Suggestion: Wrist/Palm/Hand-based Animations for Beam Rifle

[RunoKnows]

Hey all!

 

I have a suggestion/request that should be simple enough to incorporate. ... Well, maybe simple, at least, as I don't know the first thing about game development and the very idea might make the devs want to tear their hair out instead... but I digress!

 

I'd absolutely LOVE to see an alternate set of animations for Beam Rifle across all archetypes; I know the idea of removing the "rifle" from "beam rifle" might sound a little odd, but it would open up a lot of possibilities for different character concepts if you simply don't see your character running around with a laser gun, such as power armor pilots, spellcasters, and mutants with... uhh... laser beam hands, I guess, just to name a few possibilities. Simply put, offering the choice to change the point of origin of beam rifle blasts to the hands/palms (ala traditional Blast sets) and removing the rifle entirely from that alternate set would help cater to a lot of different hero themes and fantasies!

 

This would also provide an alternative to Energy Blast, Radiation Blast, and the likes for those who do not care to roll one of those sets for whatever reason. I know I'd love to reroll my Energy/Invuln Sentinel as Beam/Invuln so I stop accidentally trolling teams, but a big honkin' pew pew rifle just doesn't look right on that character.

 

Anyone else have any interest in seeing this kind of animation set added to beam rifle? I apologize if this has been discussed to death already but I didn't see any recent topics on the matter, so I figured I'd give it a shot!

 

~ @Runo

[TemporalVileTerror]

Absolutely. 

And as breath/spit attack animations.

And similarly using the death ray to fire off Fire Blasts, Ice Blasts, Radiation Blasts, et cetera.

 

 In other words:  ALL the customization!

[SwitchFade]

Sure. We'd all like more customization; however, the work necessary is significant. Animations and such are a ton of work.

[RunoKnows]

1 minute ago, SwitchFade said:

Sure. We'd all like more customization; however, the work necessary is significant. Animations and such are a ton of work.

Likely so, yeah, though honestly I'd be happy if these alternate animations just recycled older animations that are already in-game; they don't have to be brand new animations or anything, I feel!

[TemporalVileTerror]

Wholeheartedly agree, @RunoKnows.

There are a lot of existing animations which could be utilized.  About the only thing that would need to be addressed are animation times and activation times.  Not an insignificant amount of work, but clearly one that would be well worth the investment.

[biostem]

Here's an odd idea:  If you look at the below image, you can see the position of the beam rifle.  Now, imagine if we left the animation the same, but instead of displaying the rifle model, we replaced it with with fairly chunky "gauntlets" with emitters/beam ports/etc pointing in the right direction for the shot.  It may be a little wonky to get everything to line up correctly, but I think you could pull it off...

 

 

Edited February 23, 2021 by biostem

[BLVD]

There were some animations like these included in the Gadgetry pool. Maybe that would be a good place to start. 

[UltraAlt]

So, I have to ask if you would want all the other blaster sets to have dual pistol, rifle, and beam rifle power animation options?

 

If beam rifle can be a hand blast, why can't fire or electricity use the dual pistol animation?

 

I understand what you are going for, but maybe you can see what I'm saying as well.

 

I think it's a can full of worms.

[UltraAlt]

8 hours ago, TemporalVileTerror said:

 Not an insignificant amount of work, but clearly one that would be well worth the investment.

Which is purely subjective as it is DEV's time which is not paid for.

The DEVs work for free because they love the game.

[dangeraaron10]

I support it!

 

Especially the bit with brearh/spit animations for Beam Rifle.  That's some 90s era Kaiju lightshow stuff and I'm all for it.

[RunoKnows]

12 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

So, I have to ask if you would want all the other blaster sets to have dual pistol, rifle, and beam rifle power animation options?

 

If beam rifle can be a hand blast, why can't fire or electricity use the dual pistol animation?

 

I understand what you are going for, but maybe you can see what I'm saying as well.

 

I think it's a can full of worms.

Actually in an ideal situation I'd love to see more animation sets become available to different blast sets like that -- though, preferably with animations that would be less hassle to work on, i.e. sets that don't require brand new alternate animations to make sense. I don't see Dual Pistols working with most other animation types unless you're the first person to roll the least-popular X-Man, "Throws Bullets With His Hands Man", but I think there is precedence for something like a Beam Rifle animation set for Fire Blast or Electricity Blast. Heck, I think that'd be really cool. Flamethrowers and tesla rifles hooo!

 

In reply to your follow-up post:

Quote

Which is purely subjective as it is DEV's time which is not paid for.

The DEVs work for free because they love the game.

The thing is it's not really anyone's place to say what the devs do or don't want to work on -- I think everyone can agree on that -- but these kinds of posts are part of the Suggestions & Feedback forum for a reason, no? If the devs catch wind of this and decide that they feel like implementing these suggestions, that's great! If not, no worries, but IMHO it's worth it to throw suggestions into the wind and see what sticks. If enough people want to see a change or addition, that might encourage the devs to want to implement it.

 

Again, if not, ah well -- but it's worth a shot, I think!

[VinceBlood]

14 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

So, I have to ask if you would want all the other blaster sets to have dual pistol, rifle, and beam rifle power animation options?

 

If beam rifle can be a hand blast, why can't fire or electricity use the dual pistol animation?

 

I understand what you are going for, but maybe you can see what I'm saying as well.

 

I think it's a can full of worms.

It's only a can full of worms if you're asking for specifically that: to port animations universally.  This is simply one request for Beam Rifle and no other powerset, so I don't really see how this question is applicable.  It's like a weird pseudo-whataboutism.

 

Personally I'd love to have hand-based animations for beam rifle, since the visual effects would translate rather nicely.

[UltraAlt]

10 hours ago, RunoKnows said:

Actually in an ideal situation

I have a different take.

I have many alts, so I can understand why variation of character creation and power customization is a great thing.

 

The DEVs are all volunteers. 

What you are suggesting would take a massive amount of time.

 

I think the DEVs have been good about making their time "well spent" in regards to changes in the game.

In this case, I think "beam rifle" says it all. It wasn't named the "beam" power set.

 

Character customization is good, but I would rather see powerset proliferation - bringing power set types from one set to another set that doesn't have them would be easier and more beneficial to the game.

 

I know that there are many other things that the DEVs are working on (using their own time that they are not being paid for).

 

I'm not saying what you are bringing isn't neat or cool. I'm not even saying that I wouldn't use these options if implemented.

I do think I would be more likely to create an Ice blaster with a rifle or electric blaster with dual pistols than a blaster with beam rifle blaster without a beam rifle.

 

Honestly, I'm still looking for my dual wield  scrapper to be able to hold pistols as weapons (because I don't see a pistols melee set coming out anytime soon^tm)

[UltraAlt]

8 hours ago, VinceBlood said:

This is simply one request for Beam Rifle and no other powerset, so I don't really see how this question is applicable.

Players have already asked for things like wands and staffs to be used for power sets to add more mystic flavour to powers.

 

The point is that people do want all kinds of customization.

Possibly there needs to be a power customization thread the same way that there is one for costume parts.

 

My point is one customization .... there is never only one.

 

Nothing with it being cool. This among many things are cool.

I'm not arguing with bringing it up.

 

I do think changing a set a called "beam rifle" into something that doesn't have a rifle necessarily involved - at the very least  - would need to be renamed.

[RunoKnows]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

The DEVs are all volunteers. 

What you are suggesting would take a massive amount of time.

 

I think the DEVs have been good about making their time "well spent" in regards to changes in the game.

 

I respectfully disagree!

 

I am no game dev, and I assume you, like me, have never worked on City of Heroes (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!). I don't think we need to naysay suggestions simply because 'it might not be dev time well spent', largely because we do not speak for the devs. It could be an incredibly quick and easy suggestion to implement -- it could be horrendously difficult, too -- but ultimately it comes down to whether our dev team wants to take on the task or not, yeah?

[VinceBlood]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

Players have already asked for things like wands and staffs to be used for power sets to add more mystic flavour to powers.

 

The point is that people do want all kinds of customization.

Possibly there needs to be a power customization thread the same way that there is one for costume parts.

 

My point is one customization .... there is never only one.

 

Nothing with it being cool. This among many things are cool.

I'm not arguing with bringing it up.

 

I do think changing a set a called "beam rifle" into something that doesn't have a rifle necessarily involved - at the very least  - would need to be renamed.

I'm aware of that.  But that doesn't change that the OP isn't asking for a proliferation of these animations across more sets than just Beam Rifle.  Many sets in the game with beam-like qualities have alternate, hand-based animations.  Beam's thematic look could easily be explained away into gadget gloves, or hand-based powers.  Other weapon sets wouldn't make as much sense.

 

Like, not to sound blunt or anything, but if you want Dual Pistols to have a new set of animations, you can always make a separate thread.  This thread is about Beam Rifle and its visual versatility lending itself to a potential different animation set.  Would I like more animations for powers across the board?  Yeah, that'd be great.  But we can focus on just the one here, I think.

 

Even if "there's never only one," this is just an idea for one.

[TemporalVileTerror]

Another point of these being volunteer devs means that even if no one on the team currently has the time for this suggestion, that doesn't preclude the possibility of a new dev joining the team who focuses on this as their personal pet project.

 

Suggestions are good.  End of story.

No one here is making demands.

Stating that something may not be feasible due to scope is fair, but even then an expert opinion is more valuable than a guess made by one of us.

Stating an idea sounds personally worthwhile or not is subjective, but fair.

Stating if something is or isn't worth the devs' time is up to the devs.

[Tiger Shadow]

19 hours ago, RunoKnows said:

 I don't see Dual Pistols working with most other animation types unless you're the first person to roll the least-popular X-Man, "Throws Bullets With His Hands Man"

His name was Random and he was with X-Factor, not the X-Men. 😁

[Rejolt]

I requested Wrist Bow animations from the Knives of Artemis for Trick Arrow and from the Live devs and got met with the "Ugh, not worth the time to work out the animations" talk. And yes, we have volunteers here. We actually have Wrist shot animations (Blaster immob dart T1 power for example, Widow darts) but can imagine it would be a pain to basically create a new set of animation "connections" without the benefit of creating a new set.

 

And this is from a person who wants Shoulder Launders for Trick Arrow badly so I can make an Iron Man-like power armor suit (Energy/Trick Arrow). We have missile swarms from EDF/praetorians, MM Big bot and Malta but again.. volunteer time to give us something we already have animations done for.

 

I'd flip out if we got a Shoulder Launcher epic set for Tanks/Brutes (missile swarms, tear gas, immobilize aoe, glue bombs etc).

[EmperorSteele]

I mean, the Praetorian Police have wrist beams.

 

I think the issue might be scapping together 9 unique animations (one for each power), but overall, I'd be in favor of this 😃

[VinceBlood]

2 hours ago, EmperorSteele said:

I mean, the Praetorian Police have wrist beams.

 

I think the issue might be scapping together 9 unique animations (one for each power), but overall, I'd be in favor of this 😃

Really, I'd much rather see the attacks come from our existing animations.  You can't tell me the 'eye beam' animation (shoulders back, head forward, fists clenched) wouldn't make a great Cutting Beam anim.

[TemporalVileTerror]

X-Ray Beam has an Activation time of 1.67s, so it's animation is roughly that long.

Cutting Beam has a 1.9s Activation.

While I'd personally be okay with padding out the extra time with a bit of animation hang, I expect the Dev Team might not be (based on some of the other statements they've made about graphic quality over the past two years).

So, sadly, there is a little bit of an extra hurdle in the way here.  Hopefully one which can be overcome, though.  The changes to Total Focus suggest the Devs now have the tools necessary to make adjustments like this feasible.

[Starhammer]

I enthusiastically support any and all additions to costume and power customization options!

That said, I think the easiest implementation is the addition of "invisible" weapons. It's not perfect, but in the right combinations, it's pretty awesome. Not long before shutdown, devs were showing something that involved a dual pistols character firing, but had no pistol models in his hands (something they insisted previously just "couldn't" be done) and it actually looked amazing... and depending on which gloves are worn, still looks perfectly feasible... those chuncky vented IDF gauntlets would be perfect, if they'd let us have them.

I'm not sure this would work as well with rifle powersets because of the firing poses, but it's a step in the right direction until someone is able/willing to dig in and add alternative animations.

[The Scandinavian]

I saw ( can't remember what story arc ) an NPC  use the Beam rifle powers but as an eye beam Cyclops style, it would appear those animations are already in the game.....somewhere; it was rather cool.

[arcane]

Let’s not forget the finger gun amidst all this talk of alternative animations.