I19 "Custom Power Animations and Request"

Announced with the I19, your set to release custom power animations. More accurately, it's a power emanation option. Left hand, right hand, eyes, chest, etc...

My question is "Due to a number of character concepts that would benefit from a custom power animation option, do you plan to take this a step further and include new costume pieces that serve as thematic props for the emanation points?
Specifically things like these:

Arm gun: A weapon that overlaps the forearm and hand. Used for characters like Samus, Armory, and Megaman.

Shoulder Launchers: Costume piece that resembles shoulder-mounted missile pods or, really, any other weapon that could realistically be mounted on the shoulder.

Chest "beam" Detail: Chest Detail pieces like "Jewel", but designed to look more like a output point for a power.

Tail: Scorpion tail that fires ice blasts please?

This is something that has been requested quite often for quite a while now. The developers are aware of the large population of players that would like these types of options, as well as other customizable things such as permanent jet packs for flyers, different travel options (such as flying/gliding on objects i.e. ice slides, flying disks/boards, levitating boulders), different run styles for super-speeders, etc.

However, given that we have already seen an overview of Issue 19 and none of these things were mentioned, it is almost guaranteed that they will not be included. Though, it is highly likely that we will see some of these things in future. How far in the future, that's tough to say and depends on a lot of things (how high it is on the priority list, how difficult it is to create animations that will work in all scenarios, what the technology can and cannot support, etc.).

Long story short: I am pretty positive we will see these types of things implemented in the future, but just not with Issue 19.

The step from emanation points (if indeed that's what we're getting) to putting weapons in non-weapon sets and vice versa is non-trivial and quite serious. This feeds into both the problem of interfacing with the costume system and with activation sequences, which don't seem to be customizable at the moment. Suggesting these is fine, but until we actually see precedent for this, I wouldn't hold high hopes.

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.

I wouldn't mind getting new costume items that would serve as "cosmetic props" to an expanded power animation/emanation system. But I would not be in favor of system that would link any costume items to such a system. For example I wouldn't mind seeing "arm guns" added to the game but I wouldn't want to be forced to have to wear a specific arm gun costume item just to change the way my powers animate. I would hate to have to be limited to wearing specific costume items to gain any kind of benefit like that.

Now, costume options like an arm or shoulder cannon would be good booster pack fodder.

But I can see there would be serious problems with some sets (A Sword and Board Scrapper taking arm cannons, anyone?)

I'm sure they can make workarounds for it, though.

If it let me swap out animations from a bow to a crossbow I would roll a second TA/A defender in a heartbeat.

Control sets have always lacked a tech option. Sure, we could say any given set is tech just like any other powerset, but there's no control oriented Traps or Devices or weapons or whatever. Custom animations are the answer.

Take ye olde medicine pool scanner and retexture it into a device with buttons, knobs, and flashing... then add pulling out that dohickey and fussing with it/aiming it as an animation choice for powersets like Mind Control, Illusion Control, and even Gravity Control. "AH-HAHAHAH!! My Mind/Illusion/Gravity Control device has thwarted your evil schemes/heroic endeavors!!"

Fire Control? Give us the the flamethrower animation and let us launch special fire control effects from it. While we're at it, flamethrower would also make an excellent option to launch our Fire Blast attacks from. And, although I wouldn't want to tread on any trademarks, why should Mr. Freeze (or Captain Cold, or Blizzard, or whoever else) have all the fun with cold guns?

Honestly, I wouldn't care if the objects themselves weren't custom selectable/colorable like weapon customization as I think it would be more important to have the power effects which emanate from the devices be color-customized. But having devices puts us in the right direction.