Art team doing costumes for players, anymore?

At this point in development, based on the extensive quality libraries I've seen of costumes/armor/clothes other highly modded single player games have, I kind of wish they'd explore a management system for open sourcing some basic costume development to us players.

Chest emblems. Tights patterns. Bump and texture maps. Glow maps. New geometry would be great but obviously trickier due to inexperienced modders risking high poly count items. But the rest of those in technical terms are templated graphics files. I'm sure dozens if not hundreds of our very loyal fanbase have both the artistic and technical chops to help pitch in and bring some much needed growth and life to the whole CC system.

Yes there would need to be a submission system and vetting of costume items. Nobody wants their 5-6G CoH file to balloon to 12G, half of which are redundant, copyright infringing or vulgar skins and textures. And yes, I think ANY and ALL such items produced via players for players should be bundled into free content updates, never sold for profit by the studio. BUT at least such a system could help players finally realize certain concepts or open up new avenues of creativity that the dev team has (IMO) sometimes long neglected and underestimated the potential popularity of...

The one thing that fan creators would need is an offline version of the CC that draws from all live content and can also be used to test any new content visually before submitting it the Paragon approval pipeline.

Me, I'm tired of waiting for certain items and themes that I doubt will ever come. I'm personally ready to take matters into my own hands. My $.02 on the topic.

All I'm saying is wait 'til the issue itself comes out before you start raging.

For me it is not all about i20 (I love the content in it), it is more about recent trends. I have purchased all of the costume packs offered. I have also found a use for every costume item in them at some point.

For me looking different is about as good as doing new things. I will build whole character concepts around a costume.

However, it isn't just about me. I like seeing what others do with new costume items also.

I hope David hasn't posted in a while because he is working on something amazing for our PCs, and not just their NPCs. I haven't seen Jay post since last summer, and kinda miss his odd sense of humor.

Looking at the posts in this thread over the last few days, it seems that there is a greater discontentment with the Boosters than there was years ago when they first started producing them.

Back when the first Wedding pack came out, I had a lot of mixed feelings with what I saw. We did get one new free dress shirt out of it that was (if memory serves) leaked unintentionally. The little bit I voiced my concerns were mostly dismissed, saying this was just a special occasion.

Then the Magic pack was announced and came out. This prooved that the Wedding pack wasn't just a fluke, but the beginning of a trend. Again I raised my voice with concern, and while some people listened this time, still most people dismissed me as paranoid ramblings.

At this time, with the burden of starting my own RL business, I had to make a choice on what online games I would continue playing. Even though I enjoyed CoH, and was looking forward to i14, the growing trend with micro-transactions in a subscription-based game was the deciding factor for me to cancel my CoH account.

I returned only recently, and I've been both impressed and disappointed with much of what I'm seeing. Power customization, albeit incomplete, is a nice addition, and adjustments to Auras is nice. However, I was surprised with how few costume pieces had been added over the last two years.... and then I looked at the booster packs again.

Yes, I've have strong feelings about this. Especially since the devs promised to never do such a thing. I don't remember now if I read it on the forums, in an interview, or even the one time I spoke to the Devs directly at GenCon one year, but I distinctly remember them saying that they would never make us pay for more costume options, or have purchase-only powers.

Now it seems that a good chunk of the new content we must now pay extra for - a far cry from the advertised, "Free" Issues. New costume pieces? Gotta pay for those now. New emotes? Gotta pay for those now too. New content? Gotta have the paid expansion for that. New powers? Gotta buy some of them, others, gotta have the paid expansion for that. Not including GR, to buy all of the booster packs can easily run about $100. That's a lot of money just a few costume pieces. When will it end?

Maybe I'm just being a cheapskate? I admit, I've had to be a bit of a penny-pincher these last few years. But I've also seen other MMO's similar in size and scope to CoH that release free expansions once or twice and year and do NOT require any extra purchases whatsoever. EVE Online comes to mind.

As I said before, I'd not have as much of a problem with this if there were in-game means to acquiring these items. Easiest way to accomplish this could be to charge a number of Inf/Reward Merits/Alignment Merits/etc. Even if the cost is an exorbitant amount that could take weeks or months of play for a single piece, at least the *option* would be there.

According to Second Measure in an interview yesterday:

Quote:

"We have a booster in development that we are very excited about. As always, we want to wait until everything is done to release details, but there will be the very first appearance of a popularly-requested costume feature in this pack."

Back items, perhaps?

1. If backpacks are released in a pay-for booster its all torches and pitchforks. I would rather see it be Steampunk items for Paragon studios sake.

2. I20 is here and we have no IDF costumes RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE!

With Second Measure apparently saying "costume feature", I'd bet it is back item, or -more specifically- a jetpack.
Going with the idea that a Steampunk booster is next (may not be, for certain), some sort of steampunk jetpack/back item is a likely piece.

I figure they will include it as the first appearance of such a costume feature... And then eventually more will be put into the game (likely in the following issue... but who knows).

I'm not a fan of any of this, but... I accepted that this is the business model they are going with. And, so far, I've been able to keep up and have my fun here.
I do not like how much money it'd take a brand new player to acquire all the cool costumes that come from the boosters and such. I happen to not be a fan of such business models.
I ain't in charge though... only of my own wallet, of course (usually).

Not a single new costume piece this issue. Sadness... I guess I can try one of the TFs sometime, but otherwise, not too excited about this issue. 95% of my characters never even make it to 30 lol. And so I wait for news of I21 in hopes that it has something that caters to altitis sufferers like me and *pulls out wallet* I also wait for the next booster to come out that I know I'll buy because I'm a sap for new shiny.

Cant believe the amount of new cool looking costumes another supers F2P mmo is releasing each month and we got nothing new here in such a long time...
I need some tease, a screenshoot, anything!!
Need to keep my hopes. I wonder where the heck is DN