Right, something that I didn't spot a thread for and I feel should be at least discussed. I imagine the coding for it would be a bit more difficult, but it'd allow for certain costume options and player ideas that are different than the usual.
To those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, I'm talking odd replacements for lower body meshes - the classic naga idea, centaurs, driders, things like that. Possibly even a lower body that is basically a cybernetic hovercraft. If This were to happen, I'd still want clothes that could be worn for the lower bodies, though, as a personal thing - for example, a naga in relatively normal clothing, including a skirt for her lower body. The idea of someone with an antigrav platform instead of legs wearing a dress has a nice feel to it too.
The other part of this thread would be the unusual "Additional" body parts. likes like tails, wings, horns, an extra pair of arms, and similar. Both heroes and villains have these things all the time, and CoH had a large number of them to fit that paradigm.
the reason I mention this at all rather than just assuming it can't be done is because the designers have said several times that the limit is less what the tech is able to handle, but what the imagination can support. So every time someone on these forums suggests something the devs haven't thought of yet, it might actually get into the game, even if it's a bit strange. Who knows? Plus, I don't think any other game out there does this.
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".
This thought has been raised (examples [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/body-selections-and-sliders]here[/url], [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/digigradenon-human-legs]here[/url], and [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/new-forms-limbs]here[/url]). As I understand it, there are two hurdles. The most work-intensive hurdle is that such characters would require different skeletons, unless they remained bipedal and any additional appendages, or lack thereof, were merely an illusion. The other hurdle is that such shapes/forms would require their own animation sets (for example, how does someone with no legs, or multiple legs, perform a martial arts kick?).
We may eventually see such things, but they will almost certainly be added after launch.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
simple... some body shapes makes certain powers unusable. It would be logical to bind powers to body shapes (to a certain degree) Like, you can't have a hulk like character and then jump around like for example a gymnast. (of course that would be possible but it would be really redicilous)
Plauge and death... Let that come
NO.
Bad.
Wrong.
Character appearance should have ZERO impact on what your character can DO.
We don't want a game where you have to "equip" a certain kind of "look" before you're allowed to "do" something. That's for every other MMO on the market.
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I just meant that there should be some sort of impact from begin certain shapes. A musculed mountain that is weak as fuck? I understand what you mean though, but maybe like this. In the character creation screen is multiple diiffrent body types (that you later can modify) and each gives SLIGHLTY more of certain stats then others. LIke a huge hulk like body type gives +2 strenght, while one with a nimble body +2 to dexterity. (of coruse I am not fammiliar with their stat system but that could work) then you can modify the bodies too, almost reshape them and such. Would just be a fun thing to add.
Plauge and death... Let that come
Again: what Redlynne said.
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I still don't see the real wrong with that. (of course I may be wrong, I am just curious WHY I am wrong)
Plauge and death... Let that come
I don't want to sound like a twat, I just don't understand the fault of that idea. I myself might be seeing it from the wrong way.
Plauge and death... Let that come
We tend to assume that people here either played or are familiar with City of Heroes. In case you have or are not, be aware that this suggestion, as Redlynne pointed out, runs counter to CoH's approach: appearance had no impact on the character. You could create a character with any appearance you pleased, secure in the knowledge that it would not have any effect on any power sets, abilities, stats, etc. In other words, complete freedom in designing a character's appearance. This was, and is, a [i]huge[/i] factor for CoH players.
This is also essentially a wrinkle on the [url=http://cityoftitans.com/forum/weaknesses-0]weaknesses[/url] idea. Not only does it provide an obvious tool for min-maxing, it becomes difficult to judge when to stop. "My character is all huge and muscle-ly so he should be stronger!" "My character is lithe so he should be faster!" "My character is tiny so he should be harder to hit!" "My character has a costume with armor so he should be harder to hurt!" "My character looks east Asian so he should be better at martial arts!" "My character has a ghost bottom instead of legs so he shouldn't set off mines or be slowed by caltrops!"
As for linking appearance with power sets... Imagine this conversation: "You look like Superman? Sorry, you can't use super strength. You need to look like the Hulk to use super strength."
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Support [url=http://cityoftitans.com/comment/52149#comment-52149]trap clowns[/url] for CoT!
I see... okay xD thanks for clearing it up for me.
Plauge and death... Let that come
It is however, even though as you mention once or twice, impractical....I like the amount of thinking you would need to do in order to create the character that you would desire in relation to how they would appear. I'm intrigued! In COH, the amount of tanks that were soooo tiny and small was very common. My tank was huge, my blaster was sleek, my healer was ickle tiny ,maybe that's just too predictable .... Omg I've just bored myself....byeeeeee x
I used to be indecisive....but now I'm not so sure........
*hopes that she'll be able to be depicted as a cat rather than a -- shudders -- catgirl!*
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A hulking cat with a lower body made of branching, ghostly tentacles that look like they escaped from a fractal arts program.
that would be an awesome villian =3
Plauge and death... Let that come
Wouldn't that be an 'Octopus'.....get it?....'OCTOPUS'....exits stage left.
I used to be indecisive....but now I'm not so sure........
Octopuses on a Train!
...or bin bag :-)
I used to be indecisive....but now I'm not so sure........
Or taking over the world
Plauge and death... Let that come
On the topic of tails, Neverwinter did an interesting little thing with the tails of Tieflings. I've been playing it a little and so far it all looks surprisingly natural - the tail is anchored to the character's rear as per the usual, but with a downward tilt. Then it has its own animations scheme, but it's not static - whenever the character does an extreme move, the tail trails behind their movement, so if you're a rogue doing a dodge roll, the tail will circle around your body fluidly. Check it out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkbuOgKnlZ4
It's not supremely easy to see in the video unfortunately, and I've been unsuccessful in finding one that's better.
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".
I think having "additive" animated parts like wings, tails and capes will be relatively easy for the Unreal Engine 4 to do and we'll likely have at least a few examples of each on Day One. None of those things existed in CoH when it first launched (other than non-moving tails) but the software technology of today is much more advanced beyond where it was when CoH was first being developed.
Having fundamentally "non-humanoid" body shapes (like driders or centaurs) is probably also doable with the Unreal Engine 4 but I suspect those would be things that would appear as updates after launch. The priority for those things simply won't be as high as getting the basic "human" shapes all working as intended.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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On the topic of limiting powers and body shapes...
I may just be playing devil's advocate, but there were *some* limitations on City of Heroes. For example, you could not use dual blades with a shield as I recall. Now, this may not be exactly what Tnecniw was talking about, but it could be possible, instead, to limit certain animations based on power choice and body type.
What I mean here would be like someone choosing "martial arts" and "helicopter propeller instead of legs" might instead be restricted such that they can only choose punch-style animations instead of kicking animations (as we saw was often an option later on in CoX with the custom animations).
I imagine certain character concepts would do just fine using a sword with no arms as a "levitating sword" or some other form of telekinesis. However, if your eye-beam power absolutely HAD to come from your eyes, you could just say that if you choose eye beams, you can't choose the headless costume option...
In this way, it would be sort of the other way around where your *powers* restricted your *costume* or that your costume or powers restrict access to certain animations. But then again, I think many costumes/powers could use whatever animations they wanted, like the levitating sword. Your centaur character could simply kick with the front legs, or new animations could be eventually implemented such as your "spinny kick" power allowing you to donkey kick someone with your hind legs.
I'm of the opinion that the Devs should do absoultely everything in their power to NOT limit any choices based on body types and/or powers, period. It should be up to the player to choose "what looks right" in terms of how their powers work in relation to their costumes/bodies.
Now obviously if it comes to the point where we could actually choose (for example) a "helicopter propeller instead of legs" then certain types of animations (like kicking) might not cleanly apply or look appropriate. But instead of programming the game to prevent that player from choosing specific kick-style animations I'd rather the game try to do the best it can with making the helicopter propeller look like it's kicking even if that particular combination ends up looking dumb.
The main issue here is that if the Devs go out of their way to specifically prevent every single uniquely weird combination of body/costume/animation possible they are just going to be spending a lot of time chasing their tails with that. I'd rather players be able to judge for themselves what looks good and what doesn't as much as reasonably possible. Case in point there were combinations of costume items in CoH that "clipped" each other but in some cases those clippings actually produced cool effects. Same could probably be said for different unexpected body/animation combinations in CoT.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
I think the idea of limiting different animations based on body systems is a bad one. by ad large, the dedicated community that chose to play CoH was all about having fun with the game, and the devs recognized that, which allowed us to have tons of fun. Part of that was the options - Do you recall ever seeing anybody running around in naught but a bikini? Yeah, it happened, but it was incredibly rare because the players who were playing those sorts of characters would get tired of it and go for something else within. The reason, of course, was because it didn't feel appropriate. (obviously there were exceptions, but my point stands)
Players tend to gravitate to what they find appropriate, even if they play with a thing for a while to see how funny it is. The end result is that even if these sorts of problematic interactions between unusual lower bodies and stuff like kicking are capable of being brought to bear by the game engine, the number of people that'll do it if it looks strange or wrong is so miniscule as to be pointless to exclude. Plus, more versatility in that sort of thing can open up interactions between animations and powers that the Devs hadn't forseen, and in the case where it ends up looking good, it's a feature rather than a bug.
Essentially, for reasons both Lothic and I said, there's no reason from a design standpoint to limit things like that, and very little reason from a player perspective.
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".
If someone is ok with their character looking "stupid" that's their business. Customizing your characters appearance is going to be a major selling point of CoT, you don't want to impose any artificial limits on it.
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