Discussion: Formspring.me 4/23 Dev Q&A Transcript

I would still like to see 'manly' girl villains; utilizing costume piece ports from what's available in male costume selection, like: cigars, kilts (with bag), tattoos, all the male hats, etc (not sure about the facial hair though )

Hey, Samuel.

Expanding the range of the sliders means changing the geometry of the model, and the more the geo changes, the more it starts intersecting badly with costume pieces and requiring more and more custom parts. So to really make the sliders accomplish what you want, it puts us back in that same boat where it would take too long to recreate everything.

Adding a new texture to the existing geometry, on the other hand, is relatively simple and doable because it's just one costume set. But then we get into an aesthetic issue: would a muscle texture even work on such a thin model? Personally, I think it'd look pretty awful. The female model's obviously exaggerated to be lithe and graceful, and slapping a muscle texture on it would look incongrous at best and downright jarring at worst. It's a move that has the potential to make the game look worse, so I'm not really in favor of spending resources there.

Sorry there's no easy fix here. We really pride ourselves in listening to player feedback and giving you guys what you want, but of course there'll be edge cases like this one where it's simply not possible technically.

Hats are tricky. Some of the other stuff might be possible though.

Fair enough. Thanks (although I know this is not a promise or agreement to make such ports happen).


...y DOBLE primero, sus cucarachas!

Would rather see the reverse, you know the RHPS inspired paper mish should have a hostage in labcoat basque stockings heels and suspenders

As someone whose main has a hat that is rumored to NEVER leave his head, any effort to make any hats shall be saluted mate! Cheers

Pro-tip: We've been down this route before. Between Jay and Posi, there was a clear line between how we dress up boys v. girls. (Though, not as bad as it was under Statesman.)

Better get War Witch on your side first with this before bringing it up to the whole staff. Many of us are all for unisexing all the costume pieces. Not so Paragon Studios staff. Get ready for a fight.

Are you imagining the case of stretching the sliders to approximate Huge, or in a smaller increase of a 10-20% extension on sliders, or both? I can certainly imagine the great distortion with messing with pushing the mesh too far, but would a smaller increase still throw things out of whack?

For example She-Hulk or Power Girl aren't even close to the level of hugeness of the Male Huge body type, but they are both popular comic characters whose body shapes can't be reproduced in this game. A woman of that size - someone with a slightly thicker upper body and arms but not massively bulging with muscle - is what I think of when someone mentions the Huge Female type.

I really appreciate you taking the time out to answer our questions even if it's not always what we want to hear.

Um...such as? Anything about the game as it currently exists is pretty much available info.
The months before an expansion (for any game) tends to be dominated by info about said expansion.

What would be an example of a question you wished the devs were able to answer in the Q&A?

I actually asked quite a few non-GR related questions:

Updating slotting for IO sets?
Expanding the Brainstorm system?
Villain hazard zones?
Multi-level base building?
Accessing Arena from SG bases?
Asymmetrical costume pieces?
Unlocking faction-centric storylines with the appropriate defeat badge(s)?
Additional persistent (1-50) storylines for both red/blue side?
Zero-G/Underwater and/or Aero-centric instances/zones?
etc.

Er? I can do a She-Hulk or Powergirl quite easily (Gigatanica is Max Height and Busty as Hell!)

mousedroid, I'll try to answer some of your questions here since no one else touched on them that I can see.

Level 50 Dominator - I think it is safe to say that he would be shoehorned into the Controller PPPs. They are afterall the opposite side equivalents.

Cole Memorial Hospital - Memorializing someone does not have to wait until after they are dead. There are many examples of this everyday. Simply naming something after someone is in fact a memorial.

Incarnate System - the only requirement named so far is that you have to have a level 50 toon. Not to say that that is the only requirement, but it is the only reference I have found so far.

Benefits for not switching sides - it was mentioned someplace that there would be some sort of benefit for not switching sides. Unfortunately they have not said what they are yet.

Hope this helps, but probably not much since they are being rather quiet on details.

See, the reason I ask is that I've actually seen this in various ways in-game. Currently, the female Icon mannequins use the Male upper body texture (Tights Muscular, to be precise), and while opinions on how appropriate this is vary, I don't believe many have said that it looks BAD so much as that it looks odd. And mind you, this is a texture that I don't think was ever designed for the female torso. If that works well enough to pass...

Additionally, a curious bug a couple of years ago introduced arms on the female model that used the male upper arms texture (again, Tights Muscular). They Shirt and Uniform Shirt sleeves for Jackets did this, and when I tried it, it didn't look half bad. Obviously not as good as it could have if it were intentional, but it wasn't too bad for a bug.

Finally, CURRENTLY ON LIVE female lower arms that use anything "with skin," such as the Fingerless Gloves texture for Smooth Gloves or the Pointed Glove and Flared Glove 3D model options will have the MALE lower arm texture, with all the heavy muscle striations and tendons popping up, which actually creates a sort of "line" between the smooth-skin upper arm and them muscular lower arm. I've bugged this several times, going as far back as 2004 and that still remains the same. I agree with you that it doesn't exactly look spectacular, but again - it's a texture that was intended for a much broader forearm.

All of that is to say that this may not look as badly as you fear if done properly and not over-the-top. Certainly, it's a matter of taste, and you clearly outrank me in terms of decision weight But I would still suggest that you guys at least look into this and see if there might not be something to it. It'd certainly make me personally VERY happy, and even if nothing comes out of it, at least I know SOMEONE heard my suggestions after all these years

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.

Many of those sound more like suggestions than questions. For example: "unlocking faction-centric storylines with the appropriate defeat badge(s)?" is more of a suggestion than a question.

As a question, the question would be either:

Are you currently working on creating faction-centric storylines that are unlocked with the appropriate defeat badge(s)?

or

Are you currently considering creating faction-centric storylines that are unlocked with the appropriate defeat badge(s)?

or

Would you consider creating faction-centric storylines that are unlocked with the appropriate defeat badge(s)?

or

Is there a reason why creating faction-centric storylines that are unlocked with the appropriate defeat badge(s) is something unlikely to happen?


Just the phrasing itself makes it a difficult "question" to answer. Its less of a question, and more of a topic. Unless you phrased the questions more explicitly in the Q&A, and are only summarizing them here, I'm not sure how the devs could reasonably respond within the constraints of the Q&A which seems to prevent clarifying questions. Each of the four questions above could have completely different answers.


Even I am not sure what you mean by "updating slotting for IO sets?" The best guess I have is something of the form "are the devs planning on allowing people to unslot invention enhancements without penalty and either sell them, give them away, or reslot them into other characters?" The devs have consistently said "no" to that one.

The related question some people answer is "what do the devs intend to do about the problem of being unable to unslot inventions when I want to change invention slotting." The blunt answer to that question has traditionally been "that's not a problem: that is by design."

The other related question is "why can't I unslot my inventions without penalty" and that is the starting gun of an argument that can't be resolved in a Q&A session.


Perhaps what is needed in cases like this is a translation layer between the questions and the devs, and the answers and the players. That would at least give the questions a fighting chance of being answerable, and give the answers a reasonable chance of being comprehensible. I wonder if that would work.

That's nice for you, but I'm talking about neither bust nor height here.

Dominators and Controllers may share a role, but their PPPs and APPs are a poor match for the other.

The only ones I could really see them doing this on would be defenders & corruptors as well as brutes and scrappers. They use the same sets and fill the same role - the other ATs that fill the same role do so differently than each other.

Also, as has been said - nowhere does it sag Marcus Cole Memorial. There are a number of dead family members in his tree.

Even better than that, the female 7th Generation Paragon Protectors actually have noticeable muscle tone. Just double checked in AE that it's just them and not all PP females. But still, it works well in that it has the muscle tone but isn't jarring.

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman

I'm paraphrasing for the sake of simplicity. I think you're thinking too much into it in order to make a point. And questions about the future state of [unknown] game aspects may go hand in hand with suggestions.

I would just like to stand with Sam on these suggestions, even though he knows I already do - lord knows we've had some rather lengthy conversations on the subject many times over.

To put it in another way, though... Unless there are some very tricky plans for the future, CoH is no longer the forefront of customization - and for as long as these old, awkward (comparatively) models are limited to the sorts of categories we currently have (IE: Adding more pieces and more hairstyles), it's unlikely that it will catch up as it deserves to. Worse, characters will simply become 'stale' and no longer as interesting to play with. Or perhaps that's just me, as I tend to run through every piece ten times over between issues, and wind up not playing for a while simply because I've run out of good ideas. Occasionally, a good piece comes along that helps, and it brings the fun back into creation.

If it can't (or shouldn't) be done, then it can't be done, I suppose. Still, I'm all behind a player-model equivalent of an 'Ultra-Mode' level overhaul.

Also, the 'male lower arms on a female toon with gloves the contain skin' issue? Bothers the bugger out of me, too. SOmetimes to the point where I'll avoid using them whenever possible.

Note: Everything above was strictly my own opinion. I claim in no way to be an expert on the matter, and would simply like to throw my thoughts out on the table.

I'm trying to figure out why your questions might not have been addressed. If you're not going to actually post the questions as phrased, I can only go by what you say. And in terms of "overthinking things to make a point" my only point is this: I don't have any problems asking the devs questions and getting answers. So much so that I never seriously participate in Q&As, either in-game, on the forums, or in any other venue, because it would be unfair. I'm willing to help you try to get your questions answered, if you actually have legitmate questions that can be answered. If that is of no benefit to you, that's fine. I have no other point to prove there.

Irrelevant, as I was defending the forumite you challenged by providing an example of questions outside of GR that could've been answered; which was his point (and the point of some of the others in this thread in the first place). Their point being, essentially, "Why answer questions that will already be answered fairly soon and in consequent manner through the cumulative postings within the forums, webzine postings, emails as well as on the webpage dedicated to its namesake as opposed to questions outside of GR?".

This isn't about how I may or may not have worded actual or potential (which is pretty much what you asked of that poster) questions and why they might not have been answered (which was not the point of my 'in proxy' response'). The point was simply to show that there are questions, outside of GR, that can be asked.