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I'm not sure what badges are to care about them, so maybe someone could clear that up? Are they like unlockable achievements? Or a little graphic we can wear on our characters costume? I'm not sure about the terminology here.
Another question that came to mind was this; if we buy something in the cash shop, and later unlock the item we already bought, is there some kind of tangible reward instead of the unlock? Like a few stars, or an xp boost or anything? Maybe it's the badges I've seen mentioned and thus the question was answered from the start, but since I don't quite get what they are in this context, well, I'm s.o.l :)
Thanks.
@Ravrohan, badges are a reward for an achievement. They are not worn on the character, but are instead displayed in a place for them in your chacter's information screen.
Some people, myself included, would also like to see badges displayed in-game in a shadow box or other form of I-Love-Me wall in our personal lair.
Besides a badge, another achievement reward could be a cosmetic item. For characters who don't want to wait for the achievement to get the cosmetic item, they can purchase the item in the cash shop. But purchased items don't come with the achievement or the other rewards associated with the achievement, such as badges.
Each character must still earn each achievement.
I hope this helps
[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.
Just to add to Huckleberry's explanation, here is a description of badges from the old game to which City of Titans is a spiritual successor. We don't know how similar badges will be in CoT, but it seems a reasonable assumption that they will be something like the ones in the old game:
https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Badges
Spurn all ye kindle.
Sounds good. I like that buying cosmetics will be account wide and earning them will be character specific. Kudos
These are my bases:
CoH Base
https://imgur.com/a/HbskR
Citadel Forged With Fire
https://imgur.com/a/9okUuf1
Badgers?! No... wait... misread that...
... carry on. nothing to see here.
Wait until you see the... nope, that would ruin the surprise.
Gotta make you wonder how many costume sets we are looking at upon launch.
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
That might be an interesting bit of trivia but if the Devs were ever going to throw out an "abstract statistic" like that I might rather want to know the rough total number of [b][i]individual[/i][/b] costume items/options we'll have.
Turns out I personally rarely used "complete costume sets" in CoH - sure I might have occasionally used a few "matching" items but most of the time I mixed-n-matched various items from various sets together into workable outfits. Because of this knowing how many "costume sets" we'll have at launch is a relatively useless data point to some of us that never really worked on a "complete costume set" basis.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Also with the compartmentalized customization they've shown in each piece, such as being able to alter certain sections, the looks and feel of an entire piece may be changed just with option and color selection, more so than in any other mmo I've seen. I'm extremely excited about that.
Well, the costume sets would be a good basis, though, because, as Super M points out, you can change colors and make a costume part almost a whole new part. So you could take the "costume sets" and extrapolate from there. The various combinations could be darn near endless! :)
Shocking Blu
One thing I really hated about CoH and Champions was costume sets.
You'd always get items that, for the most part, don't really work with anything but the set. Or a pattern that only the appropriate bottom part lines up with.
Drove me up the wall.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
But then we'd need the average or median number of pieces per set.
Personally if they are going to give us numbers then I would want number of sets, average/median number of pieces per set, and total number of pieces in one go. All those are useful in some way.
Yeah that was more or less my main problem with costume sets as well. They were fine if you wanted to use all the pieces together but their primary weakness was that most of the individual parts of those sets could -not- be used individually. So they tended to be an "all or nothing" affair which in a weird way limited character creativity. You either had to accept a "head-to-toe Dev designed" outfit or not.
True, but at least the "total number of costume items" data point would by definition end up being a big single number which would look impressive for advertisement purposes. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
As long as the items unlock accountwide when bought from the store with $$$ I don't have too much of a problem with this. Per character only unlocks however are a terrible idea for this sort of game.
I've seen many many great costumes which mix sets, the best ones always mix them in creative ways.
Sure there were usually a few parts from each set that were "generic" enough to be used interchangeably.
But I think the point that Project_Hero was making was that there were always other parts of those sets that really could -not- be used with anything other than the complete set they were designed for. That made the overall utility of many of those parts relatively low.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Patterns not lining up perfectly might still be a problem unless they plan ahead for them to. I'm just glad that the current plan, as I understand it, doesn't bake any certain materials into any of the costume pieces making them always never match match even a little.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation."
A major limitation of CoH (at least compared to CoT) was that costume item "textures" were baked into the items and players had zero control over that.
I've mentioned it before but one of the more annoying examples of that back in CoH was the "shiny" spandex outfit parts. CoH provided "basic spandex" parts for every clothing area (tops, pants, bikini bottoms, gloves, masks, boots, etc.) but only provided a "shiny" version of those items for tops and pants. This meant it was impossible for example to make a complete "shiny" leotard type outfit because there were no "shiny bikini bottoms" to match up to the "shiny top".
Now that CoT is allowing players to define the textures they want that kind of problem should not happen here.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
This is a problem I have with DCUO, as well. I'll find a top & bottom that work WONDERFULLY together, from different sets... only to find out that the texture mapping is vastly different. Some [i]sets[/i] even have mismatched texture/shine between pieces, and others only match with pieces in that set. Instead of having "matte, semi-shiny, very shiny," they have about a dozen different variations of shininess that can't be altered or reliably lined up without severely limiting one's costume options. It's maddening.
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[color=blue][b]Unrelated:[/b][/color] Will there be the option (perhaps in the character creator?) to pay to unlock a character-unlocked cosmetic pieces for the entire account? I wouldn't mind being able to earn a costume piece on one character, and then unlock it for the rest by clicking a payment button - and thus skipping the necessity of grinding on every single character for that one piece - once I've gotten the satisfaction of earning the badge & item.
Characters:
* Kestrel
* Zero Break
* All-Star
This idea is an awesome one, and I hope it will be implemented.
Shocking Blu
Since the devs have said that anything in the cash shop is available through gameplay for free, it might be safe to assume that the opposite is also true: that anything unocked in game is also available in the cash shop. I'm sure there will be exceptions for items that absolutely have to be unlocked in-game for lore reasons.
Accordingly, if your character has unlocked something in-game, I would assume you could use the same cash shop menu to purchase that item for the rest of your characters. But where I think your idea has the most merit is in the convenience of making it unlockable from the item itself. So when you unlock the item for the first time or when you're modifying your costume to include it and you are looking at your unlocked piece, you can select right there that you want it unlocked for the rest of your account. That way you don't have to go into your other characters, find the piece among the hundreds of other costume items and then purchase it for your account.
It's a small convenience, but it would probably end up resulting more cash shop purchases because of that.
[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.
As Huckleberry was hinting at the Devs have already told us that "The Plan" is to have everything that is "unlockable" in the game be available for purchase in the in-game store. The key differences are as follows:
If you buy costume item X in the in-game store it will be automatically unlocked for all characters on your account. If you buy such an item this way you will not earn any associated badge for it this way. Otherwise if you unlock item X in game by earning a badge only that single character who earned the badge will have that item unlocked.
So the choice will always be yours and you could do either of these things in any order. For instance if you wanted to actually "earn" an item first by having a character earn the badge for it you could do that and then go to the in-game store to "buy" it so that it's instantly unlocked for all your [i]other[/i] characters.
This system let's you either "pay to have it instantly" or let's you "earn the badge as many times as you want" if badges are important to you. It's really just about the best compromise for this I can think of off-hand. :)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
To be technical they said that every aesthetic option they themselves own will be unlockable both through game play (character level) and through the cash shop (account level), but they also said that for any licensed (third-party) content it will be up to that owner to decide for one or the other, or both methods of unlock.
Also, I'm pretty sure we will have a separate store UI where we can buy these items regardless of if we have unlocked it for that specific character or not, so there should be no need to have to log onto a character that doesn't have a character level unlock just to be able to buy it. That would actually be really bad design if we would only be able to buy costume pieces through the costume creator. Though I must say that the proposed "short cuts" would be convenient so nothing against them per say.
You know, this talk of 3rd-party content makes me wonder if it would be worthwhile to approach Marvel or DC about licensing costume parts; Basically all or most of the revenue from those parts would go straight to Marvel or DC, and it would short-circuit any potential problems that would arise from people making characters that mimic Marvel or DC content; If they're licensing the Wolverine mask or Cyclops eye-piece, they can't really get mad when people make look-alikes. You know people are going to do it anyway, so this might be a way to get ahead of the problem.
~ DariusWolfe
Errant, TNT, Vibrant and Fluxion on Liberty
Why stop there? Follow the TF2 example and have cosmetic tie ins to all sorts of games, shows, comics, movies, you name it. Don't even stop (or start with) other licensed IP stuff either when you can community source stuff. Again, TF2 provides a great example of how this can be handled.
Of course you need a popular game before this sort of thing really starts to matter.
Assuming licensing things directly from big names like Marvel or DC would actually be a good idea for CoT (personally I don't think it would be) do you have any idea how much those companies would charge for the privilege of allowing for such thing? With all due respect to the folks at MWM this game would probably have to have hundreds of thousands of subscribed players BEFORE that would even become a profitable proposition.
CoH existed for 8.5 years without openly allowing anyone to "clone" DC or Marvel characters and things were happy enough that way. If you seriously want to clone a DC or Marvel character (without the threat of having a player report you and a GM 'generic' you) go ahead and play an official DC or Marvel game. Frankly I'm glad there's going to be a game like CoT that will NOT be tied to any preexisting franchise so that I can make my OWN characters, not somebody else's cheesy clones.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Cyclops is more than just his visor, and same with Wolvie's pointy headgear. If I understand correctly, the lawsuit that Marvel brought to CoH set precedent. As long as MWM makes it clear in the EULA that full remakes/copies of copyrighted characters are off limits and they make an active effort to "genericize" such characters that are made and found out, then they should be fine to include costume parts that look like ones seen in various comics, like a generic tech visor covering the eyes, or a couple of sweeping upward points on the side of a mask.
Lothic, what I meant was that if any licensed stuff was going to be used it should be handled similarly to the way community sourced stuff would be: purchases of it get split between MWM and the creator / owner of license.
So MWM would be getting paid for it, otherwise what is the point of having it in the game really?
Community sourced stuff would be ideal since it would encourage a lot more creativity. I totally agree with you, less focus on cloning existing stuff is better.
There is indeed a huge difference between adding "community 3rd party" stuff into the game and trying to license stuff from the likes of DC and/or Marvel. For starters the former is realistically doable by MWM. The latter is just asking for those guys to either try to take MWM over or run them out of business before they even really get started.
As Interdictor reminded us the history of CoH has had a bad run in with the "big names" over stuff like this (i.e. the time Marvel foisted a frivolous lawsuit at CoH more or less just to be dicks). I'd be happy enough for MWM to avoid any IP entanglements with the big companies for any reason.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Good point!
Using actual characters comes with certain liens such that how the characters' are used and represented use must be approved by the owners. I don't see any of the big names being an attractive option for us for that reason. The big names don't need us for their business and so they will be vigilantly intrusive about how we use any of their IP.
On the other hand, smaller independent companies might think of CoT as a means to get their characters into a desirable targeted demographic and would be happy to let MWM use their IP with only a few restrictions. I imagine some would even allow a "good faith" clause such that as long as MWM uses their characters in a way that is in keeping with their established use, we wouldn't have to submit every detail and dialogue for approval.
Then MWM will be able to advertise the presence of the characters while those publishers get the additional exposure. I don't even think money changing hands would even be necessary.
Imagine this: In the costume creation process, you see costume items labelled with the origin character and description. If they are cash shop items, the description could even include the name of the publisher and comic source and maybe even which issues it appeared in if it is a special item. All would be up to the holder of the license to use for their own marketing.
[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.
Genericizing characters has ended up being acceptable practice for quite a while as well. For instance, check out this character from a few episodes of Young Justice
http://youngjustice.wikia.com/wiki/Black_Spider
Wall-crawling, web-slinging, full body suit with a pair of stylized eyes, crouched combat stance, spider theme, spider [i]name[/i], and literally voiced by the same person as the guy who did Peter Parker in Spectacular Spider-man.
The precedent is set VERY strongly that you can get away with blatant ripoffs of characters as long as it's clearly not actually them.
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".
We can speculate about whether or not it'd be a viable move or not; It's just a thought that MWM might find worthwhile to look into.
I also prefer unique characters, but there will always be someone who wants to ape their favorite comic character. If all or most of the profits for the use of such assets goes directly to the copyright holder (similarly to how videos using licensed content on YouTube are monetized to pay the copyright holders, and not the video creator) they might be willing to allow it, and completely circumvent any such lawsuits. Marvel/DC get paid, MWM maybe gets some free exposure, and people can make what they want to make without anyone needing to moderate them. If the major players involved are willing to play ball, it's win-win-win. If they're not, then the policy plays out like described here.
~ DariusWolfe
Errant, TNT, Vibrant and Fluxion on Liberty
Indeed. Just because there is already a Spider-Man does not mean we cannot create spider-themed characters with similar spider-derived powers (agility, webs, wall crawling, etc) in CoT. We just can't make him [I]THE[/I] Peter Parker Spider-Man with a copy of his suit.
I'm not against the idea of people wanting to "ape their favorite comic character" as you put it. I'm just not sure MWM (and by indirection we) need to pay Marvel/DC for the privilege. CoT should not be a "marketing extension" of one of the big name companies and I'd rather MWM not ever be pressured into selling out to one of them.
Look, I'm not dumb enough to think someone isn't going to try to make a Superman or Iron Man clone in CoT. But I'd rather that person have to be clever/creative enough to make a costume "almost" identical with the items provided by CoT rather than MWM have to pay someone else to get the "exact" items necessary for a perfect clone. Paying licensing fees for exact costume items would be as I mentioned before hyper-expensive compared to the relative "no budget" MWM is currently working with.
Case in point: I created a character back in CoH that looked just about as close to the following pic as CoH allowed me to get (which was pretty close):
[img=300x300]http://mariafresa.net/newimages/blonde-clipart-supergirl-16.jpg[/img]
I actually had that character for years and it never once got generic'd by a GM. Want to know how I managed to pull that off? Well first her name was not even remotely close to "Supergirl". Second I certainly did not put an "S" on her chest (I used one of the 'star' options). And thirdly I made her a Ele/Ele/Ele Blaster (which of course was nothing like what Supergirl is in the comic books). I even made it clear in her character bio that she was 100% human and relied totally on tech (hidden in her gloves and boots) for her "super powers".
By being clever enough you can "ape" whatever you want as long as you change enough about a given character to make it "obviously different".
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Well said. And I agree-- don;t give the monstrosities that DC and Marvel have turned into any handle on CoT. They don;t need us, and we SURE don;t need THEM.
Shocking Blu
Truth be told, most concepts can likely be compared to other well known properties. :p
To give people an idea of my own, I say she's a combination of Spider-Woman + X-23 with a splash of Rachel Grey. Basically Agile Regenner with a powerful ability on her side at times.
I don't think people would instantly think it when they see my character, as I make her different enough appearance wise, but power wise. Also, Spider-Man has some pretty generic abilities really, except for the web shooters with a simple (but awesome) name.
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