Gender of human MM pets

[GamerKate]

I’ve not had much experience at all with Masterminds. Can we choose the gender of the human pets such as ninjas, thugs etc, or are they fixed, or random?

 

MCM

[MetaVileTerror]

This has been a long-standing requested feature, but alas, the Henchpets are all hard-coded at the moment with their preset models.  The most variation you get are with the Mercenaries and the Thugs randomizing between an assortment of pre-established appearances, all quite masculine.

[SaintD]

By 'all quite masculine' he means 'women simply don't exist in MM primaries'.

Masterminds are a hardcoded sausagefest unless you have a death wish and wanna try it on with a lioness.

[Redlynne]

Wait ... the demons aren't all high school girls?

[Shazbotacus]

I understand the original devs' worry that players would make Masterminds of all female henchmen with... certain outfit themes and name themselves stupid, degrading middle school/4chan crap whenever the topic of customizable henchmen came up, but I wouldn't be opposed to certain henchmen summons having just one female model to be picked out by random as the game assigns an appearance to summoned pets. Like how the Skulls started taking on female members.

Edited October 9, 2019 by Shazbotacus

[IscreamMan]

2 hours ago, Shazbotacus said:

I understand the original devs' worry that players would make Masterminds of all female henchmen with... certain outfit themes and name themselves stupid, degrading middle school/4chan crap whenever the topic of customizable henchmen came up

This makes no sense and sounds like the dev just wanted an excuse as to why they didnt do what in hindsight was obvious. I mean by the same logic, City of Heroes shouldn't have even been developed bc someone might make an offensive character or a marvel clone.

 

IMO, the lack of customization in the MM pets, in a game where the biggest and best feature is its character creator, is just lunatic design choice.

 

I'm a game programmer myself, so I'd be interested in checking out adding the feature if homecoming devs would promise to add it.

Edited October 9, 2019 by IscreamMan

[Shazbotacus]

That's a fair point. Sometimes I do wonder if the devs were just lazy about some things. I know I am.

[SaintD]

Actually it would almost certainly have been because of PvP, which they were still desperately pretending was still A Thing at that point. In a PvP environment all powers have to have the same consistent effects and appearances so you can identify things at a glance. It's why the 'minimal' costume customization options are ACTUALLY 'PvP Only'.

Power customization was also not at all on anyone's mind for anything at all at that point either, so the henchmen were implemented with as little concern for customization as anything else. Given how much work it took to do power customization, it's probably just as much to implement it for MM henchmen, but it would all be for just a handful of primaries on a single AT.

[IscreamMan]

4 hours ago, SaintD said:

Actually it would almost certainly have been because of PvP, which they were still desperately pretending was still A Thing at that point. In a PvP environment all powers have to have the same consistent effects and appearances so you can identify things at a glance. It's why the 'minimal' costume customization options are ACTUALLY 'PvP Only'.

Power customization was also not at all on anyone's mind for anything at all at that point either, so the henchmen were implemented with as little concern for customization as anything else. Given how much work it took to do power customization, it's probably just as much to implement it for MM henchmen, but it would all be for just a handful of primaries on a single AT.

I'm gonna download the source code and take a look. Might even be less insane to just make an entirely new archetype / powerset than to try to edit the MM henchmen, if things are as bad as people say. I heard the source is worse than you can imagine, if you imagined it being awful.

[Redlynne]

8 hours ago, IscreamMan said:

I heard the source is worse than you can imagine, if you imagined it being awful.

At least spaghetti is straight before it gets boiled ...

[SmalltalkJava]

I love the psychology of pvp.   

 

Real pvp’rs should be able to pvp with minimal effects options enabled.    In a real super hero world you might not always be able to tell if a person is using  dark armor vs fire amor.   Or what ever power has minimal effects options vs another power that has it also.   If your gonna pvp, then do it all the way.   I don’t care if you have effects or not.   I’ll run up to you with my petless MM and cross punch your face!  Kick, cross punch , brawl.   

 

- I’m just poking fun.   😉 

[Gulbasaur]

On 10/9/2019 at 11:39 PM, IscreamMan said:

I'm a game programmer myself, so I'd be interested in checking out adding the feature if homecoming devs would promise to add it.

Look up BobbleWrap on Reddit. He's done it, I think.

 

It's on the i24 codebase, though, so maybe you could collaborate with him to fork it to i25/26?

[Herotu]

On 10/13/2019 at 9:06 PM, Gulbasaur said:

Look up BobbleWrap on Reddit. He's done it, I think.

 

It's on the i24 codebase, though, so maybe you could collaborate with him to fork it to i25/26?

Wow, look at that!

https://imgur.com/a/d1otgm1

Edited October 17, 2019 by Herotu

[Rigged]

On 10/10/2019 at 4:06 AM, Shazbotacus said:

I understand the original devs' worry that players would make Masterminds of all female henchmen with... certain outfit themes and name themselves stupid, degrading middle school/4chan crap whenever the topic of customizable henchmen came up, but I wouldn't be opposed to certain henchmen summons having just one female model to be picked out by random as the game assigns an appearance to summoned pets. Like how the Skulls started taking on female members.

This was never the case. It was purely conjecture by players on the original CoH forums as to the reasons, the usual "no, nothing needs to be changed" argument made every time someone wants something new. The reason we never got customisable henches  was entirely technical - it was hard, it was something they wanted but was low priority, and it would possibly kill frame rates as each MM could potentially have a half dozen costumes to load at once.

 

Years later the rumour has taken a life of its own and people are blaming SJWs for ruining their fun, which is just ridiculous since Cryptic was nowhere near resembling anything enthusiastically woke.

 

Straightforwardly the devs simply didn't make very many female NPCs. In issue 0 there were in fact NO female enemies. The first time we got them was in I1 with Carnies and Knives. No female default henchmen was just an extension of that attitude, that it was just easier to make male NPCs.

Edited October 18, 2019 by Rigged

[Rigged]

On 10/10/2019 at 6:39 AM, IscreamMan said:

This makes no sense and sounds like the dev just wanted an excuse as to why they didnt do what in hindsight was obvious. I mean by the same logic, City of Heroes shouldn't have even been developed bc someone might make an offensive character or a marvel clone.

 

IMO, the lack of customization in the MM pets, in a game where the biggest and best feature is its character creator, is just lunatic design choice.

 

I'm a game programmer myself, so I'd be interested in checking out adding the feature if homecoming devs would promise to add it.

As I mentioned, this was never said by a dev. It should be obvious that there are several MM sets without human henchmen and none of them got any kind of customisation, even alternate models.

 

The limitation was purely development time, not a design choice. As a programmer I do believe you can appreciate this reason. 

[Shazbotacus]

5 hours ago, Rigged said:

This was never the case. It was purely conjecture by players on the original CoH forums as to the reasons, the usual "no, nothing needs to be changed" argument made every time someone wants something new. The reason we never got customisable henches  was entirely technical - it was hard, it was something they wanted but was low priority, and it would possibly kill frame rates as each MM could potentially have a half dozen costumes to load at once.

Ah, that makes sense. All righty.

[IscreamMan]

On 10/18/2019 at 2:29 AM, Rigged said:

This was never the case. It was purely conjecture by players on the original CoH forums as to the reasons, the usual "no, nothing needs to be changed" argument made every time someone wants something new. The reason we never got customisable henches  was entirely technical - it was hard, it was something they wanted but was low priority, and it would possibly kill frame rates as each MM could potentially have a half dozen costumes to load at once.

 

Years later the rumour has taken a life of its own and people are blaming SJWs for ruining their fun, which is just ridiculous since Cryptic was nowhere near resembling anything enthusiastically woke.

 

Straightforwardly the devs simply didn't make very many female NPCs. In issue 0 there were in fact NO female enemies. The first time we got them was in I1 with Carnies and Knives. No female default henchmen was just an extension of that attitude, that it was just easier to make male NPCs.

That makes A LOT more sense.

On 10/18/2019 at 3:06 AM, Rigged said:

As I mentioned, this was never said by a dev. It should be obvious that there are several MM sets without human henchmen and none of them got any kind of customisation, even alternate models.

 

The limitation was purely development time, not a design choice. As a programmer I do believe you can appreciate this reason. 

As an indie solo programmer, I can appreciate limitations based on development time. No problem. I get it. IMO this would be at the top top top of the feature list and be a feature from the start, but I understand - as an indie developer. However for a full AAA MMORPG company like Cryptic back in City of Heroe's prime, there is no excuse. We all know it wasn't for lack of the engineer's desire, ability, or time. It wasn't even for the lack of money. It was purely red tape BS. In fact I'd be honestly surprised if it weren't the case that the entire team of engineers and artists wanted the idea at the top of their priority list, but due to not having any voice and thus no say in the matter (with non-gamer leadership always obsessing over money/greed/profit) I'm sure the leadership thought "But where's the profit?" and probably asked questions to anyone who brought the idea up, like, "So...where is the profit? Do...we charge them for customization? Is this P2W? Oh oh I love it. Oh...we don't do P2W right now? I don't quite understand. You want to implement it because it increases....what? What is q-quality? Is that French? Huh? F...fun? Is that a foreign currency? I'm sorry but I'm gonna have to say no. We really need to push the update no one asked for instead."

😛

Joking aside, it is always extremely disappointing in AAA. Nearly every time I have ever found out the truth of why a company didn't do something obvious, something overwhelmingly popular among the userbase, or something that would greatly improve or fix the game, the answer was always disappointingly about the top leadership's bank account or manipulating stock value. Or even worse in some cases, like with the Marvel Heroes CEO running out the door with all the money in his briefcase, grabbing as many women's asses on his way out with the money as he could. That example is a lot less hyperbolic than it sounds too 😄

On 10/13/2019 at 3:06 PM, Gulbasaur said:

Look up BobbleWrap on Reddit. He's done it, I think.

 

It's on the i24 codebase, though, so maybe you could collaborate with him to fork it to i25/26?

Thank you very much! I'll definitely check this out, but I doubt I could be of any real help at this point if it is already finished. By the time it would take me to get caught up to speed on the codebase, it'll probably already be long since ready. I am really hoping the homecoming admins accept this in 25/26 when/if it's ready.

Edited October 29, 2019 by IscreamMan

[biostem]

On 10/9/2019 at 10:21 AM, SaintD said:

By 'all quite masculine' he means 'women simply don't exist in MM primaries'.

Masterminds are a hardcoded sausagefest unless you have a death wish and wanna try it on with a lioness.

Are you assuming my bots' gender?  😅

[SaintD]

On 10/31/2019 at 8:45 AM, biostem said:

Are you assuming my bots' gender?  😅

They're obsessed with brawling, especially to their own detriment. If you think they're female, you're wrong. Sorry.

[Mishii]

Necromancy on this to maybe bring back to light?

 

can we please get customized pets? Or fair equality of gender? Or a new set? Maybe Carnival MM or Fortuna’s or something of this nature? I would loving to feel like Birds of Prey or Femme Fatale!! 
 

i see it is possible. I would loving this!

[gameboy1234]

18 hours ago, Mishii said:

Or a new set? Maybe Carnival MM or Fortuna’s or something of this nature?

 

This is an interesting idea.  While customization could be hard, a new set might be easier to code.  It's just picking off the list of power sets, right?  No worse than adding other new powers like Electrical Affinity and Clown Brawling.  Just reuse the existing powers, like Ninjas, and make the summon Knives of Artemis models.  Should be "relatively" easy.  Well I shouldn't assume but I hope it's easier.

 

 

 

(I made up Clown Brawling, sorry to lead you all on like that.)

[WumpusRat]

It would certainly be nice to see a new mastermind primary, considering the last new one was at the tail end of live, with beast mastery. Other ATs have had primaries ported over to them, or created entirely, but MMs still languish with only 7 primaries to choose from, by far the lowest number of any AT in the game (other than kheldians and veats, but they don't really count).

 

Going purely by damage types, the ones that we already have are:

Lethal -- mercenaries, necro (the grave knights' sword attacks), thugs (all the guns), ninjas shuriken/swords, beast mastery animal claws/bites

Smashing -- thugs Bruiser, necro zombie punches, ninjas kicking

Fire -- thugs arsonist, ninjas oni, robotics assault bot flamethrower, demons tier-1 fire demon

Cold - demons demon prince attacks, beast mastery dire wolf attacks, demons tier-1 cold demon

Energy -- robotics all the lasers

Negative -- necro all the undead pewpew

Toxic -- necro zombie barf, demons tier-1 toxic demon

Psionic -- ...nothing?

 

So a set that focuses on psionic stuff could be interesting, just to fill the niche that has nothing in it. Another energy-focused set could also be good, to have something other than robotics. Same with negative, as only necromancy deals with that -- though to be honest there isn't much in CoH that uses negative energy that ISN'T undead/necromancy. Or maybe a set that focuses on cold, or fire. 

 

The simplest (in terms of models and such) would be picking from existing groups and summoning up versions of them. Though the MM stuff is all "generic" rather than specific, so that might be stepping into an area the devs just don't want to deal with. After all, the moment you add ONE existing group as a MM set, people are going to be demanding the others that they want to play, and arguing that "if you did it with that one, these ten can't be that much harder, right?" 

 

 

 

 

[High_Beam]

On 10/9/2019 at 9:02 AM, MetaVileTerror said:

Thugs randomizing between an assortment of pre-established appearances, all quite masculine.

or from Jersey

[Caven10]

On 10/9/2019 at 7:54 AM, GamerKate said:

I’ve not had much experience at all with Masterminds. Can we choose the gender of the human pets such as ninjas, thugs etc, or are they fixed, or random?

 

MCM

OHHH FFS!