Character Behavior

So i've been playing CoH for about 6 years now. And I watched as more and more levels of customization have been added. That said, one thing that hasn't changed, is that when my character stands around, he spends some time with his arms crossed, and then he spends some time looking around, or with his arms at his side, but I don't get to choose how he poses himself.

Now, the mechanic I'm talking about here is pretty big, and would probably entail a power spectrum level of rebuilding in order to work.

Currently, we have a couple different powers we can select to have our characters behave in certain ways, for example the walk power. What I'm thinking about here however is something akin to choosing your power.

Imagine another tab when creating your character. You've made his appearance, you've selected his powers, how they want to look, and what weapon he uses. Now, you select his behavior. In this tab you would have a list of actions. Things like idle, walk, fly, alternate attack animations.

This would affect the way your character behaves in the game, outside of using custom emotes or temp powers.

Granted, there are lots of different animations, and to change the system so that it lets you pick between them would be a lot of work, probably something best saved for CoH2, but i really think it's the last thing between my character being a mindless shell who only responds to orders, and an actual character who does more than just mirror the same stances everyone else standing around is doing.

Unless it's a task force don't expect much. I think the best way to go about this would be what DCUO has done and give you an option of stances at character selection. This would obviously apply to Icon as well. Good suggestion but like you said, just a dream for CoH2.

We've already got part of what you're asking for. There's a variety of emotes in the game, ranging from active movement (/em kata) to minor movement (/em laptop) to just standing around looking cool (/em stancehero1). There's even emotes that override the default flying animation (/em flypose1). They can be accessed through the popmenu on your chat window, marked with a little "word bubble" beside the typing field. And if you don't feel like digging through the menu for your favorites, you can always create a keybind or macro to activate them at the press of a key, or the click of a button.

I'd love to see a way to pick the default idle animations, run animations, etc. But since they're still working towards customization for Pool and Epic powers, I'm not sure this is something that we'll see soon, if ever.

I've often suggested as much over the years, so I agree completely. I'd include:

*Idle animation (or collection thereof)
*Run animation
*Jump animation
*Fly animation

At the very least. Ninja Run and Walk have proven that basic character animations can be customized without breaking the game. Now it's a question of how far they're willing to take this.

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.

So far as I know every single idle stance can be duplicated with an emote command so yes you can choose what your character does when idle and once in that emote stance they will remain there. I use /e akimbo all the time for costume contests. Now if you are talking about setting up a chain of chosen actions that's a bit different.

Of course, we can make this happen in-game, as it is, to certain extents (I'm a big emote user and different characters generally have different idle stances and such)...

However, It'd be great (this is just complete idealism here) for it to apply to things like jumping, running, walking as well as the sounds for such things.

The mmorpg that I used to play, a long time ago... in a galaxy far far away... (before the dark times of the three letters that I shall not utter)...

That game had /mood commands that altered your idle animations and lasted until you chose another/mood and/or went back to /mood none.
This game also had facial animations, so that added a bit more to it.

A very popular (yet somewhat underground in America) Japanese wrestling video game has had tremendous customization and various animations tied to attitude/personality options. As well as a large voice catalog for specific sounds for each and every move performed.

I've always been a fan of such things and I definitely think CoH is a place that such features would fit.
That being said... I doubt it'd be implemented into the existing game (to any great extent).

A follow-up? I would lobby hard for such levels of customization!
(Still... Not that I'd personally mind the resources put into such things for this game... I just don't think the majority of players would, thus the developers are unlikely to spend the time and money on it)