It'd also take 3 sets worth of animations, for one set.
It'd be cool, yes. But Im not 100% sure it'd be prioritised over actual new powersets.
*shrug*
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Trick Arrow, not Trick Archery.
While I can't see a reason why this SHOULDN'T happen, I can give you a reason why it most likely won't - power customization, as of right now, does not appear to be able to change power activation sequences, and it's activation sequences that call a weapon and define which animations are played. Because a weapon is a set-wide parameter and a costume piece written into the set itself, this is not a simple change to make, and would likely herald the ability to pick to use weapons for non-weapon powers and vice versa.
The problem is with how weapons and animations are changed. Power customization is currently only capable of altering animations and effects. It is not capable of altering customizable weapons, as those are costume pieces and not part of the powers system. It is also not capable of altering the activation sequences that call these custom weapons, and it is the activation sequence which defines what weapon you're going to use. The less interdependence activation sequences have, the better it is for the game, as Shields and all their related bugs have demonstrated. Each time you attempt to have one set try to alter all of its animations to account for the activation sequence of another set, you double up your workload.
What you're asking for is not inherently bad, but as far as I'm aware, the game currently does not support the technology required to alter this in real time on our end of the client.
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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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/signed
It's a great idea. I imagine in my naivety that the animations can largely be recycled from other powers too. If the code can possibly be done, I'd definitely go for it (perhaps three mechanically identical powersets, only one of which is available at a time at char creation, depending what other set is chosen?).
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The animations can't just be recycled, because they need to match the Rooted times of the existing animations, or the set can possibly LOSE effectiveness in specific combinations. In particular, just pulling animations from Dual Pistols ready-made will increase cast times by almost 50% in some cases. Animations will, at the very least, have to be customised to match current Rooted times.|
Originally Posted by oreso
/signed
It's a great idea. I imagine in my naivety that the animations can largely be recycled from other powers too. If the code can possibly be done, I'd definitely go for it (perhaps three mechanically identical powersets, only one of which is available at a time at char creation, depending what other set is chosen?). |
As well, cloning the powerset is something Castle has been shooting down pretty much since he's been with the game. This triples the workload involved in keeping the powerset straight, it makes bugs harder to track and opens the doors to all sorts of problems with the different versions desyncing. This was suggested as a possibility for Power Customization as far back as the beginning of the game, and it has always been turned down. Redundant sets will not do for customization, especially not now that we have an actual system to handle this.
But again, animations are not the problem here. Even at the worst of times, they can just be redone. It's what BABs did for Shields. The problem is the rig itself, in that I don't think it can do what you want it to do. Swapping power props is already easily possible and power customization does that even now. Swapping costume piece weapons and the stances that call for them does not appear to be something which is changeable, however. Anything we customize retains its activation sequences and only alters its attached animation or effect. And, yes, fire swords are actually effects. That's why they don't scale with model.
Now, a question comes up that I'm sure no-one wants to ask, but... Are we sure that weapons as a costume effect is the best way to handle weapon customization now that we have greater power customization? Might it not be better to instead go back to the old system of using power effects for weapons, now that we can actually alter these effects? What does having them as costume pieces actually give us?
The original answer was to add customiation, which is now possible via other venues. An auxiliary answer was that this allowed BABs to scale weapons to the model size, so women have weapons that are really just far too small. Power customization ought to be able to handle that with the introduction of several sizes of props for players to select from. Another thing we actually see with shields is that having them as costume pieces allows more customization options, with more colours to go around. I'll give that to shields, but all of the other weapons have uni-models and only two colours, which the current power customization can already model. Furthermore, this seems to be a UI concern more than anything else, as the power customization UI has only one category with everything dumped into it. I'm not sure if it can be broken down into several to affect different aspects, but it might not actually be able to do that without newer tech.
I guess there could be some kind of programming solution that makes it better to have one and only one weapon defined as one and only one costume piece that powers always reference, rather than having nine copies of it for each power to write down separately and then try to keep consistent. That's kind of why I'm asking - is it the best solution to keep weapons as costume pieces vs. calling them as effects?
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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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And, frankly, I don't see the powers from Trick Arrow working very well with Dual Pistols. While there are a few heroes out there that do use non-standard guns (the Crimson Avenger is the only example I can think of offhand), very rarely do they use a full variety of ammo types. And even then, the concept still doesn't gel with most of the pistol models we currently have available.
Edit: And now that I mull it over some more, Sonic Arrow wouldn't make much sense with pistols at all. Flash Arrow and EMP Arrow are also questionable.
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Bab has already said he believes non-weapon to weapon swaps are doable, see here.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Trick Arrow, not Trick Archery.
While I can't see a reason why this SHOULDN'T happen, I can give you a reason why it most likely won't - power customization, as of right now, does not appear to be able to change power activation sequences, and it's activation sequences that call a weapon and define which animations are played. Because a weapon is a set-wide parameter and a costume piece written into the set itself, this is not a simple change to make, and would likely herald the ability to pick to use weapons for non-weapon powers and vice versa. |
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Since when has 'sense' stopped Longbow from using sonics, and firing grenades from miniguns? |
Originally Posted by IanTheM1
And, frankly, I don't see the powers from Trick Arrow working very well with Dual Pistols. While there are a few heroes out there that do use non-standard guns (the Crimson Avenger is the only example I can think of offhand), very rarely do they use a full variety of ammo types. And even then, the concept still doesn't gel with most of the pistol models we currently have available.
Edit: And now that I mull it over some more, Sonic Arrow wouldn't make much sense with pistols at all. Flash Arrow and EMP Arrow are also questionable. |
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Before this happens, or as it does, can the whole set get a buff? Trick Arrow seems to... underperform... in comparison to most Buff/Debuff sets.
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At least in the former case it's a Sonic Grenade. It's still a projectile large enough to sensibly be deployed and emit a disruption field.
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Since when has 'sense' stopped Longbow from using sonics, and firing grenades from miniguns?
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Fair enough. Make a fourth option: grenades. Thrown by hand in the case of DP users, fired from the gun in the case of AR users.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522
This is just an idea to make Trick Archery more useful for combinations with non-Archery powersets.
Rename the set "Trick Ammo".
Now make it possible to select whether we want to use the trick ammo with a bow, an assault rifle or dual pistols.
Make a few new animations to go with the assault rifle and dual pistol options.
Voilá, an old powerset that previously only worked well with one other powerset is now working well with three powersets, without causing stupid amounts of redraw and without looking silly. And it's instantly much cooler.
Winner of Players' Choice Best Villainous Arc 2010: Fear and Loathing on Striga; ID #350522