COH Concept Gallery

My stance is that the material should fit the theme. If we want a sleek, polished tech set, then it makes sense to use some reflectivity. If we want a grungy, low-rent, 'used' look then obviously we should avoid reflectivity. The reason I like reflectivity is that it gives us another great tool in the toolbox, when previously all we could acheive was matte.

In the end, my hope is that the game will offer lots of great options for both styles.

That's good to hear. And that wasn't a trap, by the way

The reason I expanded on this so much is I just realised we're somewhat short of "square tech" in City of Heroes. It does exist and it's pretty good where it exists, but there isn't too much of it. The game has a lot of smooth lines and elegant curves, but I really wish we had more things like this:



Nerf make the best toys... Anyway, for some reason, that sort of tech just works for me. It's just contemporary enough to "get," yet just futuristic enough to be exciting.

To bring up movies for a while again: I remember watching Star Wars when I was a kid and being really excited about their blaster rifles that shot energy beam snipplets. It was something I hadn't seen and it didn't look like "Earth technology." However, as I grew older and rewatched Aliens for the umpteenth time, I realised that I far, FAR preferred the more contemporary pulse rifles and smartguns which shot real bullets with real propellant. There's something about a mechanical machine with moving parts which shoots physical bodies via mechanical force from chemical reactions which you just can't replicate with fancy technobabble sci-fi. To a large extent, I "get" the machine, which makes it more fascinating, whereas you can't really "get" lightsabres. But on a much more basic level, it's just a machine which looks physical, and that's what makes it so cool. It looks heavy, it looks sturdy, it looks tough.

By contrast, energy weapons like Star Trek's phaser never really connected with me. There's no sense of force, no sense of impact, no sense of power. It quite literally feels like a special effect. This sense of "force" is something that Street Justice got just right recently - the sound, the look, the feel of it. Sure, a fancy super sci-fi ray gun might be able to melt faces with nary a feedback nudge, but a big gun that shoots big bullets and kicks like a mule just "feels" stronger even if it ain't. It does to me, at least.

If you've seen my fascination with big things - big swords, big axes, big muscles, big boots - then that's part of it. Things which are big and chunky, things which look heavy and sturdy, things which seem to have heavy, fast-moving internal parts, things which make big explosions - those are the thing I find aesthetically pleasing, because those are the things that look like they have force behind them. These are the things that look powerful.

That's where all of this comes together. "Square tech" looks sturdy and over-engineered. It looks like it can take a beating and keep on working. Because it's so tough, it looks like it NEEDS to be tough as it's expected to endure a lot of force. Because it looks like it can endure a lot of force, it looks like it can produce a lot of force. This is the sort of thing I really want to see. Big guns, long barrels, fat swords, chunky armour and more

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.

Why?

Wasn't one of the benefits of Freedom supposed to be that it will open it up to single/limited items, such as the fireman's hat? What's wrong with making a new gun all by itself and tossing it out on the market?

Economy, I'd wager.

As players, we want sets to come out all at once, because then we can get all the pieces at once at a discount. Also, we can see a bunch of pieces made with the same mind in the same creative moment together and pick and choose. Rather than getting a Colonial Marine helmet made by Artist A today, and A Colonial Marine Jacket 2 years later made by Artist C that doesn't really match it.

As artists, they can probably much more easily get money and time to work on something that has a lot of flexibility and can be used by npcs as well as heroes in various ways. "I need budget to produce space suits for the the Moonbase Expansion" probably goes over a lot easier than "can I make a giant, chunky, square bubble helmet for Sam Tow? "

Kind of like how a bank is more likely to approve a house loan than a burger loan

Or maybe a nice space themed set to coincide with the once promised space station zone. :P

That would make thematic sense.

I was actually speaking of the game in broad terms, not just costume design in particular. For instance, your original concept art for the "dirty" Praetorian labs tileset was amazing and almost exactly what I was talking about, but it didn't make it in the game. When I say the game can "use more of this," I mean in general. Like, we could have a new zone that's themed like this, or a new instance tileset, or maybe even a new enemy group that like it... Although a new enemy group more or less means a new costume set for us. ... Right?

I would pay for that on the spot. Don't even care what it costs. That Nerf rifle in the pic above? That's out of production, so I ended up having to pay 80 Euro for the thing over e-bay. I'm excited and it hasn't even arrived yet. That's how much I love the look of the thing. That's how excited I am about new weapons. Please, please, PLEASE do this if you ever get a chance. Even just a couple weapons per set would be more than welcome

Actually, you know what? You can EASILY make this a running theme. A weapon set with, like, 10-15 new weapons, all for one set (and other sets which share the same weapons), released a few months apart. You could churn out a whole load of the things. In fact, let's count them:

1. Broadsword/Dual Blades
2. Katana
3. Battle Axe
4. War Mace
5. Claws
6. Dual Pistols/Thugs
7. Assault Rifle/Mercenaries/Robotics/Beam Rifle
8. Archery/Ninja

Am I forgetting anything? Either way, that's eight whole sets you could make, all of them fitting a fairly easy theme Or if you don't want this many, you can do one for manual weapons (swords, axes, bows, etc.) and one for firearms (pistols and rifles).

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Speaking of weapon sets, what could we say current weapon sets lack? Well, without going set-to-set and boring you to death I'll try to summarise.

1. Big weapons. I know Titan Weapons (that's what I forgot!) is coming out soon and that has all the big weapons we could ask for, other sets could still do with a few big pieces. Dual Pistols, specifically, can use something of the size of the Match Compensators, but tintable and less old. Broadsword is relatively good but Battle Axe and Mace could use weapons with longer shafts. Archery could use a few longer longbows and I think we're about due for another long rifle like the Vanguard Redding Rail Rifle.

2. Tech weapons. People make fun of the Tech Sword and "microwave on a stick" tech mace, but I've used both of them personally, and I'd like to see more. A tech axe, more tech swords and maces, too, more tech shields (we have two or three, counting the Vanguard shield) and, more than anything else, more tech guns. Beam Rifle went quite a ways for that, but Assault Rifle and Dual Pistols can use more sci-fi guns. "Square tech" guns, in particular.

3. Energy weapons. Seriously, aside from Vanguard, we have no energy weapons of any kind. We have a single Energy Shield, but that's about it. I'd love to see more swords and axes made of "hard light," and preferably some with actual three dimensions.

That's about all I can think of at the moment, and I apologise for turning this into a request. A weapons pack has me excited

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To prolong this a tad more, I think what you need to shoot for the most is themes we have the least represented. When making a new set, a new zone or a new enemy group, try to figure out what we don't already have and make that. Sure, over-saturating an existing theme gives people more control over the finer details of their characters, but a brand new theme gives people a whole new playing field. Think of the Think Tank and how successful that was, as well as how it stirred people's creativity. It was just one, single piece, and yet it inspired so many incredible costumes. That, to my mind, was an overwhelming success because you guys put in something that was completely different from everything we've had before.

I suppose there's a question here, now that I think about it: When given an equal choice, would you prefer to expand on an existing theme or introduce a brand new one?

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.