Power customization and logging in (two for Tuesday).

Power customization is nice. I don't think I've actually met anyone who didn't like it. But you know what? It can be so much more. It should be so much more.

Every time I use Tenebrous Tentacles, I shoot dandelion puffs. Every. Time. I can change the color of those dandelion puffs, but they're still dandelion puffs. Purple dandelion puffs, green dandelion puffs, what-did-I-eat-last-night dandelion puffs, there's nothing that really makes them more interesting or visually appealing, they're still, always, the same dandelion puffs. Why not flag animations to use graphics from different powersets? Why not allow us to let the dandelion puffs drift off in the wind and shoot ice shards, flames or other effects instead? So many powers share animations, why not let players choose which effects their powers use?

Going a bit further with power customization, every time I use a power like Aim, Build Up, Embrace of Fire, any type of brief but continuing buff, I see a momentary flash of color... and nothing but a simple graphical effect for the remainder of the duration. How dull and uninspiring. I'm hitting the peak of my power, and all I get is a one second light show? Why don't I explode into a pillar of flame, or become covered in frost, or do anything graphically impressive and noteworthy? Yes, I know, combat auras are a partial answer to that, now that they're available. But those are global effects, active regardless of which power is used. Individual effects for individual powers would be more reflective of the power we're supposed to be harnessing and unleashing.

Moving on, I have to wonder what the heck my characters are doing when I'm logged out. I have to wonder because every time I log in, they're just standing there. Why are they just standing there? Why aren't they doing something? Reading the paper, using a laptop, drinking tea, licking stamps, operating a till, writing on a clipboard, flipping a coin? They just spent hours, days, sometimes weeks or months in Day Job locations, and they're... standing, doing nothing.

There are dozens upon dozens of perfectly appropriate animations that could be used to animate our characters when we log in, yet they just stand there. We KNOW that our characters can be animated using emotes upon zoning, we see them doing it every time they jump out of a truck or manhole, or exit a mission with a power like Weave active, and logging in is just zoning, so why not do it? Randomized or a specific selection we can set, just do it.

tl;dr: power color customization =/= power customization. Not asking for the option to use different animations, just to use different effects for similar or identical animations. And make our characters more lifelike by having /emote animations applied when logging in.

Login emotes tied to day jobs could be a nice twist on this idea.
eg checking the police Scanner/Paper for Patroller/Criminal, digging for Grave Digger, clipboard if you were logged out in a hospital, book in a university and so on.

Not that it's something thats ever bugged me, and I wouldn't really want the devs to spend much time on it.

Full power customisation on the other hand, right down to power effects and animation and attachment point, would be incredibly awesome. A lot of work, but well worth it. I'd much rather see that sort of power in player hands than have the devs develop another powerset in fact, since most game mechanic points are covered now, but many concpets aren't.

e.g. rather than make a "Raygun blaster" set with whatever fixed game mechanic, allow existing sets to be turned into rayguns that shoot fire, energy, ice etc.

The powers-that-be couldn't even come to grips with wooden swords doing lethal damage. If you try to sell them on the notion of, say, fire effects doing ice damage you might over-excite the shrivelled husks of their imaginations.

Full power customization would be incredibly nice for the game, but has been show to be very resource-intensive and not something that the developers have been willing to commit to aside from that one push to give us customization at all. Ideally, I'd like to see the ability to alter power effects (i.e. sprites) and power animations, possibly independently. Here's what I mean:

Suppose I want my fireball to use an underhand pitch and say I want it to explode in a 3D ball of fire, instead of a planar spread of fire, which is what we have now. Ideally, I'd be able to pick Underhand Toss from an Animation dropdown containing such things Cast, Overhead Toss, Eyes, Mouth, etc. and then pick Spherical Shockwave from a dropdown containing things like Flat Shockwave, Tower of Flame, Subtle Explosion and so forth.

That said, the amount of resources needed to make this happen, and not just in this game, but in ANY game, may well be prohibitive when we remember how many powers we're talking about. Blizzard might have the kind of coffers and slave labour to do it, but I'm not sure about anyone else.

Quote:

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.

After they get the old content (especially in COH) and endgame content to where it needs to be, sure. THAT needs to be done before making things more pretty.

Yes, I get that it's more than that, but this is a basically a suggestion for them spending more time on the way the game looks . . . which I say we've had enough of in the past year. What this game needs "RIGHT NOA" is FRESH content.

Once that's done have at it with further customization.

Why do you think we've got a signed NDA and a super-long I20 beta?

This is why !!!!

(oh come on, somebody had to throw it out there for the rumor mill)