Origin Specific Powers

Now... before anyone gets upset or says anything about this already being mentioned before: I did try and search for similar threads and some popped up but weren't all too specific with the idea while one of them had a comment that mentioned Castle having a post about this. But upon searching that thread, I couldn't find it. If it does exist, I'm probably just not the best with searching so do forgive me.

What I want to talk about is not just Power Emotes. But Origin specific power customization. Much like how wings have gone from just angel and demon wings to bone, fiery, and tech wings.

The idea I wish to share here is, well, just imagine:

Fire-based heroes who wish to look more magical because of their magic origin. For such cases, there could be fiery magic circles shown around the caster's hands or under the enemy's feet.

Energy blasting... I know almost everyone would like to see this power done without the orbs. Energy itself could be done in a variety of ways.

Mutant element powers could be done in an oozy manner. Fire could look more like lava or burning acid. Changing the colors could even make it an acid power. Radiation could look like ooze. Electricity could look more like something you'd see from a plasma lamp where it curves smoothly instead of bending in cracks. Of course, if you were to choose, say, tech origin, it shouldn't mean that you're stuck with tech origin power choices. Because we'd all love to have a robot toon who can spit green burning goop, for example.

Tech-based elemental powers could have sort of a digital effect. Like floating glowing squares or the effect you see when the Praetorian PPD debuff you. Hard to explain the first description (digital), but I'll post an example in the links below.

And Fire sword... they seem rather big or all look like a glass sword dowsed in flames. I'd love to see more swords for this power. Maybe an actual sword covered in flames or just the flames alone without the glass sword inside. Or a flaming beam sword for a tech build (also linked below).

Natural could maybe have devices they'd throw that would explode on contact. Instead of throwing a ball of electricity, they could toss a small metal ball that would explode into an electrical burst on/under the enemy. Instead of throwing fire balls, a natural build could quickly light something (or nothing) in their hand(s) on fire before throwing it. Radiation and ice could have a small device in the hands that contains the power. Energy could be shown as an aura on the hands/arms before being shot out (chi) but not with the animations or sounds of Kinetic melee. And so on.

Yes, there are a lot of powers that would need a lot of thinking on this. That's why I'd love to hear other ideas and see this grow into something much larger to help give the game even more customization and variety and continue to make it one of the most indepth games out there.

Below are three photos I put together for basic ideas:

Magic circles with fire:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._1906849_n.jpg

Tech blasts:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._6695767_n.jpg

Tech Fire Sword:
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._7897975_n.jpg

(Keep in mind: CoX already has unlockable beam/light swords and other beam/light weapons. Just incase anyone felt compelled to say it wouldn't be possible for any copyright-related reasons)

Thank you for your time.

(If anyone may have a link to Castle's post about this, if it's still around, I'd be more than happy to just repost this as a comment there)

Well, first off, Castle does have a HUGE thread going in the Archetypes and Powersets general forum, asking people what sets they'd like to have alternate animations for. I'm sure that these will be done in stages, and not all at once.

However, having origin-specific animations for sets poses several problems:

1) Your magic origin vs my magic origin:

This is a problem with origins not being exactly the same for everyone, and being very broad in their scope. Magic could be a wizard, or it could be a magical demon. If you create an animation for the wizard, do you then need to do one for the demon? My tech guy could be in a power suit, or could be a robot with various attachments, or just a guy with a gun, or an optic blaster. Which animation scheme do you go for?

2) Locking in animations depending on origin:

What if my secondary set comes from a mutation, but my primary comes from some technology? If I choose Tech origin, I'd be locked out of choosing different animations for my secondary. If I choose mutation, I've got the same problem for my primary. Also, what if already-created characters like the animations of another origin, and think that they fit better than the ones their origin got? There's no way to change origin without completely re-creating the character.

3) This would be a HUGE amount of work:

Okay, let's break this down a bit. Each powerset has 9 powers in it. Each power has 6 different animations for it already (male ground, female ground, huge ground, male flight, female flight, huge flight). As such, there are 54 animations per powerset (let's lower this conservatively to 48, since there's likely a 'basic' power in each set that others share, like Taunt.

Now, there are about 6 powersets per AT (that is, all of the powersets spread out among all of the ATs is about 6 due to sharing). That's 10 ATs, 6 powersets each, 48 animations per powerset, and 5 origins. That's a grand total of 14,400 animations if we were to create new animations for each origin for each set.

To clarify, that's like asking for the equivalent of 300 completely new powersets. BABs would have a heart attack, methinks.

I appreciate the imput

I was specific (or so I hoped) about origin powers being a choice in the power customization. It wouldn't be locked on only mutation choices if you chose mutation origin. It's written up there at the end of the section that starts off with Mutation element examples.

But, as for number 3, we all know that some suggestions take a lot of work. Some larger amounts than others. But they've put in suggestion threads for a reason, of course. I don't expect an idea like this to just happen in a matter of weeks. They'll add in things that could take years to put in to continue to make CoX an amazing game. They wouldn't ask for ideas if they wanted to complain about the amount of work they'd have to put into it.
So really, it's needless to say.

They've made much less significant changes for no little to no acclaim.
Players always love more customization whether it be new emotes, new powers, colors, or costumes. If someone doesn't like how one magic spell looks, they don't have to choose it. They can stick with the original emote for it, seeing as no one is complaining about how it looks.
More/new power appearances will be just as appreciated as colors were when they first came out or when shields first came out and people realized that there were elemental shields, among many others to choose from. They were hyped about it. So it's not like people would look at new power appearances and turn the other cheek in boredom.

I'm not against the idea of having all sorts of customizations for all sorts of powers.

But I think there has been an ongoing trend in this game since the beginning to keep things "origin-neutral". The Devs have avoided making origins count for anything significant because, for lack of a better reason, origins are something you can't respec. People would likely scream bloody murder if "such-n-such" power customization were ever LIMITED by origin choices.

I prefer the tack the Devs have taken by leaving most things origin-oriented up to players' RP choices. I would prefer the game continue to avoid making anything limited/restricted by origins. Now that doesn't mean I don't want origin "looking" things added to this game. It just means I want to make sure I have the choice to use any newly added feature regardless of my characters' origin.

Think of it this way via the following example: We've now had five Super Booster Packs covering all five origins of the game. Despite that ANY of my characters can make use of ANY of the features of those packs they want. No restrictions.