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It looks like we can give everyone a list of minimum specs for running City of Titans. Please keep in mind that this is 'for now' until we are able to add more graphics and other system refinements. Currently you will need :
Windows 10 or later required; no Intel integrated graphics like UHD, must have AMD or NVIDIA card or discrete chipset with 4Gb or more of VRAM
At least 16GB of main DRAM.
These stats may change as we continue to test.
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So Mids was a GREAT resource for CoH. I think it would be cool if CoT came with an official version of it. It could be in-game, or a stand-alone like Mids, but either way I would be in favor of something like that.
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I would -love- something like that here. Mids was an amazing resource when trying to figure out exactly what in the world you really wanted to do with your character. Not everyone needs or wants to get that in-depth with their power selection design, but for those who do, it would be awesome.
[color=blue]You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
[i]George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)[/i][/color]
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A good thing to possibly float as well is similar to that Eve Online does with their ship fits.
You can import and export ship fits from the game directly... also on top of that, the tools that the community have developed, also do the same. There are websites out there where you can download ship fits and then import them into the game, so you can have a complete library of ship fits available.
Oh, and you can automatically use a fit to equip your ship if you have the modules available as well (which makes it handy to quickly swap fits between a tank/DPS/logistics/e-war setup if need be)
And you can preview the fits as well once you have imported them.
I would love to be able to craft a build in Mids (offline, or at least out-of-game) and then Load that build as a template for my development in the game.
Time to train my next level, what do I want to do? Oh, my template for this character says I need to get XXX next. Or I'm respeccing and I just click 'Load' and the whole template fills in. No need for cross-checking, or stumbling through the interface, just Load it and go. I've already spent the hours of agonizing over slot-placement when I'm Not burning game-time.
Be Well!
Fireheart
Many +1s for this idea!
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...
What kind of hero builder we're gonna be using that will suggest adult content next? Ok, I'll show myself out.
Tecolot
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLO5WNy4pQs] Damage Inc Story Arc [/url]
Heh.. Next thing they 'll be asking for is a Mobile App version of it. ;)
Hey Wait. I would want that! Dohhhh!
I believe, Izzy, that's called a self fulfilling prophesy.
This so much
Issue 0 CoH player barely let my subscription lapse before NC Soft called it quits; my incarnate gear *Sniff*
Global: Chance Jackson; Triumph: Liege Cheetatron X, Fight of Your Life, Down Right Fierce, Infernal Samurai, Time May Change Me etc
How about builds being XML based, so we could design them online on a simple HTML/PHP/MYSQL interface? You could code the bare bones of it (creation, not analysis). We could export them from a build page, import them into the game, export them out of the game, post them on forums for people to analyze, post them over to someone else's website. Once the XML standard had been agreed to (which big integers correspond to which powers and upgrades, or whatever), you could leave it to the community to design the MIDS type analysis engines. Webheads would compete for who would have the richest interface, but it would never be an offline app to download, we could just handle it online.
Thirded! Fourthed? Whatever the number, I'm agreeing with this idea!
While we can't commit to anything yet, but if we don't do it, we will have the hooks to enable a third party to make it happen.
Former Online Community Manager & Forum Moderator
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
I think an official program would be great, but it's even better if third party programs are an option. Not just for a character builder, but for anything else people might want to do. MWM is a bunch of cool folks, but the community can always think of more stuff as well.
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Be fun to have. If there was one in game, would be neat if you could design ya toons leveling choices and then turn on an auto level button. Then it'll just follow the build ya made when you ding. Just long as ya can turn it off at any time and make changes to it.
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Owner and Big Sister of the Justice Girls -Champions Online-City of Titans-
Forum Breaker
Leader of the Ellysyn Dark Ensemble
Personally, I think the best place for the build planner is in the Character Creator (maybe not in the first release, but by the time the game goes live). I like to work out my power build at the same time I'm thinking of the name and costume. I consider build planning to be a core function, and it really should be a part of the game itself.
[size=1]Kickstart Backer # 771[/size]
Come on now, we all know build-planners are cheating ;)
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
And this is why you guys are destined to succeed. Obviously you have fans who will do SO MUCH FOR YOU if you give us the chance. We'll help you lead the game, we'll help you refine it, and obviously we can help with tools and art and many other things as long as you make it possible for us to do so :)
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This summarizes my hopes and dreams for CoT. Check it out if you'd like.
I'm not sure a build planner is a good idea in the character creator. Perhaps as an option, but it shouldn't be visible by default. I can't imagine someone excited about suiting up and kicking butt would be thrilled to see a build planner at the end of that process. Plus it might turn off more casual players to see it, especially if they didn't realize it could be skipped. Plus I found that I preferred to choose powers as I went, and once I had an idea of how a character or archetype played, then I would go to Mids.
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Hmmm... Maybe have an "Easy button", and it turns into a Next Recomended Power selection blinky. ;)
Newb's will LOVE IT! ;D
Wait, were all NEWBS! Ohhh Noes! :O
Really, you have to look no further than the fact that the CoH Devs used Mids' for their own characters in order to realize that a Build Planner is just too fundamental a TOOL to not have in the toolbox for your game. A game that aspires to ANY level of complexity NEEDS to have a Build Planner ... even if it's just a Traits planner for WoW's classes, which was "dirt simple" in comparison to the complexities that went into Mids' Hero Planner. Furthermore, having a Build Planner built in and supported by the game itself "keeps the Devs honest" in terms of just how complex they want to make things on the back end ... because by the time Inventions rolled around in Issue 9, the build planning for CoX was [i]so complex[/i] that you simply couldn't do it with pencil and paper anymore and NEEDED to have an application like Mids' to do it.
Tabula Rasa needed a Build Planner, and got a third party one.
Star Trek Online needs a Build Planner (and has a 3rd party one).
City of Heroes needed a Build Planner, and the community built one.
World of Warcraft needed a Build Planner, and 3rd party sites started hosting them before Blizzard got into the act.
Diablo III needed a Build Planner, and Blizzard provided one on their website for the game.
I detect a pattern here ...
As far as I'm concerned, a Build Planner is just as necessary, and useful, for the long term health of City of Titans and its community as a Costume Editor (and for many of the same reasons). Being able to think about and work on the "structure" of your character's powers without being logged into the game in order to do so is just too powerful of an application (not to mention a "draw" for other potential players who haven't joined the game yet).
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I remember the TR one, as I was one of the first people to use it (or at least a variation of one)
The powers/slots/etc. should be a data string in game. And the game itself should include a "planned ahead" preview sort of screen where you can see what your build might look like at max level. The devs don't need to do anything other than just build-in something which would display a hypothetical build for a character. It could easily be a slight modification of a regular ability respec screen. One which lets you select powers hypothetically to max level, without actually selecting any changes in your character. Think of it as a sneak peek at what you'd be able to do on a test-live server with infinite resources, levels, skills, etc. Or perhaps like in CoX when they introduced the "second build" option, basically just make a 'fake' second build option, which isn't level locked.
Anyway, if it's data-string based, then you could copy&paste it into and out of the game, and into/outof web based builders. The in-game portion of it could be pretty simple, and leave it to 3rd party out-of-game coding to do builders which actually add up your stats/defense/etc. I'm thinking of Viper's Deck Manager mod (the secret world) which allows ability-swapping in that game based on builds you can create & save in-game, or create & save out of game and import in/out of the game, using a simple cut&paste data string. Though I am suggesting Dev's put the in-game component into the game themselves, since I doubt CoT will have significant modding potential, at least at launch. (I only mention viper's mod for the data string aspect of it, it's functionality would be fairly dissimilar otherwise due to differences in the two games).
Basically, rely on 3rd party help, but roll out a red carpet that makes things relatively easy for them to help.
Build Planners are TOOLS ... and every game development in history lives or dies on the QUALITY of its TOOLS.
One of the things that "did in" Tabula Rasa was the fact that the Dev team abandoned making Tools too early in the development cycle, because they HAD TO switch over to making content for the game. That basically crippled their development of content later on down the line. For instance, Tabula Rasa never really developed an internal TOOL to create Missions with ... meaning that every design and implementation of a Mission in Tabula Rasa was a FRUSTRATING affair of dealing directly with codebases and databases that really weren't set up for interacting with humans (let alone writers who weren't programmers!). That meant that they lacked the TOOLS necessary to quickly and easily create and debug content created for the game BY THE DEVELOPERS. They were practically having to "kit bash" every new piece of content they added to the game post launch, because they didn't have GOOD TOOLS that allowed them to do so in a KISS (keep it simple stupid) way.
A Build Planner is just as important a TOOL, not only for the playerbase, but also for the Developers themselves as well. I say that because HOW you set up and "run" a Build Planner also helps define and delineate how you set up some other very important services for your game that EVERYONE is going to expect ... things like Respecs. City of Heroes had one of the *kludgiest* Respec interfaces imaginable, and that due in part to the fact that the game was never really "built" to have a Robust Build Planner TOOL which could then be ported OUT of the game and turned into an App which could be used as a draw for new players and old players alike. Furthermore, because you didn't have a Robust Build Planner TOOL in the game, a whole bunch of other Web Integration Features just simply didn't (and couldn't!) exist ... like being able to go on the company website and look at what your (or somebody else's) Character Build is without being logged into the game. Imagine if people had been able to post links in the forums to web pages on the CoH Website that listed the information about their character, rather than needing to (re)create their character build in Mids' Hero Planner and then needing to post the Hash Code that Mids' produced in order to "communicate" their builds and strategies to other people. Would have made it a LOT easier to play "show and tell" with other people you know when you don't have Mids' sitting on the desktop computer you're sitting at. Heck, nowadays, just being able to "pitch" the game to a newcomer by showing them your character [i]on your phone[/i] thanks to a web page implementation would be a useful selling point for a lot of people!
So yeah ... a Build Planner is in many ways just as important to City of Titans as having a Costume Creator is ... and for many of the same reasons.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Yes, precisely right.
Whether the build planner is a part of the Character Creator or not, we need the functionality. Since this is a community-driven game, there's no reason it should be third-party. Those would-be third-parties can join the team! Integration between the apps will be that much easier.
The Character Creator will be a revenue stream and publicity generator for the game, before the game goes live. The Builder Planner can be both, too.
[size=1]Kickstart Backer # 771[/size]
I'm just a backer, but I'm extremely confident of a few things in this area...
1) the avatar creator will be rolled-out fairly early, particularly if it's under it's own Beta and/or is initially a stand-alone product
2) there will be an "official" or very good unofficial build planner available early during CoT Beta, and
3) there will be a sub-system in-game that will let us completely test any toon, wearing any costume, with any and all of its [enhanced] powers.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/26pBVBG.png[/img]
([i]Currently developing the Sapphire 7 Initiative[/i])
hm, to me, they are definitely of different importance, when it comes to being provided by the game devs. After all, you can't play without designing how your character will appear, but lots (probably most) CoH players happily played without using build planners. And, for my part, spending even a minute doing build planning while I am in-game felt like wasted time to me. That is a big reason -why- I used build planners... so I could spend nongametime (like when I am on the commuter train) to make my gametime more efficient.
I do want the numbers available when I look at powers ingame, though. The approach CoH eventually took for making those available covered that for me nicely. It was also cool that I could just bracket an arbitrary power or item in a chat window to bring up info on a whole range of things.
I personally don't care if CoT provides a build planner or not, so long as they do definitely expose, in a standard defined format, all the data a third-party build planner would need. I am not talking about the settings for an individual character here (yes, there should be an api to allow import and export of that), but about all the data about the powers... what is available to whom and what are the recharge times and effect-per-unit and all that stuff. If the devs do produce a build planner, I would want it to have to use that same data, as well, so they can be sure it is complete enough.
If they expose that information in a format that will make it as easy for third-party planners to be developed, then many flowers get to bloom and we are guaranteed our choice of the best in planners, which is what I want, regardless of whether CoT provides one itself.
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
Heck, even a Tool that would allow the Devs (and Players) to export out what amounts to Red Tomax' City Of Data for analysis, so as to be able to have 3rd parties comb through it looking for flaws/typos/errors/etc. would be a tremendous boon.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I have been thinking about this type of thing for awhile.
What I think would really help is if the game had a "character simulator"... maybe a COT version of ICON from COX. Only, this one would go a step further and allow new or existing characters to build something and test it out in the simulator before actually creating the character, naming it, and playing it, and then having to possibly delete it later when it doesn't work out the way you like. This happened to me many times within minutes of bringing a new alt into the game, it was very time consuming.
So instead, you have something that is almost like the trial zone or tutorial, but can be used at any time. You can dial-in any power or level and see what it looks like before you play the character for 30 levels and decide you hate it. I think it would also be easy to make this piece available as a "stand alone" program that could be run offline to satisfy that need as well. Of course you would have the real stats in there like COX had later on. Want to see what fire blast does at level 50 with full I/O's? Dial it in.
I think it would also be easy to code, because I will bet the DEVs would need a tool like this anyways to create various NPCs.
-Bodai
I'm under the impression that a stand alone character creator is being made, but I'm also under the impression it's for costumes only. I can't imagine it would be the hardest thing in the world to add powers to it as well...
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I would expect the Avatar Builder to eventually include powers, since there will be power customizations to design, as well. It may not be available as early as the rest of it, though.
And, of course, letting you design the cosmetics of your powers is not a build planner. Implicitly making some promises about avatar appearance before the game is released seems less dangerous for them than implicitly making promises about powers and enhancements and effect-per-unit and all that. That digs deeper into balance and gameplay questions (the kind of thing you'd expect to be in flux based on what they see in the alpha and beta) than your costume or the color of your blast does.
Anyway, as long as they conveniently expose the actual data that the build planner will be using (say, in some XML or well-documented binary blob of some sort), I don't have a problem with them producing a planner as well (even if it isn't part of the avatar builder, which will probably have higher graphical requirements than a build planner will need). Having others crawl over that data will be like getting free consulting, if nothing else.
Global: @Second Chances
SG: Fusion Force
"And it's not what I wanted
Oh no, it's not what I planned
See it's not where I thought I'd be
It's just where I am"
throwing my +1 on this and the mobile app idea too.
+1 to all of this. Mids and VirtueVerse were a HUGE part of CoH for many people, and having these tools as actually part of the game would encourage people who wouldn't go looking for them to get more deeply immersed in the game. I think this is a potential enhancement to player retention.
OH!!! Possibly link it to subbing or at least being Premium? I know some people will flame that idea right quick, and maybe it's a bad idea, but it would give an incentive to sub that isn't pay-to-win. But, whether or not it was linked to sub/premium status, just by existing it would pull people further into the game by drawing people into the "meta-games" of buildcrafting and bio-writing who might not have gone looking for it on their own.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
If it is a sub only option, I can guarantee that there will be versions made available for it *whilst the game is in beta testing* for out of game usage.
Yeah. I think a CoT version of Mids available on the website would be the best idea.
I would love it if this were included in the Costume Creator app they are releasing for Android and iOS as a later (purchasable) expansion.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Not even on a website. I tend to like them being on MY computer.. because that means that I am not required to have net access to work on a build. That means that I can use my old desktop that is not on the network to work on builds. Having it "net only" is along similar lines to always on DRM... which I know that people complain about.
Yes, I know that there are a LOT of "WoW character builders" that are online, but when you look at the build complexity of it compared to what CoX was... it was a world of difference. Most (if not all) of them could also work as a form of spreadsheet.
CoX's version as a spreadsheet would have been *horrendous* (although I am sure that someone did a version for themselves... but it would have been a basic version at least.
The longer it takes to build a character from 1 to level cap *theoretically* the better it is (in my mind) to make it offline. That is why Eve Onlines *main* ship builder tools are offline programs (although they do have an online component for updating it with your character stats *at that point in time*).
Build Planna's?....ain't nobody got time fo' dat!
haha. Just kidding. I'll be waiting for one for my tablet.
Sorry, what I meant was downloadable from the website. :)
A thought I had is that it'd be nice if we could input/mark which powers and slots we want to take, and the level at which we want to take them, on our characters. In particular it tended to annoy me somewhat to have to tab out to check on which slot should go where at which level.
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[font=Pristina][size=18][b]Hail Beard![/b][/size][/font]
Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I can see that happening. Eve Online does something similar, where the player built ship fitting tools are able to export the ship fittings in a format that the game can import. This means that there are a few websites out there (Battleclinic is the main one) where you are able to download ship fits for pretty much *every* single ship in the game (some might only have a couple of fits, others will have hundreds of different fits) and then import them into eve online.
Even better is that in Eve Online, you can change ship fits with just a few mouse clicks if you have the items already in your hanger (apart from rigs because once fitted, they cannot be removed). Made it nice and easy for me to swap roles in my ships without having to necessarily have 3 or 4 of the same ship all fitted out differently necessarily.
Id love it if there was the following at some point:
- External Build Designer (ie: Mids)
- In-game Build Designer (ie: Mids but from within the game itself - must allow all Chat windows to be used while in the BD)
- In-game BD to allow saving of build 'profiles'
- Allow all Build Designs (Ext and In-game) to be exported and imported to any account (so I can create a build for my friend to use)
- Allow imported Builds to be used when levelling - along with being able to NOT use the build - such as:
__You have reached Level 25.
__Upon levelling when you select your new powers/slots/etc it shows you all options as standard but highlights the changes based on your "current or loaded" Build Design.
__Click "Change Build Profile" to load a different BD if you want
__Click "Apply Build Design" confirms changes based on the selected BD
__Make any other changes and click "Apply Manual Changes"
Id even like to see eventually down the track an option to compare 2-3 builds. Id see this as comparing the "numbers" only:
________Build1_______Build2_______Build3
Max HP
Regen
End
Def
_DefA
_DefB
_DefC
ToHit
Movement
_Walk
_Fly
_Swim
_Swing
etc
etc
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