Characters and Cosmetics

flash525

I'd like to make a request of Cryptic and their Art Department to take some time toward Character Cosmetics in the coming months. Aren't we due some? I know there's a fair requests always going around, such as Feline manes, Suliban (playable), and female Gorn, but we've got nothing. I can appreciate that remodeling the feline species to have them work with manes could prove problematic, but that doesn't stop you from adding some hairstyles that people have requested, ie; more alike M'ress. Female Gorn, again, I can see from a logical stantpoint that it would kind of be odd (what do they even look like), but then you've got an open window with female Nausciaan, and yet, we don't have them either.

I understand some plans change as the games goes on, such as the inclusion of the Suliban, and the animated Andorian antenna, but, and getting back to the department; Klingon hairstyles. C'mon. I think, since launch, they've had one, yes ONE additional hairstyle added to them. I daren't think how many others have been added to other species, or how many of the other new hairstyles would work on Klingons (both male and female). Qo'nos must suffer from a severe lack of hair stylists. There are a bunch of NPC Klingons with styles we could use, and there's other styles seen on Xindi (Primate), Cardassian and even some more typical humanoid styles; these are all there, waiting to be used by the Empire, and yet they're not. Why?

Wouldn't also mind seeing some other additions whilst I'm here too, such as Trill spots, Patterns for Reman, Saurian & Rigelian (oh, Rigelians could use more hair too), and beards for Romulans..... Character (and Boff) customization goes a long way, and matters a lot to some people, and aside from uniforms, not a whole lot has been added as of late.

bernatk

I'm afraid gorn females would end up in lockboxes. Or you can pop a caitian mane from a lockbox.

Otherwise cosmetic things monetize very badly. (for ex: remans. You buy them for 1k zen and you're done.)

flash525

bernatk wrote: »

Otherwise cosmetic things monetize very badly. (for ex: remans. You buy them for 1k zen and you're done.)

Or just complete the Republic Rep on a Fed/Kdf character before hand?

chipg7

They've been working on character customization things recently. They just redid a ton of KDF clothing textures, for example.

Look in the weekly patchnotes, and you'll often find something being enabled / fixed with character models. Lately, Cryptic's definitely been doing a much better job with this kind of thing.

gabeoz1

Before we get more Character and costumers/cosmetics I would like a revamp of the existing ones with have already. Costumes/cosmetics are already low res and the hair is horrid.

lianthelia

I want female Nausicaan! Just so I can make a female with that awesome armor they have!

flash525

chipg7 wrote: »

They've been working on character customization things recently. They just redid a ton of KDF clothing textures, for example.

You are right, the KDF clothing was worked on, though it wasn't lately, it was a while ago now, and if I'm not mistaken, that's an ongoing process, but one of the developers who's doing it in his own time. I might be wrong there, but swear I've read that. Needless to say, even though the KDF costumes were getting updated, it's only the male of that species that have undergone the change (excluding any additional hair). The females remain as they were.

gabeoz1 wrote: »

Before we get more Character and costumers/cosmetics I would like a revamp of the existing ones with have already. Costumes/cosmetics are already low res and the hair is horrid.

Yes, this too. Some of the newer hair looks brilliant, though is significantly let down by the styles that remain untouched since launch.

lianthelia wrote: »

I want female Nausicaan! Just so I can make a female with that awesome armor they have!

+1

duncanidaho11

flash525 wrote: »

Needless to say, even though the KDF costumes were getting updated, it's only the male of that species that have undergone the change (excluding any additional hair). The females remain as they were.

Though this also applies to males, female klingons fairly recently got access to the revamped facial textures from a few seasons ago. There have also been a few very recent updates to leg-based clothing options, enabling a few more combinations (particularly with belts.)

Still, more would be nice and I personally rank it as one of my higher priorities with updates (STO's strongest aspect is probably its customization system, so more of that just makes it more awesome and those kinds of updates also hugely benefit the range of Foundry characters I can make.) But we've also been in the middle of the holiday dead zone so I wouldn't call up the rally cry again for more customization stuff (doesn't matter what, we NEED MOAR!!!!) until...oh...probably next week. :P

khazlol

The entire tailor UI could use a revamp while they are at it

captainhunter1

Yes, please.





(sorry, couldn't find a pict for Nausicaans)

artan42

captainhunter1 wrote: »

Yes, please.





(sorry, couldn't find a pict for Nausicaans)

Male Nausicaan.


Female Nausicaan.

Why? Because it's far more interesting and alien than sticking a set of TRIBBLE on the male to make them female.

You can do the same thing with Gorn


Female.



Male.

Same with Tellarites and Saurians, in a far more interesting way the Cyptic did by sticking TRIBBLE on the males (in the Saurians case, a reptile/amphibian thing to boot).​​

horridperson

artan42 wrote "Same with Tellarites and Saurians, in a far more interesting way the Cyptic did by sticking TRIBBLE on the males (in the Saurians case, a reptile/amphibian thing to boot).​​"

Which is pretty much what the franchise did with aliens of both genders from square one. Take a human add a monster head or pointy years, add some paint. Most aliens were bipedal like us because it cost less. Over the course of 50 years makeup techniques and budget changed; reassigning genders to canon males you depicted would be like saying ridge headed Klingons should be girls and smooth headed ones are boys or vice versa.

In Cryptic's solution there is a precedent. Your solution would contradict Trek lore and can't be justified any more easily. I am all for cosmetics. I just hope they do them right. I struck out trying to find much in the way of hard (or soft) canon references to the wider Gorn and Nausicaan cultures. What I thought might have been a soft canon gender citation is likely fan justifications. It's a gray area in the franchise (which isn't even consistent internally) and should be approached carefully.

It is nice to see things that represent canon accurately in game but this is an MMO. If I expected to see any female Nausicaans in game they would have to look "scary hot"; That universal monster woman MMO look where the hard lines are softened somewhat from the male counterpart, switched around for pretty and then transplanted onto a supermodel frame. Perpetual who Cryptic took over from did a decent job of this; And also had a nice looking fat Nausicaan in their design drawings.

I thought that female Gorn were supposed to be larger than their male counterparts and have no external sexual characteristics but that was probably just a fan add on I heard somewhere along the way.

Unknown

This content has been removed.

artan42

Tellarites and Saurians
Which is pretty much what the franchise did with aliens of both genders from square one. Take a human add a monster head or pointy years, add some paint. Most aliens were bipedal like us because it cost less. Over the course of 50 years makeup techniques and budget changed; reassigning genders to canon males you depicted would be like saying ridge headed Klingons should be girls and smooth headed ones are boys or vice versa.
[/quote]

No it would't. As both male and female Klingons were established in TOS.
Also, I assume you never saw 'The Cage'.

horridperson wrote: »

In Cryptic's solution there is a precedent. Your solution would contradict Trek lore and can't be justified any more easily. I am all for cosmetics. I just hope they do them right.

Really? So you happen to know what female Gorn, Nausicaan, Tellarites and Saurians look like? Impressive considering nobody does.

horridperson wrote: »

It is nice to see things that represent canon accurately in game but this is an MMO. If I expected to see any female Nausicaans in game they would have to look "scary hot"

Oh sure, that sounds like canon.

horridperson wrote: »

I thought that female Gorn were supposed to be larger than their male counterparts and have no external sexual characteristics but that was probably just a fan add on I heard somewhere along the way.

It was, so following the logic of Cryptic and the Saurians coupled with the chronic lack of imagination displayed by you expect the female Gorn to have TRIBBLE and be smaller. You know, just like lizards.​​

horridperson

artan42 wrote: wrote:

No it would't. As both male and female Klingons were established in TOS.
Also, I assume you never saw 'The Cage'.

Klingons and Romulans of both genders were featured in TOS. They are a good example of the minimal adjustments made by the effects department to convey, "not human". Just the same the ears were relatively expensive so some of the Romulans got got stuck with silly helmets. You selected two stills of Nausicaans and Gorn aliens and designated one female and the other male. You infer that the the physical dissimilarities indicate different genders in spite of agreeing both pictured aliens are male. That the images were designed by two different special effects departments with as much as forty years of effects technology separating them wouldn't be a more likely cause for the differences. Some differences so pronounced (like the Klingons) explanations were retconned into canon.

artan42 wrote: wrote:

Really? So you happen to know what female Gorn, Nausicaan, Tellarites and Saurians look like? Impressive considering nobody does.

No I don't. I stated that I had looked for supplemental information any canon or non canon references. I didn't comment on Tellarites or Saurians because you didn't post any gender reassignment stills of them.

artan42 wrote: wrote:

Oh sure, that sounds like canon.

Not at all and I probably don't like it any more than you do, but an MMO is a business and if they are only going to burn resources creating something on the expectation it will be utilized. What is the population of female Orions in game compared to number of times you ran into female avatars who look like Vina unmasked? Yes, I have seen the Cage. It's worth mentioning that when you labelled your two Nausicaan images you chose the "softer" treatment as your female.

artan42 wrote: wrote:

It was, so following the logic of Cryptic and the Saurians coupled with the chronic lack of imagination displayed by you expect the female Gorn to have TRIBBLE and be smaller. You know, just like lizards.​​

If you are going to throw around logic it would behoove you to do it in syntax. I'm not sure what it is you mean to say but the suggestion that adding TRIBBLE the saurian is lazy or unimaginative is no less lazy or unimaginative than adding a lizard head directly onto a body that is very clearly human. In this case at least there in continuity between the addition of TRIBBLE to Robert Fletcher's canon design and the majority of bipedal aliens introduced throughout the history of the series.

duncanidaho11

The current professional opinion on modern scientific taxonomy is that Mammals (in addition to birds) are just specialized reptiles. Its entirely plausible to have certain characteristics associated with modern eutherians on animal that looks otherwise very reptilian. This happened a lot in the early evolution of "mammals," though not to the extreme as depicted above, and is why everything your elementary school taught you about the Duck-billed Platypus is wrong (it is a reptile, its impossible for mammals to be a monophyletic group otherwise.)

There isn't really any logic you can apply to say what should or should not be appropriate gender-based physical differentiation of another species. They could largely be the same or they could be wildly different. It depends on their evolutionary history. That is doubly so for an alien species. Anyone can pretty much do whatever they want to in depicting the female members of another species. You cannot presume that one choice here is more fundamentally appropriate than another choice (within conventional boundaries for mass media.)

And canon isn't a firm basis either. See. Rigelians. It's just a creative choice and whoever's make it has considerable free reign in spite of documented precedents (it's not like they didn't have photographic evidence. :P)

tessaravejgan

More customization is always welcome. More clothes, more hair styles (more so for kdf), more playable races (on republic side your only option is a romulan or reman), they should add female nausicaan, gorn, lethean. More ship customization. Right now I can only change the colors of the pattern I choose but not the actual hull so that would be nice to have

captainhunter1

The whole male/female argument regarding certain races can be summed up with one canon Star Trek source: The Preservers.

You can consider any humanoid race (including Gorns - they have no tails and are basically man-like - see TOS episode 'Arena') to be their work and therefore share common male/female characteristics with all other humanoids.