Average height

Well remember that Sam doesn't make a lot of HUMAN characters.
Let's also not forget that when you get to the max height scales city of allows, you can generally start throwing them being fully human out the window.

Part of why I say this is because I would love a taller height slider myself. Why? Because I have a character who's an old Soviet Robot and I can't help but feel he should be a lot more massive. I also don't mind environment clipping in that case because I like to imagine him just smashing apart door frames and such and making bad guys @#$% themselves.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

As usual, there are some blatantly offensive generalities here. While I personally think Sam goes off the deep-end when it comes to wanting large weapons, and tall women in this game... I would never call his desires "perverted." Nor would I characterize anyone's desire to have a tall female as somehow less than "normal."

I also fail to see how tall women turn them into men, or how every large sword indicates a dude with tiny man-parts.

Even WITH your "cute" smileys, this post seems offensive.

The Legacy weapons do NOT scale at all from one character to the next. I believe this is due to the fact that before Weapon Customization the weapon model was coded as having to do with the powerset, and not the model that draws it. The moment weapons became a costume bit, they scaled. Now, somehow, the Legacy weapons STILL don't scale, hence the disparity.

Sorry, I don't know him. I went by his argument starting with "because as we all know, women are always shorter than men", which looks like to me as bringing realism/RL into it.

It is there for Males, but it's only very slight. The Legacy Broadsword is only slightly larger than the Painted Broadsword, and Rularuu's Bane is significantly larger. The disparity is reverse for Huge models, actually. The Legacy Broadsword actually looks small in comparison to the oversized weapons Huge use, which are actually oversized even in comparison to their body size.

In essence, Legacy weapons are the same size for all models, and as such serve as a nice measuring stick by which to see how much a model's weapons are shrunken or oversized. The Legacy Broadsword for women, furthermore, is what I'll be measuring Titanic Weapons by. We'll see how that goes.

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.

Yeah, I have a hard time making purely human characters, especially in appearance. I know they're a staple of comic books, but I just prefer weirder characters. They aren't all giant, of course, but a lot of them are aliens, mutants, monsters, robots and the like. In a game that gives me this much freedom, it makes sense to me to explore as many themes as possible.

And I'd actually like to make even bigger characters, as well. My ultimate dream when it comes to height is for my characters to be able to look a Fake Nemesis in the eye. I probably wouldn't use that height on more than a couple of characters, but at the very least Tyler could use being bigger. And speaking of monsters, I've long since given up on making Xanta look like a real woman. That's not the point. She's born of the bloodline of the Trolls, inheriting their physical strength but not their ugliness or stupidity. She's supposed to be towering, grumpy monster that, luckily, had a kind heart to her just the same. Her entire point in thematic is to tower over all of her enemies and be imposing.

I apologise if that's how it came off. Yes, I'm aware that, in reality, women tend to be generally smaller in stature than men and generally weaker in physical strength. However, City of Heroes gives me the freedom to make a woman who is inhumanly stronger than any man, almost completely invulnerable and cool besides... But yet doesn't give them the freedom to make her not walk like she's in 12-inch heels or be taller than most men? Just doesn't seem fair to me, especially in light of bigots like Golden Girl who believed that women SHOULD be inferior to men in every aspect.

I had to fight tooth and nail for the recognition that women can have muscular bodies, a prospect that seems to make some people's heads explode (Whadyamean all women aren't Victoria's Secret models?!?), eventually having to resort to swapping in-game textures to produce those screenshots I keep banding about before even David Nakayama was convinced that the idea wasn't horrible and incredibly ugly. I'm merely asking for more options, and I get ridiculed for being a "pervert" over it.

That's Golden Girl for you. Every now and then I'll hear people talk about what kind of good, helpful person she is and wonder if maybe ignoring her was a mistake. Then I catch one of her posts in someone else's quote and remember exactly why I decided why I never want to see anything that woman has to say ever again. I've tried arguing with her and it doesn't work. It's like arguing with a rock. I just wish the forums would hide quotes from people I have on ignore, too, so I don't end up getting accidentally pissed off over things that I didn't want to see anyway.

*edit*
You know what I'd like to see? An in-game slash command which would give us the height of any targetable entity in feet by the ruler, or at the very least the height of the humanoid ones. Then when I make, say, a 6'1'' character and every NPC towers over me, I can do a /getheight on them, see that it reads 7'5'' and use that information to give context to the problem. Because I'm sure most civvies in Paragon City are over 7 feet tall.

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.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

This is the only part of the character designer that gets to me, because it's mechanically unworkable no matter how you try to spin it. Heels are categorically a bad idea if you're going to be doing anything even remotely as physically active as fighting (or committing) crime.

It's been tested by martial artists; and those tests clearly demonstrated that, given roughly-equal skills and physical attributes, a fighter in flat soles will DOMINATE a fighter in heels - period.

Unless your character is in permanent hover/fly mode and never gets involved in melee combat, you're violating a pretty basic law of combat anatomy by donning heels.

I want them to be slightly bigger than the Legacy Broadsword at the very least. Not just the same size as the Legacy Broadsword.

And I don't see why the weapons can't be the same size across all the models. Look at one of them...Rail Road Crossing sign, that should be the same size no matter who grabs one for a weapon.

If it's Titan Size for the Huge Model, then I want that size for female models

OK, I'll grant you that But I just feel that keeping civilians and most non-monstrous NPCs at the same general average height, within 6'', give or take, would be a better choice in terms of visual appeal. A lot of characters are defined as much by how they relate to ordinary people as they are about basic numerical stats. As I mentioned before, my giant robot is supposed to tower over almost all of his enemies unless they were somehow giant, which would require him to be as big as a Fake Nemesis in this game. Having him be about as tall as so many seemingly ordinary people irks me. Inversely, my feline mystic assassin is supposed to be in the shape of a somewhat tiny woman, relying on speed, stealth and a cat's reflexes to win fights. Having her be smaller than most of her enemies is almost a must-have. I didn't make her TOO small since I wanted her to still be somewhat comparable to Paragon City civilians, which made her taller than almost all Praetorian women O_o

Never mind fighting or committing crime. Heels are a bad idea for something as simple as walking up a very steep hill (last time a lady tried to do that in heels, I had to essentially carry her up and down), walking over uneven ground (like the busted-up rotten sidewalks in my town that women in heels always walk around) or walking on sand or soft soil. I had a hearty laugh in the Harvey Maylor mission about the missing reporter when she makes notes about meeting a contact in a cave, one of which is: "Wear comfortable shoes."

In which case the running animation doesn't even matter I have a few characters like that, myself, as I do eventually grew to like the shape of some of the high-heel boots the game offers. And, yes, these almost always fly, and never land unless they have to rest or unless they get dead. Interestingly enough, I can't say that the actual WALKING animation looks like it's don in high heels. Sure, it has a lot of butt wiggle, but that's perfectly doable in flat shoes, too.

That's kind of why I've always been in favour of adding custom running animations, even if we have all of three options. I just HATE how women run, and have hated it since all the way back in 2004 when I made my first female character. I'd like some more options here, at least for the women I have running around in Large boots. Changing their footsteps to not sound like high heels would be nice, too.

I don't really have a problem with heroes and some NPCs being bigger than normal, but the thing is that the game has no "norm." Most of the old NPCs are giant, including the old civvies, most of the new NPCs are tiny, including the new civvies and rescaled old ones, some NPCs are ridiculously huge, like all of the Freakshow and most of the Ubermenshcen/Cor Leonis soldiers, and some NPCs are ridiculously small, like most of the Crey Agents, Scientists and Security Guards. And then there are the giant university professors. I guess PhDs make you grow a good two feet taller.

Personally, I'd be all in favour of doing a pass of all NPC models and re-evaluating which ones are supposed to be giant (like the Freakshow are now, and like the Trolls should be upscaled to be), which are supposed to be normal height (like Crey personnel and Malta soldiers) and which are supposed to be tiny (like the Red Caps and Wailers), then rescaling all of them as necessary. Civvies need to look like they can fit in the cars they drive and walk through public restroom doors without smashing their foreheads on the frame, after all.

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.

My measuring stick is going to be the Legacy Broadsword for women. What I want to see is for every single Titanic Weapon model - even the smallest one - to be bigger in the hands of a Female model than the Legacy Broadsword is. If this isn't the case, then I intend to make myself a pain in the *** campaigning for them to be made bigger. "Titanic" Weapons - in the sense of really big weapons - is the name of the set. I expect really big weapons, not "big weapons except for women, who shouldn't be using big weapons anyway."

I agree with you completely. The rescaling of weapons is probably my biggest point of disagreement with BABs back in the day. His argument - which does make sense - is that they scaled weapon models down for women because women had really small hands. Leaving aside the fact that I don't like women having such small hands, the result is that almost all of their weapons are TINY! If it's at all possible, I'd love to see Titanic Weapons being as big for women as they are for men and Huge characters.

If the hilts on some of those end up a little too thick for the female hand to hold... Well, how about expanding the grip on the hand a little bit? Right now, characters hold weapons with a fist closed so tight they couldn't even cold a piece of string. They use, as a point of fact, a fist closed for punching. If they expand the grip a little bit, then the hand will be able to grip larger objects.

I ran into a similar problem when designing Brutticus, as you can see here. The shaft of the Legacy Battle Axe is still scaled for the Huge model's giant hand, and as such is too small to be held by the Female model's tiny fingers. My solution was to go for manhands and use the Large Gloves so as to increase the size of the gripping hand. And it worked so well that I've been trying to suggest adding a larger bare hand for women as a custom glove option. It's clearly possible if Large gloves can do it.

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.