How difficult would it be to give players a char gen or tailor for sidekicks?

screwthisprocess · April 2018

Do you think this will never happen because it will make their pre-made loyal sidekicks obsolete? If players had the option to tailor their own sidekicks they could simply create Blaise or Amp. I don't think this is a hard thing to do, but I do think there may be a conflict of interest because their c-store sidekicks would not sell at all. Do you think this is the case? I see no reason why we cannot have tailors for sidekicks in a game with a low player population.

ealford1985 · April 2018

I think it would be game breaking...code is just ****.

And also yeah, regarding the store stuff.

markhawkman · April 2018

depends on the level of customization. As-is you can recolor sidekick powers.

See? BLUE!!!

stellariodragon · April 2018

I wish we could buy a sidekick and then give it one of our own costumes.
A set of pets would be great too (like summon a gang war device).
Also the call super hero would be fun to summon your alts, lol.

grievehart · April 2018

Something cool would be to have a purchasable Device called "YOUR sidekick", able to summon a char using the 3d skin model of any other char of your account.
I do not know if a device can work this way, but that would definitly be cool.
And it would have a number of good advantages for the game:
- Purchasable with zen, like all other sidekicks, maybe a little higher since it's more interesting.
- No need to create a "sidekick tailor" since you just have to edit your alt character skin with conventionnal tailor to alter your sidekick appearence.
- Encourage even further alting and will boost character slots sales, considering each alt char can become a sidekick.

The annoying thing with this would be that due to the complexity of characters builds in CO, the powers used by such sidekicks could not easily respect those of the original characters, so even if appearence is the same as one of your alt char, his powers will probably be some kind of set template.
There is solutions for that but it s useless to think about it now, since we do not even know if it's possible for a device to "call" the skin model of another char.

Would be interesting to know if devices could work like that: instead of calling a set 3D char model like Rex or Blaize, call the 3d model of one of your toon from your account char database.

screwthisprocess · April 2018

In my mind this would have been done already because char gen is the calling card of this game. I was thinking how can this be done without killing off their generic sidekicks. But maybe it is best to kill of their sidekicks like they killed off a few of their own items like legion gear. Every player will probably buy the a char gen sidekick because every player spends time creating characters. Every player does not use sidekicks tho. Rarely in alerts do I see players doing it and I been leveling alts all year.

pantagruel01 · April 2018

Allowing players to pick sidekick powers in the same way as player powers is not likely to be in the cards, because of the problem of getting the AI to actually use powers. Allowing costume design might be easier, but also might be a major hassle and wouldn't allow anything that cannot be done with a hero costume.

In any case, the reason people don't use sidekicks isn't lack of customization. It's because they're expensive, not particularly good, and a hassle to manage.

grievehart · April 2018

screwthisprocess said:
I was thinking how can this be done without killing off their generic sidekicks.

grievehart said:

- Purchasable with zen, like all other sidekicks, maybe a little higher since it's more interesting.

"Killing " is a strong word, i prefer seeing it as letting people the alternative between a low cost generic SK and a more expansive customisable one. Lack of customization ideas or low budget can lead some people to buy the old ones. That being said, what people will choose is not really a problem, money spent by players to acquire new or old SK go to the game pockets in the end. What matters is the cost of the method used to develop custom SK.

On the other hand something that could probably hurt their old SK sales is proposing free versions of SK, even temporary, for a ingame farmable currency; something they did recently. A nice move from a player perspective, but not sure it serves their interest.

screwthisprocess said:
Every player will probably buy the a char gen sidekick because every player spends time creating characters.

Depending on their budget, but yeah, i agree. On a personnal level i find the idea of a sidekick more appealing if it can be customized, and am ready to buy it higher price.

screwthisprocess said:
Every player does not use sidekicks tho. Rarely in alerts do I see players doing it and I been leveling alts all year.

Completly true, rarely see SK in alerts or maps. It happens, but not often.
Not being able to choose what your SK probably play a role in that.

markhawkman · April 2018

I think setting power colors as a separate UI element and not as a function of the recolor all button would be nice. We already have the ability to color their powers, but it's all or nothing. The ability to set them individually would be nice. Recostuming? maybe. Dressing Blaise in blue jeans and a T-shirt would be fun.

But not all sidekicks are humanoid. One of my personal favorites, more for theme than utility really, is the Reprogrammed Spider Unit, which is one of Mechanon's spider robots. Not even close to humanoid. It's like with Grond and how the animations use a completely different wire frame.

grievehart · April 2018

pantagruel01 said:
Allowing players to pick sidekick powers in the same way as player powers is not likely to be in the cards

Yes, expecting something like this would be unrealistic, that's why i talked about "set templates" which correspond to what we already have on current sidekicks. The player will not choose skills for his SK device, only the "theme" of the device he pays for.
Examples: Device 1: YOUR gunner sidekick (Pistowhip template)
Device 2: YOUR darkness sidekick (Emily lovett template)
Device 3: etc, you get it.

pantagruel01 said:
the problem of getting the AI to actually use powers.

I highly doubt the currrent SK's "AI" use something more complicated than "randomly use a skill from a skill list" but people generally see me as cynical so...
Anyway, with "set templates", your "AI problem" is not more complicated than a copy/paste problem since you use already existing templates.

pantagruel01 said:

In any case, the reason people don't use sidekicks isn't lack of customization. It's because they're expensive, not particularly good, and a hassle to manage.

I agree with 3 of your 4 statements:

- SK are expensive. 1500z for what they are is overpriced in my opinion. But it's not my role to decide price of things. I only decide if i buy it or not. (Not in their current state...)

- They are not particulary good. True again. SK are weak. But like other device pets or pets powers, they do not have to be too good, game is already easy enough. As sidekick, they must not overshadow the hero.
SK are a semi autonomous source of damage, that can draw some mobs attention to give breath to the player (or put him into **** in some cases...). Their advantage over pets powers is that you can remove it from your device bar at any time.

-Hassle to manage. True. They are dumb as hell and can put you in trouble.

pantagruel01 said:

In any case, the reason people don't use sidekicks isn't lack of customization.

Not the only reason indeed, but it definitly has a role in it. Customisable sidekicks is one of the most reccuring topic with foundry, nemesis etc on suggestion forum. So there's people interested in it, including myself, who waits that to invest in SKs.

So, the question remains. Would be interesting to have some kind of official answer regarding how devices works:

Is it possible for a device, instead of calling a pre set 3D char model like Rex or Blaize, to call the 3d model of one of your toon from your account char database ?

markhawkman · April 2018

Well, on thing I've learned from reskinning non-human characters in STO foundry is that the animations get weird. Reskinning Tholians(spider-like aliens) as humanoids causes them to not play attack animatiosn because the Tholians have a special attack animation that humanoids don't.

pantagruel01 · April 2018

grievehart said:
I highly doubt the currrent SK's "AI" use something more complicated than "randomly use a skill from a skill list" but people generally see me as cynical so...

Pretty sure it's a simple decision table -- it runs through powers in order, and for each power it checks whether the power is usable (target in range, not on cd, etc) and possibly some other conditions (for example, summons I think check for whether you currently have something summoned), until it finds a power to use. Not terribly complex AI, but the other conditions can be a bit of a hassle.

grievehart · April 2018

pantagruel01 said:

Pretty sure it's a simple decision table -- it runs through powers in order, and for each power it checks whether the power is usable (target in range, not on cd, etc) and possibly some other conditions (for example, summons I think check for whether you currently have something summoned), until it finds a power to use. Not terribly complex AI, but the other conditions can be a bit of a hassle.

But if you work with a copied template of an already existing device, all this is already programmed and configured since it's a copy. Theorically, there's little to no more work to provide than change minor things like appearence, name, and maybe relative coordonates of some animations and numerical values here and there.
I understand building something from zero can be hard, annoying, and long, requires tests and all; but when you already have something complete and only wish to modify it slightly, it 's easier.
No proof on that, but i think it's probably already how SK are created. Anyway it's how i would do it. Take one of the last SK done and only change what changes: 3d char model, name, power list, damage and other numerical values, sound effects, talking lines and maybe voice. I suppose some must have required additionnal work like Agate ( because quadrupede) and the Spider unit.

markhawkman said:
Well, on thing I've learned from reskinning non-human characters in STO foundry is that the animations get weird. Reskinning Tholians(spider-like aliens) as humanoids causes them to not play attack animatiosn because the Tholians have a special attack animation that humanoids don't.

Considering CO editor only allow players to create bipedal humanoids, let 's focus on this in a first time.
We still do not know if devices can use characters 3d models directly from players account database, so no need to complicate things or overthinking next steps until we have an official word on this

markhawkman · April 2018

grievehart said:

markhawkman said:
Well, on thing I've learned from reskinning non-human characters in STO foundry is that the animations get weird. Reskinning Tholians(spider-like aliens) as humanoids causes them to not play attack animatiosn because the Tholians have a special attack animation that humanoids don't.
Considering CO editor only allow players to create bipedal humanoids, let 's focus on this in a first time.
We still do not know if devices can use characters 3d models directly from players account database, so no need to complicate things or overthinking next steps until we have an official word on this

I mentioned it because we already have non-humanoids as henchmen/sidekicks in CO. I really don't know if their powers are compatible.

How difficult would it be to give players a char gen or tailor for sidekicks?

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