I really wish an artist assigned to costuming would occasionally comment here on the forum.
~~ I have no idea how long it takes to make a costume piece.
OK to my point. Gadgeteers. Guys who use gimmicks and will likely have every power using a different firing point.
1) for launch this may be difficult. BUT gadgeteer equipment needs to customizable [u]so it will not look like we all shopped at the same store.[/u]
2) [b]Drones.[/b] These are floating firing point pets. That is their only purpose: to be a firing point.
Firing points can be more than just lasers, forcefields and buffs need firing point love too.
2A) this is where we really need customization. No two should look alike. The basic shapes should be different (round, oval, all sorts of base shapes). wings, fins, antennae, guns, blinking lights, open machinery, even a creepy doll face for the villains.
2B) heres where it might get tricky. Two or more drones. lots of powers, lots of firing points.
~~Again I have no idea how this will task the programmers.
2C) gageteers need not be mechanically inclined. They could have all magical effects, wands, staves, and even a small cloud of fairies floating about them.
3) But the backpacks, extendable arms (firing points...does this mean animation and programming time?), all the accessories that attach to the gadgeteer need to be able to look unique, and not store bought.
4) Masterminds. The devs have already said minions will be customizable. GREAT.
[b]What this all boils down to: customization.[b] dooddads and techno things I can add to existing costume pieces. and additional shapes for things like drones, backpacks.
~~~ and extendable arms that can come out, fire and fold back...
and a question.
since animations will not be tied to a power set, is the gageteer just an animation choice?
will he be an energy projector with a trick arrows secondary? Will an Orbital Strike animation be a choice that any high level Blaster/Ranger can choose? for that matter can I just assign orbital strikes to all my offensive powers and just stand around doing nothing?
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
Obviously it's going to take the Devs of CoT a good, long time to create the many thousands of costume item options and variations we are all looking forward to. No one's expecting CoT to have as many items as CoH provided after 8.5 years of continuous development any time soon.
Having said that one could reasonably assume that by now (as of October 2015) the Devs should have at least a few fundamental items finished for the male and female body model, even if it's limited to something like generic spandex unitards. With all due respect and patience involved I really do hope that we'll start seeing at least a few pics of these initial costumes in the next couple of weeks/months, especially since every vague hint we've gotten from the Devs so far have alluded to getting the initial versions of the standalone Avatar Builder around the first of the year.
Again I don't expect/demand to see hundreds of CoT costumes ready by tomorrow. But seriously as the literal years since the kickstarter have continued to tick by we should be getting close to some initial costume pics. I can only hope we are just mere weeks from those instead of months or more at this point.
Let's just remember that the concepts of a "gadgeteer" and/or the idea of "firing points" that weren't directly connected to the body are completely new for CoT. These things never existed in CoH. With that said I'm not going to assume we'll have extreme amounts of freedom to customize these things, at least at first. It might eventually be cool to have customizable "firing drones" or "backpack guns" but we may have to wait for those things until after launch. As with CoH we may have to just be clever in "simulating" gadeteers with good costume choices and go from there.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Hell - I'd settle for concept art - illustrated on male and female body templates.