Discussion: The Intrepid Informer: A Paragon Periodical

Greetings and welcome to the very first issue of the Intrepid Informer!

What is the Intrepid Informer you ask? Well, it's a regularly written feature that is about to become a staple of CoH community life!

The fact of the matter is that wee have awesome developers working on an amazing game with nearly 7 years worth of history and much more content to come. That means we have a tremendous amount of information that we can dig deeper into and share with you, our players. This is where the Intrepid Informer comes in!. It's a way for us to share exciting pieces of information about not only the game but about what goes on behind the scenes at Paragon and a whole lot more!
One week the Intrepid Informer may focus on one of our developers so that you can get to know him/her a little bit better, while the next issue of the Informer might showcase a feature of the game and give you a bit of background on its design and conception. You never know what you might get!

Really, it's all about us sharing information so you can paint a clearer picture of the game and the people behind it.

Since a hot topic of the moment seems to be the recently announced Animal Pack, what better way to start this new written feature than with a little bit of background information on its conception, courtesy of Eric Johnsen, one of Paragon's awesome Producers whom some of you will recall from our panel at PAX Prime in 2010!

Without further ado, and with a couple of decidedly feathery and hairy images, welcome to the very first issue of the Intrepid Informer!



Intrepid Informer: A Paragon Periodical Issue #1 - The Animal Pack!
By Eric Johnsen, Producer


The Animal Pack was really born from the discussion of what we should do for the Mutant pack. We knew players were looking for some anthropomorphic costume pieces, but we didn't really feel that the Mutant pack was the place to put them. As we started exploring themes for the Mutant pack we realized that Animals really deserved their own pack and that Mutants should stand on their own.

So when we started doing concept exploration for the Animal Pack we started broad (as we often do when we're considering themes for booster packs) and slowly refined the scope. Eventually we narrowed down what we wanted to do to a few different themes and objectives.

We wanted players to be able to create a legitimate Minotaur model. We already had the Cimerora costume pieces, so it seemed like a short jaunt to getting a full Minotaur costume in there. With that in mind we decided to build the Minotaur head and tail.

We wanted players to be able to create a more classic Werewolf model, but felt that the wolf tail we introduced with the Mutant Pack was a little too nice (for lack of a better term). So we built out the wolf heads and new wolf tail, which is a bit more ragged than the one introduced in the Mutant Pack.

So we have cows and wolves, what else do we need, seriously, bang, done, right?

Ok, maybe not, we figured our canine friendly players would be happy with the Wolf parts, but you can’t have dogs without cats now, can you? So we pulled a lot of reference for the various big cats, and put together a collection of fur textures, big cat patterns and the like (which really came out great), as well as feet. Of course, then I read the forums and saw some of the more esoteric requests for things like house cat patterns. Sadly that realization came a little late, so hopefully you folks will be cool with big cats for the time being. Maybe we’ll look into an SPCA pack later. Putting the cats together created a huge number of variations and added a lot of bulk to the pack (I’ll get back to this later).

Lastly, we knew that Ghost Falcon would kill us if we didn’t include some bird parts (we also suspected some of you might want them based upon the forum chatter). So we put together a solid bird head as a base, a few beak variations and some bird feet, which in combination with the various wings will allow players to create some very solid anthropomorphic bird costumes.

That’s it, right?

Not quite! One of our other objectives was to provide an alternative to Ninja Run, which seems to be pretty popular. So we introduced a Beast Run travel power in the pack, which may or may not allow players to run on all fours with the same movement attributes as Ninja Run.

Auras and Costume Change emotes you say? Very well then! We put together two flavors of costume change emotes involving fur and feathers either bursting out from the character or as a result of excessive spinning. We also came up with a couple new auras, but we’ll let you check out the pack to determine what those are (I’ve spoiled pretty much everything else in the pack at this point).

I will also attempt to defuse at least one set of questions with a brief mention that we did not include everything that had concept attached to it in the pack. As I said, in building the schedule for the cat pieces we got a lot of costume piece variations, this led to one set of concepts getting cut and folded into what we expect will be another pack at some point in the future (we’ll let you speculate on that one).

All of this is brought to you by our newest character artist, Eric Chyn, with Jay and Cheryl consulting (they are hard at work on other Fabulous™ projects).

There you go. Everything there is to tell about the Animal Pack and maybe even a little more! Not bad for the first issue of the Intrepid Informer, eh?


Eric Johnsen
Producer

I love the idea of these regular articles! It's fun to see "behind the curtain" and get an idea of how we get the stuff the Devs give us.

Also, you tease us with a reptile/dinosaur pack! It would perfectly fit a character I have that's slowing turning into a dinosaur. I look forward to seeing it in the future!

Dinosaur pack? Yes please!

Ooh, when you do the reptile pack, please making an awesome dragon head, too. I know we have one, but I want one more.

A reptile/lizard pack would be cool - there could be like an alligator head, a snake head, a T-Rex head, a lizard head, a dragon head, and maybe a couple of other dinosaur heads, along with horns and crests and feet.

Are these going to be instead of the Producer's Letters? Or in addition to them? If so, this is a definitely promising sign of more communication from our redname overlords!

(And another vote for the Reptile/Dinosaur pack - not coz I'm huge on them, but coz hubby mine would LOVE it!)

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

This is definitely going to be kept separate from Second Measure's letters, as an additional way for us to share information with you all

I wonder if the pattern for future boosters/packs will go 1.) Animal related - 2.) Something else... and then repeat. So we get this Animal Pack then the next one is a Steampunk Pack or something and after that will be the Reptile Pack and on and on.

I can imagine a lot of other options for animal-related packs like an African Animal Pack (that has elephant and rhino heads in it).

I'm not terribly interested in buying this Beast Pack, though my wife has expressed an interest in it.

However, if you did make a pack and send a portion of the proceeds to the SPCA... I would be all over it, even if I never used a bit of the costumes.

Dinosaur pack . . . . . . seriously? . . . . . .

I love you. No really i do. Is it done yet? Or at least part of it? I want it now! Dinosaurs is what this game needs!

Why edit out the reference to alligator costume parts?

Got to admit a Reptilian style booster brings many possibilities. I for one have an idea for a Dragon character that would go great with it. And even more so would be if along with the booster they added more alternate animation for Fire and Ice blast. You know, ALL the attacks coming out of the mouth like the original Sonic attacks. O.O ooh add Dark Miasma to that list too. Drathamir the Black Steel Dragon King will rise again!!! (i know name is too long) MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

we still need bears!!!

First: Great newsletter update to keep us informed, thanks.
Second: I like the pack, looking forward to its release!

Third... and I need to say this now, because you brought it up yourself with the costume overage for a later pack. _I_ think that, as you have all these add-on packs available to users to buy, they shouldn't be one-shot updates, but rather a flag that allows them to CONTINUE to get updates for a pack for which they have access. More magic costume pieces? Then the people who bought the magic pack get it automatically. More cat poses? Then the animal pack users get that automatically too.

This keeps the releases from being microtransaction to being something that, as time progresses, becomes an investment as you get more swag added for a theme you liked. The players benefit obviously, but throwing us a bone here every now and then will benefit you by keeping us happy.

Just sayin'. Anyway, well done on the pack, and I look forward to finally making my themed toon, "Black Bull"!

@TURGENEV - Freedom Server / IRON / B.A.N.E / HORDE

Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine Acts III & IV coming 2012!
Turg Fiction: IX is now LIVE on Architect Entertainment!

Honestly, I don't care about the animal parts as character costumes; but I can't wait to see those as new enemies in AE arcs.

Loving all these new articles and ads. City of Heroes is knocking it out of the park lately and you have my support!