A Thorny Sneakpeak?

I bought the Barbarian Set without having any specific intentions in mind.

Now the CoT belt, the glowing one, I had, I dunno, about a million uses for that, and its not in the pack?

What did it really clip with, if thats the excuse?

I have to say, I've always hated this "it clips with some stuff, so you cant have it" response you guys dish out, since alot of stuff does end up clipping, look at the Steampunk pack, the female chest details can only be very selectively used without clipping.

I'm only echoing the posts of my fellow players here, and have nothing new to add, but as much as purchasing the barbarian pack was a take my money/show of support for the new stuff, NOT purchasing the CoT pack is going to have to be my demonstration against not getting the cool stuff.

No belt, No buck :S

Quote:

Originally Posted by VoodooGirl [*]Watching out for the Spinning Disco Portal of D00M!*

I agree with the previous two posters. I bought the Barbarian set for all the little interesting bits I could tie into other, non-barbarian concepts. The belt and shoulder rings are great and Carnifax uses a combo of the Bolero and the chest detail with fur on the top (which actually clips slightly too but with the right colour combo still works to my mind).


There are few interesting options with the CoT pack, so I'm avoiding it.

eh, if i may devils advocate here, while i REALLY wished we had gotten those long waist capes from the death mages, we did see the concept art a while ago posted on the forums, that is exactly what we got. I wish more had been added from the npc groups, but this was literally what we were shown to expect, so i cant legitimately yell. I DO wish that the whole detail was a belt, rather than a belt and skirt. i can see why they were separated, because now some people can have sashes, but the outfit i had wanted it for was rian frostdrake's full dragon form, and that uses monsterous legs. so that look is not doable.

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

I did purchase it, and there are several items I will get use out of. I am still not as happy as I could be though. This could have been an out of the park hit with one or two more items in it. As I said, I can understand the long skirt not being it, but the other items like the hat, cool belt, and the strapped on gloves not being in there is just frustrating.

Honestly if they do a CoT pack 2, I will still purchase it. I do think I will get my monies worth out of it, but...well it still feels like the really good stuff was removed for no good reason.

What avatar/sig is screwing this thread up?

^Exactly! I would have expected to see the CoT mage hat under "hats" too, which would prevent the problems with hair sticking out.

And yes, color me extremely disappointed that they went to all this work making these awesome new costume parts (Oh, players can use NPC parts, 90% of NPC parts will be converted for players!) and then withhold the coolest things, the parts that people really, really wanted. I wanted the armored plate gloves- no dice. I was hoping for that short capelet, that jewelled belt, and of course, the long skirts. Seriously, we players have been clamoring for long robes now, and they finally come up with one that should work with our player rig, but then they withhold all the coolest parts on grounds that it will clip? Oh come on!

You know what? I don't care if my MA scrapper looks funny when doing Eagle's Claw with that long CoT skirt. Why? Because he spends very little time in that extreme position. I want something that will look cool the rest of the time. I don't just grind and fight in this game, I also like just hanging out chatting and RP'ing, and I want a costume that looks cool then too- it's not ALL about how it looks when performing the most extreme moves in my powerset.

Clipping issues? Already, the celestial chest detail clips horribly with cape options, especially on males. But I live with it. The steampunk skirt clips through the lower halves of martial arts robes, but I live with it- I either make those parts the same color so it's not noticeable, or use the warrior belt to cover it up. Others before me have said that clipping is a lame excuse to withhold things, given how much it already happens.
I think even giving us a couple of the other skirt and glove options would have made this set a real winner, right up there with barbarian, steampunk, and magic. Instead it's almost as lame as the IDF set- another one that would have been sweet with just a couple more pieces.
I don't like the belt included with this set at all, it just looks lame with those short, chopped off flat tails below the waist. It looks like the martial arts tied belt, after somebody chopped the ends off with scissors. The jewelled belt would have been better, I would have had a lot more uses for it. Likewise the gauntlets- it was the armor that we really wanted. Considering that the geometry of those is a lot tamer than ascension, why withhold them? Surely they can't be any more problematic than things like the Sinister and Justice armored gloves.

Devs, I really hope you will reconsider and throw us some bones here. What's the point of redesigning an NPC faction and teasing us by saying that players will be able to have NPC parts (including stuff we've been asking for forever), then giving us only the low level minion stuff, saving the coolest things for the NPC's, on grounds of "clipping"?
Why waste the time, why get our hopes up with cool stuff that we can't have?
You say you're amazed by the things we come up with- stop trying to protect us from ourselves, and let us have this stuff, we'll find ways to make it work, be it avoiding the combos that clip badly (even with 20% of pieces being a problem, that still leaves us 80% that work with no problem, a pretty good ratio if you ask me), or even find ways to make the clipping work for us.

Somehow I suspect my prediction made in another thread is going to come true- the pack is missing a lot of what we really wanted, therefore sales are not going to be as good as barbarian or the original magic set. (anyone else remember how we practically broke the store server when the Magic booster was released?

There's also the cost issue- packs like Magic, Martial Arts, Steampunk, and Barbarian give us great value for our money- that 400 pp buys a lot of things- costume parts both major and minor, that can be mix and matched in a lot of cool ways. But this one sucks, in terms of value for money. It costs as much as the most detailed packs, and includes only 12 pieces, and they're mostly not the ones we really wanted. This doesn't feel like a proper booster compared to the other paid ones which have been released, it feels like a lame afterthought, it's so skimpy.

Also, here's my mini-review of the CoT set, which I'm putting in a separate post because I'm sure someone will post by the time I'm done writing this:

Hood: The Cot hood is an interesting deign, and the first "open" hood that I've seen. However, it still pales in comparison to the Magic Pack hood because it's both kind of low-resolution (either that, or it has too much detail for the resolution it has) and it colours VERY weirdly, as sort of a gradient between the back of the neck and the front of the hood. I may be able to use it at some point, but I can't think of a single design that I can't make with the CoT hood that I can't make with the Magic hood.

Chest and Legs: This is very weird... Why do the CoT have a rubber super suit finish on their tights? Serious question here. The thing is perforated like the new Super Man tights and it has a rubbery sheen to it. I thought those were supposed to be robes, as in CLOTH. Cloth really isn't shiny. Unless these guys are supposed to be wearing some kind of pressed leather? What happened here? I could never see the NPCs close enough before, but seeing this on me is just... Weird. It's like Sinister if Sinister were made of rubber.

Shoulders: One great set and one awful set. I'm sure the awful gradient shoulders looked good on NPCs, but on players they're just bad. They have a really low-resolution texture that their inherent blend pattern makes look even worse so they just look like some kind of undefinable scuffed material. The great set, however, is great. I'm not sure if it has a higher resolution, but the sharp, defined thorn patterns stand out very well and make the shoulder very pretty. They look a lot like Blood Elf shoulders, but that's not a bad thing since I like Blood Elf shoulders. That's probably the only part I really want.

Gloves: Strange choice of design, but I like it. The gloves kind of look like a long heavy sleeve pulled over a glove underneath. Sadly, there is no option to have the sleeve with a bare hand, something I thought would have been obvious considering the old CoT had sleeves separate from their gloves. The bad part about this is that since it's all one piece, the thorn detailing always matches the colour of the glove, and it's a bit weird. There's a version with and without thorns on it. There's a version with and without spikes, but I prefer the one without since the spikes don't seem to match the glove pattern very precisely. And the gloves still look like heavy latex rubber for some reason.

Boots: OK, this is just plain weird. These look almost exactly like Wellington Boots with the CoT pattern painted over them. They even have the rough rubber surface finish of some of Wellignton's designs. This is just out of place, since those are fairly modern They have the modern thread pattern, the elevated heel, the skintight design that makes the ankle bones very obvious... These are just weird, and they still look like rubber. They too have a version with spikes, and these are much more appealing since the spikes are better positioned over the pattern. Here's the kicker, though - on the gloves, the spikes are over the detail colour whereas on the boots, the spikes are between the detail colours and over the base item colour. Why?

Belt: What is this I don't even... At first glance it looks like a tied cloth sash, but it's not. It's more like a metal-studded leather belt with a cloth insert along the middle, but what is that cloth knot supposed to represent? Is it even a knot? I don't get it.

Kilt: OK, I take it back, this is the other item I wanted. The Kilt isn't exactly a full robe, but it looks very impressive. Like the great shoulders, it has a crisp, sharp texture that makes the patterns stand out from the background and its sheer model complexity is just breath-taking. But... It doesn't really work like a robe or a tunic. Not in the slightest. At best it looks like an elaborate coat tail. Still, the piece looks great and I can't complain.

Those are all the pieces I saw. I may be missing some, but as with most other costume set, I have no idea what's actually in it and where to find all the damn parts, so that's all I have.

Quote:

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.

In regards to Sam's question- how much are we missing? Are there more missing pieces?
Oh heck yes. Go look at the last thread I started, titled "What CoT pieces would you want", you can read it here:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=272366
I posted a picture showing all sorts of goodness- several varieties of skirt, an armoured glove (there was another style with huge spikes that I didn't post), and an awesome high collar/back detail. In regards to this last piece, it's freaking lame that they would withhold it on clipping grounds, considering how much the high collar and cape we already have don't play nice with most of the hairstyles and all the shoulder options in the game.
Heck, to further beat down the clipping excuse (that's what it is, a freaking excuse!), I actually DO use shoulder pieces with my high collar cape sometimes, having found some options where the amount of clipping is acceptable to me.

Yeah, the lack of the little capelet is some serious nonsense. What could that POSSIBLY clip with that doesn't ALREADY clip with similar capes?

Oh no, clipping!

Fact is, if it wasn't for clipping, Baltzam's costume wouldn't look half as cool as it does. The Big bit is the Valkyrie Shoulders and the High Collar Cloak. The top, rounded paldroun sits atop the material, while underneath on the arm itself is the smaller pauldron. Clipping was used to make the helmet out of Samurai, Warrior and Cyborg pieces, along with a nice glowing aura.



I'm Zortel, and I approve of letting us decide whether to use clipping costume parts or not.