CoH2 already

About facial customization: How often do you really look at a character's face? Sure you'll see it at the selection screen, but during gameplay you're staring at the back of a character's head. And most people seeing your character from the front won't see most face details because they're so small. Customization options like that mostly matter for in game cutscenes, if the game has any.

That, and whenever I play a game with massive facial customization like that, I usually end up ignoring most of the options anyway.

Using that logic then they should do away with all frontal costume customization since all you look at is the back and who gives a rat's patootie what other players see from the front.

/e sarcasmoff

Good for you.
The RP community, on the other hand, like having full customisation options and plenty of choice.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

This only happens when people make stupid suggestions 'backed up' with comments like "It should be easy" or "I can't see why this would take much effort", with as much actual knowledge as someone who has no actual knowledge of anything to do with game making.

I'm no programmer. I took one look at the whole scripting thing in 3D software alone and nearly ran a mile. But I also realise that, hey, this stuff is really damn complicated. And, given the results some small errors in coding have had over the years, anyone claiming "It shouldn't be hard!" is practically proving themselves to be an utter nitwit.




Which is only reinforced when they then try and argue with Arcanaville. You know, the person who even the DEVS defer to from time to time and on an unofficial basis?
Which is the CoH equivalent of challenging Chuck smegging Norris.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

There's no literal limit, just practical limits based on how much resources they have, and how much it would take to accomplish the change, and what the net benefit of that change would be.

Take fingers. Our hands don't have separate articulate fingers. Would it be impossible to add them? Not literally. But you'd need to change the models to add fingers and finger skeletons, and even if you only want to animate them occasionally you still need to change parts of the animation system to account for those new skeletons. Then there are the costume graphical assets like gloves that would all need to be modified. That's a huge amount of work for fingers. At the moment, the devs don't consider it worth the effort, given what else you could add to the game for the same level of effort. You might get several new powersets for the same effort as having fingers.

As long as that kind of equation holds true, certain things will be practical impossibilities even if they are not literal impossibilities.

Sometimes the equation changes. Power customization's equation changed because the estimate for the amount of effort required went down, and the perceived net benefit went up. BaB also spent significant amounts of his time on the changes necessary to make power customization a reality, so having a dev that believes in the change and is in a position to help it along helps. Ultra Mode was funded in part by the resources made available for a boxed expansion which altered the economics of that effort.

Of course not.

There's just a limit to how much they can add without an incredibly huge amount of work.



Long story short, the problem of making significant overhauls to an existing, live, code base is not a new one. It can be done. It's usually impractical, but in the case of an MMO it may be justified simply because you have such huge motivation to avoid splitting things into a new game. And yet, the cost differences are huge.

If you set out to build, from scratch, a game that had all the features of CoH, plus some revisions to allow some cool new stuff, it might cost $N. Converting CoH to allow that new stuff might cost $N*5, or more. And the first $N*4 of it might happen with no user-visible improvements at all if you tried to do it as a single development effort. You might be able to break it down into smaller chunks with visible output... and that might knock you up to $N*10.

But that could be profitable if the game is doing decently and your community is large enough to keep, which IMHO this one is.

It already exists. It is called Champions Online.

Newer graphics and engine? Yes.
Better and more complete customization? Yes.

But that game sucks with gameplay mechanics. You only need 2 or 3 attacks you hit all the time, and gets BORING. Animations are crunky and the characters looks like The Incredibles.
Customization is awesome but CoH is still far better than that other game.

Things would rock for CoH?:
If our characters could move while attacking.
Faster response for powers and movement.
Faster redraw, no animation and activation time for toogles.
More points for costume pieces in the model.
Animated faces, hair and fingers.
More, new and revamped power pools and APPs,PPPs with customization.

But that would be major changes that implies a lot of work and overhaul of the game mechanics and numbers.

I don't know if I agree with CO having better and more complete customization.

CO lacks an X Eyes mask and lacks Large Boots, something I found really dissappointing in their costume creator.

Not to mention, it had some pieces that couldn't be used with other pieces and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why (different fingerless style gloves that worked with one group but not another)

Not sure if this is what you are talking about but you can turn off the cartoony outlining which in my opinion makes the characters look a lot better.

It helps, but they still come off as cartoony.

The rest of it is a deliberate design choice. They went that route because they wanted players to feel like they were stepping into a comic book. Personally I think it makes you feel like your stepping into the funny pages without the funny.

Yes, see, because they started with the goal of "let's put in *everything* the players of CoH have ever asked for!" but forgot to put in the things nobody was aksing for because they were already *in* CoH.

Best. Summation. EVER.

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

QFT!

I recall CoXs baby brother in the beta days. I was even one who thought it might well kill off CoX.Then it went live and that was like the great ED of CoX but on an opening day.

I gave it about a month before I relized I had seen the majority of the content in my first play through, and each alt was a waste of time. I have even gone back there now and then just to see if its growing into a worthy rival. Its not.

Sure it does a few things well, maybe even better then CoX could. But it fails in any real area an MMO needs to compete in. It would of been alot more fun as a solo action game with RPG elements and maybe some kind of online invite your friends to play in small group type console game.

The things id like seeing from COXs baby brother added here would be the semi generic personal housing/lairs options, even more costume slots per character but with abit more reasonable of a pricing option. On CO I picked up something like 16 extra cotume slots for every character on my account for a fairly reasonable price in the early days.

Id like to see that games nemesis system, and a variant asked for even there, called the sidekick system where you could design your own personal partner for when you are solo but want some company.

really its nothing graphical I worry on, to be honest Im an avid RPer and still dont get the obsession other supposed RPers seem to have with animated faces or non mitten hands. It isnt virtual reality and shouldnt need to be for folks using thier imaginations to pretend digital things are real.

If I do an emote saying I have my hand on the bar taping my fingers do I need my fingers animated doing that? not really when ime most people here on COX really appreciate how textual we can be while RPing, giving us an almost Pen and Paper like role play experiance.