Agreed, I also want to point out the gross lack of claws or bows for archery.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
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I'd like to see katana get a hand-and-a-half sword. The other term for it is censored by the forums, it's synonymous with a child who has no father.
Being a 2 handed weapon, it would be appropriate for it to be wielded similar to a katana.
A model for it already exists in game as well. (Look above the fireplace in Manticore's mansion in Twinshot's story arc)
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Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison See, it's gems like these that make me check Claws' post history every once in a while to make sure I haven't missed anything good lately. |
I'm still waiting for actual Claws... At this point I'd settle for being able to choose 'None' under weapons for Claws, that way my beast characters won't be stuck with metal claws and would at least be using his own.
I'm all for more Katana options though. I was debating rolling a new Scrapper and recently looked at all the models. I wasn't able to find one that begged for a concept though.
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This was brought up quite a bit in beta.
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Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
Agreed, I also want to point out the gross lack of claws or bows for archery.
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You know what's funny, though? Almost every time custom weapons come up, a comparison is drawn between the many options Broadsword and Dual Blades have and the few options the set in question has. But it isn't Katana or Claws or Archery that has too few options. EVERYTHING that isn't Broadsword or Dual Blades has too few options. And of the sets that have a few, most of those are either Legacy weapons (Legacy Katana and Legacy Ninja Blade) or they're direct prop dumps from NPCs (three quarters of pistol options) which look really bad because they weren't designed for player use.
Broadsword and Dual Blades should be the benchmark of weapon customization. Please, developers, make ALL weapon sets have at least roughly comparable numbers of customization option to that set. Hell, devote a chunk of a whole Issue to adding more weapons. Have you any idea how many new characters a sufficiently large dump of new weapons could make possible? Of all the sets in the game, weapons are the most reusable, because you can pick a different weapon, slap on a recoloured secondary and you have a radically different character. From broadsword to scimitar to Rikti sword to Tech Sword, these are all fundamentally different characters.
To be quite honest, there are few things I want more than more weapons. In fact, the things I want more than that pretty much come down to "muscular women" and "giant swords," in that order, with "more weapons" being a very close third. This is a massive opportunity for more variety that doesn't come with nearly as much of a workload as making new content or new powersets. The costume editor is your baby, Paragon. ALL of it.
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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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It seems that every time they decide they need to add a themed weapon to some new content or pack, they go with Broadsword (and thus Dual Blades). I agree that this is getting ridiculous.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
EVERYTHING that isn't Broadsword or Dual Blades has too few options.
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Some of them like the bone or the shillelagh just look wrong because they seem brighter and washed out than the model wielding them.
Dual Blades still needs the rusted blades before it can be considered to have a lot of customization 
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No need to even do this any more. Just have the art team make a few a week and add them to the store. Shoot, one new weapon a week would be awesome, and I am sure be guaranteed purchases for the majority of the player base.
| Hell, devote a chunk of a whole Issue to adding more weapons. |
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I completely agree with everyone on this. One of my more recent lvl 50 characters was going to be a Katana/WP scrapper, but after looking through the choices of Katana compared to the choices of Broadsword, I much preferred the choices Broadsword had to offer and thus made a BS/WP instead. War Mace is another that needs more options. Screw the nightsticks, wrenches, and ridiculous bits of wood and other such things. They look stupid, and aren't very good options at all. We need more awesome looking War Mace's like the Fantasy Mace. I love the look of that one.
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Originally Posted by Zyphoid
No need to even do this any more. Just have the art team make a few a week and add them to the store. Shoot, one new weapon a week would be awesome, and I am sure be guaranteed purchases for the majority of the player base.
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Normally, I'd agree, but even without Issues, Issues still seem to exist by virtue of some things being emphasised and other things being forgotten. Were I at all convinced this were as simple as one graphic artist taking some time away from making Crotch Melee to cobble together a couple of Katana options and put those in the store, I would LOVE that as an option. However, even with the freedom to create costume pieces a la carte, creating costume pieces a la carte still doesn't seem to be an option if those costume pieces aren't part of a theme that is currently being worked on.|
Originally Posted by Zyphoid
No need to even do this any more. Just have the art team make a few a week and add them to the store. Shoot, one new weapon a week would be awesome, and I am sure be guaranteed purchases for the majority of the player base.
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As we recently found out with the proliferated sets, the Art Team was working on something else and couldn't be spared even for one rotten Assassin's Strike animation, let alone being spared for any meaningful number of new weapons. They're always busy with something big, so I'm simply proposing that that something big be a big load of weapons once for a change.
Of course, if we CAN get one new weapon for a different set every week, then I would buy those every time. Why would I not? I would also buy Beam Rifle if its weapon options worked for Mastermind Pulse Rifle, but apparently they don't, so I end up having no use for the set. Too bad.
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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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At the risk of invoking a Standard Code Rant, is a weapon model really that much work? You could practically take some of the existing sword models and just lengthen the handle and make it work with katana. Or is this little bit of model work followed by weeks of pain-staking hand-animation done by Tibetan monks or something?|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
As we recently found out with the proliferated sets, the Art Team was working on something else and couldn't be spared even for one rotten Assassin's Strike animation, let alone being spared for any meaningful number of new weapons. They're always busy with something big, so I'm simply proposing that that something big be a big load of weapons once for a change.
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At the very least if they are going to be charging actual money for this stuff they need better descriptions to let some of us know that just saying "sword" in the item description still means "yes, we screwed katana YET AGAIN."
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I don't know. It seems like getting anything done that has artwork attached to it is like getting blood from a stone around these parts, especially if it's not something high-profile like a whole new zone or a whole new powerset. David spoke of being able to make costume pieces now which, unlike before, didn't have to be part of large sets, but what it would take for those costume pieces to actually be new weapon models, I couldn't tell you.|
Originally Posted by Zem
At the risk of invoking a Standard Code Rant, is a weapon model really that much work? You could practically take some of the existing sword models and just lengthen the handle and make it work with katana. Or is this little bit of model work followed by weeks of pain-staking hand-animation done by Tibetan monks or something?
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Adding weapons to existing weapon sets seems to be in the same boat as adding new power customization options to old powersets - it's not a priority. Sure, the NEW weapon sets seem to get a modicum of love, with Beam Rifle getting a lot of really cool options, but old weapon sets that aren't Broadsword just seem to be ignored.
We'll see how that goes, but my bet is we won't see very many lone costume pieces sold in the store and not very many of those will be weapons, and not very many of those will be for anything other than swords.
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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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Well Sam, the up side is that they could say that new weapons were just additions to existing themes. That is one of the great things about the boosters, they can be added to at any time.
Now, I agree that it is unlikely to happen, but it would be nice. I would with out a doubt buy any new sword or bow put in the store, and I don't even play ranged toons.
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I don't think it's so much a question of ability or opportunity as it is of priority. For some reason, the simplest of costume additions always seem to have the lowest priority irrespective of the amount of work they would take to create. It seems that everything which requires someone to sit down and devote a day's worth of work to and so needs to be scheduled officially suffers from the "Shadow Shard syndrome," or the "Perpetual Soon syndrome." Take your pick.
I hope weapons take on a higher priority, but considering that in order for more weapons to be made, something else WON'T be made, then priorities would have to come into question, and I'll need a bit more convincing before I fully trust Paragon Studios' priorities again.
I mean, seriously - what precisely is keeping me from using Beam Rifle weapons for the beam rifle attacks in Mastermind Robotics BUT development priorities?
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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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I love Katana and Ninja Blade. They're great sets! This post isn't about balance or animations. It's about customization, or lack thereof, in the Katana sets. (Note that I'll just be using "Katana" here, but I do mean both Katana and Ninja Blade.)
To get straight to the point, Katana is notably lacking in customization options. This has been bothering me for awhile now, and I thought I'd finally try to make a post about it.
So I'm looking at the customization options for Broadsword and Dual Blades. I compare notes between what I have at character creation and what I can get via unlocks on ParagonWiki. By my count, I come to a total number of 27 for Broadsword and 27 for Dual Blades. Very good numbers! A great amount of variety and customizability for these sets. (One notable exception here: Dual Blades does not have access to the new Barbarian sword. Seems like an oversight.)
Katana? 11. Less than half.
Katana is lacking in variety. The set could use plenty more options, and not just of the curved-sword kind. Broadsword, for instance, has many different kinds of swords, from the old-fashioned "big, broad, straight sword" to the Vanguard Katana itself. It has curved Chinese swords, and even the "Tsoo Katana". In other words, just because you're playing the Broadsword set doesn't mean you have to use a broadsword. And the same thing goes for Dual Blades; plenty of variety there, from broadswords to rapiers.
Katana has katanas and curvy, katana-like swords. Unlike Broadsword and Dual Blades, there is virtually no conceptual variety to be found in this set. It's as if the devs are adamant about the Katana set only using Katanas. But look at the variety Broadsword gets. Broadsword even gets katana options!
So how can we fix this? Well the easiest method is to port over swords from Broadsword and Dual Blades. The main problem here, as stated by the devs every single time I've tried to bring this up (Yes, I know, I got it the first time!) is handle length. The handles on most of the swords used by Broadsword and Dual Blades are too short to accommodate the two-handed grip used by Katana. This is a valid point! However, there are already sword models in-game that can be ported over as-is with no modifications necessary.
In other words, these swords' handles are plenty long enough:
- Barbarian Sword
- Thorn Blade
- Romulus Augustus sword (and its Nictus variant)
- Celestial Sword
These swords are the lowest-hanging fruit of the bunch. No remodeling necessary, no repositioning necessary. Just make them available in the character creator for the Katana sets. They would look great with the two-handed animations used by Katana!What about the other swords? Well, their handles would need to be lengthened. That's it. Like the swords above, they don't need to be repositioned on the hand; you can see this for yourself through the magic of demoediting. I'm sorry I don't have a picture handy for this post.
I'm not a dev. I don't know what's involved in getting additional models added to the game and character creator. But I have to think that simply stretching out one end of an already modeled and designed piece of geometry falls under the heading of "low-hanging fruit". I'm not saying it takes no effort. But it would certainly take much less effort than designing and modeling a brand new weapon model from scratch.
So many of the swords from Broadsword would go great with the two-handed fighting style of Katana! The Longsword, the Flamberge, the Tech Sword, the Vanguard Sword, the Chinese swords... And it would add much-needed variety to a set that's sorely lacking compared to its peers.
Please devs, D-Nak or JLove or whoever is in charge of weapon customization: Katana needs more love!
(On a side note, I'm also well aware of other sets currently lacking in choices, including the Arachnos Mace/Rifle and the Pulse Rifle used by Robotics Masterminds. But Katana is near and dear to my heart!)