What Tyche said. The power sets were not designed with specific visual themes in mind. You can read the update in how we went about designing power sets which can work with a broad variety of themes.

Personally:
Fire blast: lethality
Ice blast: Atrohpic blast
Electric blast: Atrophic blast

Yep. Or rather you have to give them a look since they have no standard one afaik.

Lord Nightmare wrote:

I believe they stated at some point that you would have overall cosmetic themes you could apply to powers to ensure they look how you want but it's been a while so I don't know if that's still the case.

For ease of making a character there will be aesthetic themes for powers just like there can be for costumes

Chargen?
I thought you wanted to go with Avatar Builder.
€dit: Wrong thread /shrug

What development teams call their products or modules internally often have nothing to do with how they get branded for public release, often because that public name comes much later in the process. I know at my job, nobody is interested in renaming a bunch of internal wiki spaces or source control repository branches just because the utilitarian and/or techie working titles we've used got changed by Marketing into snappy, two-syllable names that fit neatly under a logo.

Char-Gen? Oh no.. not more Charr!

[img]https://wiki.guildwars.com/images/thumb/a/ae/Charr_ranger.jpg/300px-Charr_ranger.jpg[/img]

Foradain wrote:

We need more Char!

[url=https://www.giantbomb.com/char-aznable/3005-4072/][img]http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/11/116676/1834303-char_aznable.jpg[/img][/url]

[img]http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/678/273/e11.gif[/img]

McJigg wrote:

Does this mean I can take Gravity Control and give it a sword visual? I meant that as a joke but now lifting people up with floating swords sounds fun....

You can give your character a sword prop and use it as a firing point for your gravity powers that are skinned to look like plants...(if we every add animating plant fx) but it is an example.

Mind-Freeze wrote:

oh ok so of the choices we get to pick from you can change them to look like fire ice electric etc ??

To carry this a step further; I can have a rifle that shoots electricity, instead of bullets, like the beam rifle from CoH?

Suhweet sweet nice!

TitansCity wrote:

Is the emanation point a part of the chargen ? I mean, we can choose it in the chargen or it is during the power choice ? It seems the chargen actualy showed on video does not have the power customization nor the emanation point choice

I would guess during power customization since you will (99.99999999999999% certain) do it on a per power basis.

Project_Hero wrote:

Hopefully time saving options will be available as much as possible. Although I like the idea of being able to customize each power individually for simple concepts it'd be nice to have things set to say Blue Lightning emanating from hands to all powers then only have to make slight changes as you go.

Though this raises a question. When we customize our powers will it be like CoX where we customize all our possible primary and secondary powers before getting into the game, or do we customize when we get said power? When we pick up a tertiary power does it just have a default aesthetic till we change it or does it give us the option to change it when we get it?

I'd pretty much assume anything that can be "customized" in this game is going to have to have a "default" setting for anything you didn't want to customize or haven't yet gotten around to customizing. As far as power emanation points go I'd imagine most powers would default to the hands just cause it's simple and probably "makes sense" for most powers regardless.

As far as how we get to customize our powers I hope CoT follows the CoH model of letting us edit all of our power customizations for any of our powersets as soon as possible (and of course any time you'd want after that). The idea of only being able to customize powers once they are officially "unlocked" means that you'd likely have to take time-out to customize these things each time you leveled up. I'd much rather be able to do it all at once whenever I wanted and then when I'm actually playing (perhaps while I'm in a team) I'd have these pre-customized powers ready to go the instant I leveled up.

Project_Hero wrote:

Hopefully we can customize the default setting. Like if I make an eye laser guy being able to set all ranged powers to default to emanating from eyes, then if I pick up a tertiary ranged power set half the work is done for me.

Eh... let's put it this way: I wouldn't be upset if they bothered to give us a way to "choose our default settings" like you're suggesting but I truly doubt many people would ultimately use that feature or that it would actually save anyone that much time regardless. Let's hypothetically say the "default" emanation point for all powers is the hands and you'd rather they be the eyes for ONE specific character you're making. Just spend the 10-20 seconds it might take to click on each of your powers to toggle all the settings to "eyes" and you're done. Let's not have the Devs waste time providing features that relatively few people would actually use - remember most people are likely going to spend the extra time during character creation to uniquely customize each power (assuming they bother to customize at all). Being able to "change the defaults" just seems superfluous at best.

Project_Hero wrote:

Also hopefully in regards to tertiary powers we'll be able to customize them once for free, if we don't get the option to customize them as soon as we unlock the powerset.

How tertiaries will be able to be customized is of interest to me. As it's a whole new set do we get to customize them as soon as we unlock them or would we need to go to a tailor to be able to change them?

One is more preferable to those who just want to get back to the action and the other is preferable to those who want to stick to their theme.

Perhaps it'd be best to have the option to customize it on the spot but if we choose to customize it later we'd get one free customization.

So essentially once a tertiary powerset is unlocked we'd get the option of "Customize" or "Later" the latter option granting us the free power customization next time you customize.

I think that might be the best way to go with it.

I figure once you level up high enough to get tertiary powers the ones you pick will be fully customizable at any time (just like the initial primary and secondary powersets). They'll have default settings just like everything else. I'm not overly worried about how this'll work.

Also you mentioned the idea of worrying about getting various "free" customizations versus having to "pay" for them in some way. Frankly I couldn't care less about such things either way. By the time CoH ended most of my characters had dozens of unused costume change tokens and I still spent maybe hundreds of hours tinkering with their costumes. The key my friend was the Test Server. I did countless costume experiments/changes on the Test Server and once I knew exactly what I wanted I'd make the final -actual- changes back on the live servers ONCE.

For what it's worth do we even know we'll have to "pay" for costume and power customization edits in CoT?

Project_Hero wrote:

I don't think it's known at this time but I feel it's a safe assumption to make. As IGC sinks go changing/creating costumes is a pretty good place to put one.

Edit: in CoH I was constantly tweaking, changing, or making new costumes. Sometimes I'd like something one way but then after seeing it in action change my mind.

I did the same - I made countless tweaks and spent hundreds of millions of INF doing it on probably hundreds of costume slots.

But my point was that I did a huge amount of that on the Test Server where it didn't matter how much INF I wasted. Once I did all my costume "testing" there I'd go back and do the final edits on the live servers ONCE. This is why the actual "cost" for these edits were practically insignificant to me. There's no reason to think we won't be able to do the same thing in CoT.

Huckleberry wrote:

And as far as customizations go, I think being able to customize on the fly would be a good candidate service for the cash shop.

I think it would make sense that the only place to customize your powers is at your training location, whether that is a dojo, temple, firing range, or laboratory. The devs have already said that the workshops we will use to craft our enhancements and refinements will be customizable to match and/or be appropriate for our chosen "origin." [i](Yes I know we won't have origins like CoX did, but we will have a [url=https://cityoftitans.com/comment/113382#comment-113382]customizable crafting animation[/url] so that we can either be using a soldering iron, punching the heavy bag or otherwise performing some action that we the player have determined is lore appropriate for our character)[/i] So it only makes sense that the place you train your new powers would also be customizable. (assuming there will actually be one at all)
Of course, a training location, crafting workbench and costume customizer would make good base items as well.

But then, if you want to change your power or costume aesthetics without having to go back to town or to your base, then you just pay $1 in the cash shop to enable the "ACCEPT" button anywhere, once. (included 1/day for subscribers)

I have no problem with having various money sinks incorporated into various types of costume/power editing options. I'm simply pointing out that the Test Server can be used to keep those expenses down to a reasonable minimum. ;)

Project_Hero wrote:

Having a cash shop item that's a mobile tailor would be a good idea. I don't know if it's better to be a 1 time cost, a cost per use, or buying a pack of them. I just imagine a thing crashing down in front of you then opening up like some high tech wardrobe.

Having to unlock the "ability to do costume editing anywhere" a thing you'd have to pay for from the cash store would be fine but I doubt I would bother with it if it was token-based or a "pay per single use" feature (especially given what I said about using the Test Server earlier).

I'd be perfectly willing to pay say a one-time $20 if it unlocked a "permanent use as many times as you want" thing for your account. Think about it - people who don't care much about costumes would likely never buy this thing regardless (token-based or otherwise) and people who would actually want this would likely want use it often. Why make something like that a "pay real money per use" feature?

Project_Hero wrote:

Perhaps giving everyone the ability to customize anywhere and anytime but it costs significantly more IGC to do so compared to stationary places?

This might be a reasonable compromise for this. *shrugs*

Doctor Tyche wrote:

Lothic wrote:

I have no problem with having various money sinks incorporated into various types of costume/power editing options. I'm simply pointing out that the Test Server can be used to keep those expenses down to a reasonable minimum. ;)

Or run in standalone mode.

Yes of course. Clearly my reference to "the Test Server" applied directly to how CoH worked but you're right that since CoT is being designed so that players can effectively run their own private games in standalone mode there shouldn't be any reason why we couldn't copy our "official server" characters down to our own standalone servers and do any kind of "testing" we'd want to do locally including experimenting with costume options.

Long story short every player should be able to set up their own equivalent of a "Test Server" to do exactly what I was referring to earlier.

Kazander wrote:

Lothic,

Wouldn't we be able to use the stand alone costume creator to play with and tweak costumes save the files then in game up load them? Why else release a costume creator before the game comes out? At least that is how I read Dr Tyche's response. Did I miss an important detail?

Yes that might be possible. But the point about downloading "official server" versions of characters to local standalone game servers might be an important one depending on how MWM plans to handle unlocked account-based costume options. Until we get our hands on the standalone costume creator and understand exactly how it works it's possible the only way we'll be able to play with unlocked items (things like items bought from the in-game store or earned by playing certain missions in the game) would be to have access to our "official server" characters which might not be directly available to the generic standalone costume creator.

Bottomline we need to see how all the pieces work before we assume the standalone costume creator is "all we'd need" to be able to experiment with any costume item we might have unlocked via our game accounts. Remember if the so-called standalone costume creator app has to "log in" to the official servers in order to verify which items you have unlocked then it's not going to technically be an "offline standalone" app.

Kazander wrote:

Thank you. I knew there was something I was missing! That makes sense.

NP. Also while I'm sure the standalone costume creator will be nice to have it probably won't let you take a character out for a "test drive" wearing any of the experimental costume changes you'd be tinkering with. Having a standalone instance of the game server on your local machine (much like CoH's Test Server) would let you do that.

The powers system where you choose a function and a visual to create your powersets sounds really really cool. That's how it works right? it's how it sounds from what I've heard so far.

This is what I’m really excited about. Depending on how robust this is I’m really excited about the prospect of making powers like what I’ve always imagined.

Like an energy blast set that has a spiral, rather than just a jet of light, thin concentrated beams that pierce the opponent. Or other such things.

My imagination runs wild although I doubt something that specific might be available. I’ll be excited by whatever I encounter!

Crimsonomen20 wrote:

I'm curious to see what other mechanics we could put in that are different from the ones already implemented. Thoughts?

At first thought I would say replicating as many sets as possible from CoH when looking at their mechanics "flavor", and of course proliferate the existing ones as much as possible.

ZeeHero wrote:

I was wondering if you can have more than one travel power. At least 2 is a must for most of my character concepts.

Yes, travel powers are a separate progression than combat powers.

ZeeHero wrote:

I was wondering if you can have more than one travel power. At least 2 is a must for most of my character concepts.

Especially in PVP. I remember having a main travel power for my toons like super speed for my stalker, but also TP in case I got stuck or couldn't move. For my Dom, flight was the main travel power but I also had TP as well

Oh, forgot about masteries.

good stuff though :)

What sort of thinks are we calling basic powers? Is this like sprinting, brawling, perhaps one mildly ranged tranquilizer dart and variations of those like COH had? I never really thought of those as powers so much but they did take up slots until something substantial was achieved...

rookslide wrote:

What sort of thinks are we calling basic powers? Is this like sprinting, brawling, perhaps one mildly ranged tranquilizer dart and variations of those like COH had? I never really thought of those as powers so much but they did take up slots until something substantial was achieved...

Everyone gets two basic powers: One melee and one ranged.

This was disclosed in the Kickstarter Update: [url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/missingworldsmedia/the-phoenix-project-city-of-titans/posts/1870792]What We Can Do: Powers (Anniversary Special)[/url]

Quote:

There’s some freebies as you go along - your basic attacks, melee and ranged. Nothing too fancy, but at least you can reach out and touch someone - and hey, it helps with your attack chain. Everyone gets both.

But I'd understand it if you didn't catch that, since their word choice and sentence structure make that utterly unintelligible. I had to Ask Doctor Tyche what that paragraph meant. And here was his response:

Doctor Tyche wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:

...I didn't understand what you were trying to say under the "What: The Extras" heading. Are you just talking about the first basic attacks we get when we start off? If so, how are those "extras?"

The[y] are basic attacks given when starting off. Remember, not everyone will have played CoH, so the idea of an automatically included attack is not a given. Keep in mind that these extras are impacted by your power choice, and themes apply to them. So, your fire belching dragon no longer throws a hypodermic needle or punch.

In other words, we will get a melee attack and a ranged attack right out of the gate. And while we will customize them using one of the aesthetic themes we have chosen for our power sets; they are in addition to, not part of, our power set selection.

No problem. And that's also confirmation we'll be able to make fire-belching dragons!!!

rookslide wrote:

Awesome! Do we have any sort of aesthics list? Do we know how what choices they have firmly selected to have at release? This is a huge question I'm sure but thought I would ask anyway.

I’d love to see at least some sampling of the aesthetics we’ll have at launch, personally. We’ve talked a lot about aesthetic decoupling and have even seen clips of the chargen in action, but I what I’m most excited for is gettin into the aesthetics of powers.

I understand all good things in time, and I can be patient, but I second the question on whether there is a list somewhere of what aesthetics we know we will have at launch. It could be that I missed an update on it somewhere.

So, for instance someone with a support/ranged power set might get minor support side effects, and not as much damage on the melee basic power as someone would with, say, a defense/melee power set?

Honestly I like your ideas even better than what Valiance is doing, but I'm more cautious becuase I don't see as much transparency from this team, different business strategy I guess. But if CoT makes it to launch I'll definitely try it out.

Whats your vision for the overall combat system/feel of combat? you going for a COH style clicker, a Action system or something in between?

By rioting do you mean rooting? also if you choose reticule targeting, does it mean you don't have to tab target at all, and the system will automatically target what you're pointing at?

Check out some examples of powers under the Character section.[/quote]

What if you then need to activate a power on another target? will pointing the reticule at said target un target the first one and prepare to target the next? otherwise it might feel really clunky to use I'm afraid, Champions Online has a system like that, but becuase it doesn't auto de target the first target, after targeting one thing it becomes pointless.

Tannim222 wrote:

ZeeHero wrote:

What if you then need to activate a power on another target? will pointing the reticule at said target un target the first one and prepare to target the next? otherwise it might feel really clunky to use I'm afraid, Champions Online has a system like that, but becuase it doesn't auto de target the first target, after targeting one thing it becomes pointless.

This is different than CO.

Yaaaaaaaay

Tannim222 wrote:

A hybrid system that uses tab targeting as its basis but you can choose to switch to a recticle targeting system as well.

Tannim222 wrote:

Yes, you can aim at the target and there is a soft lock until you activate a power that forces the lock.

[img]https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Py7GuXBnJyg/maxresdefault.jpg[/img]

Champions tended to have to few skills, in that just needing to hit 1 button repeating for best damage, is boring.

Personally, I thought CoH did it best. 4-5 attacks one can string together for non stop attacks (after some stat building) like in CoH is just more fun. While still having some survival skills (like a heal) to push and what not. CoH just did skills the best imo

Brand X wrote:

Champions tended to have to few skills, in that just needing to hit 1 button repeating for best damage, is boring.

Personally, I thought CoH did it best. 4-5 attacks one can string together for non stop attacks (after some stat building) like in CoH is just more fun. While still having some survival skills (like a heal) to push and what not. CoH just did skills the best imo

I had a string of button presses in CO to get best damage, with it I could half the health of a super tank specced character in one blow. Good times.

I’m with you JT. I have no doubts they are bringing a killer game to life but it does sound wildly complex to design even just the aesthetic decoupling let alone all the other systems that have to work together more or less seamlessly... Overwhelming me wee little noggin!

I agree that MWM have put far more on their plate than the average MMO developer can eat when it comes to power effects. Even CoX had only one choice of effect per power. All we players could do was change the colors up a bit.

On the other hand, a ranged single target power is a ranged single target power is a ranged single target power. So aesthetic decoupling will enable MWM to create a common slate of effects and apply the same slate to any and all power sets that have common powers. This could have the unfortunate side effect of an [i]Operator's[/i] control power looking exactly like a [i]Ranger's[/i] blast power looking exactly like a [i]Stalwart's[/i] taunt power. I suppose we'll have to see.

Edit: One way to take advantage of both the commonality aspect of aesthetic decoupling and still have the differentiation of powers based on archetype is to craft each power out of four elements:[list=1]
[*]The power itself. This is the effect we will recognize as the power. A beam, a spray, a bubble, an AoE ground effect, whatever.
[*]Particles. If the power is part of a character's primary set, it should get more particle effects. If it is a secondary, less, and if it is tertiary, it should have minimal partical effects.
[*]Originator Effects. Put a trapping on the originator when the power is activated. This trapping can change depending on the prop and the archetype of the originator.
[*]Destination Effects. A single target ranged damage spell will have a different hit effect than a single target control spell. Add onto that any additional continuing effects that a DoT would have or a mez would have, and the destination effects could be quite varied.
[/list]
So a ranged single target effect could end up looking different enough even with the same exact aesthetic choices, just by being cast by different characters of different archetypes and powers sets.

Project_Hero wrote:

jtpaull wrote:

I am so impatient to see how aesthetic decoupling will work with different power sets. I love the idea, but the scope seems too large for a KS'd group of volunteers. Don't get me wrong, I am not doubting the CoT team, their skill, or anything else...just can't wrap my head around how the effects will look on so many power sets/props. For example, if I create a scrapper with a warhammer as a prop and use electric fx (like Thor), would that look the same no matter which weapon I chose? That seems logical but what about other power sets? Does the 'electric' fx look the same no matter what powerset you choose? I imagine it would have to look different for a blaster, a brawler (no weapon), etc etc. That seems like A LOT of unique animations created and set to different power sets.

Then again, I'm a financial analyst and have little to no understanding of software engineering...or whatever title the people have that create the coding and actual animations. Hmm.

It'd be neat for them to showcase this in a video. Have the same power set, using the same abilities, with different aesthetics to show how varied it can be.

Agreed. I am sure that they will, at some point, before release but it would be great to get a sneak peak soon. But it would be cool to also see, as Huckleberry mentioned, different powersets using the same fx/animations to see how similar/different they will look.

Lothic wrote:

Huckleberry wrote:

So aesthetic decoupling will enable MWM to create a common slate of effects and apply the same slate to any and all power sets that have common powers. This could have the unfortunate side effect of an [i]Operator's[/i] control power looking exactly like a [i]Ranger's[/i] blast power looking exactly like a [i]Stalwart's[/i] taunt power. I suppose we'll have to see.

I suspect a little bit of "animation overlap" like this is likely inevitable. But I think the thing that will save us is having the ability to choose emanation points as much as aesthetic animations.

For example the animation of a guy holding out both hands to fire off an energy blast is likely going to look the same no matter which archetype you're talking about. But the fact that I could choose a one-handed aesthetic for a power while you could choose the two-handed version should be enough to give us the "suspension of disbelief" of more uniqueness than we might actually have.

I just edited my post while you were writing this. Take a look and tell me what you think.

jtpaull wrote:

Lothic wrote:

For example the animation of a guy holding out both hands to fire off an energy blast is likely going to look the same no matter which archetype you're talking about. But the fact that I could choose a one-handed aesthetic for a power while you could choose the two-handed version should be enough to give us the "suspension of disbelief" of more uniqueness than we might actually have.

This is an interesting point that I didn't know CoT was implementing. Is that confirmed? being able to choose emanation point/points? That will add a fair amount of variety...especially if you have enough choices for the emanation point(s). Take a blaster for example...could I choose, for a ranged attacked, to shoot from one hand, two hands, eyes, or from a prop like a gun or staff or wand, etc? And for each power? That is a lot more customized that I originally though...if true.

It has been confirmed. Feet and even forehead is an option.

Huckleberry wrote:

jtpaull wrote:

Lothic wrote:

For example the animation of a guy holding out both hands to fire off an energy blast is likely going to look the same no matter which archetype you're talking about. But the fact that I could choose a one-handed aesthetic for a power while you could choose the two-handed version should be enough to give us the "suspension of disbelief" of more uniqueness than we might actually have.

This is an interesting point that I didn't know CoT was implementing. Is that confirmed? being able to choose emanation point/points? That will add a fair amount of variety...especially if you have enough choices for the emanation point(s). Take a blaster for example...could I choose, for a ranged attacked, to shoot from one hand, two hands, eyes, or from a prop like a gun or staff or wand, etc? And for each power? That is a lot more customized that I originally though...if true.

It has been confirmed. Feet and even forehead is an option.

Phenomenal.