"Standard code rant."
Something important to remember is what is or is not possible within a certain game, based on said game's design foundations. Natural claws, for example, are darn near impossible because a) we do not have fingers and b) they would require reworking all of the claw animations with an open-hand-no-weapons animation. Doable, of course, but probably low on the priority list.
My point is that certain design elements make certain other things far more difficult. Why do you think the Devs have yet to give us Pool Power customization? It isn't that they do not WANT us to have it, it is just that with the way the game is designed the Devs probably think that the ends would not justify the means.
Also, this is very close to being a compare/contrast thread. Don't let moderation come as a surprise.
@Winter. Because I'm Winter. Period.
I am a blaster first, and an alt-oholic second.
Decided to take a look at the store that was referenced and...why do they get cool stuff like that, and we get lame 'undead survival kits'?! I'm sorry, but Paragon really needs to get their act together when it comes to market releases. We REALLY need some more cool releases, because the competition is trouncing us when it comes to things to buy on the stores. I can kinda see why they don't want us to reference competition now, it makes us look bad by comparing their goodies to ours. It's a good thing the gameplay in this game is leagues above theirs.
(I know this thread will be gone by tomorrow/Monday, but I'm sorry, tornado flight>>>>undead survival kit.)
P.S. Oh, and we don't have pool power customization yet because they want to find a way to charge us for it. :P
Shadowblaze - Lvl 50 Dark/Thermal Cor, Alexander Kalsoa - Lvl 50 BS/Regen Scrapper, and a whole bunch of other Alts. Global is @Shadowblaze.
I'm pretty sure they are deliberately trying not to offer features and products that are offered in certain other games. That's why we don't have any powers being offered as duplicates of what are being offered elsewhere in other people's markets, perhaps why the choice of starting city was removed, and likely why we don't have personal bases. I don't think we're getting any of those things largely because no one wants to hear, "and then CoH copied that".
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That's fine, but then they need to give us cool stuff that's on that level. Not 'Undead Survival Kits' the day before the Halloween event ends. That kind of disorganization and laziness isn't gonna fly any more when you have 2 other free to play superhero MMOs. They need to step up their game, and soon.
Shadowblaze - Lvl 50 Dark/Thermal Cor, Alexander Kalsoa - Lvl 50 BS/Regen Scrapper, and a whole bunch of other Alts. Global is @Shadowblaze.
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You know I just registered, not anticipating on actually posting.|
Originally Posted by Shadowblaze
That's fine, but then they need to give us cool stuff that's on that level. Not 'Undead Survival Kits' the day before the Halloween event ends. That kind of disorganization and laziness isn't gonna fly any more when you have 2 other free to play superhero MMOs. They need to step up their game, and soon.
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But yeah.. that doesnt look prof imo.
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Originally Posted by Shadowblaze
That's fine, but then they need to give us cool stuff that's on that level. Not 'Undead Survival Kits' the day before the Halloween event ends. That kind of disorganization and laziness isn't gonna fly any more when you have 2 other free to play superhero MMOs. They need to step up their game, and soon.
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COH needs to step up its game? Isnt COH the benchmark for which all superhero MMOs look at? Im pretty certain CoH is THE superhero MMO
@Damz Find me on the global channel Union Chat. One of the best "chat channels" ingame!
Fair arguments, but the market hasn't been up all really that long to be honest, and we've got Thanksgiving and Christmas on the way...any business, be it MMO or otherwise is going to go for maximum profit around the holidays.
I know I would.
S.
Part of Sister Flame's Clickey-Clack Posse
The great thing about weekly content releases is that Doom can now come four times a month.
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No, it's not brilliant, it's terrible. If I were to make a character who turns into a werewolf here (and I have), I would want this to be a werewolf of MY OWN design, not someone else's vision of what constitutes a werewolf, what powers a werewolf should have and what vulnerabilities a werewolf should suffer from. City of Heroes is a game that emphasises character creation, as opposed to character selection, and this is by FAR its primary strength. I don't want to be "given" a werewolf to play, because I'm not interested in using someone else's concept. I want to make my own. And if my own werewolf happens to scientific instead of magical and happens to favour using a sword and a shield as opposed to claws and fangs, then THAT is what I want, and a traditional werewolf will not do.|
Originally Posted by LastLeprechaun
Lastly, I couldn't believe that one of the older offerings in their market was "turn into a vampire/werewolf" - not the CoH transformation/ToT costume power mind you - and actual transformation in both looks and powers. Beyond this it also stated more powers are made available on the transformation side as you level. The power is said to be permanent and the toggle is temporary (moon goes away, sun comes up, etc). It included things like flock of bats flight and of course... NATURAL CLAWS. Anyway is it me, or is this a brilliant concept as a whole - on how to bring the reality of cursed (blessed?) lycan/vamps into a gaming world.
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Suggestions have been made about shapeshifting powersets or entire archetypes in this game already. I've largely supported most of them, as Kheldians already kind of sort of work. I'm sure it's doable, but I'm also sure that, like Mastermind primaries, it's also a hell of a lot of work to make work, and might end up either inferior or superior in an unballanced way. Never let it be said that I or anyone else here has ever spoken against shapeshifters, though. Sure, it's a Standard Code Rant nightmare, but then so was power customization and Incarnates, and we got those eventually. I'm sure a shapeshifter is not out of the question. Until such a time, however, I will use the existing tools at my disposal and utilise alternate costumes for this purpose.
What I DO NOT WANT, however, it to use someone else's concept. I didn't come to this game to play other people's characters. I came here to make my own. I came here to make my characters how I like them, to play like I want them to play, to look like I want them to look, to have the powers I feel are relevant to their concepts. I came to City of Heroes for MY concepts, and the last thing I want to pay money for is to buy other people's ready-made concepts. I don't need more complete characters. Give me the tools to make my own, and I'll make them far better, at least for the person who's going to be using them - me.
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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 am tired of hearing that it is "impossible" to do this or that based on what is in the game now. All they would have to do is create new hand artwork to go with that specific thing: the new claws would also have new hands! One set new male hands, one set new female hands, one set both male and female monstrous hands, one set of huge hands. Done!|
Originally Posted by Winterminal
"Standard code rant."
Something important to remember is what is or is not possible within a certain game, based on said game's design foundations. Natural claws, for example, are darn near impossible because a) we do not have fingers and b) they would require reworking all of the claw animations with an open-hand-no-weapons animation. Doable, of course, but probably low on the priority list. |
And before I hear any squeaking about "OH WE CAN'T DO THAT!" allow me to remind you that we have new female torsos with new, improved cleavage instead of sporting two boxes on one's chest as we did back in the day. However you can only get that new cleavage by using a few NEW torsos. You want it? You use things like the Barbarian female torso, or Witch, to see it. They didnt retrofit every female torso in the game, they just added NEW ONES.
So, WHY are new hands with claws so "impossible"?! Or indeed, just some new hands, period? I would really like someone to break it down, and "oh its a lot of work for the art dept." is not going to fly. That's what art departments are FOR: to do artwork.
I'm not going to compare or contrast.
What I will say is that this week's undead survival kit is lame. The baseball bat and holy shotgun temporary powers are trash. The werewolf whistle is OK, but not worth real money. Last week's costume toggles were even lamer.
Paragon is not ready to release purchasable content on a weekly basis. There is plenty of worthwhile stuff on the Paragon Market already. They shouldn't be releasing junk, just so that they can say they have something new every week.
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That's what I mean, they need to step up their game to REMAIN at the top. When you have 3 free superhero MMOs with stores full of goodies, if you want to attract new players, you have to have the best new shinies on the market for people to impulse buy. Like I said, I stay here because this game has the best gameplay. The other 2 are ugly and boring, respectively. But for a new player wanting to play one of these 3 games, you need to have awesome stuff to offer them, I mean, if you had never played city of heroes, what would attract you more, tornado/magic carpet/phoenix flight or an undead survival kit with some baseball bats, nerf guns, and warwolves in it advertised for fighting zombies when the event ended in a day? I guess I'm just a tad bitter lately. I guess I just expected more out of the Paragon Market with how much they talked it up. So far, it seems like it was just a bunch of hot air. The only cool stuff in it is stuff we would have gotten for free a few months ago.
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Originally Posted by EU_Damz
COH needs to step up its game? Isnt COH the benchmark for which all superhero MMOs look at? Im pretty certain CoH is THE superhero MMO
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Shadowblaze - Lvl 50 Dark/Thermal Cor, Alexander Kalsoa - Lvl 50 BS/Regen Scrapper, and a whole bunch of other Alts. Global is @Shadowblaze.
Two things need to be reevaluated about the store: the "something every week" policy (it's been working out pretty poorly so far, and it's a purely self-imposed rule. There's no need to have it.) and the pricing (people in beta said prices would be decreased on live...THEY WERE WRONG! Most stayed the same and some, incredibly, WENT UP!).
And please don't tell me we aren't getting personal bases. I NEED my personal bases! I don't CARE if another game got it first!
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i can kind of agree with this, captain mako for example is basically a claw/sr/leviathan mastery stalker but uses his actual claws for attacks instead of weapons, he still does redraw animations and such|
Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
I am tired of hearing that it is "impossible" to do this or that based on what is in the game now. All they would have to do is create new hand artwork to go with that specific thing: the new claws would also have new hands! One set new male hands, one set new female hands, one set both male and female monstrous hands, one set of huge hands. Done!
And before I hear any squeaking about "OH WE CAN'T DO THAT!" allow me to remind you that we have new female torsos with new, improved cleavage instead of sporting two boxes on one's chest as we did back in the day. However you can only get that new cleavage by using a few NEW torsos. You want it? You use things like the Barbarian female torso, or Witch, to see it. They didnt retrofit every female torso in the game, they just added NEW ONES. So, WHY are new hands with claws so "impossible"?! Or indeed, just some new hands, period? I would really like someone to break it down, and "oh its a lot of work for the art dept." is not going to fly. That's what art departments are FOR: to do artwork. |
for weapon customization of actual claws just give us an overlay of a natural style of claws and basically just make the non natural claw part invisible so it looks like were using claws, all that has to be done is make it so those "claw guantlet" type things did not redraw and there you go (i have no idea how hard it would be to code, but there are animations in game for using natural claws as mako is not the only one who uses them, all types of the snake enemies use them as well for example)
The other game has more content in the store because the other store has been in existence longer than ours.
Conversely, we have more content in total, especially more content accessible to a pure free player.
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Which isn't what people actually said. "Beast claws" is impossible for Claws, but there's nothing to say you can't have Beast Claws as their own powerset. I mean, we already have Street Justice and Titan Weapons as proof that new powersets don't have to reinvent the wheel, thematically speaking. If you want bestial claws, ask for bestial claws and stick to it.
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Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
I am tired of hearing that it is "impossible" to do this or that based on what is in the game now.
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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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We already have a natural claws costume piece, it's called Monstrous under the Gloves section.
All we actually need is a "No Weapon" option on Claws.
[url=http://vox-doom.deviantart.com]Take A Gander At This.[/url]
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You need much more than that. For one, you need open-hand animations for claws, but much more than that you need a system which can alter a power's animation based on the weapon you have chosen. To the best of my knowledge, this functionality simply doesn't exist in this game. And if the argument is to make it happen, then that's really not a job for the art team, but more so for the programmers, and I'd wager it's far more complex and time-consuming than flipping a switch.
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Originally Posted by Vox_Doom
We already have a natural claws costume piece, it's called Monstrous under the Gloves section.
All we actually need is a "No Weapon" option on Claws. |
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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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Why would you need all that instead of adding an open, static, clawed hand art asset on the Weapon slot which replaces the Glove option?|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
You need much more than that. For one, you need open-hand animations for claws, but much more than that you need a system which can alter a power's animation based on the weapon you have chosen. To the best of my knowledge, this functionality simply doesn't exist in this game. And if the argument is to make it happen, then that's really not a job for the art team, but more so for the programmers, and I'd wager it's far more complex and time-consuming than flipping a switch.
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I'm sure it's more work than 'just' that, but it would make more sense to do that than have to go into altering animations based on the weapon.
[url=http://vox-doom.deviantart.com]Take A Gander At This.[/url]
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as i said in my earlier post, theres already animations in game for open hand stuff because very common things such as snakes and mako uses them|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
You need much more than that. For one, you need open-hand animations for claws, but much more than that you need a system which can alter a power's animation based on the weapon you have chosen. To the best of my knowledge, this functionality simply doesn't exist in this game. And if the argument is to make it happen, then that's really not a job for the art team, but more so for the programmers, and I'd wager it's far more complex and time-consuming than flipping a switch.
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now how hard it would be to port to a player model im not certain of
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And as I said earlier in my post, you're asking for customization that doesn't exist yet. Granted, we've heard tell of Titan Weapons being able to swap animations on the fly based on whether you have Momentum or not, but that uses the "state" mechanic, which is part of the combat system. We still have no precedent to suggest that this kind of customization is possible based on weapon choice, and I'm actually somewhat dubious THAT kind of customization is what Titan Weapons uses.|
Originally Posted by Necrotech_Master
as i said in my earlier post, theres already animations in game for open hand stuff because very common things such as snakes and mako uses them
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Adapting animations is a trivial task that just requires time and someone to do it. Actually having these animations be appropriate to the weapon in question, on the other hand, is a problem that I'm not aware of a solution to, based on what we've seen in-game systems do.
Let me expand on this a little bit, just to explain why this is such a big deal. Have you ever seen suggestions that we be able to fire, say, our Ice Blasts out of a futuristic freeze rifle of some sort? How about suggestions that we be able to fire Assault Rifle attacks out of a pair of pistols? How about suggestions to be able to customize Archery to instead have our characters throw javelins? I have (and I've made a few of them, myself), and the one key problem that pulls them all together is I don't believe this is currently even possible. Granted, turning bow attacks into javelin attacks would require far more animation work than turning closed-fist claws into open-fist claws, but the fundamental problem remains the same - the animation system can't alter its power animations based on weapon selection. It's a bit more complex than that, going into activation sequences and such, but that's the basic general problem.
Is it worth doing? Hell yes. I've said it many times that being able to pick our weapon class (including "no weapon") and having that be applicable to all or at least most powersets is one of the last big things the character editor has left to achieve, but if that's ever going to get made, I highly doubt Beast Claws will be the reason to invest in it. If ever we see this at all, I suspect we'll first see it in a powerset that's built around this, and then we may see it cloned around the other powersets.
I want this to happen as much as you do, but you need to recognise that this is not a simple case of swapping a few variables, or even as simple case of making a few animations. The animations are the easy bit. Making the system customizable enough to accomplish this is the real hurdle. You are frankly far better off simply asking for Beast Claws as a whole new powerset with some kind of eccentric gimmick, as that's considerably less work and requires considerably less new tech. In other words, it's a lot more likely to happen.
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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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*sigh* You do realize the "new female torsos" are just different textures, not a change to the geometry, right? Unless you're referring to the geometry change back in '04 or so that removed "nipples" from the torso geometry.|
Originally Posted by Bad_Influence
I am tired of hearing that it is "impossible" to do this or that based on what is in the game now. All they would have to do is create new hand artwork to go with that specific thing: the new claws would also have new hands! One set new male hands, one set new female hands, one set both male and female monstrous hands, one set of huge hands. Done!
And before I hear any squeaking about "OH WE CAN'T DO THAT!" allow me to remind you that we have new female torsos with new, improved cleavage instead of sporting two boxes on one's chest as we did back in the day. However you can only get that new cleavage by using a few NEW torsos. You want it? You use things like the Barbarian female torso, or Witch, to see it. They didnt retrofit every female torso in the game, they just added NEW ONES. So, WHY are new hands with claws so "impossible"?! Or indeed, just some new hands, period? I would really like someone to break it down, and "oh its a lot of work for the art dept." is not going to fly. That's what art departments are FOR: to do artwork. |
Clawed hands/animated beast claws would require either to create a powerset that swaps out your current hands for the set's weapon models or a total rework of hand models and animations. Not impossible at all, but not currently planned AFAIK.
Animated clawed hands and torso textures are not even in the same ballpark as far as work required.
Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
Can we get a "Beast Claws" option? Yes.
Will we get a "Beast Claws" option? Yes.
Will we get it within the next 12 months? Probably not.
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I thought the issue was weapon model choice doesn't effect animations...
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Originally Posted by Schismatrix
*sigh* You do realize the "new female torsos" are just different textures, not a change to the geometry, right? Unless you're referring to the geometry change back in '04 or so that removed "nipples" from the torso geometry.
Clawed hands/animated beast claws would require either to create a powerset that swaps out your current hands for the set's weapon models or a total rework of hand models and animations. Not impossible at all, but not currently planned AFAIK. Animated clawed hands and torso textures are not even in the same ballpark as far as work required. |
Well it has been a year - but I visited the "other" hero games market just to fill some downtime I had - and had a flood of observations.
First off - I've seen a bunch of threads here discussing the future, both near and far, of the Paragon Market - and I believe all things would be quickly revealed if you made a visit over there... both in what the future may hold as well as what might be available next week. There is most definitely some eyes on this thing. Uncanny.
Secondly I have another post here where I mentioned "concept" was a very important part of CoH to me - and my feeling/play-style unsurprisingly had some people taken back a bit. So I was rather shocked to see that in the other market - listed with each power - was an actual section dedicated to and labeled "Concepts" which listed ideas for character concepts that the said power may fit with... no math or strategy mind you... just pure creative. Wow.
Lastly, I couldn't believe that one of the older offerings in their market was "turn into a vampire/werewolf" - not the CoH transformation/ToT costume power mind you - and actual transformation in both looks and powers. Beyond this it also stated more powers are made available on the transformation side as you level. The power is said to be permanent and the toggle is temporary (moon goes away, sun comes up, etc). It included things like flock of bats flight and of course... NATURAL CLAWS. Anyway is it me, or is this a brilliant concept as a whole - on how to bring the reality of cursed (blessed?) lycan/vamps into a gaming world.
I have definitely strayed to them long ago (hey it was free) to see what all the hub-bub was about - and although I was able to flesh out a few more concepts than I currently can in CoH... in the end the graphics started to really annoy me and the play just felt slightly off or cheesy... so I remain a loyal lifer here. Plus I have too much cash tied up in CoH now and most of the cool things I saw over there require cash.
But I think if anyone wants to see just how robust the Paragon Market could become (or what is in the immediate pipeline) a peek over there is probably your best Crystal Ball.
(Tornado Flight!? Aw man why did I have to see that.......)