A Thorny Sneakpeak?

I am just bummed its the new CoT outfits and not the old ones. I still want a plain basic robe/dress. I was hoping that they were finally offering it to us after 7 years of us begging (since the real ones got an up date it would have been nice to get the hand-me-downs at least). But nope. Only the flashy new ones that I can not tell apart.

Every dress or robe option is left out to keep it out of the players hands. That is fact. Too many people want it to be anything less. You can rationalize it anyway you want, but out of our hands is out of our hands.

At least one new character in the new zone gets one, the roman npc's (oracles on both) get some, the Oni pet gets one.... Do we? no. The rest of the ninja do martial arts kicks, does the Oni? I haven't noticed, but if so that's another argument against that being an issue.

and yes, hats and hair should be two separate things, period. Even if that requires you to redesign a 'with hat' version of each hair style. (or helmet or whatever). Just like the belts and tails should be different (and are finally), and the beards and other facial decorations should be different. If I have a beard I can't smoke? If I have horns I can't have glasses? and so on.
At least this one didn't have gender specific options like so many others, or pieces that have parts you can not color (at least not that I have seen so far).

I know this isn't the right place, but since I won't be coming back here again for a while this is close, on the Trench Coat (probably others too) the "Over" chest detail goes half on the jacket and half on the collar. (at least on the females) and looks bad, it should be moved over to the character's left just a bit.

If you guys want to stay a head as the best character creator on any game, gotta keep making it better, sometimes that means rethinking the way it works, like maybe adding a 3rd color, or once again separating out more of the options so we have more choices. And more ways to combine the choices we have.
It also might help if everything were not squished into the center of the screen (can barely even see the weapons I am choosing) and if we zoom in on the lower half of the body, like the boots, that it actually zooms into the boots and not the belt.

The only things I'm remotely even interested in are costumes & powersets.
Given how they increased the price of the older booster packs (if purchased complete) and how little value of money COT bundle is...

Super Tailor access at 800pp was always a sorespot.

Its almost as if they want to milk us as hard and as fast as they can. Since I don't have that much excess cash to throw around, I'm not very encouraged to splurge my stipend even on costumes that I've always wanted.

If Paragon Studios wants more people to buy more PP, they need to price their items reasonably and give more value for new upcoming costume bundles.

People have been asking for the CoT robes since I first started reading forums, but I suspect that many of them, like me, wanted the robes and such because they were cool, not because we specifically wanted to look exactly like CoT.

Imagine how complete and amazing the Barbarian pack could have been if all that art effort with the revamp and the costume pack had gone into it, instead. With the superior costume editor, we probably could have made Age of Conan look bad.

Which is not to say I don't like and use bits of the Barbarian pack. Just wish there was more of it.

As far as the CoT pack goes, they've always been my favorite villain group, but I'm not really fond of the revamp, and of the pieces available, I kind of like the hood and the shoulders. Probably not going to buy it.

Simple for me.

No Hat, no sale really.

Sorry but the hat was the only thing I wanted out of it so...yeah...not buying this.

I've voiced my dislike for all things new CoT more than enough so I'll stay out of that part of the debate.

Concerning clipping.

Let us choose what 'Looks good'! I've made use of clipping more times than I can recall to get just the right look. Actually seeking out pieces that clip in some circumstances, to get armor breaking through cloth etc etc.

I think we've shown time and again that we can utilize the creator to create works of art, the more options the better!

Lots of great replies in here.
As far as I'm concerned... they missed the mark here.
No huge deal. Everything is okay, but... Yeah, I'm not satisfied with the cost/value. And I'm disappointed in what is missing... But, mostly, I am disappointed in the entire CoT revamp.
While they look okay in game now. I don't think that they look better than before.
I believe in iconic legacy and i felt like the group had that for the past seven years. I don't admire nor appreciate disrupting that to the extent that they did.

What is crazy is that the CoT look was one of the most requested looks in this game. So... they removed it from the game entirely.

Anyway... I just see the revamp as similar to taking the Star Wars Royal Imperial Guard...
And saying... "Yeah, they're cool, but what if -instead of simple robes- we gave them spiky and cooler outfits and more contours on the helmets and..." so on and so on... You know what? The Royal Imperial Guards look pretty damn cool with their simple, yet amazing, outfits from 1983 thankyouverymuch.

I don't think that the entire reason for making NPCs with the player skeleton was for ease of porting NPC costumes to players. If it was... this would be a colossal disaster, hehe.
I think that was just a part of it.
This just makes a lot of things easier for them. Animations, powers...

I liked this reply (I guess I chose to go a bit more with the passionate fan... but not quite):

Quote:

Originally Posted by SilverAgeFan Hmmm.. not sure whether to reply as a reasonable but indifferent adult and thank you for the response. Or as an impassioned but disappointed customer. Part of me is ready just to say "meh" and figure that we're going to get what we get under Freedom. But the part of me that is still very enthusiastic about this game is kinda tired of the tired explanations for weird marketing and release decisions. That part of me is also in agreement with other posters that are asserting that the no clipping explanation just doesn't wash and what *has* been included in this pack is marginally worth the price of Paragon Points.

This so very much spoke to how I felt when considering a response...
My only point of disagreement is that (in my personal estimate) the pack is not marginally worth the price.



Anyway!!
Not every move is going to be in agreement with me!
So, I move on! and continue to enjoy what I do.
Although... some additions to this pack would be great.


Oh, one other thing... I was a bit worried about this possibility. This once a week thing (or just greater quantity of purchasable content) really needs to keep to the quality over quantity mantra (and I don't mean within a pack!).

We'll see though.
It's early yet and the impact of the new business model may bring on an enormous amount of resources and great content (both free and purchasable).
Time will tell!

Oh, Sam...
You mentioned confusion about why the chest and tights looked rubbery, shiny and oddly textured...
In case you (or anyone else) were still wondering, David had said that they are made out of snakeskin.
Hand (or maybe magically) stitched snakeskin garments.

Another reason for the snakes' disappearance form Mercy, perhaps?

A lot of what Sam just posted is the reason that it appears the Devs keep the best costume items for their NPCs. It sucks.

I really do expect a second pack that offers the more advanced parts, and I am fine with that, as long as I don't have to wait till next year for it.

At times I wonder if the NPC's have a union.

"We've agreed to your players having the right to slaughter us at times of their choosing, but we keep our Pope hat!"

No belt, No hat, No purchase.

---

Also, please stop deciding for me what I want to spend my money on. Now that I have to go out of the way to buy costume pieces - usually when they work and as I need them - I would appreciate if the Devs did not hold my hand through it.

I don't need the Devs playing fashion police 'for our own protection'.

Because... what exactly is it preserving? That we might get turned off the game for daring to see an obnoxious costume match-up?

Also, there's this guy on Union, who can go invisible because his costume makes your brain not want to register it... and... he's awesome.

Yeah, they really teased us with this one. Showed us a bunch of really cool looking stuff, then said "Oh, you can't have it now, insert excuse here!"
I don't think clipping was the REAL reason why they gave us so little. As others have said, surely the gauntlets we wanted are no more problematic in regards to clipping than things like ascension, which we can play with already. And even if the gauntlets DO clip with jacket, robe, or baggy shirt sleeves, then shouldn't we decide if it looks okay to us or not?
I've used some gauntlet and boot options that clipped somewhat with baggy shirts and tucked in pants, if I decided that the clipping was acceptable (Perhaps it looked like the fabric of the shirt or garment was hanging over the top of the boot or glove). Likewise, I've also declined to use some combos because the clipping didn't look as good, either finding a new boot or glove style, or using a tight top or bottom instead. Either way I still got a costume that looked awesome.

Like I said, somehow clipping isn't the whole story, I'm guessing. If it were the ONLY reason why things were being held back, with the goal of giving us as much as humanly possible, I'm sure we would have seen a sampling of parts all through the minion/lieutenant/boss range given to us- this pack would not have felt so skimpy. We would have probably gotten the armored gauntlets, and maybe even that funny wing-like back detail on the bosses- since selecting it would preclude using capes or other back details, what would THAT clip with? And surely we would have had at least the minion skirt with coattails.
But instead, we get ONLY the most basic parts for the minions. I mean, come on. Even most of the minions get those buttcape skirts. Why this "Minion parts ONLY for players" foolishness? If we wanna RP a CoT or PPD boss, why can't we have the parts? To say nothing of the original creations that could be made using those pieces!

So yeah, either this is a smokescreen for an unspoken "Minion parts ONLY for players" policy (which is total crap, see Samuel Tow's earlier post), or it's Marketing BS- They intend to sell supplements to the booster down the road, a "lieutenant" pack" and "Boss Pack" at some later date.
As for the pope hat, I would have expected to see that listed under hats, or possibly even hoods, either way precluding picking a hairstyle that would clip- that thing does seem to be part hood after all, it makes sense that it would cover the player's hair completely.

If it requires another pack to get the rest of the parts we want, I can live with that. To me that is better than not getting the parts at all.

Yeah, this^. As much as I wish they would quit holding to the "clipping" party line, and give these parts retroactively to anyone who bought the bundle, I would rather drop some more points on a "CoT II" bundle than not have these parts at all.

But seeing how EVERY SINGLE piece (even gauntlets no more extreme than ones we have now) that those above minion level get was arbitrarily withheld, I suspect that this is more marketing horsedook, and clipping is a convenient excuse. Otherwise, if clipping was really the only excuse, surely we would have had a smattering of the other parts from various classes thrown in.
Now, if every single damn piece made for anyone lieutenant or higher really does clip something awful with anything else not of the CoT set and can't be mix-and matched at all, well that's just bad design, no matter how cool it looks.