Not that you'd be the first to confuse the two. Early editions of AD&D described Monks as "monastic aesthetics". The Murphy's Rules entry was headlined "Grand Master of Flower Arranging". ^_^

The more you say stuff like this, the more I really want to play the game.

Darth Fez wrote:

Will each animation set come with its own names for the various animations/powers or will the game allow for customized names for powers, to avoid dissonance? Otherwise people will have a "Fire Blast" that has no relation to fire or powers will require very generic names. I expect something relatively generic like "Burn Blast" will be necessary so that there will be a common terminology to discuss the various powers, but it would be very cool if it showed as "Acid Belch" on the power tray (and perhaps even in the combat log). Rather like a global and personal name for each power.

Intriguing proposal for an already good idea. I like it although I am not sure what the devs could do about it

Darth Fez wrote:

Will each animation set come with its own names for the various animations/powers or will the game allow for customized names for powers, to avoid dissonance? Otherwise people will have a "Fire Blast" that has no relation to fire or powers will require very generic names. I expect something relatively generic like "Burn Blast" will be necessary so that there will be a common terminology to discuss the various powers, but it would be very cool if it showed as "Acid Belch" on the power tray (and perhaps even in the combat log). Rather like a global and personal name for each power.

There are good reasons why it wouldn't work that way. All the power names run off the power library, so anything meant to provide information would run the library name. I will get back to naming in a moment and move to the next part.

Selecting particle effects may be by name, but it won't change the power information itself. Aesthetic decoupling is true in every sense, what a power looks like does not affect the mechanics, including the name. Taking the "burning blast" power and choosing a fire fx particle fx or a liquid fx won't affect the name of the power. Selecting the emanation point doesn't affect the name of the power either.

So what does this mean for names? Well, there are certain limitations to what can be used for a name, but that doesn't prevent either "generic" or creative names either. Going back to my first point, the power library and name, in order for the name to change with every animation a power would need to have both a Power Name and Power Display Name.
The natural question to ask then is : "If you can do that, then way aren't you?"

The reason is rather simple: so many names such little time.

I will give an example. Let's take a very basic power name like burning blast. Now the following is something that may not be at launch but something possible over time, let's start with emanation points: hands, feet, wrists, shoulders, mouth, eyes, forehead.

Then there are objects: every possible type of hand held weapon from melee to ranged types. Just labeling all these categories would take a couple of paragraphs. Each of these may have their own emanation point. Next objects could be those not held by the character, such as something nearby the character at various heights; like a bird, or a cat; plenty of categories, each with at least one emanation point.

Each location from no weapon to weapons then may call for a different physical animation, and indeed themselves have multiple selections. Take the hand emanation point: open hand, fist, various fighting styles (multiple categories here), and then various poses that may not fall into a fighting style.

Next, particle effects, burning. Blast can have multiple. Examples include but not necessarily limited to: Fire, wind, acid, electricity, lasers, mystic runes that explode, catch fire, electrify, etc...

This one power therefore has multiple categories from which to derive a display name from. Each category, and each subcategory thereof, would require we provide a name so players know what they are looking at, but with so many combinations it wouldn't be feasible to create a massive library of every possible combination and provide a unique, applicable name so each has a distinct power display name for just a single power.

The question has come up in the past about the possibility of the player being able to customize the name of their power set and even power names to both provide a way around the issues surrounding having one power with so many possible power names due to the multitude of options and providing fulfillment of player concepts. Again, while possible, not feasible as it requires a robust filtering system (even beyond character name filters), and opens up the potential of a customer service nightmare in resolving any player reporting issues. Our cs dept will already have to deal with coatume and character name violations, customized power names is more of a complication worth devoting time towards at this juncture.

Ah yes, that perennial problem with custom names should have occurred to me. The easy approach to dealing with that is to limit such customization to the client side, so that everyone else still sees the default "Burning Blast". Not as satisfying[color=red]*[/color] but definitely a step in the right direction.

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[color=red]*[/color] Nor as potentially annoying or irritating, if someone else uses the same for what appears to be a completely different power.

What will be possible for client-side modifications is outside the current scope of design. We are, after all, only at the prototype stage. It would also probably be very limited in what would actually change for the client and what wouldn't because of what is not handed off to the client. Say if a client could change their power tray, but not their Augmentation screen, or new power selection screen, or combat logs and so on.

If the point of the customization is so they player can customize their experience to improve their immersion, but that customization is limited to where they cannot avoid the non-customizable portions, the option has rather failed to achieve the stated goal.

fair points. I should think this was pretty far down the list of launch day deliverables anyway ;-)

[url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/625583]Yes[/url].