As much as I love the character creator, I think putting an upper limit on the maximum size of characters may be a good idea, after all the following character (Mobile Mountain), would have to crawl on their hands and knees to enter a building.
of course, could also be interesting to have to fight in buildings on your hands and knees........
If you search the forums a little, you can see we've had a lot of back and forth debate on character sizes.
I've even seen people ask to be able to make their characters the size of small buildings.
Here's a couple good reads;
https://cityoftitans.com/forum/so-just-how-big-could-i-be
https://cityoftitans.com/forum/size-manipulation-powers
[color=red]PR Team, Forum Moderator, Live Response Team[/color]
Still, the OP's point is a valid one. We don't want every interior map to have to be a hangar or a vast cavern -- or worse yet, an oversized version of normal interiors that will make our 6-foot characters look diminutive. It's bad enough that the street citizens in the old game did this to us. lol
Spurn all ye kindle.
Your pic reminded me of a time a few years ago when I worked with this tall guy onboard a MSC ship. This ship was noticeably scaled on the smallish side so that all the rooms, doors and fixtures were geared for people who were say around 5'6". You could definitely see that with some of the low ceilings and things like the shower stalls in the staterooms. The problem was this guy was easily 6'8" and he constantly had to crouch down to avoid hitting things. The poor man was almost like Gandalf trying to move around in Bilbo's house. ;)
That said this game probably ought to limit player characters to about 8 feet tall as far as character creation goes. Even 8 foot tall PCs will run into things but that's probably the best compromise. If the Devs want to give us temporary powers/effects that make us bigger that'd be fine but they'd have to account for how that would work inside buildings accordingly.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
One other thing they [i]could[/i] do is make it so any character over a certain size can not access any map area or instance that has to be accessed via a door. And in the [b]A[/b]vatar [b]B[/b]uilder, throw a warning up that this character is too large and may not be supported in some missions and map areas. In fact, they could even put a wireframe box in the [b]AB[/b] that establishes the maximum [i]compatible[/i] size. As soon as a character's dimensions exceed the box, it turns red and the warning pops up.
Rather than limiting how big a character can actually be, this gives players the agency to build their characters as big as they want but with the acknowledgement that any characters larger than the box will not be supported in most missions and instances.
Doing this will still allow players to make their enormous characters for social gatherings and any open-world content or just to show off. I'm sure some players would appreciate the opportunity and take advantage of it regardless of whether or not they can go inside buildings.
It seems to me, however, that it would be far simpler for the game to just prevent characters created who exceed the [i]compatible[/i] size.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
It's a fairly fascinating idea to allow players to create super-tall characters while at the same time warning them that those characters would not be able to access significant portions of the game based on their size alone. I'd suspect the "pure roleplayers" would love it because it does promote the concept of "limitless freedom" to create as many types of characters as possible. But practically speaking you'd likely have a bunch of players complaining that they should be allowed to level up their 30 foot tall behemoth as equally as any other character.
This seems like it would be the simplest way to deal with this issue. Again I could see where characters might be temporarily "super-sized" by in-game powers/effects. But there should still be a max height that a character could be made in the Avatar Builder that would remain overall "compatible" with the game world.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
While personally I'd prefer Huckleberry's idea, and I'd likely roleplay any such character as going to their Friendly Local Mad Scientist for a shrink soda or something
[url=https://www.egscomics.com/sketchbook/2002-09-22][img=400x600]https://www.egscomics.com/comics/20020922_pH7s.jpg[/img][/url]
to justify changing costume to a smaller size and do the content that way, assuming they can't just use their own magic... ^_^
Anyway, I can see a lot of people who don't have a costume slot to spare, or maybe they just choose to complain. And that's assuming that the programming [i]can[/i] be done to support "check size of avatar before allowing into instance." So we're likely to have to go with "The Avatar Builder will only make characters this tall --->" and roleplay around that.
Foradain, Mage of Phoenix Rising.
[url=https://cityoftitans.com/forum/foradains-character-conclave]Foradain's Character Conclave[/url]
.
Avatar courtesy of [s]Satellite9[/s] [url=https://www.instagram.com/irezoomie/]Irezoomie[/url]
Nice image fu you got going on there for the win, Foradain!
But seriously, [b]if[/b] the game does allow larger than [i]compatible[/i] characters to exist, I think it would be most exceptional if there actually were "Size Matters" brand consumables that would scale a character to [i]compatible[/i] size for a set duration, or the end of an instance, whichever is longer.
I can just imagine the team chat would go something like, "hold on a sec, I need to stop by the shop to get some shrink soda. I'll meet you at the mission door."
(Edit: For anyone reading this forum who hasn't tried out the [b]AB[/b] yet, it is possible to make EXTREMELY tall and/or wide characters by maxing out some of the sliders that are available to us. The range given to us for any single slider is exactly what we want it to be, but when one sets [u]all[/u] the sliders (or just a select few) to their maximum we can end up with [i]incompatible[/i] sized characters. So it is not a function of the scale of the character "size" as much as it is the limits in any particular dimension when put all together. This is why a wireframe box showing the limits of compatible sizes would be highly recommended. I would recommend such a box because it gives the players the agency they need to choose whether to scale their entire character down or just move one slider a bit to the left and maybe play with a few other sliders to get the design they want and still fit.)
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
If you can fit your luggage into the box, then Carry On!
I'm not against the "wireframe box" idea in principle but as Foradain pointed out we're probably going to end up with a game where the code is NOT going to be able "check size of avatar before allowing into instance." That would require height/distance checks with every object in the game environment relative to our character's position and I just don't see that happening.
So while having a "wireframe box" feature might be useful I think we're just going to get what we get with the Avatar Builder and it'll be up to the individual player to judge how much they want their character's head to clip through overhangs/ceilings. The situation will be similiar to how much players want individual costume items to "clip" with each other.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I thought I was being clear when I said the box should be in the Avatar Builder, that implied not in the game world. It would be a simple binary result: You are or are not compatible size for entering the game world.[br]
If you are referring to the discussion about accepting any character size into the game world but limiting their access to content (from post #5) if they are too big, that idea assumed that there would still be only the one binary result checked in the Avatar Builder and flagged on the character (or on that one costume, I suppose). Either that costume is or is not of compatible size with the game world.[br]
I agree with you that having different size restrictions for different content would be a frustrating and disappointing morass for players if they were to discover they can enter some instances but not others.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
If the game is not going to be able to real-time check whether your character is "compatible" (whatever that would actually mean to the Devs) why should the Devs bother to write code to support a "checker box" in the Avatar Builder? That was my point.
Again I think the idea of whether your character's head clips through ceilings is likely going to have be up to what the individual player cares about. If the player thinks it "looks bad" they'll have to re-edit the size of their character in the Avatar Builder. We don't really need an arbitrary checker box for that in the long run because everyone will have their own ideas about what is "too big" for themselves.
I simply think it's going to be too hard for the game code to dynamically "know" whether characters are too big for certain areas. This is why the idea of making the sliders in the Avatar Builder only allow for a fixed "max size/height" is probably the easiest compromise from a design standpoint. But even if they let the max size remain silly-huge for RP purposes it'll still be up to the players to determine how annoying it would be to see things like depicted in the OP's pic above.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
...
I'm at a loss for words. Obviously the mental image I have in my head about how it works is different than the mental image you have in your head.
My mental image goes something like this:
[indent] A player is in the Avatar Builder and gets the warning that their character design is outside the [i]compatible[/i] box and will not be supported by many missions in the game world. The player thinks about it and says "I don't care, I just want to run around the world like a madlad." The player presses the [ACCEPT] button and enters the game world. That character design is flagged in the game with the [i][b]incompatible[/b][/i] tag. Any time the character tries to go into a building through a normal sized door (that includes many mission instances), the game checks for the [i]incompatible[i] tag among all the other tags it checks, such as whether the character is on the correct phase of the mission and whether certain plot points have been checked, and whether cheat algorithms are active and any other checks the game makes before sending characters into an instance. In this case, the player will be given a pop-up that says something like "Your character is too large to enter this instance." The player will obviously be a little disappointed but will either accept his or her fate, switch to an alternate and compatible costume slot, or hop over to the store for a shrink soda.[/indent]
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I'll try again. How are you (or even the Devs for that matter) defining the term "compatible" in this context? What defines being "too large" to enter an instance?
When you answer that question, or at least realize the answer is likely going to be completely arbitrary or relative to a given location, you might better understand what I'm trying to talk about here.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Oh that's simple. It will be a box determined by one of the devs, probably after some play testing. It will have to take into account characters who are so big that players can't see what's going on in combat (that's width as much as height. I'm looking at you, [i]Marble Mountain[/i]). it will also have to take into account that "normal" doors in titan city are probably much larger than doors any one of us would see in the real world. Finally it will have to take into account the default minimum ceiling heights that dungeon designers have as part of their design constraints for world building at Missing Worlds Studio. I'm sure someone will have to end up deciding what the definition of too big is. Until then, we'll just have to trust that they will.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
So if someone's going to determine (by some means arbitrary or otherwise) that there will be a threshold for what's "acceptable" versus what's "too big" why not enshrine that threshold into the Avatar Builder via the slider settings? Again as always I'm playing Devil's Advocate here: You'd need to justify why the Devs should spend more effort to allow for oversized characters AND the extra coding of a box to let players know they've arbitrarily made something too big. I think if someone chooses to make a character twice as big as an average human they'd have to know they would have trouble fitting through the average doorway. Do we need a box in the AB to tell them that?
To reiterate I thought your idea of letting players create "oversized characters" would be an interesting boon for RPers, but it would hardly be practical game design wise. Again if we assume the Devs will decide there's going to be the concept of "being too big" why would they allow any character to be made that way in the first place? If size was strictly controlled by the sliders then there would be no need for the extra coding to create not only a "checker box" but all the additional effort to decide which content is "acceptable" for oversized characters.
Ultimately I feel you're asking for a lot of extra development work for marginal overall benefit. But don't worry - people throw that speed-bump at me all the time and it usually doesn't shut me up either. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I've already stated it once in the [url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/177612#comment-177612]Edit note I made for comment #5 above[/url], but I'll do it again since you asked. The reason we don't put limits on the sliders is because no single slider makes a design [i]incompatible[/i]. If I want to make a character with freakishly long legs but a short body like this guy who hankers for a hunk of cheese:
[img=240x240]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/5c/95/c7/5c95c71a5c87338d081a05ad36013090.jpg[/img]
[br]
or a huge upper body and itty bitty legs like this verby action guy:
[img=240x240]https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c5/fd/a0/c5fda0253436ee6ae388ffa92a1ab09f--schoolhouse-rock-saturday-morning.jpg[/img]
you can and it won't be [i]incompatible[/i]. But if they limit the sliders to reasonable amounts, players won't be able to make such characters. Its only when a bunch of sliders are all used in conjunction with each other that [i]incompatibility[/i] is reached. Would you limit some of them if others are maxed out? Which ones would you limit and by how much? It seems to me that such a calculation and the enforcement methods you would have to implement to enforce into the sliders to dynamically limit them depending on the settings other sliders are set to would be FAR MORE development effort than just checking if the character's total size is too big and leaving it up to the player to determine how to bring it within the limits.
Furthermore, there is still the character scale to discuss. A player could max out all the sliders but reduce the "size" of the character such that it could still be within [i]compatible[/i] limits.[br]
So it seems to me, the only possible way to decide what is or is not too big is to look at the entire character design as a whole. If it exceeds the [i]compatible limit[/i] then the player is notified that the character is too big. If we have a wireframe box set up, then the player will be able to see in how and where the character is too big. Maybe shortening the character would still leave it too wide, for instance. A wireframe box would enable the player to see both its width and its height. But if height is the only dimension we care about, then maybe we can do away with the wireframe box and just give the player a warning that their character is too tall to enter the game.
[p]I like Devil's advocates. They keep us all honest and thinking critically. Let me answer that last question first. Yes. Without Question Yes, the player needs to be informed inside the Avatar Builder before he or she gets into the game. This is a game, after all, and the rules need to be spelled out before people play. It would be unfair and a disservice to any player who makes his or her character only to find out they can't access most of the game after they get in and spend time.[/p][p] As for whether the devs should spend their time and effort to establish checks within the game that limit the access of [i]incompatible[/i] characters... that's up to the devs. Perhaps we could take a poll to see how many people would want to play an [i]incompatibly[/i] sized character to see if it's worth it. Maybe they could recoup this effort by charging real world money (or stars or whatever that currency would be) for consumable shrink sodas. I personally would love to see enormous characters running around the world, street sweeping and taking part in world boss battles and such. On the other hand, their size might be used to grief other players by standing on top of NPCs and such (especially when they get bored with the limited content available to them due to being [i]incompatible[/i]), so it will have to be a decision taken with thought and full knowledge of the repercussions.[/p]
That is the question, isn't it? I think you answered it yourself when you said [b][i]"I thought your idea of letting players create "oversized characters" would be an interesting boon for RPers"[/i][/b] If there is a value to this, what value is that? How does a dev weigh this value in with all the other considerations? I don't know. But then again, why do the devs spend so many resources trying to make the city look realistic? That's only for immersion and RP reasons also, isn't it? Where does one draw the line between what is of sufficient value and what is not? Again, I don't know. That's probably an executive decision.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Stepping into this discussion to note that height is related to other proportions on a model, so an ultimate cap is necessary. Even if a incompatible tag were implemented, people would be disappointed that their character was deformed to fit in an office bulding.
[hr]
[color=red]PR, Forum Moderator[/color]
[url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/desvipers-creative-impulsivity]My Non-Canon Backstories[/url]
Avatar by MikeNovember
Yeah I understand how I might not have made myself clear here. I [b]DO[/b] think being able to create "oversized characters" would be an interesting boon for RPers. But I [b]ALSO[/b] think it's probably impractical and unfortunately I'm not going to expect it to be possible, especially considering how DesViper just responded.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]