Just change Hasten's effect

Not at all. Changing a power wholesale, well, changes it, for those who want change and those who don't. You have one campe that is happy, while the other isn't. Hence, the Cottage Rule.

Power Customization, OTOH, doesn't change a power wholesale as much as it adds options. People who like the power the way that it is can keep it, while others have the options of changing it. Both camps are happy.

The rest of your example is, IMPO, a scarecrow. Unless we're discussing power effects that give people migraines or epileptic seizures, which is an entirely different discussion altogether (aesthetic reasons vs. the health of players).

Perhaps my OP was a bit ubiquitous. There are valid reasons for changes; this is not one of them.

Some powers, as previously stated, where changed in order to avoid visually-related illnesses of players. Any power FX that causes nausea, headaches, seizures, or the like obviously should be changed. This is not one of them.

Any power that has a discrepancy in rooted time and non-rooted time, or is otherwise bugged, should obviously be changed. This is not one of them.

Any power animation normalization (ie: normalization between rooting for self buffs or PBAoE damage auras) in order to create or maintain uniformity across all ATs should happen. This is not one of them.

Ths only reason for the change listed in the OP is purely asthetic (ie: I don't like how the power looks). This power does not cause player illness, is uniform in animation across all ATs, and is not otherwise bugged. Hence, it should not be changed until Power Customization can be added - to allow players to keep it as-is or change it to their content.

Well, we've been told the customization is on the way, so I'm not gonna bother my head thinking how they're going to implement it.

But however they are going to implement it, the current animation/effect and no effect are already in the game, so other than for the customization UI, no animation/effect changes need to be added, so it would be a quicker intro than waiting for all the additional animations and effects to be added.

Do you have a quote from a Dev about a 'visual fx cottage rule'? I ask because you don't even seem to understand the regular cottage rule if you think it applies to something like FX.

Based on various commnents I have seen castle make the cottage rule appears to exist mostly to prevent changes to powers that will REQUIRE a respec. Specifically, Castle prefers not to change the level at which you can take a power OR the power's function in such a way that make IO sets the powers takes no longer work - both are things that would require a person with the changed power to respec or play with an invalid build. Castle also doesn't seem to mind ADDING abilities to existing powers that allow you to slot new IO sets in them.

That is why when he changed conserve power in electric armor to energize they reduced the amount of end reduction, instead of removing it, and added the heal/regen. Note that while he moved the power to L20 for scrappers he left the brute version at the same level, because swapping it with lightning reflexes would have broken the cottage rule for existing brute characters.

When they made changes to energy melee they readily replaced existing animations in ET and played around with the recharge/end/damage numbers for barrage but left the power order the same, despite the fact that barrage is now clearly a tier 2 attack and should really have been swapped with energy punch - but that would have broken the cottage rule so they left the power order alone.

So, unless you can provide an actual dev quote about an "FX" version of the cottage rule, I am fairly sure that there is no such thing. The developers are certainly NOT going to change the FX in a single power because a few folks (or even a lot of folks) don't 'like' it, about that you are correct. A change like this will always upset at least as many folks as it pleases so the dev team know they are better off waiting for full power pool customization - but they are not avoiding it because of a rule that has nothing whatsoever to do with power effects.

I wonder if Castle regrets ever mentioning the cottage rule - I know almost every time I see folks talk about it on the forums it is clear they do not understand it.

Castle's bailiwick is power functionality, the fact that he only invokes the "Cottage Rule" for power functionality should not be taken to mean that the logic behind it (don't change things on players without a really good reason) can't be extended to other areas.

As far as I know the closest thing we've gotten to a "FX Cottage Rule" was Brawler's statement that animations wont be changed based on aesthetics.

My primary objection to throwing around the 'cottage rule' phrase is that it refers to a very specific, limited guideline that Castle said he tried to follow. Most of the time I see folks invoking it they are doing it incorrectly and with a bad understanding of it - which just contributed to FUD on the forums.

Certainly the 'cottage rule' is just a guide line and with enough reason it will even be violated, as BrandX pointed out for a few specific things (although I suspect the majority of the changes in question where not on Castles watch). However, it is pretty clear that it DOES take good reasons to violate the rule - a good example of that is the fact that brute electric armor's power order stayed the same despite that fact that the scrapper version changed or the reverse - when SR was ported to brutes evasion was moved up so that you could get some AE def before L28 but the scrapper version was left the same. I am fairly sure most existing brutes/scrappers with those powersets would have loved to get the earlier version of the powers or at least had no objection.

This is all an aside - despite my objections to invoking 'that phrase' I am in general agreement with the replies to the OP - changing a single FX/Animation just because a few or even a lot of folks are aesthetically displeased with it is not going to happen. Even if a clear majority of folks would be pleased with the change it is also true from a customer satisfaction standpoint that 1 unhappy customer roughly equals 10 happy customers, so a change like this would need to please 10 times the number of folks it displeased just to break even. Far better to wait until you can do it right with power customization.

On that topic (power customization) I certainly hope they include a lot more no FX or lessened FX options for the various pool powers, as well as alternative FX for some powers - I am thinking mostly of things like aid other/aid self which are so clearly tech powers that it ruins immersion for non-tech characters.

With that regard, I would rather they change the name than the effects.

The Cottage Rule is very strong. Castle will not violate the Cottage Rule without overwhelming and compelling reasons that cannot be addressed in any other way. By contrast, power animations are changed. . . well, not quite on a whim, but for reasons that do not equate to "This powerset is completely non-functional and only changing the animations can possibly fix it."

There are sets out there that desperately need to be fixed because they seriously under-perform compared to other sets in the same general category. They are left intact largely because fixing them would violate the Cottage Rule. That's my objection to using the term "Cottage Rule" so loosely. "Don't change stuff without good reason," is just common sense. "Don't change stuff in certain very particular ways even *WITH* good reason unless there is absolutely no other way to address the problem you're trying to fix and the problem absolutely has to be fixed," is a much stronger charge, and is no more than a mild exaggeration of how seriously the devs appear to take the Cottage Rule.