Hi all,
I was reminiscing about designing the look of my characters and came up with an idea that the Character Creator (CC) could recommend costume items based on your characters selections.
For example:
Origin = Tech
Primary = Ranged Damage/DoT/Power Armour
Secondary = Defence/Dodging
When I get to the costume design the game checks my choices and recommends a costumer that is Tech based with Power Armour items, choosing from random items flagged as 'Tech', 'Power Armour' and 'Dodging'.
Now I can see some combination may be hard to do this for as the Style portion of your selection (Power Armour/Dodging) may not have any costume items it can link to (can you define a costume item as 'Dodging'?) but then again maybe its not hard?
CoH had the "Randomise" button which was great, but it could be better if there was "Randomise" (based on your previous choices) and "Randomise General" which would ignore your previous selections and be a true random.
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
I definitely see where your suggestion for a "smart randomizer" (one that would give you costume choices more relevant to you based on your character's details) might be more useful to some players than just a pure randomizer that takes nothing about your character into account. But honestly I'm not sure the extra amount of database cross-referencing work it would take for the system to become "smart" about costume items like this would be ultimately worth it.
The Devs would have to spend time attaching semi-subjective metadata to every item based on multiple origin and powerset combinations. And while it might be obvious that the "armored robotic breastplate" would likely be "tech" oriented what about more generic items like a pair of knee-hi boots or a cape? Those things could easily make sense under any origin and/or powerset combo and unfortunately for this idea I think a vast majority of the costume items in the system would fall under this vague "generic" category. Then of course there's the point that this might actually tend to stifle creativity - if the system always suggested that every tech-based character wear a power suit then what about having a tech based character who wanted to wear a cool robe and be like a [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technomage]“Technomage"[/url]? People would be more inclined to just let the system decide what their characters are going to look like instead of deciding for themselves.
I don't want to speak for other players but I know that in my 8.5 years of playing CoH I basically never used the costume randomizer as the basis for any costume I ever made. For me playing around with designing costumes was fun enough that I built them piece-by-piece based on specific ideas I had. And frankly I suspect most of the time my ideas would likely not have been anything like what a "smart randomizer" would have assumed I would have wanted based on things like my origins and powersets.
So while your idea might help a few players throw together semi "cookie cutter" costumes in a few seconds I simply don't believe it would help enough players well enough to make it worth the time and expense for the Devs above and beyond just a simple pure randomizer. As to your point about having things available based on your previous choices the system will more than likely allow us to save/load costumes (just like CoH did) so if you come up with something cool just save it and use it again. This would in effect allow you to create your own "smart randomizer".
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Whereas I used the random costume option to come up with a character (and then chose powersets afterwards that fitted with the look), and then back to fine tune the appearance.
I think that CoH did fairly well with the costume "presets" that you could choose as well. So whilst it wasn't as flexible as what was suggested here (in that they were set), it is something that could well be handy for the developers to introduce to act as a springboard for players to work from, instead of giving them a blank slate and just a vast majority of choices up front.
Sometimes, there is such thing as "too much variety is bad". Because the further down the choices you go, the more likely you are going to be to stop at any point in time, and just hit the earlier choices in the list (or whatever their starting point is in the list)
Between the simple (non-smart) costume randomizer, the premade default costumes and the ability to save/load your own costumes I think there's enough "tools" there for people to either throw together a costume in 30 seconds or spend hours tinkering with them.
Again the idea of a "smart" randomizer that might be able to provide focused choices based on character details is an interesting idea at first glance. I'm just not sold on the idea it would be helpful/useful to enough people beyond the other tools provided to make it worth the Devs' effort. Frankly after you get past "robes for magic users" and "power armor for tech users" I'm not really sure how many other obvious costume choices there would be for all the various origins and powersets out there. I mean what costume items are the obvious ones for "mutants" or "naturals" for instance?
P.S. When it comes costume choices in games like this I would say "too much variety is NEVER bad". But again with things like the pure randomizer and the premade defaults it's easy enough to avoid being overwhelmed by choices if you didn't want to bother with it for whatever reason.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Yeah it was more of an idea for after launch, whereas I want to make a Powerset/Powerset/Class that I havnt done before and want some costume ideas.
Even if I chose the "smart randomised" costume I can still change it.
The Phoenix Rising Initiative Rules Lawyer
I used the CoH costume Sets more as a starter then any Random costume. I think that would be better then a Smart Randomized system where we just have costumes sets pre rendered and we just make adjustments.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP