APP/PPP Customization woes


Adeon Hawkwood

 

Posted

First, I'd like to make the disclaimer that I'm well aware the devs are working on a lot of cool stuff and I really look forward to everything, and that I know priorities must be set and all that. So this is not a "I WANT THIS NAO! Wah! Wah! Wah!"

Just curious if anyone else is in the same boat as I am.

Power customization/colorization brought a lot of life into this game, making us feel even more unique and make our character closer to how we envisioned them. It even made some alts more fun to play, and in my case even playable.

My third hero ever was an electric/electric blaster. Made more than 69 months ago. I made him without seeing electric blast in play, so I was thinking it was in the yellow/bright/orange range. I made a too hip for school blater with shades and all and went to town. To my dismay, the purple electricity didn't really jive with him. I even tried making a purple costume to see if it worked, but nothing. He made it to his late twenties before gathering dust.

When power colorization came around I changed his sparkles to orange/yellow and he became fun. I know its all in my head, he was really not all that different but before, but I suddenly enjoyed playing him.

He is now parked at 40 because he cannot face the reality that at 41 he'll be having purple electricity.

My Mind/Energy Dominator had a less dramatic story. I tailored him from the get go to the red blasts. Power colorization didn't do anything for the secondary, but added sexy red hues to Mind Control, which matched the story of a third tier mentalist who got way too empowered by the energy of the red chains. I always enjoyed playing him, but he became even more fun.

Now he in his mid 40s, not looking forward to blue Energy Torrent and Explosive blasts. At least Energy Transfer is pinkish enough to pass.

I have a few other alts like that, but those are the two most notable examples.

Funny thing is, this is not a recurring thing with me. The vast majority of my characters are maleable enough to fit in with what is available. Most of my character didn't even have to hit Icon to change their weapons or powers. There's just some of them that have some sort of theme they aspire to and currently cannot.

I'm wondering if anyone else has alts with similar stories and if you've chosen to play them slower or park them until they can fit your ideal.

Again, I'm not saying "devs! where are the colors!?!? GIMME!" Just musing publicly for conversation's sake.



 

Posted

Well, speaking as one who plays a kheldian main..


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Posted

Yes.

I was playing my mind/storm troller today. All her powers have been recolored in cool blues and greys. She has the psychic APP. And the bright pink scribbles that surround her whenever she's wearing her epic armor literally makes me rage. I don't even want the power on, so it's a waste of a power and good slots and a good IO set. It looks like some toddler came in and scrawled all over a work of art with a crayon. Neither my powers nor any of my costumes come anything close to matching those hideous pink scribbles.

And that's not even mentioning the Hasten that I've just tried to train myself to pretend isn't there.

Pool customization needs to happen NOW.


 

Posted

I hear ya, mate. My Ill/Rad has all her powers colored pale yellow and passed off as light control. The APPs we have do not match that theme and would be very out of place next to everything else she does... when she gets to high enough levels to start taking Primal Forces Mastery (the closest match to the concept) I'm probably going to chew my own face off out of sheer anal-ness. Damn it, the Legacy Chain can have the right color; why can't I?


 

Posted

My hero main is also Elec^3, so yeah the "purple" (I always saw it as blue but I have some colorblindness) electricity does bug me a bit, but not enough to stop playing him (the fact that he was level 50 long before Power Customization might help that fact). I'm definitely eager for Ancillary Pool Customization, but we're never going to get Patron Pool Customization, and that makes my Dark/Dark/Soul Brute a sad demonic panda.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tormentoso View Post
I'm wondering if anyone else has alts with similar stories and if you've chosen to play them slower or park them until they can fit your ideal.
*shakes magic 8ball* "Signs point to yes" Hmm...

I have a Fire/Fire Brute whose fire powers I recoloured a dark blue and black variant, to imitate what I like to call "dark fire." I designed the character as more of a force of destruction, and have written his fire as less of a chemical reaction and more of a manifestation of that force. As of I18, I have access to Pyre Mastery... Only I don't, really. I can't take any of his Fire Epic powers because those epics are orange/yellow, whereas his fire is blue/black. Bummer.

My 50 Energy/Energy/Foce Blaster recoloured her energy blasts and energy punches both into a bright cyan colour, but now her Foce Mastery powers are in this sickening green tinge that would fit a Forcefields Defender, but doesn't fit my theme at all. It wasn't as bad before I could customize, but now...

My 40-ish DP/Elec Blaster is right now put on hiatus, because I recoloured her Electric Manipulation powers to be a dense teal, whereas her Electric Mastery powers show up as a purple, clashing pretty bad.

My 50 Fire/Fire/Pyre Blaster from before customization is right now forced to retain her Original fire colours, because I can't recolour Pyre Mastery.

My 40-ish Ice/Ice/Cold Blaster is forced to retain her original Ice effects because I can't recolour Cold Mastery.

My 40-ish D3 Scrapper is forced to retain his original Dark colours because I can't recolour Dark Mastery.

My 30-ish BS/Dark Scrapper cannot take Dark Mastery because I customized his Dark Armour colours to a blood red.

Both my 30-ish Necro/Dark and 30-ish Thugs/Dark Masterminds cannot use Ghost Widow's Patron pool because her brand of darkness is pastel yellow and not customizable. I'm not sure if they got access to a Dark Epic with I18.

I can't customize the powers for my 50 Stone/Stone Brute if I ever want to make use of the new Earth Mastery Epic he got access to in I18, because that's not customizable.

And I have others I'm forgetting about.


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Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Feycat View Post
Pool customization needs to happen NOW.
If not sooner.

I wonder who thought the effects of Hasten were best represented visually by fire. Perhaps this person was inspired by the archetypal old man shouting at some young person zipping by, "Hey, where's the fire?" Too bad powers like Repulsion Field don't make use of grass. That would be truly epic.


 

Posted

It is rather amazing how simply changing the color of a character's powers can make it so much more fun to play. I've designed characters around the power color, such as Nor'easter Bunny's pink-themed outfit (not to mention her name and backstory) because of the color of the Mental powers. When I had an idea for a psychic character who happened to be a Native American guy, I made him but let him languish because the Mental Blaster powers looked silly. Once I could make those powers gold... wow. So much more fun.


The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Feycat View Post
the bright pink scribbles that surround her whenever she's wearing her epic armor literally makes me rage.
Literally literally?


@Golden Girl

City of Heroes comics and artwork

 

Posted

honestly, I was sort of wondering why Pool and Epic Pool power customization didn't happen with the rest of it.

When it comes right down to it, very few of those powers use different animations or FX than others. I mean it's all pretty recycled, and the fireball from my controllers Epic Pool isn't all that different than fireball from a blasters fire blast set.


It seems like they should have been able to do a sort of "copy and paste" for the custom stuff to the epic sets for the most part.

Patron pools I suppose is a little different, but even something like Soul mastery is just the same effects as dark blast, mu mastery is just more electric effects which they did plenty of, again, copy and paste those effects and Voila, PPP and APP Customization.

Khelds and WSs may be a little different since they have extra effects in theirs I think, but even then a lot of the blasts look pretty damn similar, I don't understand how they couldn't just port the new customizable stuff to the khelds.


And VEATs, well fortunata's would have been easy and I'm pretty sure Crabs, and Banes are using the same beams from their weapons, and for that matter the PPP Mace, so all that could have been done.


"Where does he get those wonderful toys?" - The Joker

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ice_Wall View Post
honestly, I was sort of wondering why Pool and Epic Pool power customization didn't happen with the rest of it.
Probably because it would require a significant rework of either the character creation screen to allow you to customize power colors for powers you might not ever pick at character creation (ie. to allow customization of pool powers at character set up), or some kind of new character creation system that would dynamically allow the character creation screen to add new new pool/epic/patron powers as you selected them, so you could then head over to the tailor and get your new colors.

If you look at how color customization works now, specifically how the creation screen works and how it flows at character creation, it's pretty clear that there's a non-trivial amount of back end updates needed to add this feature.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it, but it does look like a fairly big update to a number of systems to me.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Camper View Post
Probably because it would require a significant rework of either the character creation screen to allow you to costumize power colors for powers you might not ever pick at character creation (ie. to allow customization of pool powers at character set up), or some kind of new character creation system that would dynamically allow the character creation screen to add new new pool/epic/patron powers as you selected them, so you could then head over to the tailor and get your new colors.

If you look at how color customization works now, specifically how the creation screen works and how it flows at character creation, it's pretty clear that there's a non-trivial amount of back end updates needed to add this feature.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it, but it does look like a fairly big update to a number of systems to me.
It seems to me like it shouldn't be impossible to just let us edit whatever powers we've gained once we visit the tailor. So I pick Hasten. I can choose to leave it at the default appearance, or head over to the Tailor and set it to "No/Minimal FX" and turn those godawful pompoms off forever.

I'm not saying it would be supereasy or whatever, but it's been quite a while since the power customization got added to the game, and it doesn't even seem like this is in the active works.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Camper View Post
Probably because it would require a significant rework of either the character creation screen to allow you to costumize power colors for powers you might not ever pick at character creation (ie. to allow customization of pool powers at character set up), or some kind of new character creation system that would dynamically allow the character creation screen to add new new pool/epic/patron powers as you selected them, so you could then head over to the tailor and get your new colors.

If you look at how color customization works now, specifically how the creation screen works and how it flows at character creation, it's pretty clear that there's a non-trivial amount of back end updates needed to add this feature.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it, but it does look like a fairly big update to a number of systems to me.
Works fine for the Munitions and Mace costume parts, which are kind of an analogue to power customisation (not quite the same, I know, but damn close)
You suddenly get this new option when you pick the mace/rifle. I'm 95% sure that could be done the same with epic powers.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha View Post
Works fine for the Munitions and Mace costume parts, which are kind of an analogue to power customisation (not quite the same, I know, but damn close)
You suddenly get this new option when you pick the mace/rifle. I'm 95% sure that could be done the same with epic powers.
I was about to say the same. When you pick up Munitions Mastery or the Black Scorpion Patron pool, your costume editor shows a new dropdown with customizations for your new weapon. Not only that, but Munitions Mastery is hooked up to meld with the AR weapon customization dropdown, so you get a new weapon to customize, unless you already had AR either as a Corruptor or a Blaster.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Feycat View Post
It seems to me like it shouldn't be impossible to just let us edit whatever powers we've gained once we visit the tailor. So I pick Hasten. I can choose to leave it at the default appearance, or head over to the Tailor and set it to "No/Minimal FX" and turn those godawful pompoms off forever.

I'm not saying it would be supereasy or whatever, but it's been quite a while since the power customization got added to the game, and it doesn't even seem like this is in the active works.
Because it hasn't been in quote "active works."

The developers were very explicit after Issue 16 launched that power customization for costume overlays such as MasterMind Pets and Granite Armor; pool powers; epic pool powers; and patron powers all required additional database and UI engine work that would not be available until after Going Rogue launched.

The earliest the development process for adding in these features could have started would have been the week after August 17th, the launch of Going Rogue. That means the earliest practical time for new code to enter the game is going to be on the next major release cycle.

That would be Issue 20.

Next Year.

Now, as to whether or not it's easy or simple, as the examples in this thread would imply:

No. It is not easy or simple.

For starters, all of the examples in this thread deal either with power choices that were already represented in the major primary and secondary power pools; or with weapon choices presented in the costume interface, not the power interface. None of those are good examples.

Now, the point could be made that the existing power colorization system does indeed leave room for Pool / Patron / Epic powers to be added at a later date. This goes back to needing the Coding / UI resources to actually make those options available and expose the colorization options to individual powers.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tormentoso View Post
When power colorization came around I changed his sparkles to orange/yellow and he became fun. I know its all in my head, he was really not all that different but before, but I suddenly enjoyed playing him.
I feel the same way. some alts i made in the past i no longer found fun. CC came along adn ZING! I can't stop playing them.

APP CC come now plz!


 

Posted

Personally I don't use an APP that matches one of my primaries/secondaries solely because the default colors wouldn't fit with my customized selections. I'd rather have yellow electricity paired with something contrasting like fire than the default electricity, which looks wrong in conjunction.


 

Posted

I'm going to bump this, rather than start my own thread since I can't get a response from Noble Savage or any dev via pms nor can I find any dev posts anywhere stating if this is going to happen anytime soon or in the near future.

Please allow us to change the colors of our app/ppp/pp powers. And eventually the ability to disable things such as the glow from hasten and superspeed or things besides tentacles for the dark immobilize.

thanks

*edit* this really needs to be moved to suggestions and ideas.


Friends don't let friends buy an ncsoft controlled project.

 

Posted

There really isn't much to say on the subject that I haven't said before. I appreciate BABs and the others' hard work in bringing us power customization, but I always inferred that primary and secondary customization was just the first step, and that they'd add Pools and Epics before too long, and possibly include weapon sets, as well.

To this day, I still see the customization system as badly incomplete without this, to the point where several of my characters are on hold over it.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
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.

 

Posted

Ivy Star, my Elec/Elec/Elec made it to 50 back before the dramatic increase in EXP gain. She was supposed to have green-tinted lightning blasts and an Ivy leaf/Pentagram motif to her costume. She's an AOE/Blaptroller type and is a real joy to play solo and in groups. Being a blappy-type, she DEPENDS on Charged Armor to reduce some of the S/L damage she takes, especially in groups. Despite the fact that Brutes, Tanks, Scrappers, and Stalkers can color their Charged Armor power, Ivy cannot.


 

Posted

Yeah, I'm eagerly awaiting this extension of customization too. It's sad that we have all this level of customization for us but complete customization Desmond incomplete. I have far too many Alts who desire one thing or other in either Epics or PP's. And let me not even get started on HEAT's & VEAT's...I'm hoping that at the very least it's still in the works.


 

Posted

Wish list:

Bright/Dark/Color Tintable for the Auras unlocked at level 30.
APP/PPP power customzation.
Power Pool customization.


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Posted

I don't really understand why this hasn't happened yet. Is it necessary? No, but neither was power customization at all. It'd be nice to not have those flames at my feet with SS or for my mu PPP to match the rest of my elec abilities instead of standing out.

I don't see how allowing color for this would be all that difficult since ALOT of those powers are just copies of ones from other sets. I admit I'm not a dev, though.


 

Posted

Hasten

Hasten

Hasten!

My main is a /Cold based Troller (theme and power wise)...with perma Hasten.

Couldn't think of anything more annoying in CoH.

*Hasten activation sound goes off in the background*

...and a challenger has appeared!


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tormentoso View Post
He is now parked at 40 because he cannot face the reality that at 41 he'll be having purple electricity.
If you took him to villain side and picked up Mu Mastery, you'd be able to use red lightning, which sounds closer to your desired color scheme - maybe close enough to tolerate. In addition, if you go all the way back to Hero, you'll get an extra badge (yay badges!). Three of the powers in each set are basically the same (S/L/E resist armor, cone damage, single target ranged hold). For unique powers, Mu gets an AoE immobilize (which does decent damage) and a pet, while Electric Mastery gets a godmode and a mez nuke.


@Roderick