I have to assume it isn't doable (or at least hasn't been done) yet. We can alter animation, we can alter effect, but I've seen no solid evidence that we can alter weapons via the powers system, as they are inherently a costume item.

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.

Yes, but beware of buggy non-custom enemies (they may spawn grey) and possibly non-spawning objectives in the final mission. It's arc #255713, "Urban Renewal." I originally began work on it as a rewriting of the "stop the Macro Assembler" i0 mission, but it turned into more of an exercise in odd things I could do with the AE tools. Be careful; though it doesn't have any enemies that will spawn as higher than Elite Bosses, it can be challenging if you get cocky. And, as in any Nemesis mission, watch out for stacking Vengeance.

Running example: crossbows in archery.

Setup weapon change UI in costume screen to something more like shields (ie Nested, with super-category for Crossbow or Regular Bow, and sub-category for particular model). Easy.
Have the choice in the super-category limit what animations are available in the power selection screen, and implement forced changes if you change the the super-category. (ie. if you switch from regular bows to crossbows, it forces you to take the crossbow animations at the power-selection screen. Ideally, this wouldn't cost inf, but that's a nitpick). This is the hard part, but it is only hard in that there currently exists no way for the weapon selector in the costume screen to communicate with the animation selector in the power screen (that we know of).

Again, Standard Code Rant applies, and trying to suggest how easy something is to introduce to the game when you have no knowledge of how the system is set up (none of us really do) is plain and simple bad form. You don't need it to make an argument on the subject, so just try to avoid it. It looks bad and I've no doubt it makes the people who actually develop the system roll their eyes.

That said, you have a good point about shields in that they come in variants with subcategories, but those are just compound costume pieces no different from a cape or an aura. Shields are a costume piece which the system summons in accordance with the animations it plays, but they are not a costume piece which actually affects animations. I16's power customization is, I'm almost positive, something that doesn't run via the same mechanic as costume pieces at all. Shield animations control a particular costume piece - the shield. That shield is just called upon, but doesn't control animations at all.

And again, you have to remember that we do not get to pick what weapon class a powerset uses. Weapons that powersets use come complete with the powerset you picked. If you pick Assault Rifle, you get Assault Rifles. If you pick Broadsword, you get Broadswords. Short of cloning the same set multiple times (something Castle has shot down so hard I think he dented the moon), the system is currently not designed to do that. And I don't feel we're in any position to guess at to how easy this new tech would be to implement, absent an already-existing precedent.

The fact of the matter is that each weapon set comes with ONE weapon class, which has ONE pool of available weapons in it and ONE class of animations, each of which has ONE pool of possible alternate animations. In order for this "emanation point" customization to work, a powerset would need to allow for several different classes of weapons, each with its own pool of unconnected options, and it would need to come with several classes of animations, where each power would have multiple, mutually-exclusive pools of possible custom animations, distributed exactly in several classes. Currently, the system cannot do that, and I've no idea what it would take for even the basic infrastructure to be enacted. And even if the functionality exists, would BABs be willing to commit to the kind of work creating new weapons and animations that could, almost as easily, be harnessed into the creation of new powersets?

It's a very good ideal, but it's actually quite unlikely.

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.

It'd honestly be faster to just make a whole different set called "Crossbows" and have minor differences like there are between Katana and Broadsword. The powers themselves are mostly copyable data, so duplicating the set would be trivial–if one could convince the Devs that making a Crossbow set would be worth it.

I'm right with you there, believe me. I'm already knee deep in Standard Code Rant even just speculating about these things. But I try to keep spirit of speculation about trying to make sense of precedent and what it could mean, rather than trying to estimate unprecedented possibilities. Someone once said that developing a game isn't so much down to knowing how to programme as it is down to knowing exactly how the particular game is set up and what you can do with it. Obviously, some raw programming from scratch plays a role here and there, as I'm sure the Type R programmings are proving, but by and large it's not a question of what you can code, but rather what you can tweak in the game's setup to get the results you want. As I understanding, writing brand new unprecedented code is an absolute last resort.

Generally, the holy grail of power customization comes down to system ability, which I suspect might be a question of more fiddle, workload, which is probably the big stumbling block, and an actual uncertainty - should we ask for a brand new look for old powersets, or should be we ask for brand new powersets altogether? The workload, at least in terms of visuals, seems to be about the same, but do we want, say, an ice pistol to be a brand new powerset, or just Ice Blast with a pistol? Do we want a Crossbow to be a precise copy of Archery, or do we want to be a new powerset altogether?

Despite myself, I don't actually have a good answer to that. On the one hand, I'd love for all powersets to let you choose if you want to shoot them out of your hands, chest, face, a handgun or a rifle. On the other hand, the amount of work this would cost and the amount of animtion redundancy and lack of animation detail isn't necessarily worth the outcome when that same effort would undoubtedly produce at least a few brand new, really cool, really novel powersets. And I can't say which I want more.

Again, look at precedent - Dual Handguns look AWESOME! I know they're not everyone's cup of tea and some people want simpler animations and blah, blah, blah. The animations are very detailed, very pretty and very creative. And yet Castle mentioned how much more effort the fire whip for Demon Summoning requires, and that can't be more than three attacks for a Mastermind. Cool powersets take time, effort and creativity. Asking our art team to essentially triple or quadruple all powers in the game, even if it were at all POSSIBLE, would undoubtedly produce redundant, simple attacks, exactly like what we got at live, which isn't actually that exciting. On the flip side, focusing this time and effort onto something new produces comparatively less in terms of quantity, but very high in terms of quality. And if I have to be quite honest, quality is something City of Heroes can use more of. All the new stuff is really great, but it's built over a backbone of things that just aren't up to scratch. I think aiming for additions of as high a quality is possible will be key for the future.

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.

I'm hoping it will be like MA and SS, where we'll be able to choose different animations. I'd certainly make a character who used the flashier animations, but I also agree that a more subdued workmanlike version would be excellent to have, as well. I would build characters around each of those concepts.

my recurring character Tomb Fisted Kid is an undead cowboy
I've had him as an ice/nrg blaster and a dm/wp scrapper

but dual pistols would be best for him and what I've always wanted him to have - if it looked like a cowboy

Honestly, if there is anything in the game that prevents a gun toting character from looking like a cowboy its not the animations in the new set as much as it is the weapon choices. If you check out the current weapon choices for a thug MM there really isn't anything that looks like a 19th century revolver - the current revolver looks like a snub nosed 38 and the magnum revolver looks like a dirty harry 44 magnum.

Rather than whine about the animations, I would be clamoring for more weapon choices. I bet it is cheaper from a resource standpoint to add in more weapon choices than it is to design multiple animations, especially since there is no way to know if they will get the alternate animations exactly the way you want anyway. The dev team has already demonstrated a willingness to add in more weapon choices to weapon sets in the past so it strikes me as a better bet than attacking the animations.

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.

WoW has some pretty interesting looking firearms. Heck, weapons in general. I wouldn't mind having many of them graphically available for Coh powersets.