Can we loosen up the costume change timer?
By
Bookkeeper_Jay,
Posted on: 2011-06-05 14:42 in Suggestions and Ideas
Having a vampire that usually flies long distances in a bat shape and goes back to human form in normal mode I can understand.
Also.. now were talking costume switches... every of my alts uses a specific change emote. But after logging in the emote selected under the costumes also resets to default. I would like that to be saved for the toon to the last one used on that toon.
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I agree, both for the sake of concepts and for the sake of not waiting 30 seconds should you accidentally exit the tailor screen or wish to switch to another costume because you changed your mind. I think 10 seconds would be a nice timer, maybe even 5.
Halving it would be fine. 15 seconds is niether too long nor too short.
/Signed
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
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I find the solution to this is to bind costume swaps to buttons with the necessary emote embedded into the bind itself. It does consume quite a bit of keyboard space, especially if you want to make anything too complex, but it's pretty reliable. If you want, I could probably try and adapt my own variable key function binds that I use for Mastermind pet controls to something of the sort.|
Originally Posted by Liz Bathory
Also.. now were talking costume switches... every of my alts uses a specific change emote. But after logging in the emote selected under the costumes also resets to default. I would like that to be saved for the toon to the last one used on that toon.
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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha
Halving it would be fine. 15 seconds is niether too long nor too short.
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Actually, now that I think about it, if the problem is swapping costumes too many times, then I would propose a sliding scale timer that increases with each costume swap. What I mean by this is each costume swap would initiate a timer that prevents swaps for half of its duration and allows swaps for the other half, but if you swap during this "grace period," you get hit with a longer timer next time, and a longer one still after that. Say something like:
Timer for second swap: 5s ban, 5s grace
Timer for third swap: 10s ban, 10s grace
Timer for fourth swap and beyond: 30s ban, 30s grace
Yes, this is complicated, but it serves both purposes - it gives players the ability to swap costumes multiple times in quick succession, but it prevents them from doing it too many times too fast.
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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.
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If I remember rightly there was a bug with costume change emotes when they first came out that allowed you to switch between costumes more frequently, I think it was 10 or 15 seconds but I might be misremembering. And it did indeed crash a few people's games. Hence why it was fixed rather than left in as an unintentional feature.
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Why have a timer at all? Eliminate it, if it was because of a bug, then fix it! I see no reason that you shouldn't be able to switch costumes as fast as you can click. . .
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That is not a solution... that is a work-around.... I have 9 bars full of macro's already. This should be a QoL feature.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I find the solution to this is to bind costume swaps to buttons with the necessary emote embedded into the bind itself. It does consume quite a bit of keyboard space, especially if you want to make anything too complex, but it's pretty reliable. If you want, I could probably try and adapt my own variable key function binds that I use for Mastermind pet controls to something of the sort.
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- The Italian Job: The Godfather Returns #1151
Beginner - Encounter a renewed age for the Mook and the Family when Emile Marcone escapes from the Zig!
- Along Came a... Bug!? #528482
Average - A new race of aliens arrives on Earth. And Vanguard has you investigate them!
- The Court of the Blood Countess: The Rise of the Blood Countess #3805
Advanced - Go back in time and witness the birth of a vampire. Follow her to key moments in her life in order to stop her! A story of intrigue, drama and horror! Blood & Violence... not recommend to solo!
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Conjecture suggests because it taxes the server. Remember - our costumes are stored server-side, so every time someone sees you, the server has to send a ~10KB costume file to that person. It's not too bad if it's just a few people, but if you swapped costumes on, say, an old-style Hamidon raid with 100 people around you, then you force the server to upload 1MB of data instantly. I don't know what the servers' connection speed is, and I assume it's rather a lot more than that, but if you swap costumes as fast as you can click, you can easily get 10 costume swaps in under a second, and the bandwidth costs start to rise, especially when you consider that the server is communicating a lot of other stuff, as well.|
Originally Posted by Remaugen
Why have a timer at all? Eliminate it, if it was because of a bug, then fix it! I see no reason that you shouldn't be able to switch costumes as fast as you can click. . .
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I'm sure there's a very basic hardware reason for there to exist SOME timer, I just don't think that requires a timer that's THIS long.
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Originally Posted by Liz Bathory
That is not a solution... that is a work-around.... I have 9 bars full of macro's already. This should be a QoL feature.
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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.
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As we all know, when you swap costumes, you have to wait 30 seconds before you swap costumes again. To some extent, I get it - every time you swap, the server has to feed ~10KBs' worth of data to all players in range, so allowing people to essentially "pulse" between costumes via a fast-acting bind might not be the best idea.
But does it have to be 30 seconds? Here's my dilemma: I have a character who is a shapeshifter. Every time she has to interact with contacts, vendors or trainers, she transforms into a human. Every time she has to fight or travel, she transforms into a horrible winged monster. However, if I just want to sell, say, five enhancements to an outdoor vendor, I have a problem. I land near the vendor, transform into human, speak with him and attempt to fly away. "You must wait 19 seconds to change your costume again." Damn it!
Can we please reduce this timer down to a number where it still acts to prevent people from flooding the server with costume swap packets, but at the same time isn't as needlessly restrictive to players who just want to hop into a form and then hop back out, or show off multiple costumes? I'd suggest lowering the timer down to 10 seconds. This should be short enough to where anything short of changing into the wrong costume should be at least the length of the timer, meaning we'll rarely if ever have to wait on the costume change timer, and whenever we have to wait it'll only be for a few seconds, as opposed to half a minute.
What do you say?