Yeah that would pretty awesome... Sadly they would have to go through quite the number of powers and make new animations, maybe they might do that if they ever go back and updated the VFX for powers...
Issue 24 PPM Calculator // The Great Makeover: The Vindicators
One of the problems with this idea is that it would require making whole new animations that fit in exactly with the animation times of the current blasts.
A possible solution is to make a whole new set that uses tech already in place.
Magic Staff
Costume Options: Multiple Staffs
Powers:
Spell Focus: An ability just like Swap Ammo. Only it not only changes the effects/damage type, it changes the visuals. Fire/Ice/Magic Energy (Blasts that have the Rune Charm Blast effect...temp power in Croatoa) seem like the good one's to go with. Though maybe adding in Earth Spells as well.
The hard part (or maybe extremely easy and it just takes some thought) is to make it so Fire/Ice/Magic Energy (energy damage) really is as effective no matter which you use.
My thought...
All do the same damage. But the damage type changes completely. Fire does Fire Damage, Cold does Cold damage, Magic Energy does Energy damage.
For the fire portion of the spells, we avoid +DMG tics or make it so the tics still equal the same amount of damage as Ice and Energy are doing, this way people aren't just using Fire Damage for the best damage.
So what do we do? We add in different effects for the Fire damage!
Fire: -Resist
Cold: Slows/-Regen
Energy: EndDrain with a few -Def/KB/KD effecrs scattered about.
If we add in Earth, I'd say make it a combination of Smashing/Lethal attacks. Make it so Magic Energy is just EndDrain/-Def, and have Earth attacks have a combination of -Resist/-Regen/Slow/-Def/KB/KD...basically while the other damage types have their set in stone (no pun intended) effects on all their attacks, Earth becomes the Jack of All Trades, Master of None.
Then it's just a matter of the attacks.
Spell Focus (the swap ammo ability), 1 Targetted AOE, 1 Cone, 1 PBAOE Attack, 1 PBAOE Nuke, 3 Single Target Attacks, 1 Utility Attack (low damage, but massive secondary effect that corresponds to the damage type selected...if Earth is added in, I'd say make it a low amount of each effect, with an unresistable KD, maybe just an unresistable KD, or possibly just one massive Lethal Damage single target attack).
I'd make the cone a 120-180 degree cone with some okay range. Change it up from things like BReath of Fire, so people will actually consider taking it. I say this, as I figure the cone would be a flamethrower style attack.
And...that's my suggestion for the set.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
as mentioned it would require a lot of work for the alternate animations
as for the notion of a magic staff powerset i think i read somewhere that the concept would be too limited to be worthwhile (since it would mostly only apply to magic characters, maybe natural unless you want to RP that the staff itself contained the power and you just learned how to use it)
personally i dont think it would be too hard to make a magic staff set because vanguard wizards for example use a magic staff based set
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Well alot of people tend to look at the power sets name/description to decide what it does instead of getting creative.|
Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
as mentioned it would require a lot of work for the alternate animations
as for the notion of a magic staff powerset i think i read somewhere that the concept would be too limited to be worthwhile (since it would mostly only apply to magic characters, maybe natural unless you want to RP that the staff itself contained the power and you just learned how to use it) personally i dont think it would be too hard to make a magic staff set because vanguard wizards for example use a magic staff based set |
Staff could easily fall into Magic of course.
Could fall into:
Tech (especially if they give alternate graphics for say the energy blasts) as a weapon ability to harness the elements or what have you.
Mutant who needs to focus their abilities through an object.
Natural could be a normal human who has a tech/magic item, as this can easily have some overlap (dont forget there's also a secondary or in some cases primary to fall back on). Alien race would also be natural as this could just be a standard weapon of their race (and alien race includes angelic/demonic entities).
Science can have it fall into the Mutant side of things as being a focus for one's abilities, tech and science can easily have overlap as well.
My Demon/Dark MM was a mutant who summoned forth creatures from her nightmares. *shrug* My Willpower is just a combination of Regen/Reflexes/ability to take a punch (Regen, Defense Powers, and good S/L Resist), and less on "Willing herself to keep fighting"
I use the power descriptions as just a generic flavor text by the devs, and then use them how I want too. Of course this doesn't mean I wouldn't prefere to have certain elements combined into a set to truely get the feeling (like WP is typed defense, and the agility part would feel more agile if it was positional), but you go with what you have to work with.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
I brought this up a month ago and many forum-goers rushed to say it's undoable because of something they heard 3 years ago.
I like the idea of new power animations for all powers. I think its just as important, if not more important, than costume pieces.
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Triumph Server
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A dedicated Staff Blast set? Sure easily doable. The Carnival of Light nearly has an entire set worth of staff powers already in game.
Alternate animations for existing sets? Highly unlikely. It'd take considerable development time (assuming it's even possible with the current code/engine) for a very limited payoff. It's much more likely we'd get an actual Staff Blast set, which would net a larger return for the time spent.
@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
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That's pretty cool, though the subject line made me think that it would be cool to have a different kind of magic staff - that is, a group of magic-wielding employees. Basically, a Mastermind primary that involves a bunch of freakin' wizards. That would be dope, as the young people say.
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Originally Posted by Twilightdusk
Just a simple suggestion, basically make a staff optionally available as a weapon for certain powersets (my thinking is basically, any ranged powerset that doesn't already have a weapon associated could have the option).
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I don't actually know if it's possible to have a powerset feature animations that can switch between having a weapon animation and not having one. I know that the developers are capable of offering alternative animations, but I get the suspicion that weapon sets require more work.
Still, if they can do it, I don't see much reason why they couldn't offer alternative staff animations. It isn't as though there are a lot of variable animations for 'shooting people with energy', and the magical staff animations already largely exist within the Carnival of Light. I would think it would be a simple matter of just figuring out which animations to replace with which staff attack.
Of course, I'm just guessing. Maybe it's the most difficult thing to do in the entire world; I don't really know.
All of that said, I'd bet they are going to simply make a magic wand type powerset, rather than offer alternate animations for damn near everything.
I guess it would be a bit more complicated to implement than I just thought, I just thought it would be a nice option for more magic-based characters.
A powerset centered around the staff, having various attacks that can shift between a few elements, would be pretty cool to have, though I'm not sure what balance implications, if any, there would be for such a thing (IE: someone with Fire Blast has to deal with the fact that some enemies are resistant to fire. Someone with this powerset could just switch to a different damage type.) After all, I know that Dual Pistols can do a similar thing, and I've also heard Dual Pistols rather disparaged on the Blaster forums.
In any event, I'll say that if this sort of thing ever gets implemented, I'd love to see the ability to set an alternate animation for Fly/Hover involving the staff. But I guess this is a bit much of a suggestion to begin with.
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And that can all be taken into account and made into an awesome set.
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Originally Posted by Twilightdusk
I guess it would be a bit more complicated to implement than I just thought, I just thought it would be a nice option for more magic-based characters.
A powerset centered around the staff, having various attacks that can shift between a few elements, would be pretty cool to have, though I'm not sure what balance implications, if any, there would be for such a thing (IE: someone with Fire Blast has to deal with the fact that some enemies are resistant to fire. Someone with this powerset could just switch to a different damage type.) After all, I know that Dual Pistols can do a similar thing, and I've also heard Dual Pistols rather disparaged on the Blaster forums. In any event, I'll say that if this sort of thing ever gets implemented, I'd love to see the ability to set an alternate animation for Fly/Hover involving the staff. But I guess this is a bit much of a suggestion to begin with. |
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
I suggested this as an option for Beam Rifle in reference to characters like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAJOcG-CAwA
I know Nanoha is the most well known, but "magic staff used like a rifle" is something I've seen in a few places...Nanoha is just the easiest example to find
Thrythlind's Deviant Art Page
"Notice at the end, there: Arcanaville did the math and KICKED IT INTO EXISTENCE." - Ironik on the power of Arcanaville's math
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IIRC, the big issue according to the devs is that for every new animation they have to make one animation each for the three body types. If there's any other circumstances involved (such as permitting a different item in each hand) then you need three more animations. Flying typically calls for a different animation (since the feet are positioned differently) so double all those animations. Multiply all of these across 9 powers for a set and you're dedicating so many resources that you might as well just make a whole new powerset. Especially with the release of Freedom, where you can put it on the market for 800 PP and get enough extra capital in to hire a new person to do all of these animations.|
Originally Posted by Lord Rahvin
I like the idea of new power animations for all powers. I think its just as important, if not more important, than costume pieces.
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That's why we got Street Justice and Beam Rifle instead of new alternate animations for the older sets.
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1) Given the nature of using a staff in this context, they'd only need to make 1 (or maybe 2, one for offense one for defense) animation involving the staff for each body type, and copy it to each power in each powerset that gets deemed as staff-appropriate (a bit stale? Maybe but there's a lot of repeat animation within a lot of the powersets this would be applied to anyway.)|
Originally Posted by SailorET
IIRC, the big issue according to the devs is that for every new animation they have to make one animation each for the three body types. If there's any other circumstances involved (such as permitting a different item in each hand) then you need three more animations. Flying typically calls for a different animation (since the feet are positioned differently) so double all those animations. Multiply all of these across 9 powers for a set and you're dedicating so many resources that you might as well just make a whole new powerset. Especially with the release of Freedom, where you can put it on the market for 800 PP and get enough extra capital in to hire a new person to do all of these animations.
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2) Costume pack: Staves 480 PP. Given that the staves would need to be added into the costume options anyway, they could justify selling the entire weapon type, and thus only people with access to the stave costume pieces would be able to use the new animation. 480 PP isn't as much as 800, but see above about how they wouldn't exactly need to make 27 animations per powerset they would be used in.
Just my 2inf
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That wouldn't work due to the varied cast times of the powers (not to mention it'd look incredibly repetitive). There would have to be at least 1 animation for each animation length. And then those animations would have to be edited to fit the particle effects for each different powerset that used them.
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Originally Posted by Twilightdusk
1) Given the nature of using a staff in this context, they'd only need to make 1 (or maybe 2, one for offense one for defense) animation involving the staff for each body type, and copy it to each power in each powerset that gets deemed as staff-appropriate (a bit stale? Maybe but there's a lot of repeat animation within a lot of the powersets this would be applied to anyway.)
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@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too
Just a simple suggestion, basically make a staff optionally available as a weapon for certain powersets (my thinking is basically, any ranged powerset that doesn't already have a weapon associated could have the option).
So, someone using Fire Blast would have a choice between "Fireballs launching out of my hand" and "Fireballs launching from a magic staff"
It's just that, no matter how many colors I can tint it, forcing my fire blasts to radiate out from my hands feels a bit limiting if I want to make a character under the concept "Magic user focusing in fire" as opposed to "Super mutant with fire powers."
Just something to consider.