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Visual effect for costume damage?

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Wolfgang8565
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Visual effect for costume damage?

So I got this idea after looking at the material thread, but I feel like it would never happen which is why it is in this topic and not in the suggestion thread but I think it would be awesome if as you are taking damage, your costume visually shows tears, rips, scorch marks etc?

Just think about it, by the end of the boss fight, or mission, everyone's hair is all messed up, scorch marks on costumes, skin, tattered ripped clothing. The clothes wouldn't remain that way, once you go to the hospital your costume is as good as new. Or maybe even as you get healed the costume "heals" as well.

I know the amount of work to pull this off is much greater than what its worth, but I thought it would be something neat to see visually in the game rather than just a health bar.

What do you guys think?

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Works for a movie, not so

Works for a movie, not so much for a game where you spend so much time making your costume. I'd personally prefer an alternate costume slot that you automatically change to when you reach a certain level of health, over pre rendered battle damage. I don't want my robot to show human skin when he gets hit by a fireball... it's just weird...

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

Wolfgang8565
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notears wrote:
notears wrote:

Works for a movie, not so much for a game where you spend so much time making your costume. I'd personally prefer an alternate costume slot that you automatically change to when you reach a certain level of health, over pre rendered battle damage. I don't want my robot to show human skin when he gets hit by a fireball... it's just weird...

I mean, obviously on your robot it would just be scuff marks and smudges and stuff, maybe sparks. And the costume would reset once you are fully healed. This would also be optional.

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notears
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well aslong as it's optional

well aslong as it's optional and my costume reverts to normal as soon as I reach full health then I'm good :]

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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Yeah if its healthbased I

Yeah if its healthbased I have no issue, it would be cool if robots sparked at low health and such

As foolish as this seems,

Gotem.

From ya boy, Elios.

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It's funny (at least to me)

It's funny (at least to me) but this topic has been hotly debated on the old CoH forums at least several different times over the years. I think it's even come up on this forum as well.

While I'm generally in favor of the "idea" of automatic costume damage it seems it would be pretty hard to implement in practice. One big thing is the point notears brought up about what kind of damage graphics would be appropriate for each character. Between robots parts vs. living flesh you'd have radically different types of "damage" to display. Also the type of damage should affect what you see (i.e. bullets should make holes, flames should make burn marks, etc.) Then you have to decide how the appearance of the damage "evolves" from full health to 0 HP. Would it somehow be gradual or would you switch it at certain damage thresholds (like at 80%, 60%, 40% and 20% HP)? Then you have the perhaps unexpected problem of quickly transitioning between different levels of damage. Each of these transitions would be like quickly swapping out entire costumes and we already know CoH had a full 30 second costume change timer. If CoT needs a similar timer then the costumes might not be able to keep in sync with the quickly changing damage levels.

With all this one can see there are actually quite a few hurdles to making "costume damage" work in an automated fashion. I suspect the only reasonable alternative will be having multiple "damaged" costume slots premade for the character and just have the player manually switch them back and forth for roleplay purposes.

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Lin Chiao Feng
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Frankly, I'd be opposed to

Frankly, I'd be opposed to any "automatic" system, because players are going to be creative, and it's going to break on them (i.e. do something they don't want, that looks stupid, and/or degrades game performance), and they will be Pissed Off.

Pure speculation this point forward...

If there ever were a "costume degradation" system, I imagine it would basically be an extension to the Avatar Builder, where you set the changes to your base avatar for each damage level. Number of damage levels, amount of damage, all TBD, might be player-specified. Also, definitely Not At Launch.

There's all kinds of cool things you could do with this:

  • costume gets torn up (as mentioned already)
  • smoke starts pouring out of your bot
  • parts look like they're falling off as you move or get hit
  • skin or suit colors change (the reactor, she's going to blow!)
  • facial expression changes
  • blinking warning light illuminates

(Limited, of course, by what you can make in the AB; no idea about auras or blinking lights.)

Implementation wise, it increases the amount of data sent to your client when your client has to render a given avatar: when you change costumes, log in, someone else spawns in, someone else enters visual range, etc. We'd send the whole avatar dump over to your client, and your client would be responsible for rendering the right version depending on the PC's current HP. Hope you've got plenty of graphics RAM.

And, of course, it'd be easy to put a "show damaged avatars" checkbox in the options so we don't reduce lower-spec systems to City of Powerpoint.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

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We already have a subsystem

We already have a subsystem in place to use as hooks for allowing players to see textured "decals" of damage on a target. It isn't about the player deciding what their costume looks like damage, it is about the attacker's powers and how they affect textures.

There are some technical hurdles and other work required for which we don't have time for which is why this is not going to be in at launch. Just know, we have thought about it.


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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Frankly, I'd be opposed to any "automatic" system, because players are going to be creative, and it's going to break on them (i.e. do something they don't want, that looks stupid, and/or degrades game performance), and they will be Pissed Off.

This is probably the top #1 concern about this - player customization. Such a system would seriously need to be so flexible (to account for all the different character concepts and damage types) it'd be hard to imagine the Devs ever being able to give players all the options they'd need to make this work well. Even as some kind of post-launch update it be hard to imagine it being done in anything but a semi-generic "one-size-fits-all" kind of way. You'd almost have to give players the ability to create their own customized "damaged" costume items that would be unique to them.

Again I like the general "idea" of costume damage... I just don't see it happening effectively in -any- game anytime soon.

Tannim222 wrote:

We already have a subsystem in place to use as hooks for allowing players to see textured "decals" of damage on a target. It isn't about the player deciding what their costume looks like damage, it is about the attacker's powers and how they affect textures.
There are some technical hurdles and other work required for which we don't have time for which is why this is not going to be in at launch. Just know, we have thought about it.

The decal idea might end up being "better than nothing" but addressing this issue just from the "damage type" point of view might look weird depending on if a player's character is made of flesh, metal or some kind of energy (or anything in-between). Just saying if an attacker is using bullets the effect of that might look different depending on if the target is Batman versus Casper the Ghost.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Frankly, I'd be opposed to any "automatic" system, because players are going to be creative, and it's going to break on them (i.e. do something they don't want, that looks stupid, and/or degrades game performance), and they will be Pissed Off.
This is probably the top #1 concern about this - player customization. Such a system would seriously need to be so flexible (to account for all the different character concepts and damage types) it'd be hard to imagine the Devs ever being able to give players all the options they'd need to make this work well. Even as some kind of post-launch update it be hard to imagine it being done in anything but a semi-generic "one-size-fits-all" kind of way. You'd almost have to give players the ability to create their own customized "damaged" costume items that would be unique to them.
Again I like the general "idea" of costume damage... I just don't see it happening effectively in -any- game anytime soon.
Tannim222 wrote:
We already have a subsystem in place to use as hooks for allowing players to see textured "decals" of damage on a target. It isn't about the player deciding what their costume looks like damage, it is about the attacker's powers and how they affect textures.
There are some technical hurdles and other work required for which we don't have time for which is why this is not going to be in at launch. Just know, we have thought about it.
The decal idea might end up being "better than nothing" but addressing this issue just from the "damage type" point of view might look weird depending on if a player's character is made of flesh, metal or some kind of energy (or anything in-between). Just saying if an attacker is using bullets the effect of that might look different depending on if the target is Batman versus Casper the Ghost.

It is a combination of the power and the texture. It doesn't use damage type, but something else.
As I said, it is a subsystem we can possibly use.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Frankly, I'd be opposed to any "automatic" system, because players are going to be creative, and it's going to break on them (i.e. do something they don't want, that looks stupid, and/or degrades game performance), and they will be Pissed Off.
This is probably the top #1 concern about this - player customization. Such a system would seriously need to be so flexible (to account for all the different character concepts and damage types) it'd be hard to imagine the Devs ever being able to give players all the options they'd need to make this work well. Even as some kind of post-launch update it be hard to imagine it being done in anything but a semi-generic "one-size-fits-all" kind of way. You'd almost have to give players the ability to create their own customized "damaged" costume items that would be unique to them.
Again I like the general "idea" of costume damage... I just don't see it happening effectively in -any- game anytime soon.
Tannim222 wrote:
We already have a subsystem in place to use as hooks for allowing players to see textured "decals" of damage on a target. It isn't about the player deciding what their costume looks like damage, it is about the attacker's powers and how they affect textures.
There are some technical hurdles and other work required for which we don't have time for which is why this is not going to be in at launch. Just know, we have thought about it.
The decal idea might end up being "better than nothing" but addressing this issue just from the "damage type" point of view might look weird depending on if a player's character is made of flesh, metal or some kind of energy (or anything in-between). Just saying if an attacker is using bullets the effect of that might look different depending on if the target is Batman versus Casper the Ghost.
It is a combination of the power and the texture. It doesn't use damage type, but something else.
As I said, it is a subsystem we can possibly use.

It's still "one-sided" based on whatever the attacker did. The appearance of any battle damage should not only depend on what the attacker does to a target but what the target is made of as well. Flesh reacts differently to damage than metal does for the simplest example of what I'm talking about - I doubt a simple "decal" could capture all the nuances of that. What if I'm playing a human-looking android? What if I'm playing a cyborg with a metal exoskeleton and fleshy bits inside? What if I'm playing a humanoid-looking hologram? How will generic "damage decals" adequately handle all these cases?

Look I get that whatever you're talking about here is still a "better than nothing" solution to this complex challenge so don't let me dissuade you from giving it a try. As long as whatever you do is completely optional (so it can be switched off if it doesn't quite match what a player wants/expects to see) then I'm sure it'll be fine.

P.S. Any system that doesn't take into account exactly what a "player wants their costume to look like when it's damaged" is likely to encounter a good deal of pushback from the playerbase.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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I believe Lothic he said it a

I believe Lothic he said it a combination of the power(attacker) and the texture(YOU). So it takes into account what texture you've used for your toon. A metal texture would get a diff look/fesponse than a flesh texture. At least that is my understanding of what he said.

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KnightMask wrote:
KnightMask wrote:

I believe Lothic he said it a combination of the power(attacker) and the texture(YOU). So it takes into account what texture you've used for your toon. A metal texture would get a diff look/fesponse than a flesh texture. At least that is my understanding of what he said.

That's fine but it still doesn't take into account ALL character concepts. Worrying about what your "skin" (i.e. texture) is made of is one thing - accounting for the material your characters' BODIES are made of internally is something else.

One more time I get what he's saying might be a "better than nothing" solution to this but it might also just prove to be a half-assed one as far as actually accounting for everything it ought to account for. Like I said as long as seeing this is OPTIONAL then it'll be fine. I'll even give it enough of a chance that it might "work" appropriately for SOME characters. I simply have the reasonable doubt whether it'll work for MOST characters.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Maybe it would be some

Maybe it would be some particle effect or as many people pointed out an actual texture change. Either way it's sure to take up performance resources. Which MMOs are known to value both from the development side and the player side. For sure I agree with Lothic that it's got to be optional. I can see why some may want the mechanic, but I myself would pass on it. Wether in comics, cartoons, tv, or movies not all fights result in "battle damage". It's not for me, Id rather see the development time spent on other features.

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We certainly can make it

We certainly can make it optional - my effects, others effects on / off.

And in pve this would probably be only facing on npcs, not players. That may be a pvp thing. We only ever considered this for players to have visual indications of what their powers are doing without having to go overvoard (blood, burt to a crisp, etc).

Once again, this is something we've considered for the future. We aren't dedicating reources to this now.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

And in pve this would probably be only facing on npcs, not players. That may be a pvp thing. We only ever considered this for players to have visual indications of what their powers are doing without having to go overvoard (blood, burt to a crisp, etc).

I'm not even sure I considered the idea of "battle damaged" costumes on NPCs. Pretty much every time this idea has ever been suggested in the past it's been for battle damage on PCs, not NPCs. Why would it even matter for 99.9% of NPCs - most of them are defeated within a couple of seconds anyway.

Now I'll grant you it might be cool (and even tactically useful) to see some battle damage on big Archvillains/Bosses that take a long time to kill. That would be another good way to know how much damage you've done to such a big boss NPC. But beyond that I would consider trying to make it so that average NPCs can display battle damaged outfits (even the "decal" thing) to be practically pointless.

Tannim222 wrote:

Once again, this is something we've considered for the future. We aren't dedicating reources to this now.

I get there are some people who'll never listen to you when you repeat things like this. Frankly I wouldn't worry about those people too much.

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I agree, at the very least

I agree, at the very least would love to see the AV's costume/armor/look change as their health lowers. It just makes the game more realistic

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Well it would make it feel

Well it would make it feel more epic that's for sure

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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The idea really comes down to

The idea really comes down to "What's underneath" and "What's the damage?"

For example, Skin with spandex, that damage is easy to pull off. The damage we're talking about here is not necessarily damage to the character's skin, but damage to the costume. (Scratched armor, torn tights, scratched masks and all that) The shader already knows what kind of skin you have chosen/built underneath the spandex. Just don't expect blood.

I have also personally done some tests with dirt/dust collecting on the character (Not sure how useful that is, but it was an idea akin to MGSV)

The only bad part of damage is that it requires -extra- shader instructions, where we could preferably utilize the same amount of instructions on the material customization rather. And moreso you need to code the amount of damage from the progress bar to its mask visibility (and that's for spandex... for most other parts, we need to do "Damaged" versions of the textures For each costume piece.)

So it is a bit of a hassle, not an impossibility mind you. So never say never!

Charles Logan
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Really appreciate your

Really appreciate your presence on the forums lately, clogan!

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Guys, guys.... what if we

Guys, guys.... what if we ignore the "What that source of damage is" part... this is a superhero game... and while I do understand that even something as fantastical as the supers needs atleast some realism, I also understand that this is also a game, and in all honesty, gameplay has to come before realism, especially here and since CoX had it where no matter how you died you still ragdolled around no matter if you died from a shot of superheated plasma, a shotgun shell or a sword strike, I think we can safely get rid of the whole "what the source of damage" part of the equation and focus on the "What's underneath" part and just use Lin's idea if we do this at all...

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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cloganart wrote:
cloganart wrote:

The idea really comes down to "What's underneath" and "What's the damage?"
For example, Skin with spandex, that damage is easy to pull off. The damage we're talking about here is not necessarily damage to the character's skin, but damage to the costume. (Scratched armor, torn tights, scratched masks and all that) The shader already knows what kind of skin you have chosen/built underneath the spandex. Just don't expect blood.
I have also personally done some tests with dirt/dust collecting on the character (Not sure how useful that is, but it was an idea akin to MGSV)

Right, but the game still doesn't know what players decide their characters are made of -under- their skin so you can't reliably display reasonable sub-dermal damage (i.e. cuts, bruises, shredded robot metal, etc.) from character to character.

I suppose if you limit "visible combat damage" to only top-layer costume items then you can probably save yourself a lot of extra work having to display actual bodily wounds that might otherwise appear on exposed battle damaged bodies. The main problem with that idea is what if my character is running around in a tiny bikini - is it reasonable to assume that the only scratched/dirty marks that would ever appear on her entire body is ONLY going to appear on the fabric of the bikini itself?

cloganart wrote:

The only bad part of damage is that it requires -extra- shader instructions, where we could preferably utilize the same amount of instructions on the material customization rather. And moreso you need to code the amount of damage from the progress bar to its mask visibility (and that's for spandex... for most other parts, we need to do "Damaged" versions of the textures For each costume piece.)
So it is a bit of a hassle, not an impossibility mind you. So never say never!

You know me... I never say never even when the Devs of a game actually DO say never. ;)

But as far as "costume battle damage" specifically goes I've always assumed it was going to be another one of those things that some game, some time will finally get around to fully implementing correctly. I honestly wouldn't mind if CoT never quite gets around to what I'd call a full implementation of battle damage due to how much of a challenge it seriously is. People were talking about having it years ago in CoH and if it takes another 5 or 10 years for some other game to finally have the time and budget to account for all the extra work involved then that's what it'll be.

Getting rips/scratches/dirt on outer clothing items might be a reasonable compromise. But until you can display actual cuts and bullet holes I'm not sure you can really say you've totally "solved" the question of battle damage.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Getting rips/scratches/dirt on outer clothing items might be a reasonable compromise. But until you can display actual cuts and bullet holes I'm not sure you can really say you've totally "solved" the question of battle damage.

Hence why I only mentioned costume damage. (:

*Forces you to go to the tailor every time after you get hit by a Level 1 thug*

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cloganart wrote:
cloganart wrote:

Lothic wrote:
Getting rips/scratches/dirt on outer clothing items might be a reasonable compromise. But until you can display actual cuts and bullet holes I'm not sure you can really say you've totally "solved" the question of battle damage.
Hence why I only mentioned costume damage. (:

Hence why I mentioned the problem with that if I'm running around in my hypothetical bikini. Theoretically a "show damage only on costume items" system would mean that if I could have a fully nude character in the game they would never suffer from ANY visible battle damage.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Thank god we wouldn't be

Thank god we wouldn't be procedurally generating that damage mask then I guess!

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cloganart wrote:
cloganart wrote:

Thank god we wouldn't be procedurally generating that damage mask then I guess!

So let's be clear here: If I'm running around relatively "nudely" (perhaps I have an energy being that creatively looks nude even if I technically trick it out with a skin color that closely matches a "nudish" bikini) then I'll likely never see -any- significant battle damage on me?

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I wouldn't want costume

I wouldn't want costume damage to be enforced... Some people will want indestructible costumes of unstable molecules or metals or whatever and wouldn't want them damaged. So if this were to be a thing I would prefer it to be an opt in thing.

If it's an opt in thing then once opting in I would probably have menus where one could first choose type of damage (tears vs fire vs whatever) that would display once reached certain levels of damage. In essence one would basically make a costume, opt in to this, then basically choose 2 or 3 more damaged costumes that would be automatically switched to...

*shrug*

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

cloganart wrote:
Thank god we wouldn't be procedurally generating that damage mask then I guess!
So let's be clear here: If I'm running around relatively "nudely" (perhaps I have an energy being that creatively looks nude even if I technically trick it out with a skin color that closely matches a "nudish" bikini) then I'll likely never see -any- significant battle damage on me?

That's why it's called a compromise at that point. The plate is full anyway, the implementation of this system requires a lot of effort. So I'll put a Soon(tm) here.

Charles Logan
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Yeah this definatly should be

Yeah this definatly should be optional, also the battle damage should be customizable.

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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Kaemgen wrote:
Kaemgen wrote:

I wouldn't want costume damage to be enforced... Some people will want indestructible costumes of unstable molecules or metals or whatever and wouldn't want them damaged. So if this were to be a thing I would prefer it to be an opt in thing.
If it's an opt in thing then once opting in I would probably have menus where one could first choose type of damage (tears vs fire vs whatever) that would display once reached certain levels of damage. In essence one would basically make a costume, opt in to this, then basically choose 2 or 3 more damaged costumes that would be automatically switched to...
*shrug*

Right, that's one way to do it. The downside of course is that the Devs would be faced with creating nearly-countless "damaged costume items" in multiple states of disrepair. As as been said none of this is "impossible" to do but it would take a HUGGGEEEE amount of time I'm not sure could ever adequately be spared.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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I don't think it would need

I don't think it would need be limitless amounts of damaged pieces. I think you would lump pieces together like "Skin tight cloth" and "Metal armor" and do basically damage overlays that would work for the vast majority of the items that fit the description. If the player didn't like how the overlay worked with their costume they could choose another or opt out for that piece.

It would still be a lot of extra work... And I personally wouldn't argue for it to be done over a ton of other things that seem more needed... But if the time came where they felt they had free time on their hands... *shrug*

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cloganart wrote:
cloganart wrote:

Lothic wrote:
cloganart wrote:
Thank god we wouldn't be procedurally generating that damage mask then I guess!
So let's be clear here: If I'm running around relatively "nudely" (perhaps I have an energy being that creatively looks nude even if I technically trick it out with a skin color that closely matches a "nudish" bikini) then I'll likely never see -any- significant battle damage on me?
That's why it's called a compromise at that point. The plate is full anyway, the implementation of this system requires a lot of effort. So I'll put a Soon(tm) here.

Yep. Once again just trying to play "constructive Devil's Advocate" here. Frankly the "show damage only on costume items" concept is a reasonable compromise regardless. Just make sure (as a bunch of people have said already) to make this thing TOTALLY OPTIONAL because if I do make some variation of a "bikini chick" I don't want to be seeing my 3 square inches of clothing get dirty without the rest of me getting dirty. ;)

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I know we are talking about

I know we are talking about damages on costume here but i cant prevent myself To wonder : if i use a power with an aesthetic like lava (or green toxic gelee). Can we imagine some lava (or gelee) on the ennemy costume for some seconds or it Will be a too much big work ?


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When my character gets hit,

When my character gets hit, he just gets Shinier! How are we going to generate that?

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I just can't imagine combat

I just can't imagine combat damage being easier to pull off than other things which would likely be much more important to have and much better to have. But hey, if it's easy and doesn't take away from other areas! O.O

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Kaemgen wrote:
Kaemgen wrote:

I wouldn't want costume damage to be enforced... Some people will want indestructible costumes of unstable molecules or metals or whatever and wouldn't want them damaged. So if this were to be a thing I would prefer it to be an opt in thing.
If it's an opt in thing then once opting in I would probably have menus where one could first choose type of damage (tears vs fire vs whatever) that would display once reached certain levels of damage. In essence one would basically make a costume, opt in to this, then basically choose 2 or 3 more damaged costumes that would be automatically switched to...
*shrug*

It dawned on me the other day that, if a player is willing to go to the trouble and burn some costume slots on it, and there's not a long timer for costume changes, and you don't care about the damage relating to the damaging powers, then an entirely client-side mod will do the trick. All it has to do is track your HP and change your costume when appropriate. The costume changes get pushed back to the server and out to everyone else like any other costume change.

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

Kaemgen wrote:
I wouldn't want costume damage to be enforced... Some people will want indestructible costumes of unstable molecules or metals or whatever and wouldn't want them damaged. So if this were to be a thing I would prefer it to be an opt in thing.
If it's an opt in thing then once opting in I would probably have menus where one could first choose type of damage (tears vs fire vs whatever) that would display once reached certain levels of damage. In essence one would basically make a costume, opt in to this, then basically choose 2 or 3 more damaged costumes that would be automatically switched to...
*shrug*
It dawned on me the other day that, if a player is willing to go to the trouble and burn some costume slots on it, and there's not a long timer for costume changes, and you don't care about the damage relating to the damaging powers, then an entirely client-side mod will do the trick. All it has to do is track your HP and change your costume when appropriate. The costume changes get pushed back to the server and out to everyone else like any other costume change.

Well we know that CoH imposed a 30 second timer for costume changes. I know there is likely still a need for some kind of costume timer in CoT but if you have any say-so about these things could you please suggest to the other relevant Devs that this timer be GREATLY REDUCED in CoT. I should think that perhaps a 5 second timer would still serve the purpose for having the timer in the first place while making it FAR, FAR less annoying to have to put up with. Basically a full 30 seconds was likely far too conservative even for CoH's needs.

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I don’t remember there being

I don’t remember there being much of a timer in STO, and because of that someone was able to rig up a whole sequence of emotes and costume changes to do a Sailor Moon transformation.

I personally don’t see a need for a timer at all. Granted, I don’t know what a costume change looks like on he network layer, but I’d expect the slow part to be texture and shader loading on the client machine, which isn’t a server or network burden.

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

I don’t remember there being much of a timer in STO, and because of that someone was able to rig up a whole sequence of emotes and costume changes to do a Sailor Moon transformation.
I personally don’t see a need for a timer at all. Granted, I don’t know what a costume change looks like on he network layer, but I’d expect the slow part to be texture and shader loading on the client machine, which isn’t a server or network burden.

The 30 second CoH costume change timer might have had something to do with accounting for the relative slowness of the network/video hardware involved back in 2004. But I always (perhaps sadly?) believed the costume change timer was there mostly as an anti-griefing mechanism.

I don't know the exact impacts involved with CoT costume changes in terms of network traffic and/or texture/shader loading on the client machines in 2017/18 but I'd have to suspect that if a person stood in front of another person in-game and was allowed to switch costumes as quickly as humanly possible (with no timer) that the griefer still might be able to heavily lag-down the victim in that scenario.

Hopefully in an ideal world we will need no costume change timer in CoT at all. But if it turns out it's still needed as means to discourage griefing then I'd suggest that 3 or 5 seconds would be more than enough to make the difference. A full 30 seconds was always just a punishment against the innocent.

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Imagine a costume content

Imagine a costume content where everyone participating kept shifting costumes costantly. All those textures loading would cause people to lag out. That's why there was a 30 second timer to costume changes.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Imagine a costume content where everyone participating kept shifting costumes costantly. All those textures loading would cause people to lag out. That's why there was a 30 second timer to costume changes.

Right... a costume-contest full of people switching costumes constantly would certainly cause a huge amount of lag. Any large group anywhere in the game would probably do that especially if there were no costume change timer.

The argument being suggested here though is that having such a timer be a full 30 seconds long is probably orders of magnitude longer than it needs to be to accomplish the same task of preventing griefing. Think about it: If the timer to switch costumes was 5 seconds long that's still far, far longer than an average human could press two buttons back in forth to switch costumes. Without a timer a human could probably switch costumes dozens of times in 5 seconds.

So I've never seriously assumed we could get away without a costume switch timer - I simply had a pipe-dream that in an "ideal" world it might be possible but you and I both know we don't live in an "ideal" world. I would strongly argue that the 30 second CoH timer was itself very, very (did I say very?) hyper-conservative and an example of extreme overkill. The only thing it did was force "innocent non-griefing" players to wait a virtual eternity (which is what 30 seconds can seem like in a MMO) when they mistakenly switched to one costume when they meant to switch to another.

Bottomline: CoT will likely need a costume switch timer but I can see no logical/practical reason for that timer to be longer than 5 seconds.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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I think the 30 secs switch

I think the 30 secs switch was mostly because players need to be visually recognizable, as much as possible. It's related to game master duties and support rules to make their job faster and incisive even with "bad" reports (players don't put much effort when reporting, screens are often in bad quality and situation is usually unclear, I know since I worked as a GM and support for 10 years already).

Imagine a GM trying to take a "ban" decision based on a screenshot, the slightest doubt can cause the offender to be left unpunished waiting for better reports (that may never come, for example some bugs get exploited once and that's sufficient to create huge advantages). Istant shapeshifters would cause the situation to be much less clear and cause difficulties to both GMs and customer support. The difficulties are huge in 2017, think about how it was years ago with lower-quality images and stronger limitations on uploading.

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ThunderCAP wrote:
ThunderCAP wrote:

I think the 30 secs switch was mostly because players need to be visually recognizable, as much as possible. It's related to game master duties and support rules to make their job faster and incisive even with "bad" reports (players don't put much effort when reporting, screens are often in bad quality and situation is usually unclear, I know since I worked as a GM and support for 10 years already).
Imagine a GM trying to take a "ban" decision based on a screenshot, the slightest doubt can cause the offender to be left unpunished waiting for better reports (that may never come, for example some bugs get exploited once and that's sufficient to create huge advantages). Istant shapeshifters would cause the situation to be much less clear and cause difficulties to both GMs and customer support. The difficulties are huge in 2017, think about how it was years ago with lower-quality images and stronger limitations on uploading.

The problem with your premise that "a 30 second timer might be able to prevent people from being able to instantly shapeshift themselves out of getting caught by a GM" is that even with a 30 second timer (or a 30 DAY timer) any player could always "instantly shapeshift" at least ONCE whenever they wanted to. The only way a 30 second timer would come into play here is if the would-be griefer wanted to change costumes TWICE within 30 seconds. Frankly I find the idea that anyone could avoid all-due punishment from a GM by simply switching their costume to be somewhat implausible to say the least.

You do understand that even CoH allowed people to maintain up to 10 different costumes that could be switched at anytime right? We aren't talking about people being able to do ANYTHING that could actually help them to avoid punishments. We aren't taking about people switching their global names or anything else that could actually help them avoid GM detection.

Again I have yet to see any argument or rational that would lead me to believe that a costume change timer in CoT would need to be any longer than 5 seconds. Feel feel to come up with some better evidence to support your case if you have any.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Whiile the time to grap

Whiile the time to grap screen shot may have been part of the decision, I think it had more to do with hardware concerns.

The devs of the old game tried to minimize requiring players having to update their pcs as much as possible. People were playing the okd game at launch with hardware dating back to the late 90's.

While upgrading may have been inevitable, they still took low end systems into consideration.

And when it comes to determining your base line, you looking at the commonality of your lower-range users and configuring for a playable experience at that level. Not optimal, playable.

The old game was, at the time, something unique with the aspect of costume slots, appearance changes, and the ermergent play of costume contests.

We will have those very same issues to contentd with. Granted, by the time if release, lower end systems of use in the pc gaming world are leaps and bounds ahead if where the old game had to look at when making decisions about this issue. We will also have a mich greater range of textures being used in the game, particularly with customized costumes. Luckily, it is also something we can test for relatively quickly once we are ready for that step.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

We will have those very same issues to contentd with. Granted, by the time if release, lower end systems of use in the pc gaming world are leaps and bounds ahead if where the old game had to look at when making decisions about this issue. We will also have a mich greater range of textures being used in the game, particularly with customized costumes. Luckily, it is also something we can test for relatively quickly once we are ready for that step.

I agree that even in 2017-18 there may be issues with "average player gaming hardware" that make the imposition of a costume change timer JUST FOR those hardware concerns (not accounting for the additional griefing scenarios) a good thing to do. I also agree that this would be something worth testing during the initial alpha/beta testing phases. But I would also add that I would be amazed/shocked to learn that the CoT Devs end up collectively determining that a full 30 seconds for this timer is still justified for CoT.

I honestly believe that the 30 second value was originally decreed by the CoH Devs as an arbitrary "super-duper worst case" value that even back in 2004 was probably 2 or 3 times longer than was actually necessary 99.99% of the time. This is why I keep suggesting that a value of 5 seconds is more than likely extremely adequate for the intent a timer like this is meant to serve in CoT. The stats for what can be called "typical baseline hardware" has improved by orders of magnitude since 2004 and the theory that "modern texture processing" might still impose too much of a load for players' machines to handle is a dubious concern at best given that the whole "selling point" for what's supposed to make UE4 great to use is its supposed "backward compatible friendliness" for low-end graphics hardware.

All I'm saying is you'd likely have to come up with some serious non-handwavy, non-arbitrary justifications for not being able to lower this timer to a value MUCH less than 30 seconds in CoT.

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

All I'm saying is you'd likely have to come up with some serious non-handwavy, non-arbitrary justifications for not being able to lower this timer to a value MUCH less than 30 seconds in CoT.

Lothic, this is why I said it is something we can easily test for once we are ready. Then we can determine the optimal costume change timer. That could be anywhere from 0 to 30 seconds. I would hope nothing of the extreme of 30 seconds is necessary, but whatever number is arrived at, it won't be arbitrary.


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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

Lothic wrote:
All I'm saying is you'd likely have to come up with some serious non-handwavy, non-arbitrary justifications for not being able to lower this timer to a value MUCH less than 30 seconds in CoT.
Lothic, this is why I said it is something we can easily test for once we are ready. Then we can determine the optimal costume change timer. That could be anywhere from 0 to 30 seconds. I would hope nothing of the extreme of 30 seconds is necessary, but whatever number is arrived at, it won't be arbitrary.

And as I said I'm glad you'll be testing it to determine a reasonable value. A nice round (and in practice very hyper-overkill) number like "30 seconds" simply screams to me that the only vague thought the CoH Devs gave it was "let's just plug in a stoopid-big number and forget about it".

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

ThunderCAP wrote:
I think the 30 secs switch was mostly because players need to be visually recognizable, as much as possible. It's related to game master duties and support rules to make their job faster and incisive even with "bad" reports (players don't put much effort when reporting, screens are often in bad quality and situation is usually unclear, I know since I worked as a GM and support for 10 years already).
Imagine a GM trying to take a "ban" decision based on a screenshot, the slightest doubt can cause the offender to be left unpunished waiting for better reports (that may never come, for example some bugs get exploited once and that's sufficient to create huge advantages). Istant shapeshifters would cause the situation to be much less clear and cause difficulties to both GMs and customer support. The difficulties are huge in 2017, think about how it was years ago with lower-quality images and stronger limitations on uploading.
The problem with your premise that "a 30 second timer might be able to prevent people from being able to instantly shapeshift themselves out of getting caught by a GM" is that even with a 30 second timer (or a 30 DAY timer) any player could always "instantly shapeshift" at least ONCE whenever they wanted to. The only way a 30 second timer would come into play here is if the would-be griefer wanted to change costumes TWICE within 30 seconds. Frankly I find the idea that anyone could avoid all-due punishment from a GM by simply switching their costume to be somewhat implausible to say the least.
You do understand that even CoH allowed people to maintain up to 10 different costumes that could be switched at anytime right? We aren't talking about people being able to do ANYTHING that could actually help them to avoid punishments. We aren't taking about people switching their global names or anything else that could actually help them avoid GM detection.
Again I have yet to see any argument or rational that would lead me to believe that a costume change timer in CoT would need to be any longer than 5 seconds. Feel feel to come up with some better evidence to support your case if you have any.

It's not the instant-swapping the problem, of course, but it's that repeated over time. Your doubts do not surprise me, you see the matter as a player and lack direct experience on the argument from the other point of view.

Now, 2017, the issues still encountered by GMs with player reports are huge when based on screenshots. And now we got uploading sites, higher resolutions for images and better internet services + faster connections. Still the players are capable of making low-res screens with moving cameras of their smartphones instead of using in-game screen buttons (why should search for the button in the game's settings? They're used to smartphones) or Fraps etc. expecting GMs to be beings of infinite power and time (which is not the case, GMs have got limited tools and time, like any other worker has got maximum 5 minutes per case or even less, not hours, he won't lose an hour for a bug abuser since he is not paid for wasting paid hours or to be slow). If it wasn't for privacy issues I would show you the fantastic "selfie" of a player showing a bug I received once (it's funny, of course you see the face of the player and nothing else but pixels of the bug behind him). The players report other players based on instant-hate but do not put any effort while doing so.

The majority of players do not fill any report at all, why should they lose their personal time for the "developers ineptitude" and a bug that shouldn't exist in the first place for their point of view (but we all know bugs will always exist)? The few players that do send reports are no aliens, and they don't want to lose much time for that either.

Till now I was speaking about 2017 and recent years, but at the time of City of Heroes costume changes implementation the situation was even worse: low-res images were the only ones travelling the internet sea and upload limits were stronger.

Now with these premises, try to imagine a customer support agent (in a hurry) receiving 3 images from a player reporting a bug abuser who's got a macro to change costume each second.
The bug abusing action can be short or shorter is the patience of the player that wants to report the case, either one may last few seconds or one minute, few instants for the player to catch the abuser... by the time he decides to act and screen, the lack of experience in deciding what to show (very often the single images prove nothing) and the previously explained reasons, with the abuser changing costume each second you will get 3 screens apparently showing 3 different players at the same spot doing 3 different moves. The action is broken in 3, unclear, the customer support agent has got few minutes to read, download the files, open, cross-check the data with databases and in-game info (to confirm each detail of the "story") and take a final decision.

That's just one possible case, the real issue would be the macros in so many other cases, even a simple and regular player constantly changing costume with a macro (no ban or bug abusing involved) would create issues and increase the number of reports.

This scares me as a worker as soon as I imagine it, several players changing costumes each second with a macro and me being the GM that must check the screens and decide what's going on, in a short amount of time. It's a nightmare.

Since it's related to macros and customer support paid time and effectiveness, this is a very plausible reason compared to the one linked to a costume contest (for example), the source of which could only come from a player which naturally gives importance to a "special event" (organized by players for players no less, most of the times no official agent gets involved). The costume contest is a rare occurrence and barely an after-thought in the mind of the devs deciding how to implement a feature, it's pretty much irrelevant for any decision.

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It actually needs to be a

It actually needs to be a higher number in CoT. You have to assemble the costume in memory, compile it, which takes up to 40 seconds. CoH could pre-load the costumes, making switching trivially fast. We don't have that luxury without making the system requirements enormous.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

It actually needs to be a higher number in CoT. You have to assemble the costume in memory, compile it, which takes up to 40 seconds. CoH could pre-load the costumes, making switching trivially fast. We don't have that luxury without making the system requirements enormous.

The CoX devs said the same thing about being able to colour your powers. You may not have the luxury now, but in a few years? Who knows... Even if this can't immediately happen I still hope that it can eventually happen :]

not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM

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notears wrote:
notears wrote:

Doctor Tyche wrote:
It actually needs to be a higher number in CoT. You have to assemble the costume in memory, compile it, which takes up to 40 seconds. CoH could pre-load the costumes, making switching trivially fast. We don't have that luxury without making the system requirements enormous.
The CoX devs said the same thing about being able to colour your powers. You may not have the luxury now, but in a few years? Who knows... Even if this can't immediately happen I still hope that it can eventually happen :]

Oh certainly. I just don't want to promise super-fast costume changes and not deliver for launch.

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ThunderCAP wrote:
ThunderCAP wrote:

Lothic wrote:
ThunderCAP wrote:
I think the 30 secs switch was mostly because players need to be visually recognizable, as much as possible. It's related to game master duties and support rules to make their job faster and incisive even with "bad" reports (players don't put much effort when reporting, screens are often in bad quality and situation is usually unclear, I know since I worked as a GM and support for 10 years already).
Imagine a GM trying to take a "ban" decision based on a screenshot, the slightest doubt can cause the offender to be left unpunished waiting for better reports (that may never come, for example some bugs get exploited once and that's sufficient to create huge advantages). Istant shapeshifters would cause the situation to be much less clear and cause difficulties to both GMs and customer support. The difficulties are huge in 2017, think about how it was years ago with lower-quality images and stronger limitations on uploading.
The problem with your premise that "a 30 second timer might be able to prevent people from being able to instantly shapeshift themselves out of getting caught by a GM" is that even with a 30 second timer (or a 30 DAY timer) any player could always "instantly shapeshift" at least ONCE whenever they wanted to. The only way a 30 second timer would come into play here is if the would-be griefer wanted to change costumes TWICE within 30 seconds. Frankly I find the idea that anyone could avoid all-due punishment from a GM by simply switching their costume to be somewhat implausible to say the least.
You do understand that even CoH allowed people to maintain up to 10 different costumes that could be switched at anytime right? We aren't talking about people being able to do ANYTHING that could actually help them to avoid punishments. We aren't taking about people switching their global names or anything else that could actually help them avoid GM detection.
Again I have yet to see any argument or rational that would lead me to believe that a costume change timer in CoT would need to be any longer than 5 seconds. Feel feel to come up with some better evidence to support your case if you have any.
It's not the instant-swapping the problem, of course, but it's that repeated over time. Your doubts do not surprise me, you see the matter as a player and lack direct experience on the argument from the other point of view.
Now, 2017, the issues still encountered by GMs with player reports are huge when based on screenshots. And now we got uploading sites, higher resolutions for images and better internet services + faster connections. Still the players are capable of making low-res screens with moving cameras of their smartphones instead of using in-game screen buttons (why should search for the button in the game's settings? They're used to smartphones) or Fraps etc. expecting GMs to be beings of infinite power and time (which is not the case, GMs have got limited tools and time, like any other worker has got maximum 5 minutes per case or even less, not hours, he won't lose an hour for a bug abuser since he is not paid for wasting paid hours or to be slow). If it wasn't for privacy issues I would show you the fantastic "selfie" of a player showing a bug I received once (it's funny, of course you see the face of the player and nothing else but pixels of the bug behind him). The players report other players based on instant-hate but do not put any effort while doing so.
The majority of players do not fill any report at all, why should they lose their personal time for the "developers ineptitude" and a bug that shouldn't exist in the first place for their point of view (but we all know bugs will always exist)? The few players that do send reports are no aliens, and they don't want to lose much time for that either.
Till now I was speaking about 2017 and recent years, but at the time of City of Heroes costume changes implementation the situation was even worse: low-res images were the only ones travelling the internet sea and upload limits were stronger.
Now with these premises, try to imagine a customer support agent (in a hurry) receiving 3 images from a player reporting a bug abuser who's got a macro to change costume each second.
The bug abusing action can be short or shorter is the patience of the player that wants to report the case, either one may last few seconds or one minute, few instants for the player to catch the abuser... by the time he decides to act and screen, the lack of experience in deciding what to show (very often the single images prove nothing) and the previously explained reasons, with the abuser changing costume each second you will get 3 screens apparently showing 3 different players at the same spot doing 3 different moves. The action is broken in 3, unclear, the customer support agent has got few minutes to read, download the files, open, cross-check the data with databases and in-game info (to confirm each detail of the "story") and take a final decision.
That's just one possible case, the real issue would be the macros in so many other cases, even a simple and regular player constantly changing costume with a macro (no ban or bug abusing involved) would create issues and increase the number of reports.
This scares me as a worker as soon as I imagine it, several players changing costumes each second with a macro and me being the GM that must check the screens and decide what's going on, in a short amount of time. It's a nightmare.
Since it's related to macros and customer support paid time and effectiveness, this is a very plausible reason compared to the one linked to a costume contest (for example), the source of which could only come from a player which naturally gives importance to a "special event" (organized by players for players no less, most of the times no official agent gets involved). The costume contest is a rare occurrence and barely an after-thought in the mind of the devs deciding how to implement a feature, it's pretty much irrelevant for any decision.

*sigh* tl;dr... (that's actually rare for me BTW... congratulations for making me not care in this case)

I don't know what you're rambling on about here because I'm just a "player" who's also (as a side hobby) had a 20+ year career in software development for military missiles/radar systems and handling "users" of various kinds doing amazingly silly things (affecting things IRL) that require far more "policing" than any silly GM could ever hope to have to deal with in any silly game.

Anyway while you were droning on about something related to repeated uncontrolled costume changes (a thing that NO ONE HERE was suggesting ever be allowed in CoT) I'll just remind you once more that I've suggested a reasonable 5 second costume change timer for CoT as opposed to CoH's sadistically out-of-date hyper-cautious 30 second timer. That would be more than adequate to PREVENT anyone from being able to do ANY EFFECTIVE GRIEFING whether it's against other innocent players or poor silly GMs who apparently can't catch those griefing evil-doers if they do ANYTHING to elude capture/punishment like change their in-game appearance. Damn those guys you had trouble catching must be super-tricky to manage that sort of thing.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

It actually needs to be a higher number in CoT. You have to assemble the costume in memory, compile it, which takes up to 40 seconds. CoH could pre-load the costumes, making switching trivially fast. We don't have that luxury without making the system requirements enormous.

Doctor Tyche wrote:

Oh certainly. I just don't want to promise super-fast costume changes and not deliver for launch.

Even I don't think you're dumb enough to promise something this precisely that you can't hope to deliver. I'm not literally expecting you to claim right this minute (without any degree of uncertainty) that the costume change timer for CoT shall be 8.6324234 seconds with no possibility of it ever needing to be changed or tested at all. Get a grip...

All I'm SUGGESTING is that based on how many dozens (hundreds?) of people (including yours truly) I recall from CoH complaining about how arbitrary/draconian a full 30 seconds for a silly costume change timer was that perhaps, I don't know, maybe CoT could actually do something like this BETTER than CoH did based on nothing else but roughly 15+ years worth of software development tool advancements if nothing else.

The unsettling idea that CoT could actually require MORE than 30 seconds for such a costume timer could only highlight (in an incredibly sad way) that somehow, somewhere you've done something horribly, horribly wrong with CoT.

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That is your opinion Lothic,

That is your opinion Lothic, and you are certainly entitled to it. Most games which use this approach require far longer load times than 40 seconds for the character. It gives the advantage of giving a very high quality player model. The distadvantage is the longer load times as the engine compiles the character.

Could we preload, certainly, but when we are plotting to offer more costume slots, this becomes a memory nightmare.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

That is your opinion Lothic, and you are certainly entitled to it. Most games which use this approach require far longer load times than 40 seconds for the character. It gives the advantage of giving a very high quality player model. The distadvantage is the longer load times as the engine compiles the character.

Could we preload, certainly, but when we are plotting to offer more costume slots, this becomes a memory nightmare.

Opinion is one thing, relevant experience is another. I've played maybe hundreds of games over roughly 40 years. I really don't recall too many of them taking a full 40 seconds just to change a character's appearance.

Are you literally trying to suggest that if I hit a keybind in CoT related to changing (let's say) my costume #1 to my costume #2 that it could take upwards to 40 seconds before that change is accomplished? I'm not even talking about a quick SECOND costume change that MIGHT involve a costume change timer - I'm just talking the very FIRST change. Are you sure we're actually talking about the same thing here? Are you talking about some kind of initial character load when you first start playing or are you seriously relating this to any time a player would simply want to complete a single costume change? Please explain this further because what you seem to be suggesting here seems almost nonsensically antiquated to me. *shrugs*

Look, it might be hard to believe based on my forum posting but I'm usually a relatively patient person. I can easily wait for 20-30 second load times jumping into/out of instanced missions or the like. But seriously... if you're telling us it might take CoT 40-45 seconds per costume change REGARDLESS of any arbitrary timer providing an artificial delay I suspect you're going to get a HUUUGGGE amount of negative feedback from that, especially when you compare that to a previous game that's technologically 15+ years old.

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That is not what I said. I

That is not what I said. I said the timer between costume changes could be up to 40 seconds. That is because this is the compile time. You can switch immediately, that's not the issue. It will, however, be unoptimized for up to 40 seconds afterwards, and the player will lose a few fps as a result. Dumping any JIT compile is not advised for a myriad of reasons, the biggest of which is the potential for legacy data not being cleaned up properly. It is an area which will need to be optimized, I just do not know how optimized it will be before launch, that's all. So, the safest thing to do is to set the costume change timer such that it will be available after the maximum compile time of the costume, to make sure that all the garbage is cleaned up.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

That is not what I said. I said the timer between costume changes could be up to 40 seconds. That is because this is the compile time. You can switch immediately, that's not the issue. It will, however, be unoptimized for up to 40 seconds afterwards, and the player will lose a few fps as a result. Dumping any JIT compile is not advised for a myriad of reasons, the biggest of which is the potential for legacy data not being cleaned up properly. It is an area which will need to be optimized, I just do not know how optimized it will be before launch, that's all. So, the safest thing to do is to set the costume change timer such that it will be available after the maximum compile time of the costume, to make sure that all the garbage is cleaned up.

OK well at least you cleared up the idea that even the FIRST costume change would take 40 seconds to finish. That's seriously what you words were implying and I was busy sitting here thinking that would be utterly ridiculous.

So with that we're back to the possibility that the basic costume change timer for CoT might actually have to be longer than the very hated 30 second CoH timer. Why would the game not be able to handle any "character graphics compilations" in the background REGARDLESS if a player opts to change costumes or not? Even if I can take your word that it might take 40+ seconds per costume to get it ready for display why couldn't the game do all that automatically? Sure that might mean costume changes would be "unoptimized" as you say for the first few minutes that I'm playing a character but one would think that if I've been playing the same character for let's say an hour that the game client would have had plenty of time to compile/store ALL of my character's costumes to be ready at a moment's notice.

I get that you might be faced with a system that forces you to "compile" every costume and that all those compiles would take time. I just see no reason why those activities could not be handled silently in the background while I'm playing. Frankly if the game only bothers to "compile/handle" costume processing at the moment I make a single costume change then you're designing a highly inefficient system for dealing with all this. You should be letting the game spend the 40+ seconds per costume WHENEVER it can while I'm playing, not only at the moment I've decided to change costumes. Let the game's client store all the "compiled" costumes locally and keep them ready to go unless they are specifically changed (via a trip to the costume editor for instance).

If you were actually able to do all the costume compiles up front silently in the background then it would be possible for you to have TWO different costume change timers. You could have one very long one (heck make it 60 seconds long if you wanted) that you could use whenever the game client was busy trying to finish all of its necessary costume compiles. Once all the compiles were done and stored on the client then you could switch gears and perhaps (dare I say it) use a 5 second timer because at that point ALL the costumes are compiled and ready to go. There's no reason that you couldn't use two (or more) timers at different times to handle all this appropriately.

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Then we run into the system

Then we run into the system requirements issue. Nobody's ever said how many costume slots we're limiting players to. Let's just say that if you tried to store that many at once, you'll need a pretty beefy system.

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Although, now you've got me

Although, now you've got me thinking Lothic. We could put some "ready standby", starred/favorite costumes. That shouldn't be *too* resource hungry.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Then we run into the system requirements issue. Nobody's ever said how many costume slots we're limiting players to. Let's just say that if you tried to store that many at once, you'll need a pretty beefy system.

Clearly a bunch of costumes would take more storage than a few. But really how big are the "compiled costumes" going to be file size wise? Even if we're talking multi-megabytes that has to be feasible for most people's typical PCs in 2017-18.

And sure I always suspected there would have to be a "max allowed costumes per character" set in the game. I figure even if you allowed for say 20 (twice what CoH allowed for) that would be doable under this scheme.

Doctor Tyche wrote:

Although, now you've got me thinking Lothic. We could put some "ready standby", starred/favorite costumes. That shouldn't be *too* resource hungry.

Sure if you didn't think you could line it up so that ALL the character's costumes get compiled ASAP then maybe allow players to select a few that they'd want to be prioritized first to lessen the impact of a costume change within the first few minutes of playing a character.

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Lothic, the shaders we have

Lothic, the shaders we have built alone are years ahead of what CoX made, I am not even getting into the change in PBR factors, polycount, mesh count, texture size and all that. There is a crazy amount of data that will need to be compiled like Nate said.

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Doctor Tyche wrote:
Doctor Tyche wrote:

Although, now you've got me thinking Lothic. We could put some "ready standby", starred/favorite costumes. That shouldn't be *too* resource hungry.

City of Heroes used a "horizontal" arrangement of costume slots where there weren't any real dependencies between them resulting from IF-THEN-ELSE type conditional logics to their presentation. You basically had a "row" of costume slots and switching between them in any fashion was an exercise left up to the Player to execute manually for {insert reasons}.

Any sort of Costume Damage appearance would logically want to use some sort of "vertical" arrangement of costume slots so as to (tastefully) "shred" the costume elements based on an easily quantified universal parameter ... Current HP / Max HP (for example) ... using Player specified thresholds (100% / 50% / 20% for example). Simplest thing to do would be to have a sort of "3-in-1" design of the costume slot, with the additional 2 (sub)states being entirely optional (mainly because they're additional work for the Player to create/specify).

The way the whole thing works is that the Player designs the 100% (no damage) costume FIRST, in its entirety. This becomes the baseline template used for the "3-in-1" design feature and is what gets copied over into the "sub" slots of the costume upon command (basically a "dupe my main costume into this slot" feature). If the "sub" slots of the costume design are set to be used, the game will load the (correct) costume for the current character state, but then keep the other associated costumes in a Ready Standby mode to be swapped in automatically based on changes in current conditions (in this case, HP loss and/or gain).

So, for example ... you could design a sort of "cloth" based costume for your character that has tunic, long sleeves and long pants that are whole and unshredded. At the 50% HP remaining threshold, this costume automagically gets swapped for one of the sub slots that is basically the same costume parts, but now replacing the long sleeves and long pants with corresponding shredded cloth sleeves and pants. At the 20% HP remaining threshold, the costume automagically gets swapped for the last sub slot that is basically the same costume parts, but now replacing the tunic, long sleeves and long pants with shredded versions.

Include a "Continuity Option" for the costume changes such that your costume doesn't "regenerate" itself along with your character necessarily (it can, but it doesn't HAVE TO) so as to let Players "roleplay" through the damage taken to their costume states by "keeping" their damaged costume looks even after they've healed/regenerated back up to full HP. If you want to "fix" your costume, all you have to do is Costume Change to that 3-in-1 slot and it'll check the current HP state and "reload" the costume's appearance to match that specific state. That way, you can let your costume become damaged during a mission and wait until the mission is over to "change" into a fresh (undamaged) version of your costume so as to Fight The Big Boss while wearing a torn up costume in Epic Fighting Fashion™.

Of course, such a Dependency Chain for costume slots could produce some exceptionally wacky changes depending on what Players do with the Avatar Builder. The most bizarre (although very comic booky) option that comes to mind would be to have your character's avatar GROW IN SIZE (and muscularity?) as they take damage, representing a sort of "Rage" styled appearance change. Robotic/Mecha styled characters could ADD ON PARTS as they get damaged, rather than have bits of their costume fall off or get wrecked. In other words, even if the Current HP stat is going down, there's nothing to say that the costume appearance can't be going in the Other Direction, such that the appearance changes go in a "more powerful" direction instead of in a "more damaged" direction. Note that such a functionality could be extremely useful for Big Boss NPCs so as to clearly mark for Players any sort of Boss Battle Phase shifts where the attacks and powers the Big Boss is using CHANGE over the course of the battle where the Big Boss is designed to "ramp up" over the course of the fight (in proper anime fashion?).

The big question to ask though is ... yeah, all of that sounds cool enough in concept ... but is it worth the investment effort to bring to fruition in time for game launch? That then turns into an Allocation Of Precious Resources consideration, and as I'm sure we all know by now ... resources are NOT a infinite, meaning that choices need to be made.


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The good thing about this

The good thing about this game being developed by fans and made for fans is that they are not a professional development studio and, as such, have made it clear that anyone who has knowledge that can help out in development is welcome to apply and hopefully wind up helping out the game.

If for every message thread on these forums that talk about how easy/trivial it is to do x, y, and z they would get one volunteer to actually *do* x, y, and z since they are so easy, then I'd say the game would be sitting pretty.

Maybe it is easy. Maybe it isn't. Maybe "easy" takes thousands of lines of code to get it to look "easy". I don't know. But I would hope that, for the sake of the game, those here who are actual experts would consider using their talents to at least get "easy" done.

I might consider posting something like this elsewhere as needed. I'm always amazed at how many experts I meet, and I want to encourage them to help make this game as great as we all want it to be.

(insert pithy comment here)

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

I don't know what you're rambling on about here because I'm just a "player" who's also (as a side hobby) had a 20+ year career in software development for military missiles/radar systems and handling "users" of various kinds doing amazingly silly things (affecting things IRL) that require far more "policing" than any silly GM could ever hope to have to deal with in any silly game.

You may lead a nation, you're still not a Game Master, nor customer support representative, nor game developer apparently. Your "relevant experience" is not comparable to years of direct experience. Don't teach the dustman how to clean the streets just because you watch them all days and you frequently create garbage.

You "think" you know how to handle online communities till you really do that.
You "think" you know how to build a game till you actually put your self to the real test.

By the way, all gamers think they'd be perfect developers, moderators and game masters, it's an error far too common.
If you want to tell me about your missile-based experience, I will be glad to hear you fully and rest assured that I won't laugh at you for telling me something I don't expect since I lack direct experience in your field.

Lothic wrote:

Anyway while you were droning on about something related to repeated uncontrolled costume changes (a thing that NO ONE HERE was suggesting ever be allowed in CoT) I'll just remind you once more that I've suggested a reasonable 5 second costume change timer for CoT as opposed to CoH's sadistically out-of-date hyper-cautious 30 second timer. That would be more than adequate to PREVENT anyone from being able to do ANY EFFECTIVE GRIEFING whether it's against other innocent players or poor silly GMs who apparently can't catch those griefing evil-doers if they do ANYTHING to elude capture/punishment like change their in-game appearance. Damn those guys you had trouble catching must be super-tricky to manage that sort of thing.

I remember you that we were talking about City of Heroes costumes and my reply was related to your "Frankly I find the idea that anyone could avoid all-due punishment from a GM by simply switching their costume to be somewhat implausible to say the least." since it wasn't what I intended. I explained you, with details (too many maybe, I admit ^^"), what I meant and why it's not implausible, far less implausible than previous reasons in this topic.

I didn't comment about your "reasonable 5 second costume change timer for CoT" feasibility since I'm not competent for that, but personally I like the idea for both the players and the poor silly GMs you laugh about. As a future player surely I'd like the freedom and the lack of spam at the same time, but it's not that important really, a secondary matter at best, I'll be fine with any solution probably.

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cloganart wrote:
cloganart wrote:

Lothic, the shaders we have built alone are years ahead of what CoX made, I am not even getting into the change in PBR factors, polycount, mesh count, texture size and all that. There is a crazy amount of data that will need to be compiled like Nate said.

Right, as I said CoT is a game that's going to be at least 15+ years more advanced than CoH from a software development tools point of view and the kinds of hardware involved. But the last time I checked improvments in software/hardware don't tend to make things WORSE than previous features in previous applications.

Again, ONE MORE TIME, I understand that there will be new kinds of processing and compiling with this game that the folks who created CoH might not have even imagined. But frankly if you can't find way to multi-process and do things in a "whenever there's time" manner as opposed to a JIT manner then yes, I'll say it again, you are doing things wrong.

The 30 second costume change timer in CoH was something that many, many people playing that game did not like. Not just me - there were at least a dozen different threads on the subject over the years back on the CoH forums. The laughable idea that CoT might have to INCREASE that timer in the face of all the software/hardware improvements we now enjoy is not something to be proud of by any means no matter how fancy your character graphics have become.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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ThunderCAP wrote:
ThunderCAP wrote:

Lothic wrote:
I don't know what you're rambling on about here because I'm just a "player" who's also (as a side hobby) had a 20+ year career in software development for military missiles/radar systems and handling "users" of various kinds doing amazingly silly things (affecting things IRL) that require far more "policing" than any silly GM could ever hope to have to deal with in any silly game.
You may lead a nation, you're still not a Game Master, nor customer support representative, nor game developer apparently. Your "relevant experience" is not comparable to years of direct experience. Don't teach the dustman how to clean the streets just because you watch them all days and you frequently create garbage.
You "think" you know how to handle online communities till you really do that.
You "think" you know how to build a game till you actually put your self to the real test.
By the way, all gamers think they'd be perfect developers, moderators and game masters, it's an error far too common.
If you want to tell me about your missile-based experience, I will be glad to hear you fully and rest assured that I won't laugh at you for telling me something I don't expect since I lack direct experience in your field.
Lothic wrote:
Anyway while you were droning on about something related to repeated uncontrolled costume changes (a thing that NO ONE HERE was suggesting ever be allowed in CoT) I'll just remind you once more that I've suggested a reasonable 5 second costume change timer for CoT as opposed to CoH's sadistically out-of-date hyper-cautious 30 second timer. That would be more than adequate to PREVENT anyone from being able to do ANY EFFECTIVE GRIEFING whether it's against other innocent players or poor silly GMs who apparently can't catch those griefing evil-doers if they do ANYTHING to elude capture/punishment like change their in-game appearance. Damn those guys you had trouble catching must be super-tricky to manage that sort of thing.
I remember you that we were talking about City of Heroes costumes and my reply was related to your "Frankly I find the idea that anyone could avoid all-due punishment from a GM by simply switching their costume to be somewhat implausible to say the least." since it wasn't what I intended. I explained you, with details (too many maybe, I admit ^^"), what I meant and why it's not implausible, far less implausible than previous reasons in this topic.
I didn't comment about your "reasonable 5 second costume change timer for CoT" feasibility since I'm not competent for that, but personally I like the idea for both the players and the poor silly GMs you laugh about. As a future player surely I'd like the freedom and the lack of spam at the same time, but it's not that important really, a secondary matter at best, I'll be fine with any solution probably.

Are you still talking about the trials and tribulations of being a GM in a game? Why would anyone here care how hard it is for GMs to deal with griefers who can instantly change their costumes multiple times when that was something they COULD NEVER DO IN CoH and likely will not be able to do in CoT either. You do understand that CoH had a 30 second costume change timer right? And while we're currently having a substantive debate about HOW LONG CoT's costume change timer should be NO ONE is seriously suggesting there will NOT be some kind of timer in CoT. You realize that right? Why are you talking about situations (I guess from your time in other games) where having no costume change timer is a bad thing in a place where that's never (and not ever) going to be a problem? Talk about thinking you have "relevant experience" about something when you really don't...

Look, I get that you wanted to contribute to this thread in some way I suppose it's nice to have someone like you confirm something we ALREADY KNOW: that the lack of a costumer change timer in a game like this can lead to various types of griefing. But even when I don't like what the legitimate Devs of this game say in this forum I'd MUCH, MUCH rather hear what they have to say about specific costume display issues than whether or not being a mere GM is a legitimately tough job or not. If you want to talk more about GMing in games why don't you go start a different thread about it.

CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012

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Lothic wrote:
Lothic wrote:

Right, as I said CoT is a game that's going to be at least 15+ years more advanced than CoH from a software development tools point of view and the kinds of hardware involved. But the last time I checked improvments in software/hardware don't tend to make things WORSE than previous features in previous applications.
Again, ONE MORE TIME, I understand that there will be new kinds of processing and compiling with this game that the folks who created CoH might not have even imagined. But frankly if you can't find way to multi-process and do things in a "whenever there's time" manner as opposed to a JIT manner then yes, I'll say it again, you are doing things wrong.
The 30 second costume change timer in CoH was something that many, many people playing that game did not like. Not just me - there were at least a dozen different threads on the subject over the years back on the CoH forums. The laughable idea that CoT might have to INCREASE that timer in the face of all the software/hardware improvements we now enjoy is not something to be proud of by any means no matter how fancy your character graphics have become.

I would hope you are willing to help out then and show them how to make this game better, making use of your expertise. I am certain they want to add some more capable volunteers to help get the game made.

(insert pithy comment here)

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The issue of a costume timer

The issue of a costume timer has very little to do with what people may like or dislike. It is a matter of ensuring a playable experience for the minimum spec hardware user.

And trust me, visual tech has significantly advanced where it is possible to create something only the highest end hardware user could appreciate, leaving everyone else left to see a lower resolution and reduced frame rate rendered video of what those experienced.

We have to ensure that minimal spec user isn't going to be negatively impacted by costume changes even if the high end user can handle switching incredibly fast.

As Doc T said, right now, it takes around 40 seconds for a single low end user. The system that handles loading costumes isn't fully optimized yet.

Even if we shave time through optimization, and we can reduce that further through back-end loading, we will stil need to keep the timer reasonable to ensure that user won't be lagged out.

This time frame as determined by testing will resolve the concern over sifficient time for screen shots and reporting details for gm resilution.


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I'm assuming "lagged out: is

I'm assuming "lagged out: is "where did my frame rate go" not " lost connection to mapserver".

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

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Lin Chiao Feng wrote:
Lin Chiao Feng wrote:

I'm assuming "lagged out: is "where did my frame rate go" not " lost connection to mapserver".

Right. I call it the Slideshow experience.

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

This time frame as determined by testing will resolve the concern over sifficient time for screen shots and reporting details for gm resilution.

This is the part that I look at and think ... is that REALLY the best you can do?

For example ...

Over on the Elysium Project (private Vanilla WoW servers), this is their reporting method for the nigh incessant gold spamming.

Quote:

Accessing the chat logs is very time consuming and, given the small numbers of GMs, not a productive use of our time. Similarly, it is far from easy to see mail in your mailbox.

The most useful spam reports include a link to a screenshot showing the spam, or spam mail. You can reduce the size of the image to show the relevant area. These screenshots can be uploaded to a site like imgur. Please, no sites that require subscriptions etc.

We can then use that as evidence. In the absence of evidence, we can not ban an account.

Also, adding the names of the spammer(s) is helpful. It takes us a second to check if the person has been already banned, much longer to access the screenshot and then check. We get a very large number of these reports.

The ideal format for a ticket is:

Here are some more spammers

Thespammer

Theotherspammer, The spammersfriend

We do appreciate these messages, please help us make them more effective.

So when a gold spammer spews automated advertising all over a public channel, is there a UI feature that allows other Players to Right Click > Report Spam and then have an automated tool collect those reports including the offending message and the sender's ID and which "channel" they were using to make life easy for the GMs?

Oh hell no, it's WAAAAAAY more complicated than that!

So here's what the gold spammer has to do:

  1. Level a character to 10.
  2. Park in a city and repost the same annoying automated message every 2 minutes.
  3. PROFIT!!!

... and that's it.

Here's what a Player wanting to report that behavior has to do:

  1. STOP PLAYING THE GAME.
  2. Take a screenshot.
  3. Either quit the game or otherwise Alt-Tab out of the game client to go to your computer's operating system UI.
  4. Go find the screenshot file you just made.
  5. Open up a Web Browser.
  6. Go to the Imgur (or similar) website.
  7. Upload the screenshot you took onto the website.
  8. Grab the URL for the image after it has been uploaded.
  9. Write an explanation of the issue you're reporting to a GM so they'll have the context for what you're telling them.
  10. Include the URL of the image you put onto an image sharing website in your report (so the GM can see the evidence) and include the Character Name of the offender in the initial report.
  11. Either Alt-Tab back into the game ... or, if you completely quit the game client in order to File Your Evidence somewhere the GM can see it, relaunch the game client and log back into your character to actually file the complaint report.
  12. Open the GM Ticket Menu.
  13. Copy/paste the written explanation of the issue (including screenshot URL!) into the Verbal Harassment GM Ticket window.
  14. Submit the ticket.

Now ... what does a GM have to do once they GET the ticket (which could take HOURS or even DAYS with an overworked volunteer staff)?

  1. Open the ticket.
  2. Parse whatever it is that people wrote (l33t sp34k and typos do not help yet are extremely common)
  3. Manually highlight and copy the URL from the ticket
  4. Go to a web browser and paste the image URL into the browser
  5. WAIT for the image to load
  6. Transcribe the Character Name by hand into another tool to crosscheck to see if that character has already been sanctioned or not.
  7. Decide what sanctions (if any) ought to be applied for the reported offense.
  8. Find the character ID in yet another database
  9. Apply sanctions (if any) to the CORRECT character ID in the database.
  10. Copy/paste a form letter to the Player who reported the offense and SEND.

So that's basically 14 steps for a Player (with the first step being an absolute killer) and 10 steps for a GM to address an issue that gets reported by ONE automated offender who may not be sanctioned for their offense for hours, if not days. Would it surprise anyone to learn that only a tiny minority of Players even bother to report gold spammer offenses to the GMs of that game?

=====

Now, to bring this side story back to the question of how to report offending Player Costumes, it sounds like people are advocating using essentially the "I don't have a problem, YOU do something about it" mentality as I've just outlined for handling gold spammers, which puts all the WORK of doing the reporting on the humans, rather than on the machines. And trust me, having been on the GM/Customer Service side of things for an MMORPG that launched a couple of years ago, this is the kind of tool process you want to be using.

  1. Player wants to report an offensive costume on another character.
  2. Player targets character with offensive costume.
  3. Player clicks on the Target Info window to open a menu of options.
  4. Player selects and clicks on Report > Costume option while the target character is within camera view.
  5. Player's game client takes a screenshot and includes that image in an automatically generated report that contains information about the target character's location, server timestamp, character ID and active costume slot at the time the report gets generated and filed.

That's it. That's ALL the Player has to do to report a costume.
Target.
Menu.
Report > Costume.
** DONE **

Here's what the GM gets.

  1. Open the ticket.
  2. View the screenshot taken that accompanies the report.
  3. A GM tool pulls the reported character ID's costume data and edit history and renders it in an Avatar Builder tool for the GM to verify and confirm reported offense so that a screenshot isn't a Single Point Of Evidence.
  4. The same GM tool shows any sanction history that character ID has received, as well as any sanctions that the account ID for the character ID has received.
  5. GM applies sanction (if any) to the character ID and/or account ID.
  6. Copy/paste form letter to the Player who reported the offense and SEND.

Now, here's my point.

The 14+10 steps to report stuff is an overly cumbersome way of doing business that places pretty much ALL of the burdens of "policing" the game on the people doing the reporting and the GMs doing the monitoring of the game, simply because the process is obnoxious. Yes, it "works" ... after a fashion ... but it's burdensome. It basically costs people doing the "right thing" WAY MORE than it costs someone willing to do the "wrong thing" (including setting up bots to spam public channels).

By contrast, the 5+6 step process is MUCH more streamlined and offers way better tools for reporting offenses to the people who need to get those reports (GMs) and it gives them all of the information they need to evaluate and act upon those reports if action is warranted. The latter process, because it is much more automated (meaning better TOOLS for the Players and the GMs to use!) is far less intrusive on gameplay, is far less subject to being biased by unnecessary hyperbole, and delivers all of the info you want along with preventing unnecessary info you don't want (and don't need). This means that GMs can work faster, they can do their jobs more efficiently, and have 1+ less reasons to resent the Players for not following the proper reporting process. It even makes it easy for GMs to reply to "How do I?" queries from Players wanting to know what the correct process to follow is ... assuming other people don't just tell them in the public chat channels whenever the question gets asked.

Which is a long stemwinder of a way of saying that the "just send us a screenshot URL for imgur" is really a scraping through the bottom of the barrel dumb/worst way to do this particular task. There are far better ways (automated ways!) to do this task than placing almost the entire burden of collating and parsing the information onto the humans. It's a computer game. Make the computer do most of the work so the humans can get on with what they do best ... playing the game (Players) and making good decisions in accordance with company policies (GMs).

At the Tabula Rasa War College event in 2008, where a bunch of us got to go (in person) to the NCSoft developer studio and meet Richard Garriott (in person) before his space flight to the international space station ... and Starr Long the producer ... and Cuppa Jo ... and Lin Chiao Feng and I got to do the "WE'RE NOT WORTHY! WE'RE NOT WORTHY!" greeting (independently of each other, as it turns out) to Sean Michael Fish (who wasn't prepared for such adulation to be delivered to him in person for his writing on City of Heroes) ... and I remember an offhand comment that Cuppa Jo made during one of the presentations we were given, which was basically this:

Quote:

A game lives or dies by the quality of its tools.

That comment has stayed with me ever since, and having been on "the other side of the screen" in a Tier 1 Customer Service role for an MMORPG, I can certainly attest to the truth of the statement. Use crappy tools, you're going to create a crappy game experience for your Players. You might be able to paper it over for a while, and the Players might not notice it immediately, but eventually they will, and word will get out.

And I'm here to tell you that filing reports using image URLs from public websites is just about as crappy a tool as you can get when it comes to the job of needing evidence to make decisions concerning sanctioning characters and/or accounts. It does the job, but you're kinda sorta making the Player use a Rube Goldberg Device in order to get the job done.

We can do better than that.

And yeah, it'll cost more to do "up front" because you have to marshal all the programming into place to build the tools ... but then once you've done that, after that point it's just gravy train.

If you build it, they will come ... but you have to build it RIGHT if you want anyone to STAY.

Quote:

I come back again and again to conversations I have with our chief tech, Matt Wozniak. Matt uses the metaphor of debt to describe the inevitable trade off we face building and maintaining the software that runs TPM.

If we do a project in a rough and ready way, which is often what we can manage under the time and budget constraints we face, we will build up a “debt” we’ll eventually have to pay back. Basically, if we do it fast, we’ll later have to go back and rework or even replace the code to make it robust enough for the long haul, interoperate with other code that runs our site or simply be truly functional as opposed just barely doing what we need it to. There’s no right or wrong answer; it’s simply a management challenge to know when to lean one way or the other. But if you build up too much of this debt the problem can start to grow not in a linear but an exponential fashion, until the system begins to cave in on itself with internal decay, breakdowns of interoperability and emergent failures which grow from both.


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Tannim222
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Red, that is way too long to

Red, that is way too long to quote so I won't :p

The majority ofnyour statement had incredibly little to do with the part you quoted of my post.

What I was referring to was the concern over having sufficient time with which to capture a shot of someone in an offensing costume before they could switch.

My response was that once we dial-in the optimal time that will allow a minimal hardware user to have a playable experience will end up covering that time frame adequately.

Reporting tools making as simple as possible are a good thing, on that I agree.

This poor thread, so derailed.


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cloganart
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All this because there's a 40

All this because there's a 40 second cooldown :P

Charles Logan
www.cloganart.com

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[quote=Tannim222
Quote:

Tannim222
This poor thread, so derailed.

Since we're here...

Any "Assault" or combo Melee/Ranged sets I can be excited for at launch?

=)

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Tannim222 wrote:
Tannim222 wrote:

The issue of a costume timer has very little to do with what people may like or dislike. It is a matter of ensuring a playable experience for the minimum spec hardware user.

Thanks for this reminder, all our suggestions to you become useless if we forget about low-spec players. In my "guild/clan" the majority of peoples are still "Pentium/one core" level, I'm one of the few with an i7.
The massive games get often selected solely based on requirements (1st step), after that the 2nd selling point becomes the graphics (unfortunately, the majority of peoples is attracted only by that, and the two points are in contrast with each other, if not for scalability).

But the world seems in better shape compared to my clan (55.6% has got 4 cores): http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/

Tannim222 wrote:

This time frame as determined by testing will resolve the concern over sufficient time for screen shots and reporting details for gm resolution.

Reporting efficiency and feasibility affects the gameplay experience once the game is out, because it heavily affects the bugs and offenders handling. I like that you always care about your future and not just your developing present.

About the costume fast switching but also in general for any gameplay system you build, I'd suggest you to keep an eye on macros usage: always try to avoid the usage of macros from the players, by making those ineffective/not-needed, as best as you can. The players don't like to be forced to use macros to be on par with the rest, but they can accept a very slight disadvantage (which you can't completely nullify, probably).
Darkfall is a perfect example of a game destroyed by macros.

Lothic wrote:

Are you still talking about the trials and tribulations of being a GM in a game?

In my last post there isn't a single word about that, you didn't read it and your question would make me repeat again. This causes spam, and my fault for falling on that.
Whatever surprises you gets laughed about, including the "40 seconds" from Doc.T and my first post.
It will help all future conversations if you start to actually read before you reply, and with less presumption behaviour.

Redlynne wrote:

Use crappy tools, you're going to create a crappy game experience for your Players.

I agree with your whole post, this quote should be the fast summary.
Maybe we even worked together and we don't know yet, I'll contact you via pm probably about this (I worked in an NCSoft game too, among the others).

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having played everquest 2 and

having played everquest 2 and world of Warcraft for years I hated repairing armor that's why I loved playing city of heroes you fight in a group and have fun it was such a waste of time and took some fun out of it

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cloganart wrote:
cloganart wrote:

All this because there's a 40 second cooldown :P

My thoughts exactly. #FirstWorldProblems or maybe #MissingWorldProblems

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Cobalt Azurean wrote:
Cobalt Azurean wrote:

#MissingWorldProblems

/em snerk

Good one.

/em thumbs up


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Lin Chiao Feng
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Cobalt Azurean wrote:
Cobalt Azurean wrote:

#MissingWorldProblems

Sad but true.

Ideally, a reporting system would just be a matter of "report this player" at which point we snapshot the last 30 seconds of activity for that player on the server side and hand it to the GM in some form they can work with (Instant Replay!). Of course, there will need to be some rate limiting, and 30 people reporting the same player should only dump one log.

Ideally. ... Wish us luck.

Asking people to upload graphics is bandwidth we don't have, though. Especially around launch when the servers will likely be overloaded already.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

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Some of these posts are

Some of these posts are ridiculously long. Who has time to read all of it?

-----------

Graphic Designer

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BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND :p

BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND :p

I'd think giving us a health idenifier to make a macro to work with would work fine.

If health drops below x, change to costume y. If you're a costume holic like me, you'd be tempted to have a damaged version of EVERY COSTUME...but here come the costume slot dollars ;)


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Wolfgang8565
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desviper wrote:
desviper wrote:

BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND :p
I'd think giving us a health idenifier to make a macro to work with would work fine.
If health drops below x, change to costume y. If you're a costume holic like me, you'd be tempted to have a damaged version of EVERY COSTUME...but here come the costume slot dollars ;)

Yes this has been the best suggested idea so far. Id love to see that at some point in the game.

-----------

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STO has damage skins for

STO has damage skins for spaceships. At almost-dead you're a flaming wreck. Of course when your ship heals (or damages) fully within seconds it isn't so much about realism but sometimes looks interesting in a screen grab. I think it's good if folks can use macros for roleplay (especially if the macro could account for damage type) but I wouldn't want it automated like STO across the board.

"The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths." - Pushkin
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Lin Chiao Feng
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desviper wrote:
desviper wrote:

BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND :p
I'd think giving us a health idenifier to make a macro to work with would work fine.
If health drops below x, change to costume y. If you're a costume holic like me, you'd be tempted to have a damaged version of EVERY COSTUME...but here come the costume slot dollars ;)

If we have any mod support at all that can issue costume change commands, this would be trivial.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...

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Airhead wrote:
Airhead wrote:

STO has damage skins for spaceships. At almost-dead you're a flaming wreck. Of course when your ship heals (or damages) fully within seconds it isn't so much about realism but sometimes looks interesting in a screen grab. I think it's good if folks can use macros for roleplay (especially if the macro could account for damage type) but I wouldn't want it automated like STO across the board.

STO developers have to make every. single. one. of those. They don't release new ship types very quickly.

Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...