I have looked and cannot find a post about this.
In CoH the first power customization we got was different weapons. It was great to now have a shovel or fireaxe as a weapon it always felt a bit shoehorned in to me. Don't get me wrong I loved it....but I just could not get over how the animations and sound did not fit when you changed the weapon to something different.
The devs have already spoken about how the animations will be divorced from power selection but I am wondering if sound will be as well.
Foe example... In CoT hammer animations might have a hard thud sound as opposed to the sharp chunk sound of a blade. What if I want my hammer to make a squeaking sound like a toy hammer. What if I want my dark colored blast to sound like screams from the nether or my sonic blast to sound like Christmas carolers.
In CoH there were a few powers that had a sound linked to it that annoyed me personally....dark armor sounds and the screaming fire blast attack to name a couple. There were entire threads about sounds people didn't like or were annoying (sonic was a big one IIRC). Those threads resulted in the sounds being changed later. If there were multiple sounds to choose from it would limit this kind of complaint and with the devs able to monitor sound selection they could see what types of sounds people like and dislike as a whole (not just those who post on the boards). They could then focus on what the player base likes for future sounds instead of wasting time on those people do not like.
This is most likely a HUGE pipe dream and its doubtful that it would make it into release even if it wasn't. I just think it would be a great idea to have another option for character customization.
An interesting point. Certainly not all animations will require different sound effects (fire is fire, whether it's shooting out of someone's hands, a weapon, or from their pet toad), but some will come off as very odd if they do not have the appropriate effects. If they can take it that step further to also allow us to choose sound different sound effects to go with the appropriate animations, I'm all for it.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
Not trying to be argumentative just clarifying my point.
I was advocating multiple sound effects for each animation for a few reasons.
Enhancing creativity...With the divorcing of animation to power I am saying that sound can be divorced as well. Just using Darth Fezs fire is fire I would argue that someone belching fire from their mouth would have a much different sound than if they used a laser gun. Whats more one laser gun would sound different from the next. What about a clown styled character who would have sounds not appropriate to the animation (A giant handgun that made a tiny pop sound for example). So with that in mind I think it would be nice if we could choose the sound our attacks make as well as the animations. In CoH I had taken dark miasma and used a green coloring to make it more a radiation power than a dark power (not exactly overly creative but I liked it). The coloring alone was enough but if I could have changed sound as well that would have made me very happy. One of the most obvious examples of off putting sounds to me was in Dual blades....you could use sai....sai is not edged nor are they exceptionally pointy....they are a blunt instrument....having the sound of cutting with them always bothered me.
The other reason I thought multiple sounds for each animation was for use in the devs data mining. If the devs are using ultra realistic sound effects carefully recorded for each power and yet the vast majority of players choose a more cartoon sound representation of those powers they would know that spending all that time for realism is not needed in the grand scheme.
As I said...I am pretty sure this is pretty big job and its doubtful it would make into launch even if the devs loved the idea but I think it is a worthwhile enough idea to mention. Heck I could be a serious minority when it comes to wanting this..which would make this idea not even worth the time it took me to type it.
as a rule in gaming players (both yourself and those you are playing with) should have expected behaviors.. "tells" that explain succinctly to them what is happening.
I advocate that the audio effect heard go with the damage type of the power cast. Why? Because even with Aesthetic Decoupling players should know what they're being hit by. The foreground sound could go along with the animation but the background sound should be consistent.
Visually I advocated the same thing. For instance when you're hit by psychic damage you should have Pink dots that radiate from your head. If you're hit with electric damage you have electricity flow through you.
Electricity could look like a beam, could look like a lightning bolt, cold look like a shard and could be colored anything from Violet to Crimson.. so how do YOU know it's electricity? Because of what happens to its target and what it sounds like.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
That is certainly an interesting point. There should be ways to recognize persistence effects of powers easily. Im just not sure that having a set animation or sound effect is the best way to do this. Its too limiting and actual goes against what appears to be the goals of power customization CoT promises.
To explain what I mean by persistant effects (in case I am using the term wrong) is an attack that puts an effect on a player....this can be a DoT, a debuff, a buff or any combination. For example in CoH radiation blast provided a -defence and dark blast had a -accuracy.
Just using an example the devs have given.....the damage type burning...a DoT effect would be the persistant effect. They used a few examples to show what burning might be. Just picking two out of the hat....simple fire and acid....going by the idea the persistant effect animation and sound would be the same, you would have a situation where a fire blast would set a guy on fire and the acid would also set the guy on fire. While that might be a cool idea for some...it is limiting to others.
I would prefer the way to tell persistant effect and damage type be told with icons and color. In essence color code the damage type....say blue for electricity and red for fire. This way the numbers that pop above the head are the color of the damage type. If you have a persistant effect on you like a DoT from a fire source you would gain an icon (like the ones in CoH) that would be consistant with all types of DoT yet be colored red so you know it is fire. With this you get quick and consistant information at a glance that does not limit the players or devs creativity.
This is a fairly common practice in games as well so it would be instantly recognized as the system being used.