So the post of http://cityoftitans.com/forum/small-request got me to thinking, not just about the fly, or power sets but all animations. In Second life I used to make animations for avatars. I often made custom sitting animations for chairs and walking on al 4's animation for a feral avatar. I made two dances and those were a pain (never again) and a few just standing around looking full of myself kid of poses.
Is there any good, practical, and obvious reason why we couldn't have just as varied AO's in CoT? That heavy weight boxer that has an AO like a 5 year old cause he's got drain bamage. The villain who looks over his shoulders every 20 seconds. Not just looking like a bad ass or a shady ninja but acting like one too, visibly. I talking your everyday animations not powers or flight or anything like that. If I /sit I want to have both legs in front of me knees bent towards my left side and my left hand supporting me on the ground while my right rests on the hilt of my weapon. Relaxed, but distrusting. When I just back it should be lithe, and elegant. When a ninja jumps back he might want to do a back flip.
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.
If you've had experience with creating animations for Second Life then I think you pretty much ought to know the answer to why your "player created animation" idea would likely -not- be allowed in CoT for multiple reasons, not the least of which would be to preserve the "Teen" rating of this game. Even if you disregarded the possibility of players trying to implement anything of a socially questionable/unacceptable nature there would always be the possibility that someone would figure out some animation sequence(s) that might actually exploit how the game mechanics themselves work thus allowing them to have unfair advantages in either PvE and/or PvP.
Perhaps the only way I see something like this happening is if the CoT Devs allowed players to submit their custom animation work for review before it was uploaded to the game at large. The major difference between the Second Life environment and something like this MMO is the very fact that this is a structured MMO that has to work equally well for all players. Being able to go so far as to allow player submitted animations could upset that balance, especially if they were somehow allowed without overall Dev supervision.
So even though I actually agree with you that it would be very nice if CoT could have the degree of "freedoms" Second Life allows it would likely be so logistically cumbersome and time consuming for the Devs to approve/police everything being submitted to the game that it would be impractical. I think we should be happy that the Devs have met us "half-way" with the ability to submit custom costume/weapon ideas like they did for the Kickstarter - if they allow more of that after launch then at least that's much better for us than what CoH managed to do for us customization-wise.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Valid points all of them. This leads me to wonder two angles.
1> How much would someone pay for the Non Combat Animation Pack: Ninja, or Non Combat Animation Pack: School Girl. Want just the Walk Run and Back up Animations from it cause you want the School girl pack for the Sit jump forward and standing still animations. Mix and match. Like the Sitting and Flexing animations from Non Combat Animation Pack: Paladin, mix those in then.
So the question becomes how many an hours to make these animation packs. How popular will they be. Based on that what is a fair price. Yet before those questions can be asked the better one is. Does MWM even want to think about offering something like that.
2> A public, PvP disabled, studio. A place you can test your animations and others's creations. Have 2 scales 1-10 for Lame to Awesome and another Offensive Yes/No. A person never knows who's animation they are seeing to avoid bias. When something receives enough total votes then if it passes a threshold it is either placed in a que for Devs to look at. If down rated enough or generally offensive it is silently hidden in the studio tool for anyone but the creator. Having to many submissions get to poor of a rating will reduce your chances of someone seeing your submissions in the future.
Maybe these are both bad ideas. Still I'd like to not just walk, sit, and stand, like everyone else. I'm sure someone with a hunched back concept would like it if their back would hunch a little :)
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.
I don't think what you're talking about are "bad ideas". But I do think there's always going to be a big difference between "do whatever you want" environment like Second Life and a structured MMO like CoT's going to be. While it might be possible that they could come up with "animation packs" like your Ninja or School Girl examples I suspect we'll never be able to mix-n-match specific animations from multiple packs the same way you could mix-n-match costume items for different body parts. Instead they'll be packaged together as complete tested sets that would only be able to work with specific powers and/or powersets.
We may get lots of different emotes and what they might call "stance styles" for non-combat motion. But again I doubt we'll have the ability to pick unique animations for things like "left turn" or "forward jump". That level of detail just doesn't seem likely/practical again given the multiple possibilities of exploits, naughtiness and cost versus benefit concerns.
Ultimately these things mostly boil down to can the Devs deliver things which are relatively easy to develop and/or would have the greatest appeal to the most players. Unfortunately I think Second Life style animation flexibility for a MMO is likely still far off in the future of some other game.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I wish I couldn't agree with your points so readily but we'll never get it if we don't make it known we want it. I guess I could always ask how much for a custom animation set later on. I doubt they'd do it or that it'd be a price I'd easily swallow but if you never ask, you never know.
The line between knowing and understanding is often blurred.
Cute Kitsune the Anti Villain of Phoenix Rising.
I have more fervor then empathy, I still like you.~Me to a friend
It applies here too, I'm passionate not hostile.
For the record, I'm all for exploiting players for content. :) It seems to me that if the devs were to spend some resources putting together user-friendly "Studios" or down-loadable software, and some simple instructions, lots of folks would pour their time and effort into it. Then, after some vetting process, it could be somehow added to regular content, or sold in cash stores. Heck, give the submitter some kind of spendable credit for it, even.
Yeah, I know that it means having an actual person review all this stuff, but that person doesn't have to be a highly-skilled programmer, just a responsible adult that can judge quality and appropriateness. I've got to think that even if you paid that person, the amount of free content generated by the fan-base would more than make up for it.
Missions, Costume pieces, animations, all of it. Fresh, free content that would just keep coming. All this on top of what is created by the "Official" MWM team? This would be something that would keep getting attention over the life of the game and keep creative people joining the community.
Heck, so far as I can tell, that's all Second Life WAS! There was no content or story, just what the player community created. And it worked. For a while. And look at games like Everquest Next and Minecraft. This whole industry is leaning more and more towards user-created content being the main focus.