Speculation and Hopes for the Animal Booster

We don't know the answer to that but

Mod5 closed the old Pax East thread (2010) and said

Someone mentioned modular peices akin to the ones in the Science pack that could be used in multiple ways. That's my hope. My speculation?

Some more options in the "Monstrous" heads, hands, and legs with enough to fill the gaps in between them, maybe a new type of wings, new tails, Animals to be used are pretty obviously Feline and Bird at the very least. Maybe an additional canine. Plus the usual if it's a "Super Booster" Two-to-three Emotes, Two-To- Three costume changes, a power, they'd be crazy not to make it a quadrupedic ninja run type of thing. But I've been surprised before. That's IF it's an official "Super" booster, and not just a booster, in which case it might just be a few emotes and costume pieces. Can we get any official word on whether or not a SUPER booster is in the works or just a regular booster?

In addition to the furry tail anachronistically shoe-horned into the Mutant pack and more dog-like heads (spitz/shepherd and pug/Boston, please), I'm hoping for clawed hands to replace the Claws powerset. We've been asking for that since Day Two and it would be useful for more than just anthro and werewolf characters; demons and vampires come immediately to mind.

how are wolf tails in a mutant pack anachronistic? are they really really old wolf tails, or werewolves of the future?

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Hmm.... there are several technical challenges to clawed hands.

Regular claw attacks are done by using the existing model (with a closed fist). The claws themselves are additional effects- they don't alter the original model. It's been stated before that the current tech doesn't support altering of the existing model, so there are several techniques here, none of which will give you ENTIRELY what you want, but they might get close:

Simplest way:
1) make alternate animations that keep the hands open, not closed-fist. Combine this with "invisible" claw effects and you have... something. If you use the monstrous hands, you'd look somewhat like an open claw strike. With regular hands, it'd appear more like a slap. Since the models lack points of articulation in the mitten-hands, you won't be able to flay the fingers well to get that nasty claw look common in comics. To do that, we need...

2) Permanent large-monstrous hands that look a lot like those of the war wolves. They appear to have fingers flayed out already, as if they're always poised to strike. Expect many of the other emotes to look somewhat ridiculous with it, though.

or

3) (The most complex)
- You make alternate animations (not effects) that fold the model's fingers all the way inward, so they're hidden in the palm of the hand.
- You make "weapon" effects of talon-like hands that totally cover the remaining hand model with spread-finger claws.

honestly it does seem to be an issue of we can get clawed fingers when we get individual fingers, otherwise, as chase said, they would look like slaps(in retrospect, the snakes seem to use the slapping animations, rather than a splayed hands looking strike. so maybe the slaps could work, dont think that that would really satisfy people that are asking for them.) with the current hands. given how much they are asked for, i'd expect claws to happen very quickly after we get the hands options translated into having fingers.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

But female characters running Agent G's arc get to have fingers for a short while! (Arachnos Disguise turns females into a Night Widow, which have fingers.)

On the subject of feasibility of open-handed claws, that wasn't a concern as I was going along with the "hopes" part of the thread title. I seriously doubt they're going to be in the pack, but how cool would that be? "Very cool" is the answer you're looking for.

As to the animations, I don't see the issue. I just logged in my Claws Scrapper Switch Blade who has all the Scrapper attacks. The animations would look fine, I think, and if they're really going to add alternate animations to every power anyway, that's as good a time as any to do it. Some of the existing animations like Slash and Eviscerate would actually look awesome with clawed hands. Follow Up is the only one that doesn't look compatible with clawed hands.

Merely replacing the existing claws/blades with splayed clawed hands similar to the warwolves doesn't look to be any big deal. I wouldn't want freakishly long nails or bizarrely large hands, but there doesn't seem to be a huge degree of difficulty in replacing the standard fists with clawed hands. Just have them transform from the mittens to clawed hands the same way they transform from mittens to fists now.