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Cryptic? It's time for the Costume Pass
Archived Post
Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
Have you ever wanted to play something a little different? Maybe a lightly armored, highly confident gunslingin' commando with a grenade bandolier and a long, flowing scarf? Maybe you've got a youkai or an ambassador from another world who can't understand why everyone on Earth expects sophonts with a digitigrade leg structure to walk around half-naked? Can't get over your unrequited need to make a cat and put it in a hat?
Yeah. Me, too.
There are a good dozen costume combinations I can come up with off the top of my head that are specifically disallowed in Champions Online's character creation tool its single greatest asset as an MMO for no reason whatsoever. The infamous Wrapped Scarf back piece is the greatest example a long cape-like scarf a'la the Shinobi games, which can only be used by Tights & Skin characters. Can't combine the Wrapped Scarf with any of the dozens of chest wear pieces that it'd work just peachy with. Grenade and knife bandoliers, fur bikinis, corsets and bustiers, oblique armor and giant gladiator belts, tunics and martial arts gis, even something as utterly ordinary and uninteresting as SUSPENDERS...all disallowed.
Why? What's Cryptic's reasoning? Surely they've got a good answer for why we can't use such an awesome costume piece with the good half of the Chest Wear category it'd fit just fine with? Or why we can't use any of the other many, many costume combinations options which are disallowed or restricted, such as Short Skirt layers on beast legs, high collars on beast heads, bracer options with things like the Harajuku jacket, back emblem options for many of the aforementioned chest wear, or practically every (unfortunately) fake screenshot in this thread? I mean, certainly they've got to know that their costume editor is the reason a good half of their playerbase became their playerbase in the first place, right? It's certainly the reason I got into the game anyways. So their answer's got to be awesome and explain it all, right?
Cryptic: Clipping issues.
...wut. No. Not awesome, and explains nothing. You want clipping issues, Cryptic? The Tesla Armor chest piece ingests half the back pieces you try and bolt onto it. New Shadows Waist Cape clips badly with your travel power animations. Most of the things in Emblem Front have horrifying clipping issues with anything but tights or, in a few cases, oddly beneficial clipping issues (Sakura Mecha chest wear with Scarab front emblem. Try it out, be surprised at how well it works for being a monster clip). Clipping issues are NOT GONNA CUT IT as our explanation, not when anyone with a brain in their head can deal with their own clipping issues, and not when it's already perfectly possible to create absolutely atrocious-looking costumes with which to deeply offend your fellow gamers.
Now, I get it. There are some legitimate issues with a few of the things your player base keeps bringing up, Cryptic. Back emblems w/Chest Wear incurs a rendering cost in your/our system memory, usually with no visible benefit. A'ight, I can see that even if there's a significant number of chest pieces that doesn't hold for. Adding Accessory-category pieces to beast heads involves resculpting each individual piece for each individual head, and that's a lot of time and effort. That, by the way, does NOT excuse the criminal lack of Hips-layer options for beast legs. Certain pieces are also, no doubt, configured awkwardly in your databases and what looks to be a straightforward thing on the user end is some kind of bass-ackwards kludge on your end - which is what I suspect the Beast legs hip layer issue actually is. I don't doubt that fixing the issues the playerbase brings up with your costume editor would be more work than they generally say it is.
So. Idea. Do it anyways.
Earth is coming out soon; once that's out of the way, how's about we slow down the pace of powerset passes for a little while and do a Costume Pass? Finish all that awesome work you did proliferating gender-specific costume pieces that had no reason to be, find those bitsies that your playerbase keeps begging for (like the Wrapped Scarf back) and give it to them, take the time to straighten out any costume kludging you've had to do, and just generally take a month out of your powerset pass rotation and spend it putting to right some of the wrongs in a game feature just as integral to your success and even more dear to your player's hearts than whatever powerset's in the rotation after Power Armor.
You've got Wind and Earth done, or at least nearly done. Heavy Weapons isn't that old. We're cool on powersets for the moment. You can take some time off of doing the Speedster set, or the Water set, or the Taco Salad set or whatever's next in the pipe that feeds endless new-powerset demands into your offices, and maybe just fix something we've already got? That's what you guys do for older powersets, and I'm always grateful to see it, honest...but I swear I spend as much time fiddling in the tailor as I do playing the game, and I know full well I'm not alone in that. This isn't the first thread asking for costume revisions it's not even the second or third.
Pwease, Cwyptic? We can haz Costume pass? I'll be yew best fwiend!
P.S. SHORT SKIRTS ON BEAST LEGS! Whatever coding salad is keeping you from adding Short Skirt options, at the very least, to the beast leg geometries, take a chainsaw to it! I've got no less than three beast leg characters and not one of them is the sort of feral savage for whom tribal furs is appropriate which means they get to either wear a Persian Belt 'loincloth' or go nekkid. C'MON! Why why WHY are the Hips layer options for beast legs so preposterously scant? O_O
RAAWRGH!
Yeah. Me, too.
There are a good dozen costume combinations I can come up with off the top of my head that are specifically disallowed in Champions Online's character creation tool its single greatest asset as an MMO for no reason whatsoever. The infamous Wrapped Scarf back piece is the greatest example a long cape-like scarf a'la the Shinobi games, which can only be used by Tights & Skin characters. Can't combine the Wrapped Scarf with any of the dozens of chest wear pieces that it'd work just peachy with. Grenade and knife bandoliers, fur bikinis, corsets and bustiers, oblique armor and giant gladiator belts, tunics and martial arts gis, even something as utterly ordinary and uninteresting as SUSPENDERS...all disallowed.
Why? What's Cryptic's reasoning? Surely they've got a good answer for why we can't use such an awesome costume piece with the good half of the Chest Wear category it'd fit just fine with? Or why we can't use any of the other many, many costume combinations options which are disallowed or restricted, such as Short Skirt layers on beast legs, high collars on beast heads, bracer options with things like the Harajuku jacket, back emblem options for many of the aforementioned chest wear, or practically every (unfortunately) fake screenshot in this thread? I mean, certainly they've got to know that their costume editor is the reason a good half of their playerbase became their playerbase in the first place, right? It's certainly the reason I got into the game anyways. So their answer's got to be awesome and explain it all, right?
Cryptic: Clipping issues.
...wut. No. Not awesome, and explains nothing. You want clipping issues, Cryptic? The Tesla Armor chest piece ingests half the back pieces you try and bolt onto it. New Shadows Waist Cape clips badly with your travel power animations. Most of the things in Emblem Front have horrifying clipping issues with anything but tights or, in a few cases, oddly beneficial clipping issues (Sakura Mecha chest wear with Scarab front emblem. Try it out, be surprised at how well it works for being a monster clip). Clipping issues are NOT GONNA CUT IT as our explanation, not when anyone with a brain in their head can deal with their own clipping issues, and not when it's already perfectly possible to create absolutely atrocious-looking costumes with which to deeply offend your fellow gamers.
Now, I get it. There are some legitimate issues with a few of the things your player base keeps bringing up, Cryptic. Back emblems w/Chest Wear incurs a rendering cost in your/our system memory, usually with no visible benefit. A'ight, I can see that even if there's a significant number of chest pieces that doesn't hold for. Adding Accessory-category pieces to beast heads involves resculpting each individual piece for each individual head, and that's a lot of time and effort. That, by the way, does NOT excuse the criminal lack of Hips-layer options for beast legs. Certain pieces are also, no doubt, configured awkwardly in your databases and what looks to be a straightforward thing on the user end is some kind of bass-ackwards kludge on your end - which is what I suspect the Beast legs hip layer issue actually is. I don't doubt that fixing the issues the playerbase brings up with your costume editor would be more work than they generally say it is.
So. Idea. Do it anyways.
Earth is coming out soon; once that's out of the way, how's about we slow down the pace of powerset passes for a little while and do a Costume Pass? Finish all that awesome work you did proliferating gender-specific costume pieces that had no reason to be, find those bitsies that your playerbase keeps begging for (like the Wrapped Scarf back) and give it to them, take the time to straighten out any costume kludging you've had to do, and just generally take a month out of your powerset pass rotation and spend it putting to right some of the wrongs in a game feature just as integral to your success and even more dear to your player's hearts than whatever powerset's in the rotation after Power Armor.
You've got Wind and Earth done, or at least nearly done. Heavy Weapons isn't that old. We're cool on powersets for the moment. You can take some time off of doing the Speedster set, or the Water set, or the Taco Salad set or whatever's next in the pipe that feeds endless new-powerset demands into your offices, and maybe just fix something we've already got? That's what you guys do for older powersets, and I'm always grateful to see it, honest...but I swear I spend as much time fiddling in the tailor as I do playing the game, and I know full well I'm not alone in that. This isn't the first thread asking for costume revisions it's not even the second or third.
Pwease, Cwyptic? We can haz Costume pass? I'll be yew best fwiend!
P.S. SHORT SKIRTS ON BEAST LEGS! Whatever coding salad is keeping you from adding Short Skirt options, at the very least, to the beast leg geometries, take a chainsaw to it! I've got no less than three beast leg characters and not one of them is the sort of feral savage for whom tribal furs is appropriate which means they get to either wear a Persian Belt 'loincloth' or go nekkid. C'MON! Why why WHY are the Hips layer options for beast legs so preposterously scant? O_O
RAAWRGH!
Post edited by Archived Post on
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Comments
Then I kept reading. How much do you know about the engine the game runs on, or 3d models or animation? Ok, me neither. But I wonder with the clipping issues, if it wouldn't make the game slow down, like you mention with back emblems + chestwear. I'm not sure what costume parts might or might not have collision with one another, and/or what actually has a reason for not working.
Also, beast legs bend the other way. skirts would need to be animated completely differently to flow along legs bending like that.
Heh...as for who I am to tell them when it is or isn't time? I'm a paying customer, this is their suggestions box forum, and I'm suggesting - however strongly - that there are some costume editor faux pas that make no sense that I would like to see fixed
All the shirts are tucked into the pants, which looks dorky as hell, so that they won't clip with the belts.
And I don't know how correctable this is, but all the pants ride way too high on the waist as well; the characters look like they're all stuck in the '70s. But with un-tucked shirts, that really wouldn't even matter since the top of the pants would be hidden.
Apart from that as well, one of the biggest issues I have with costume creation in this game is the lack of customization with the faces. Most of the problem is that we can't change the texture used by the face. There's an option already there to choose different skins for the face, but so far it's only been utilized for ridiculous alternatives like polygonal, old or demonic faces. More normal-type options need to be added to that.
There's a ton of pieces I am always shocked at mysteriously vanishing whenever I want something else. Lots of belts go when you pick chest armour, and half of those don't even cover where the belts would be.
Enough with the lame clipping excuse! Just leave it to the players to avoid clipping. Of course, newcommers will notice how much clipping there would be in the editor and some might even complain. But the benefit of more options outweights the extra effort of selecting the costume pieces more carefully, by far!
Also, two other things that NEED to be done as part of a Costume Pass:
* Fix the bugged costume pieces! There are quite some that clip into themselvs. Others are missing material or texture options (most notably Gravitar's Metal Boots!) and a few are missing completely: crafting unlocks that worked only on one gender, certain unlockers that don't work account wide and one that is missing for no reason; the Backpack Gadgeteer.
* Make Long Gloves and Short Gloves ONE selection! Some Bracers might clip with Long Gloves, but as mentioned often enough before, this is not really an issue. Not being able to select a Short Glove on one hand and a Long Glove on the other is far more frustrating than having to select pieces that do not clip - in a bad way.
We need more options and fixed bugs!
Come on, PWI/Cryptic, what are you waiting for???
=^ _ ^= Kitty Lives!
- Heads/Helmets with Mouth/Side/Top/Eye Accessories (very limited options)
- Half/Full Helmets Mouth/Side/Top/Eye Accessories (very limited)
- Integrated Shulders + Shoulder Pads (very limited)
- Some mouth accessories should be a seperate category IE: Chin Accessories
- Bestial/Monstrous heads have little head customization in terms of accessories and when it comes to sliders
I would actually pay to have and "unlocled" character creator. They could make it a C-store purchase to avoid "new" player being freaked out by clipping.
Probably Neverwinter. But I don't think they intended to give CO any attention back after it is released. :rolleyes:
Then they'd be fools of the highest order. Superheros are BIG in pop culture right now and growing. Fantasy gaming is everywhere. A substanital re-investment in Champions is a sensible choice.
While she has been rescued
what diabolical mastermind
was behind the devious brain-napping of
the Volterrific Dr Cerebellum?