Character model revamp?

Hi all, just gotten back into the game after a loooooong break. It all feels fresh now and I love some of the changes that have happened over the years - and of course all the new powers, etc.

I particularly like the new graphics tweaks. Certainly the environment looks much, much better and stands up reasonably well to modern MMOs.

But the character models are looking a bit ropey these days. Low poly counts, boxy faces, etc.

Does anyone know if there are any plans, or any plans have been mooted, for revamping the models?

TIA

They have the occasional "high res" (I suppose) face.

... they tend to look a bit creepy, to some.

Things like fingers and such - no. Since every costume piece related to them (and likely weapons, etc.) would have to be reodone.

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I'd like to see some of the older, uglier costume pieces revamped, but a full revamp would consume inordinate amounts of development time, especially if it involved revamping the player models. If past choices are any indication, the development team prefers making new stuff to redoing old stuff.

The reason I ask is because, having in the interim played many other MMOs, all of which have things to commend them, I've come to realize that CoX is actually one of the best out there. It's well-nigh perfect in so many ways - mainly in that it allows casual players to team up at the drop of a hat. I've come to realize that (strange as it may seem) this is an incredibly rare thing in MMO-land.

But yeah, nothing major ever needs to change in CoH, it could go on forever. But I guess, to keep up with the times, it would be nice to have the character model graphics updated a bit. Again, nothing drastic, more or less like it is, but better (less boxy models, basically). Cozzies/textures are pretty much ok (apart from a few odd low rez textures here and there still), but it's the models themselves that are just looking too low poly.

One of the few other MMOs I actually like a lot, EVE Online, has managed to gradually reinvent itself graphically more than once, and looks absolutely stunning these days. I know an actual game world with lots of real "clutter" in it is a different kettle of fish from a game that's mostly empty space, but still, Paragon have done great work with the game world, and if I had a remaining wish for CoX going forward it would be this, just better models.

David Nakayama brought up the idea of revamping a bunch of old costume parts by replacing their textures with higher resolution versions (while reusing the same geometry) a while back, but for better or worse, the players decided they'd rather have both the "new" and "legacy" options than just the new options. As much as everyone involved liked the idea, it proved to require more development time to adjust the UI than was available at the time, and fell to the wayside.

I've not heard a peep about it since DN was moved over to Paragon's sister project.

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Originally Posted by Blue_Yin_NA ... if I had a remaining wish for CoX going forward it would be this, just better models.

I'm sure if they could wave a magic wand and change one thing, that would be near the top of the developers' list too.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!

i actually wouldnt like the fingers, i kind of like how the hands are done now, make it feel more comic book like/old school game type stuff

idk why but it just doesnt bother me at all lol

There's no point to having fingers if you won't actually animate them separately, so I'm with you there, but this doesn't mean we can't have better definition of fingers than just "black lines on the texture." And it's not like this doesn't exist in the game even now - "Monstrous" gloves already have fingers. Sure, they're still stuck together, but the grooves between the fingers are depicted in 3D and each finger has its own separate finger tip. That's all they'd really need to do. Trouble is, they'd need to do it on every glove model in the game.

With all of that said, I still feel "mittens" are the single most immediately obvious problem with the game's graphics that's likely to impact new players.

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.

Didn't Dink say something along the lines of: "Touching the base models would cause a cascading failure of everything in the game."?

Paraphrasing there, but I distinctly remember that in the art thread.

They just can update textures and pieces, as they are doing now...

As someone with more than a few characters locked in time due to their faces no longer being available I'll say it better not be update but add.

And some of the new faces just look ...wrong. Likely an Uncanny Valley effect, they do look more skin like but it's like dead skin or plastic made to look skin like.

I agree. Organic Armor is the best face. No plastic sheen, the lips are beautiful... I'd love to have this face with eyes that are tintable and without the bone pieces. <3

If they made more such faces, I'd buy a whole pack of them.

Yes, the hands look bad, the older costume pieces are flat and not very exciting, and we still have a few core pieces missing (ankle boots! bracers and Kheldian sashes for Male/Huge!) but I have yet to be able to use a new face since Steampunk came out. *shudder*

The reason everyone likes the Organic Armour face so much is it has about four times the texture resolution of ANY other face in the game, even those newer than it

And I don't disagree that it's great, mind you. To me, "good graphics" have always come down to high-res textures and high-poly models before they come down to any fancy shaders and particle effects. There was an old trailer for the original 1998 Unreal showed a level with extremely high-resolution textures that weren't stretched at all, and an entire small level made up of those. This was back in the day of 64x64 textures stretched and tiled, just a few years past Quake 2, and it looked like a game from the future. That never materialised, of course - it wasn't an actual game - but something this simple made it amazingly more beautiful.

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.

Thank you Samual Tow, you save me the time to explain these things ^_^

The problem with a new character model is that not only would they have to model a new character but likely every other costume option, and even the pieces that wouldn't need to be completely remade (like a belt, for instance) would still likely need to be altered to fit the new body.This would also require new textures. A new body would also most likely require a new rig, a new rig requires new animation, etc. You typically can't just replace a major asset in something like a character model without the side effects of this major change cascading downwards (which somebody mentioned already).

Also, there's the problem of this game becoming "too HD". Some people have lower end computers but can play this game just fine, even with things like Ultra Mode existing. That's because Ultra Mode is optional. A new character model couldn't be an optional feature and would impact the entire playerbase, for better and for worse.

Edit: Basically, a new character model would be immensely time consuming and I just don't think (but I certainly don't know for sure!) that the developer's have the time to implement such a major change.

On removed faces and costume parts...

Why were they removed and would it even be possible to bring them back?