Whatever Happened to Golden/Silver Age Costume Parts?

This is partly the comuintys fault. You asked us if we would want revamped old costume parts or new ones. We told you OMG NO DON"T TOUCH THE OLD ONES!

This resulted in the "Keep moving Forward" Mantra we hear from you guys when ever we ask for costume parts we already have. So now that we have clairafyed that what it is we want is in point of fact not in the game, steps can be taken to make it happen.

Captain Den'Rath 53* Merk/Traps MM, Rivona 50Energy Blast/Time Cor,Victoria Von Heilwig 53* Dual Pistols/Traps Cor, Crab Spider Webguard 53* SOA, Accela 53* Bot/FF MM,Valkyrie's Executor 53* Broadsword/Shield Def Scrap. On FREEDOM! @Knight Of Bronze

But ya'll ARE losing sight of the bigger picture. I'm not. I've got nothing but good things to say about what ya'll have produced over the last year, and what you're producing now. Boy, if you only knew. I really do sell your hard work to my friends and super group mates. In my corner of Virtue, I'm often where people learn about new and upcoming features. I'm your website to many people. I have to tell people that I'm not a dev.

Take some time out of your ordinary day for just a moment, and think about what the "bigger picture" means to a super hero comic book reader who plays your game. Then ask yourself if it's truly enough that this portion of your fan base's concerns are being heard but not prioritized in a significant way, beyond honorable mentions within product management meetings. I don't want to argue with you over small points, Zwillinger. I'm not going to quibble with you over the meaning of hyperbole. You know what I'm getting at. It's a big point. It's significant and it means something to me, and I don't believe I'm alone, and I'm being real and honest with you about it.

Sounds like someone DOESN'T want the usual Hero-Grade spandex any more

People bring this up constantly, Zwill, that we want to see this specific type of costume part. As I've posted, it's been such a big issue Noble Savage discussed it with us over the course of two large threads where we brought up loads of various ideas. This was seven months ago that we finally made such a break through.

And yet since then we've seen hardly anything in the way or progress on our ideas. It doesn't help you're coming in here and pretty much saying "Maybe someday." And it's not just a a few of us that are asking for costume pieces along this theme, either. Sure, a small handful of us are more vocal about it than others, but we've both seen so many people show incredible interest in wanting to make Captain Marvel, or Green Arrow, or Green Hornet, but fall flat due to the limitations of our costume creator.

So what do we have to do to actually make you guys legitimately care? Shell out a few hundred bucks on plane tickets and express these ideas at the next Player Summit? Because that's all it took for you guys to make Post Apoc, and we're already seeing progress on that.

All it needs is a small raised area along any of the edges, like real spandex has - the current tights don't have that.

I'd agree that 'unresponsive' is an unfair characterization.

However, expectations were set by the excellent thread and discussion on this topic in the past. That thread, fairly or not, acquired a feeling in line with the pummit costume discussions - for input and seeming attention. There was as much (or more) 'work' accomplished, IMO as an participant and observer as with the pummit items. And consequently and equal level of excitement. So... the sudden absence with no public notice or acknowledgement is disengaging.

I reading your responses they seem a tad defensive, and I'd like to say that I think most of the comments (mine certainly, and hopefully I can gamble and speak for others) are related to those expectations, even if they were misguided, and not an attack against the dev team.

I find WitchTop does wonders as Hero-grade Spandex while still giving a feel of not being painted on

That's one of the reasons I switched from it from Shiney Tights.

Edit: And mind you, I'm still in favor of body hugging costume pieces. Just that I think a little detail can go a long way.

Also, I think just altering current pieces could go a long way, and I think (admittedly not sure) would be easy to put in. Like...

Disco Costume Piece with Skin, but with bikini bottoms instead of the hot shorts, so the bottom can connect to the top tights.

Baggy Sock sandals, but without the baggy socks (love those shoes! Which I didnt always have to have the socks with them).

Bikini bottoms that are Shiney, so they can match the Shiney Tights (Top) Option. Which is another reason I switched from Shiney Tights to WitchTop. I just thought the non shiney bikini bottoms matched up better with the WitchTop better.

Silly I hadn't read all the thread when I wrote that post.

As part of my job, I spend the whole day putting myself in the shoes of the developer AND of the player. Community professionals walk a very thin line of understanding both sides of the spectrum and having to represent the interests of both parties. Heck, I just spent the better part of a meeting discussing this very topic in detail .

As far as the bigger picture, there's two things I have always consider: Sentiment expressed and actual numbers.

Sentiment is easy. I can read a thread and understand the general gist of what's being said and pull out the finer points of what's actually being requested. That simply requires time invested in reading and knowing and understanding the poster.

Numbers are a bit trickier. We report actual number, but we also have to extrapolate from that how representative of the Community those numbers are. This is accomplished in part by knowing your players and how they've interacted not only with you, but also with each other in previous posts.

Here's an example of a thread breakdown we did (by the numbers only...leaving out the qualitative remarks also discounting off topic posts) about the Post Apoc thread:

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Numbers allow us to put things in perspective. How many people are actually posting in the thread? How many people are making up the majority of the conversation? How many people are positive? Neutral? Negative?

Anytime there's an post which is a hot topic for the Community, we usually do a breakdown of this and pass it along to the interested parties along with our evaluation of what the numbers mean. The Community team remains impartial in our analysis, as doing otherwise would skew the numbers one way or another. I imagine that I will request a similar breakdown for this thread, just as I did for the original discussion many months ago.

I get it. I understand that you're passionate about it. The arguments I, and the rest of the OCR team, makes advocating your causes to the development and business team are just a passionate. Just remember that our current development schedule is in no way a reflection that we don't appreciate your enthusiastic requests and that in all likelihood, we agree with it.

HAX!

I refuse to believe GG posted less than 10 times in any thread!

Captain Den'Rath 53* Merk/Traps MM, Rivona 50Energy Blast/Time Cor,Victoria Von Heilwig 53* Dual Pistols/Traps Cor, Crab Spider Webguard 53* SOA, Accela 53* Bot/FF MM,Valkyrie's Executor 53* Broadsword/Shield Def Scrap. On FREEDOM! @Knight Of Bronze

Exactly.


It's like the difference between the Tanker top, and the Tank Top. They're both tops, and they're both suppose to represent cloth or plastic, but the Tanker top is painted on, and the tank top has raised edges where it meets the skin. Also, the tanker top doesn't work well with lighter tones (white being shaded with brown etc.) where the tank top is a solid color.

They did a similar visual trick for Mother Mayhem's top - the geometry of the chest isn't actually changed, but it looks more realistic than the spandex chests available to players.

So are we supposed to just be quiet and hope for the best, then? I didn't see a dev create a thread centered around figuring out the meaning of Cybertech, Chinese Dynasty, Cosmic Corsair, or many of the other sets we've gotten. But in this case we did work so closely with a dev, and so far it's gotten us nothing. And all you've had to tell us is "Guys, calm down. We'll get to it when we get to it."

I'm not putting you, specifically, in the fire here, Zwill. But we'd have more to hold on to than "hope for the best" if there wasn't an actual problem here.

Feelin' a lot of respect for you after reading your response, and I owe you a lot more credit than I've given you here, Zwillinger.

I'd be lying if I said this erased all disappointment over learning that more (and long-requested) super hero parts aren't on the schedule at all. I am disappointed over this news because my personality and characteristics are exactly what City of Heroes marketing tugged on to get me into this game. I'm a super hero comic book fan. I want more of THAT. NONE OF THAT is currently on your schedule. There is only ONE WAY to erase your community's disappointment over this.

I know you're busy and I'll stop posting after this, but there is something that concerns me about your data collection. When I think about my City of Heroes friends who never even come to the forums (almost all of them), friends who spend money on the game and have preferences and opinions that are never heard and collected and analyzed, it bothers me knowing that you don't have access to any of that data. And that's your true-blue fan base, Zwillinger, that's where they're at. Playing the game.

So here's a suggestion: an opt-in program allowing its participants to fill out occasional polls from within the game itself, using the same pop-ups ya'll use to give us news about current issues. Give players the ability to opt in at its launch or any time in the future through their Options menu. If you framed it in the right way, I'm sure many of the players would really love to participate and proof of their wishes would be in the pudding with all the charts and graphs you'd get out of it.

Sure, they can just whip up some code on that.

Better yet, tell your friends that if they want to be heard, they should give feedback on the forums.

Er...That's one way to put it...

A lot of these people don't WANT to be on the forums, Rosa. Believe me, I've gotten some feedback regarding that. In a perfect world, what you're saying makes perfect sense. But in actuality, this will just continue to be a source of feedback that is missing from data collection and analysis.

And, Rosa, I don't, and never would suspect the team could just whip up code on that. It would be a lot of work to get their hands on a lot of data. This is the kind of reply that makes me just turn off the forums. I'm in the position of either ignoring you, or arguing with you over semantics and split hairs. I'm the kind of person who genuinely enjoys listening to people and considering what they have to say--so I hate having to choose between options like that.

We know this and understand it. I take this into account every time we give one of these reports.

The fora represent a segment of the population, and a very narrow one at that (I've posted the numbers before so I won't rehash that). We recognize that it's a representation of the population at large and temper our evaluation of the feedback accordingly.

I know it would require coding but I think the shear amount of feedback the devs would get from this would be MORE than worth it.

The one thing I would have to say is that Free accounts would not... could not count. VIP and Premium only for many reasons.

But /signed so very much. Please Zwill pass this idea on.

Captain Den'Rath 53* Merk/Traps MM, Rivona 50Energy Blast/Time Cor,Victoria Von Heilwig 53* Dual Pistols/Traps Cor, Crab Spider Webguard 53* SOA, Accela 53* Bot/FF MM,Valkyrie's Executor 53* Broadsword/Shield Def Scrap. On FREEDOM! @Knight Of Bronze

We're the 1% - you must serve our every whim.