So, an idea occurred to me that I think bears some merit, based on the momentum system the devs are already planning on putting into the game. There's two parts to this idea that are related, but are a difference between cosmetic and mechanical.
On the mechanical side of things, we have the idea of powers getting more powerful as momentum builds, right? This is a given in a game that manipulates momentum, as it's meant to show your character pushing their limits and getting the adrenaline pumping. I feel like there should be the option of a... well, a momentum deficit, as it were, with a comparatively large momentum surplus. This'd be a power that's deliberately underpowered when used at low momentum, but becomes increasingly powerful as you get closer to max momentum. this'll probably make more sense when I get to the cosmetic side of this idea. This could even be that there's a power that
Now, I can think of a few characters that actively transform based on their "momentum". The first, and most iconic one, is The Hulk. The angry green giant, gets bigger as he gets angrier, lending more weight to his strikes, more toughness to his defenses, and so on. This is classic. Another few characters that do this are less iconic, but serve well as examples - Lung, in the Web Serial Worm, is a super that, as the fight carries on, his regenerative powers get stronger, his body is covered in more and more scales, his strength increases, and his pyrokinesis starts working better. Get him big enough and he'll even grow wings. Without a fight going on, though, he's basically just a really tall human that heals a little faster than normal. Dante from the Devil May Cry series can activate a form called "Devil Trigger" mode when he builds up enough energy, suddenly transforming into a badass devil to lay a lot more hurt on his enemies, improving the efficacy of his various attacks. Similar to the Dante example, players in Titanfall when they build up enough points can call in a titan to go stomping around murdering people. I'm not sure how you justify that from an RP standpoint, but it works.
A change like this is something we entirely lacked in City of Heroes or any other sort of super-hero game to date, but the Momentum system and the absolutely massive range of customization we're looking at suggests that we'd be able to work it in if the framework for the idea is added early enough on in development.
Imagine this. You've got a hero who does his thing as a werewolf brawler. At 0% momentum, he's got no additional traits that suggest he's anything but a basic human - perhaps he has some hand wraps, baggy jeans, and he's wearing a stretchy tanktop that nonetheless shows off his muscles. Mechanically, he's deliberately underpowered; he's just a dude that punches stuff. He's not even super strong, and he doesn't necessarily have any great martial arts training. As his momentum builds, though, a few things happen - He gets a bit larger, likely stretching his clothes a bit. A hunch in his back forms, fur starts to grow. His hands form into claws, his face changes into a muzzle, and as he hits 100% he's fully a werewolf, and he's keeping up with, if not surpassing, various other supers on his level. A supernatural level of strength and toughness, perhaps with some regeneration. Cosmetically, his movements would likely change from punches and kicks to clawing and biting, perhaps a "pounce" power becomes available. This'd phase out as his momentum depletes, until he's back to his underpowered normal self.
It's an idea, and having the momentum system in place could potentially give us the chance to utilize it to the fullest, as it's not something available in basically any other MMO. Even if not mechanically, I'd love the option of "hulking out" cosmetically as momentum builds. It also occurs to me that if people could designate, say, a transformation ability to be only available past a certain momentum threshold, you could have a final fantasy style one-winged angel boss fight. where he suddenly reveals his "True form".
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".
I welcome the idea of powers that become more powerful with momentum. However, I'm not really crazy about appearances that would change automatically with momentum. Aside from hypothetical implementation issues, it seems like a means of tying appearance to combat performance which is something that City of Titans is actively trying to avoid.
For characters who "hulk out" in appearance, I would rather see players trigger this transformation themselves using costumes and macros. Such a transformation wouldn't be gradual, and it would require manual action to activate, but this seems like the most straightforward and flexible way to handle it. After all, every player's needs will vary, and I'd rather we work with the tools we're given to express our characters instead of asking the devs to programmatically account for uncommon traits.
I'm not saying it's necessarily automatic, but that it could theoretically be set up that way, as far as the appearance differences go. It could lend another side to customization. Probably a pipe dream, but I figured while I was reaching, I may as well throw it out there. Besides, with what I described above, it'd be perfectly fine and potentially easier to not even worry about a "hulked out" look, and just always be your standard costumed self.
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".
YES! ALL OF THIS YES!
...
So long as we can choose the transformation form or if we transform at all.
I like the idea as well. With It being Optional not mandatory.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
From one side, if it were done with macros, we could feasibly be allowed to have player costume switching macros active. Scripts that basically triggered the moment we hit a certain momentum, though I see this being annoying to those who like the gradual transformations and would therefore have to make various forms, to macro int at stages they chose to have as their character script macros. Just an idea.
I like the other option as well though, that would let us change a toggle to not put particles on but different costume pieces, even changing them in different stages, adding glow, etc. I don't see this as any harder than handling a whole bunch of blinking, flashing, strobing and writhing particles. It wouldn't happen TOO often since if you had something that pumped you up to max momentum by force for a pinch, it just puts you at the best point in your transformation set.
We've kind of been told between the lines though that there's not too much solid yet that we know, lots of intent and testing, lots of hope and a few ground work things are good, or maybe I'm not understanding it. I also wonder about how augmentations may be able to effect this.
Obviously, I too want to be able to charge into battle and beat stuff up, then press a button with enough momentum and transform and start blending the mobs into paste. Eventually it would be nice is the build allowed for accumulate power to improve another toggle, or something. There's a lot that could be done and because of it, I don't have any idea how they could impliment it, since so many are quite specific and took a lot of effort to design that game to do that thing. It was their thing. Kind of like Parkour in assassins creed.
Still wanna be able to run and skate up walls.
Its an interesting Idea. And a transformation set would perfectly fit this idea. There is no reason it could not fall in with all the other power sets and the optional appearance that the devs promise. Just as a burning blast set could be acid, fire ect the transformation could have options for size increase, monstering out, an increasing glow aura, flame that changes from normal orange flame to white hot, shadows that swirl about the character, fur, magic runes, sweat dripping, veins popping, blurry attacks, louder smashes or even the attacks themselves could just change in animation as your momentum builds....from weak jabs to crazy haymakers for example.
This doesn't even have to be limited to just melee sets....blast or buff/debuff sets can have it too. Maybe it doesn't even have to be a specific set. It could be a optional secondary power customization anyone can make use of when they build momentum....heck sell this secondary customization in the store....its purely cosmetic so its not pay to win and fits in perfectly with MwM's store plans.
Fantastic idea Halae
Looking at this, I imagined a Powerset animation that ramped up the 'glow', based on Momentum. So the Samurai Kid with his blessed katana might start out with an edge-glow, step up to a blade-glow, then add a glow-trail followed by glow-trail X2, and culminating in a complete overwrite of the sword blade with 'sword of light' graphics. Or something similar with Energy Melee, with a progressive ramp-up in glows until you have full 'Pom-poms of Doom'.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I honestly never liked the pom poms of doom, would have much prefered a skin-hugging field of energy around the person punching. I kind of imagined it like solid light or someone using their Ki in the Iron Shirt sort of style, Iron Fist, I guess? I loved playing martial artists, but the ability to use something that'sNOT martial arts and make it look like it, would be fun... Melee is melee, timing of the animation should be the main determiner for whether you can use a specific animation.
Would be cool of we had execution enhancements that made attacks go faster, which could let us change the animation to something else because it's even faster. Like going from slashes to rapidly poking someone, like Asuna from SAO
Maybe they could give us a very structured "cosmetic effect scripting" GUI as an optional (stressing the word 'optional') feature for power customization.
It could work like this: for powers that have a momentum aspect let's assume they work on a scale from 0 to 100, 0 being at rest and 100 being fully ramped-up. Perhaps at every 20% threshold (so at 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%) you could predefine a specific aura and/or costume change associated with it. This way as you use the power you could say make your arms glow brighter or change other aura/costume items at each 20% threshold and these changes would ramp-up (or down) automatically as the momentum value changes. Something like this would likely be a good compromise between player desire and engineering realities.
This could also be an answer to the often-suggested idea of "battle damage" - another related GUI could let us change aura/costume appearance based on the similar predefined thresholds of 80% HPs, 60% HPs, 40% HPs, 20% HPs and 0 HPs.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
If this happens, I will need a lot of costume- slots...
Other things that might work with that would be the option 'only shown on full (three quarter, half, quarter...) momentum' for certain costume pieces like auras or additional weapon effects.
0-40: (baseline) Form 1
41-70: Form 2
71-90: Form 3
91-100: Form 4
So instead of a stairstep of +25 each, you're looking for more of a ramp of +40 then +30 then +20 then +10. Also gives you a bit of "leeway" on the top end such that you don't have to sit EXACTLY at 100 (continuously) in order to reach the final form.
Probably the best way to handle this, game mechanically, would be through use of a Click To BOOST! system where once you've achieved enough Momentum to pass a certain threshold, you just Click the power and "increment" your way up through the forms by +1 On Command. If your Momentum level falls below a particular Form's minimum threshold, then you automatically revert down by -1 Form without needing to do anything.
Note that such a system could very easily, and somewhat effectively, be used as a sort of Active Fury game mechanic, rather than the sort of Passive Fury that City of Heroes offered. The difference being that an Active Fury mechanic would require the positive engagement of the Player to make use of, as opposed to the Passive Fury that built a bar up from zero and never required anything other than "doing stuff to fill the bar" in order to benefit.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
In a perfect world, players would have granular control over how and when transformation occurs. As it stands, many in this thread have already suggested a variety of thresholds and increments. As I said in my post above, every player's needs will be different, and I don't think that any hard-coded system could account for it all.
This kind of thing is more like a "policy" of sorts---a set of rules---that each player has their own vision of. I think this is a perfect use case for a client-side scripting API that would allow each player to implement their own personal rules based on their individual needs.
For example, <BillNye>consider the following</BillNye>.
[code]
/*
* characterLogin.js
*
* Code in this file runs when a player enters the game with a character.
*/
// Capture a reference to the player's current character
var character = GAME.getPlayerCharacter();
// Add some code to run when Wolfman's momentum changes
if(character.getName() == 'Wolfman')
{
character.addEventListener('momentumchange',function(level)
{
// Get references to the character's costumes
var cc = character.getCostume(),
t1 = character.getCostume('transformation1'),
t2 = character.getCostume('transformation2'),
t3 = character.getCostume('transformation3'),
t4 = character.getCostume('transformation4');
// Trigger transformations at thresholds of 25, 50, and 75 momentum
if(level < 25 && cc != t1)
character.setCostume(t1);
else if(level >= 25 && level < 50 && cc != t2)
character.setCostume(t2);
else if(level >= 50 && level < 75 && cc != t3)
character.setCostume(t3);
else if(level >= 75 && cc != t4)
character.setCostume(t4);
});
}
[/code]
This pseudo-JavaScript code would run on the client as something the player would implement. It would trigger transformations based on your character's current momentum level. Again, this could be different for every player. Such a system would be very flexible as it would allow players to define their own transformation rules.
Also, you'll note that I used separate costumes in this example. The right API could give us access to the costumes themselves to be able to alter them on the fly. It would just be a matter of what the devs would be willing and able to grant us control over.
Of course, this is all my opinion of how it should be handled. I would rather see the devs spend time on implementing client-side scripting as opposed to feature-specific logic. Scripting would enable myriad other features such as "battle damage" that Lothic suggested and countless other schemata. It would also open the door for add-ons, and players could rely on each other for things like this rather than petitioning the devs for new features.
I know it's a stretch and probably seems like overkill, but a programmer can dream, can't he? :)
I think as long as the general populace of players weren't the ones rooting around in the scripting, this could work. We'd likely need a secondary UI - maybe a partner program or addon to make sense of it so we don't have to - to evade that particular issue. Because what you just typed up there, I can understand some it. I can even understand most of it, and extrapolate the points I can't. but there's no way I'd be able to copy it, or write my own. I'd much rather leave that to a... costume manager program, as it were, with something like that as the underlying scripting.
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".
I understand that most players aren't programmers, and it wouldn't be fair to expect everyone to be able to hammer out code like that. A UI to manage the rules would be helpful, but even more helpful would be a place in the forums where players could request certain features which us programmers could help with. An entire player community would likely grow around writing add-ons and shareable snippets of code, and I think many players would be eager to help with things like this.
What I mean to say is that if we had client-side scripting, useful features like this would naturally follow, created by the players, for the players, based on the players' wants and needs. It would be a beautiful thing.
You know, World of Warcraft has that. Hell, they've had it since the games's inception, as far as I'm aware, and I found it extremely difficult to play without while I played the game. Take a look at Curse.com if you want to see the amazingly extensive number of things people have come up with to make the Blizzard UI a bit better.
And yet, for some weird reason, almost no other MMO in the world does something like that. There's an entire community of these people, like the Skyrim modding community, and they bring a huge amount to the table. Perhaps it's a thing to consider, but it feels like we're deviating from the initial topic. Maybe this discussion deserves its own thread?
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".
I'm very familiar with WoW add-ons. When I used to play, I had redesigned my entire UI using Bartender, kgpanels, DoTimers, and a number of other popular add-ons. Add-ons really are a fantastic asset to the game.
But you're right, this is getting way off topic. Sorry about that. I'll create another thread for this.
hmm... Things are moving slowly towards Node Based programming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYJxsaeHVJU
Although I don't play Dcuo, and if I remember right, useing a certain buffs a certain number of times would transform you. An example would be the ice powerset. After stacking the "Ice Armor" buff a few times your hero turns into an ice giant. The same thing happens with the fire power set, but I don't know about the others.
Just wanted to toss this out their.
If you want to be a hero, wear the mask and live by the (optional) cape.
I really like the idea of customizing the UI with scripting, but then I'm a programmer too. Also, kudos to Plexius for choosing a widely underrated scripting language.
Before I read that, though, I came up with another idea for this, inspired by the sheer difference between the various peacebringer/warshade forms not only in appearance but in ability, so I figured I might as well throw it out there for people to reject.
You could implement transformations like these by having transformation powers that instantly switch out your toon for an alt, which essentially gives the transformation its own power sets, enhancements and level, and indeed its own costume and effects. In CoX terms it's not so different from logging out and bringing a different toon in (something I remember people doing a lot back in the day when things got rough), except that it's much quicker than going back to the login screen, selecting a toon, soliciting a re-invite and finding your way back to the team. Though if you do this you'd probably want the ability to keep the original toon's name while the transformation is in effect. And you'd probably want some kind of hybrid form that uses the inventory of the original toon etc. Perhaps something more similar to the alternate build in CoX, but with more customizability?
Tranformation powers could require a significant cooldown period, or perhaps some tie-in with the momentum system to prevent excessive use (aka. abuse). Also, from a technical viewpoint, perhaps the game might need to preload the costume, power animations and whatnot on all players' game clients, so they can all see it instantly after the transformation power is used. Though I imagine the overhead of loading these things shouldn't be too different from what happens when a new toon is transfered into the zone or instance, or when a toon switches costumes.
Momentum based transformation powers are something we talked about when discussing momentum-tied effects. While it's something we want to do, none of our current sets are slated to utilize it. There is simply too much that is not nailed down to plan around it just yet and I suspect not likely for some time post launch. Not to mention the sticky part of the character creation UI and providing distinction between a transformation's normal animation and its momentum based, transformed animation. It would require an additional layer to the power customization settings we aren't prepared to include yet,
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- Combat Mechanic -
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I think that's basically a "Yeah, we'd love to have this, but I don't think it's gonna be a launch feature" aye? I can live with that.
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".
Worrying about multiple momentum based ANIMATIONS may in fact be fairly complicated and I wouldn't expect to see such things on Day One.
But I think the alternative many of us here have been talking about involves linking specific costume/aura switches to various uses of powers. It's obviously debatable what the thresholds could be to control when these switches are made, but at the core of it would be just a relatively simple automation of when a character switches between one of several player-defined costume changes based on the amount of power usage (e.g. a 0 to 100 Fury-like scale). It would seem that something along those lines would represent a realistic "baby step" towards the more grandiose far-future idea you seem to be talking about.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily want momentum transformations to change the way the character played. Or even new animations, although I can see how some characters/players would benefit from it.
One of my favorite characters was possessed by a Forgotten Deity of Retribution. When I started a session he'd be in his original, mostly human, costume, but if I was teaming, as we went from mission to mission, he'd get bigger and spikier and his cape would get more tattered. :) I'd love it when a teammate would play along and eventually ask "Um...are you alright? You look...different." Used all my slots for the changes +1 for his civilian costume as a police detective. If the game gave me a tool that made this easier, awesome.
Depending on the role, this could be a great idea!
I generally think cosmetic changes should be completely player controlled but having macros in-game to trigger switching (or even just player made add-ons) would be great!
Crowd Control Enthusiast