It occurs to me as someone who tends to have Far Too Many Characters, it would be nice to have the option to set up group photos with multiple characters -- something that makes sense with a team-oriented genre.
It seems like this would be relatively low-hanging fruit from a development perspective; the main question is whether it would be something a lot of players would jump on in the early stages of the game (i.e. Issue 0) when there may not be a lot to do in-game except character building and running around in the first zone. Seems like this would have a lot of potential to get some buzz about the game going, and showing off the character design features with more than just single shots off the Avatar Builder.
It would need some kind of instance to avoid photobombing issues, but maybe it could just be a simple interior instance with a special attribute that lets you spawn and pose your other PCs, instead of having NPCs present.
My guess as to the requirements:
- some kind of interior instance with one or more simple sets suitable for posing (e.g. basic stage, generic laboratory, rocky cave, etc.)
- a way to spawn other characters of the player in the set
- a way to do simple positioning and poses for the characters (which also requires changing the "active" character); I'm guessing there will be some emotes available that would be suitable
A stretch goal would be able to do it in a group with other players, so that team shots could be set up. But I suspect the technical issues would multiply a bit to support that.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Would be nice to prop the Alts up without photoshop.
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[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
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As far as I'm aware, we actually already have something to this effect confirmed. Specifically, by way of mannequins you can spawn your saved costumes on that can be placed inside your base. Been a very long time since I asked about that, though, so it may have changed in the interim.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
That might do, if the mannequins are posable and full character, including facial features, skin, and skin effects like tattoos. But I wouldn't expect that of base decorations, necessarily.
Anyway, I suspect it will be a while before bases are available -- I was thinking of something that could maybe be done cheaply in the Issue 0 context, and might have some marketing benefit.
Side note: When I mentioned this idea to my spouse, she noted that it's similar to Everquest's startup character viewer, where all your characters were put into a single small set, though without the ability to pose or move them (except the "current" character the set belonged to).
Hmmm... here's another random notion: a "/selfie" chat command: moves the camera viewpoint a couple meters forward from the character, spins it to point at the character's mid-body and takes a screenshot without UI. I'm sure this will be possible manually, but it might be nice to have a shortcut, especially in the early days of Issue 0 where everyone will probably be wanting to show off their shiny new characters in-situ.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Depending on how robust the macro systems are, that might be something you could macro.
If I had to hazard a guess, it might be something like: "/Macro 'Selfie' Set_Camera_Distance 10 Set_Camera_Rotate 180 30 Screenshot_No_UI" to create a clickable macro named Selfie that sets the camera to a specific distance, rotates the camera to your front from slightly above, then takes a no-UI screencap, for example.
As a start on that idea the devs already confirmed there will be a [b]screenshotui[/b] toggle like the old game had/has, but of course everything is subject to change. Hopefully this command will make it through to live.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Just had a thought about this concept. What if we could place a number of Random Mannequins in our bases that would choose random alts that you were not currently playing, so when you were in the base it would be as if your other characters were there waiting to be called to duty? Not department store window mannequins, but models doing some sort of idle emote. Not so much a solution to the original question, but a tangent QoL benefit.
Spurn all ye kindle.
Even better than that, why not have mannequins that can have any costume file attached (assuming costume files are a thing), and even some rudimentary pathing and chatter? Then the RP folks could get really creative with NPCs in their base, like, a teenage hero whose base is her parent's basement and you can just see mom and dad chilling out in the den and occasionally saying parent stuff like "Oh, are you one of Dani's friends? That costume is adorable!" or a sorcerer with a magical lair that has wandering suits of animated armor, or a villain who runs a seedy nightclub with a few frequent customers that ocasionally shoot the breeze and buy drinks, or an android that has a few engineers and scientists wandering their lab/secret base doing research and occasionally arguing about whether the code should use spaces or tabs.
That actually is a super fun idea :) I've been clamoring for base NPCs since the Old Game. It'd really bring the base to life!
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