One thing to note here is that If you make a female 8 "feet" tall and stand next to a regular mission door. The top of your head will be even with the top of the door. This would be consistent with doors in "Real Life" for most commercial doors. Many doors in your average household are around 7 feet.
I do however agree that the sense of scale dose at times feel off in COH/V.
Captain Den'Rath 53* Merk/Traps MM, Rivona 50Energy Blast/Time Cor,Victoria Von Heilwig 53* Dual Pistols/Traps Cor, Crab Spider Webguard 53* SOA, Accela 53* Bot/FF MM,Valkyrie's Executor 53* Broadsword/Shield Def Scrap. On FREEDOM! @Knight Of Bronze
"Hypocrisy, the human inherent." "Let not this work be wasted, apply yourself always."
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A nicely done example of this is Kurst of the Lost from the Faultline arcs, he's easily the smallest of the Lost despite being the one of the more hideously mutated, but he can still be pretty tough.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
To be honest, I kind of enjoy that. I like the concept that raw brute strength and bug muscles can only take you so far, and that sometimes, the strongest one of them all isn't necessarily the most bloated one. It's the Old Sensei Effect in action, where a tiny unassuming old man will toss a bunch of big brawny muscle men like a salad. Yoda, in fact, is probably the quintessential old sensei of Western fiction.
... Basically, my problems with scale are that far too many enemies are far too big for far too little reason, not the other way around. My other problem with scale is that bosses often seem to be bigger than their followers, which doesn't always make sense, especially when their powers are not driven by their bodymass, such as mental powers or magic. |
And for the rest of your post, I have to agree with you.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.
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In the end, the answer to this thread is the Devs are not Architects
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Originally Posted by Bronze Knight
One thing to note here is that If you make a female 8 "feet" tall and stand next to a regular mission door. The top of your head will be even with the top of the door. This would be consistent with doors in "Real Life" for most commercial doors. Many doors in your average household are around 7 feet.
I do however agree that the sense of scale dose at times feel off in COH/V. |
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.
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I agree with Samuel that a good workaround is to ignore the height chart entirely, but that's what I feel is the issue: it's a workaround. Only players who have experience understand that this workaround is necessary if you want more appropriate scaling, whereas many new players are going to innocently use the chart and end up with something that doesn't quite fit right.
Ignoring the chart and going by experience definitely works. I just don't feel it should be necessary.
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Yeah, that's kind of the problem - there's no good way to figure this out other than trial and error, and even then it's not always clear what the error was. I actually didn't pay attention to the ruler when I created my first character way back when (just didn't pay attention, I guess) and made him slightly taller than what was suggested. After that, in a time before the Science Booster Pack, I pretty much had to measure all my new characters by him, so they all went off centre. The few I later made by the ruler were... Wrong, and very obviously so, namely my giant Troll woman, whom I didn't want to make eight feet tall, but ended up having to, anyway.|
Originally Posted by StormSurvivor
I agree with Samuel that a good workaround is to ignore the height chart entirely, but that's what I feel is the issue: it's a workaround. Only players who have experience understand that this workaround is necessary if you want more appropriate scaling, whereas many new players are going to innocently use the chart and end up with something that doesn't quite fit right.
Ignoring the chart and going by experience definitely works. I just don't feel it should be necessary. |
The worst part of it all is that the ruler is scaled to the world, but the NPCs in the world are not. If you're of average height on the ruler, you're to-scale with cars, doors and buildings, but tiny compared to even basic civilians. If you're average as to what looks normal, you're to-scale with the various civilians, villains and (most) other NPCs, but you're HUGE compared to buildings and cars. So it's not a simple matter of fixing the ruler, because the ruler is actually right. It's EVERYONE ELSE in-game that's wrong, and re-sizing all the NPCs at this point is just out of the question. Too much work and too many people left with unintentionally huge characters.
And why does the male slider default to 6'5'', anyway?
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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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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
The worst part of it all is that the ruler is scaled to the world, but the NPCs in the world are not. If you're of average height on the ruler, you're to-scale with cars, doors and buildings, but tiny compared to even basic civilians. If you're average as to what looks normal, you're to-scale with the various civilians, villains and (most) other NPCs, but you're HUGE compared to buildings and cars. So it's not a simple matter of fixing the ruler, because the ruler is actually right. It's EVERYONE ELSE in-game that's wrong, and re-sizing all the NPCs at this point is just out of the question. Too much work and too many people left with unintentionally huge characters.
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This is what I was trying to say.
IMO they should re-size the civilians at least I there are prolby only 10 0r 20 of them that get reused with different items and names they may even be generated randomly and locale. Obviously resizing every NPC is to much work but the civilians should be doable.
Captain Den'Rath 53* Merk/Traps MM, Rivona 50Energy Blast/Time Cor,Victoria Von Heilwig 53* Dual Pistols/Traps Cor, Crab Spider Webguard 53* SOA, Accela 53* Bot/FF MM,Valkyrie's Executor 53* Broadsword/Shield Def Scrap. On FREEDOM! @Knight Of Bronze
"Hypocrisy, the human inherent." "Let not this work be wasted, apply yourself always."
I had to remake my avatar when I first entered Outbreak and saw that 5 foot 5 and a half in the costume creator didn't really look much like 5 foot 5 and a half compared to the scale of everyone else 
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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I prefer to do the opposite, myself. I go by the character's height number and just handwave the rest as a probably necessary game discrepancy. But, that is also just a workaround. I do this because when I'm designing the characters, the height factor is one of the criticals to me (because it often determines how big I make a head, torso, legs, etc.) and I don't have the game scale to reference.|
StormSurvivor has one method: I agree with Samuel that a good workaround is to ignore the height chart entirely, but that's what I feel is the issue: it's a workaround. |
And the "peds" thing is just Sam's ESL kicking in. I've never anywhere heard anyone refer to pedophiles as "peds".
Dec out.
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Probably a misguided attempt to make that an average super-hero as opposed to an average human. Average height in the U.S. is only a hair over 5' 9" for males and a bit over 5' 4" for females, but super-heroes are traditionally "larger than life". In American comics, they're generally drawn out of proportion to their heads as well. I believe it's 7 3/4 heads as opposed to the real 6 1/2 or so (I may be off a little on the numbers, but suffice it to say super-heroes are "stretched" vertically somewhat more than humans).
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Samuel_Tow wonders: And why does the male slider default to 6'5'', anyway? |
Dec out.
The problem with scaling yourself relative to the NPCs instead of the height measurement is that others won't do that.
So one person scales their character to the NPCs and decides that they're all 6ft tall, so they make their guy what they perceive to be 6ft tall to match.
Another person decides to use the creation window height measurement to put his character at exactly 6ft as indicated.
Both of your characters are supposed to be 6 feet tall, but one character ends up noticeably taller than the other. I think this would drive people like us (OCD maniacs who can't stand discrepancies like these(and yes, I'm one of them!)) mad.
"I'm 6 feet tall!"
"I'm 6 feet tall too!"
"But you're a whole head shorter than me."
"... Crap."
Anyways, my whole point is that the workaround in scaling compared to NPCs instead of the height slider shouldn't have to be used. Though it's not a super high-priority problem or anything, an official "fix" for this issue is needed.
The solution would hopefully include the following:
- Adjust the height measurement meters in the background of the character creation screen so that it accurately represents the true height of Male, Female, and Huge models.
- Adjust the scaling of civilian NPCs, pedestrians, and contact NPCs to accurately reflect a normalized height in relation to player characters.
- Obviously, some NPCs would remain large because they're supposed to be.
I would kind of like the idea of making the non-tank Freakshow normal sized, so there'd be this very obvious contrast between the Tanks and the non-tanks. I mean there is a bit of one now, but it'd be cool to make the contrast even MORE stark.
Or in regard to the Council/5th, to make the LTs and Bosses more normal sized so when they turn into a giant werewolf it's more of an "OMG HE JUST GOT HUGE!" moment.
Anyway, I'm kind of rambling now, so I'll stop abruptly here.
Well, like Sam said, the scaler is actually "right" (more or less) compared to the environment. It's the NPCs that are huge. They're the only thing really needs fixing. Probably won't happen though, unless they get a big gap in "priority" work.
Dec out.
This is why all of our villains must work together to build the ULTO-SHRINK-RAY-BEAMOMATOR!!
AmIrightoramIright?
<.<
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
"I'd like to tell you you're wrong, baby, but YOU'RE NOT!" - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight. 
Dec out.
yeah...please make the civilians a bit shorter...would be nice.
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Thing is, going 6'5'' doesn't make you "larger than life," but rather makes you "equal to life" because 6'5'' is how tall civilians are. To be larger than life, you need to go above that still. And if you're playing a female character, you actually need to go a full foot UP just to match the WOMEN civilians, let alone wanting to match the males. I never got why that was. Why are women short-capped to always be shorter than men?
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Originally Posted by Decorum
Probably a misguided attempt to make that an average super-hero as opposed to an average human. Average height in the U.S. is only a hair over 5' 9" for males and a bit over 5' 4" for females, but super-heroes are traditionally "larger than life". In American comics, they're generally drawn out of proportion to their heads as well. I believe it's 7 3/4 heads as opposed to the real 6 1/2 or so (I may be off a little on the numbers, but suffice it to say super-heroes are "stretched" vertically somewhat more than humans).
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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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That is a LOT of work with potentially disconcerting consequences. Rescaling civilians to match the ruler should be easy. There are something like 20 models for them, and all civilian-exclusive. Everything else, however, features SO many models it's probably not economical to do so. And that's AFTER deciding who should be how tall. I mean, how tall should a Blood Brother Chopper be? He doesn't have any reason to be giant, but he could be a short guy or a tall guy, so 5-7 feet, maybe? Should the Freakshow be bigger? Should the Nemesis army soldiers? The Vanguard are already tiny, because they were made to scale, but should Malta soldiers be big?|
Originally Posted by Kyasubaru
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And even supposing all of that is changed, what we're left with is a world where our heroes one day wake up and are GIANT compared to everyone else. This means rescaling each and every costume's height to match the new environment, which is not only a lot of busywork, but actually requires a paid-for booster pack that many claimed wasn't worth the buy, so presumably many don't have.
Don't take me the wrong way - I WANT to see this. I want to see either the ruler adjusted to fit the in-game reality or the in-game reality changed to fit the world's actual scale. Or maybe we could have the world upscaled somewhat to fit the NPCs? I don't know. I'd like to know that normal people are actually normal unless they have a reason to be huge, but I'm not sure that's feasible to do at this point.
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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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No, it makes you "larger than life". Those civilians out there walking around? Not life. |
Samuel_Tow asks the wrong questions: Thing is, going 6'5'' doesn't make you "larger than life," but rather makes you "equal to life" because 6'5'' is how tall civilians are. |
Even you noted earlier that it's the NPCs that are screwed up, not the height marker. The civilians are WAY "larger than life", which shouldn't be.Quote:
| Why are women short-capped to always be shorter than men? |
Dec out.
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How does scaling down the civilians do anything but make them match our environment? So a lot of players would be bigger than the civilians. That's as should be. They gave you a scale that matches the environment. Making your character, you should take that as a guide. Your method of matching yourself up to the poorly sized civilians isn't a good work around, it's compounding an already existing mistake.
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Samuel_Tow makes me scratch my head: And even supposing all of that is changed, what we're left with is a world where our heroes one day wake up and are GIANT compared to everyone else. This means rescaling each and every costume's height to match the new environment, which is not only a lot of busywork, but actually requires a paid-for booster pack that many claimed wasn't worth the buy, so presumably many don't have. Don't take me the wrong way - I WANT to see this. I want to see either the ruler adjusted to fit the in-game reality or the in-game reality changed to fit the world's actual scale. Or maybe we could have the world upscaled somewhat to fit the NPCs? I don't know. I'd like to know that normal people are actually normal unless they have a reason to be huge, but I'm not sure that's feasible to do at this point. |
Dec out.
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I mean, why not let male and female models start off at the same height and then let players choose if they want to make their women shorter than their men. Having it mandated is... Odd, to say the least, considering our context of ultimate customization.|
Originally Posted by Decorum
They had to put the endpoints somewhere, and women are generally smaller then men. **shrugs**
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Originally Posted by Decorum
How does scaling down the civilians do anything but make them match our environment? So a lot of players would be bigger than the civilians. That's as should be. They gave you a scale that matches the environment. Making your character, you should take that as a guide. Your method of matching yourself up to the poorly sized civilians isn't a good work around, it's compounding an already existing mistake.
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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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Just add a drop down menu with 'comparison model' on it to the Tailor menu.
What would it do? Put an NPC model of your choice beside or just behind your character for scale purposes.
Want to be civilian sized? Voila. Easily done.
Want to be taller than that, but not Cor Leonis size? No probelm, you can check.
Want to put even a ravening Warwolf in your shadow? Boom, done.
Easiest way, even though it in itself might not be 'easy' to implement (code rant, etc)
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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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That's all fine and dandy if you're going to be spending all of your in-game time surrounded by the same kinds of mob. The second you stand next to somebody else, you're going to seem tiny or huge again. |
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Just add a drop down menu with 'comparison model' on it to the Tailor menu.
What would it do? Put an NPC model of your choice beside or just behind your character for scale purposes. Want to be civilian sized? Voila. Easily done. Want to be taller than that, but not Cor Leonis size? No probelm, you can check. Want to put even a ravening Warwolf in your shadow? Boom, done. Easiest way, even though it in itself might not be 'easy' to implement (code rant, etc) |
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Yeah, but if you base your character on the in game average height (civilians, Hellions, etc) then its someone elses porblem if their character is stupidly tall. Or a midget.|
Originally Posted by StormSurvivor
That's all fine and dandy if you're going to be spending all of your in-game time surrounded by the same kinds of mob. The second you stand next to somebody else, you're going to seem tiny or huge again.
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For clarification, Im talking about putting *all* the NPCs in that dropdown. Heck, make still images scaled to size, and simply impose them on the background in place of the black cityscape we have at the moment. That way you dont need to add in animations or anything consuming like that.
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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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The only problem I can possible see with this is that A LOT of enemies are insanely taller than our characters can ever hope to be.|
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Yeah, but if you base your character on the in game average height (civilians, Hellions, etc) then its someone elses porblem if their character is stupidly tall. Or a midget.
For clarification, Im talking about putting *all* the NPCs in that dropdown. Heck, make still images scaled to size, and simply impose them on the background in place of the black cityscape we have at the moment. That way you dont need to add in animations or anything consuming like that. |
My proposal to fix this would be to add to the maximum height by 1 foot or so.
(Hehehe, sorry, I've been wanting to make my old Cold War Soviet Science Fair Robot as large as I've felt he should be for being made of software of the time.)
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.
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Oh, I wasn't talking about standing next to other heroes. I meant that say, you use this drop down menu to scale yourself to a civilian. For that it'd work fine. If you want to scale yourself to a Metal Freak, that works fine. But that still doesn't change that the NPCs are oddly scaled compared to each other. So that method would only really work if the only tall NPCs are the odd ones that make sense.|
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Yeah, but if you base your character on the in game average height (civilians, Hellions, etc) then its someone elses porblem if their character is stupidly tall. Or a midget.
For clarification, Im talking about putting *all* the NPCs in that dropdown. Heck, make still images scaled to size, and simply impose them on the background in place of the black cityscape we have at the moment. That way you dont need to add in animations or anything consuming like that. |
I agree with Sam that adjusting height across the board to make NPCs realistic would be great. It's just a huge amount of work, and would leave players who didn't buy the science pack freakishly tall until they paid up, and that's just not fair.
Height scale in City of Heroes is something that has always been "off." One piece of advise I'm going to give everyone right off the bat - ignore the height ruler at character creation. It's drawn to its own fictitious scale that has nothing to do with anything at all. Instead, peruse the height SLIDER.
For the Male and Huge models, middle-slider is "average height." Even if the ruler says average height is something like 6'5'', ignore it. THAT is average height. If you try and match your character to the ruler and make him a realistic, say, 6'8'', you will be a MIDGET. That's about a third from the LOWEST height. Ignore the ruler and just pick the height by eye. If you want your character to be average, use mid-slider. If you want your character to be slightly higher than average, go a few notches right. If you want your character to be really tall, but not freakish, go about a third to a quarter to the end. Most importantly, ignore the ruler.
For female characters, middle slider is "very short." I don't know why it was decided that female characters would be tiny compared to makes, but female models are about a foot shorter than male models at mid-slider. I realise that statistically, women are somewhat shorter than men in real life, but one would think this would be up to the player to decide. Not so. A woman of middle slider will spawn at aroun 5'8'' on the ruler, and if someone wants to be "realistic" and make his female, say, 5'2'', then what you will get is a tiny little child, not in the slightest a grown woman. As we've established, "average height" is around 6'5''. Here's my advise - when making female characters, push the slider up until your characters matches the male model, or goes up to at least above 6 feet on the ruler, then go from there. If you want slightly shorter, go a few notches down. If you want very short, go down to about mid-slider. Most importantly, if you want your woman to be "tall" in any meaningful sense, go up to AT LEAST a third from the end, possibly a quarter from the end if you want a normal but tall-looking female.
I'm not saying this just to make numbers up. Pedestrians in the game, as well as most male contacts, aren't actually sized by the ruler. They're sized by the slider. Pedestrians are all middle-slider (i.e. 6'5'') so if you want average height, match THEM. Ignore the slider and match what you see from civilians. Beyond them, enemy NPCs are even taller than that. Most Skulls and Hellions will have half a head or more on most civilians. If you want your character to be "tall," then ensure you match at least the Skulls and the Hellions.
This is actually one reason I fell in love with the Science Booster Pack. I originally made a female character who was supposed to be a giant Troll woman. I didn't want to go overboard, so I made her about a quarter from the end high. This made her barely taller than the skulls, thanks to them being much taller than 6 feet and women being much shorter than men. When the Science Booster came out, I jammed her height at the far right, as high as the slider could go, and now she's just about imposingly high. And even then, she mostly has a little over a head on most "normal-looking" NPCs, whereas I wanted her CLEARLY towering over them.
The height scales in this game are messed up, and the ruler is completely broken. Ignore the ruler and measure yourself by the civilians you meet.
The university guys are just freaks of nature.