A different kind of Enhancement

I'll start off by saying this is simply a conceptual idea that I thought I should share to get feedback on. I realise that it would involve a lot of work by many departments included UI, art/effects and programming, so I don't consider it at all feasible. With that said, here it is:

A lot of times over the years, players have asked about a 7th enhancement slot for powers. The usual response is that it would be an unlikely addition due to balance issues. Besides, since the addition of the Invention system, it's pretty much been established that six is the maximum number of slots we'll be having.

So to fill that tempting little gap at the end of our powers, I present to you... COs - Cosmetic Origin Enhancements!

The basic idea behind these slots would be that you can unlock them on a per-power basis. Most of the currently slottable powers can have a CO slot added. When a CO enhancement is placed in a slot, the power gains a new graphical effect, depending on the enhancement's properties. This would enable us to further customise our characters to fit better into certain themes by combining a variety of new effects.

There would be two broad categories of COs, based on how powers are activated: clicks and toggles.
Clicks would be a short effect that replaces or plays in conjuction with the existing effect of an executed power.
Toggles would act as a kind of secondary aura as long as the toggle power is active, again either replacing or combining with the existing power's effect.
In the case of replacing an effect, it could use the specific power's customised colour options.

Unlocking a CO slot would be a type of end-game inf sink. Level 50s would be able to purchase slots in the range of 100 million inf each (possibly together with another currency). You could also purchase an unlock token that can be used by any level character for ~200 million inf.

The CO enhancements themselves would be craftable from Recipes, either dropped or rewarded. The components to craft them would be similar to current purple recipes, possibly with some Incarnate salvage as well, such as threads. The crafted enhancements would be tradable as any regular crafted IO is.

Examples of CO enhancements could range from basic elemental or other effects (fire, stone, electricity, water, etc.) to more specialised styles (desaturation, blurring, animated texture overlays) and even maybe a few signature hero/villain effects, such as Ghost Widow's holds or Statesman's lightning powers.
Note: COs would not change the combat attributes of powers. Adding a fire effect to e.g. an Assassin's Strike power would not make it deal fire damage.

To prevent confusion, CO effects would not apply in PvP zones.

And finally, a little mock-up of a filled and en empty cosmetic slot in powers:

(I may have made the CO border a tad too extravagant)

As I said, this is more of a conceptual design, so I'm sure there are a ton of technical issues that would prevent it from ever happening. I just thought it would be a cool thing to imagine for the game.

Interesting idea, and I like the idea of having a special enhancement slot as a kind of end-game boost to powers, though the incarnate system is already going into that area with slots like interface and alpha. I also would love to have as many power customization options as possible. However I don't agree with it having the powers/enhancement system affect your appearance at all.

Power customization is great, but its already lot of work for the devs to put in...look how long its taking to get the pool and ancillary powers in there. Why tie that into even more work and introduce a whole slew of possible and strange bugs by suddenly trying to tie them into the powers/enhancement system? If they are going to add more options in, I seriously doubt they would lock them behind some kind of gate when one of this game's strongest points is the customization options for your character.

I don't disagree with you about the potential problems this would bring up. I'm sure messing with something as intrinsic as the Enhancement slot system would cause many headaches. Which is why I mentioned that this was more of a theoretical suggestion rather than something that should seriously be worked on. It would simply be an interesting evolution of the Enhancement system, something that hasn't seen much innovation since Inventions, really.

Regarding the gating of customisation: That already occurs to various degrees for certain options available in the game, including Capes and Auras, extra costume slots, various costume pieces (various NPC-themed weapons, Roman clothing and shields), Astral and Empyrean costumes and aura effects, etc.
I'm of the belief that having a variety of things to unlock or gain access to is one of the ways to make progression fun in the game, and gives players an opportunity to encounter content they wouldn't otherwise look at. How many people would have done Shadow Shard content, for example, if there were no cool unlocks for their swords or axes?

I like this a lot. I'd probably use it. Like previously stated, though, it would take a lot of programming/art/etc... I imagine that the signature character effects would be purple drops...probably with an increased chance to drop from their respective characters.

I may be wrong here, but isn't that gap at the end of the powers a result of widescreen resolutions? As in, people without widescreen monitors would have no place to put those?

I like the idea of increasing customization for powers, but this is too much work and I don't like it being tied into enhancements. I'd rather keep getting new story content then get a major QoL/UI feature like this.

It is really cool though. Maybe one day we can get City of Heroes: Open Source and someone could make it

@Rorn ---- Blue Baron ---- Guardian

New enhancements and stuff around that sound great. Gating some stuff is fine, as you said they do it with other things. More power customization options are always welcome. My main concern would be tying the enhancement system suddenly in with character appearance.

I would rather have them as other costume unlocks now available if they have to gate it and not tie it into the enhancements unnecessarily just to say it is.

Under circumstances would I ever support tying cosmetics to power. Over my dead body. Yes, capes and auras exist, those relics of a time long past, and you may have noticed, both of those are permanently unlockable via the Paragon Market. Badge-locked weapons are, similarly, a horrible idea that just serves to make me not want to touch some of my characters because they don't have the "right" weapon. Just as a random example, no decently large medieval-looking sword exists for Broadsword unless you unlock it, or at least didn't the last time I played my Spirit of Light. Most of those badges can be gamed, like the Rularuu one, so it's not as bad, but Incarnate pieces CANNOT be gamed and, as a result, I've never used a single one of them.

Progression and unlocking stuff is, obviously, a part of the game. That doesn't mean everything should be included. Cosmetics, as far as I'm concerned, should never be locked behind anything. There's no way to grade cosmetics based on what looks better or worse (I happen to feel most of Celestial Armour looks like ***, and yet it's a T9 VIP expensive set), nor is there any way to claim certain concepts should be more penalised than others by having most of their gear locked.

If you want to argue for a new type of enhancement, then fine. I don't want to see it so ridiculously expensive, but I like the basic idea of a "special" slot per power. So long as it doesn't add cosmetics to the game which I simply can't have on the characters that need them, then I have no complaints.

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.

The cosmetic part holds no appeal for me, but the idea of a seventh or even eighth slot does. Ideally it would be tied to continued XP as a reward at certain milestones.

I kinda like the idea, but only if it doesn't push other things that are more desirable back. I can see like add a fire plume to the barrel or guns. But at the end of the day, I think we don't really need it.

At first, I thought it was redundant because that it's probably better to include any cosmetic option in the current power customization.

But at second thought, I found a possibility: what if the CO is made to alter the animation of the foe? There would be categories that at first glance look like the categories of ordinary set IOs, like "hold" and "sleep". But what they actually do is to change the animation of the enemy if it is held or slept by the power. Say you want to replace your ordinary hold with a vomit hold. Or turn your sleep into the "electric melee dance".
I think you should be able to slot any CO in any power, but there will obviously be no effect if you for example put a vomit hold in [brawl]. But you can achieve a desirable effect if you put the vomit hold CO in [Crippling Axe Kick] if you have slotted it with a Gravitational Anchor: Chance for Hold.

/meh.

No more unlocking costumes at 50 without any other recourse. Between Vanguard, Roman, Rularuu sets and a few others, I don't want to have my options limited through some of the best parts of a character- the leveling phase.