Two Handed animations for BA, BS and WM, open weapon appearances!

[Warlawk]

I like these sets (reworked BA is a beast!) but using a 1 handed weapon with nothing in the offhand is just... lackluster at best. I've only been able to bring myself to play these sets with the Shield Defense set since it just looks goofy otherwise.

 

I would love to see some upscaled models that use two handed animations, there's also an option of using the Dual Blades animations and letting these weapons be dual wielded. These changes would be purely cosmetic and have no impact on the powers themselves of course.

 

Additionally is it going to actually hurt anything to open up weapon appearances across sets? Does it really matter if your power set is BA but you're swinging a sword instead of an axe? At this point in CoX's lifespan I think restricting weapon models just to preserve visual identity of a set is a bit outdated. As someone who actively dislikes the look of axes and is indifferent to maces, this change would open up those sets a lot for me to enjoy playing.

[biostem]

Animations are probably the most time-intensive aspect of creating a new set, which is why they get reused & repurposed so often.  The closest you're likely to see would be some tweaking of the titan weapon animations, but even then, some of the existing broadsword weapon models don't have the correct hilt lengths.  I suppose they could try to make the katana animations selectable for broadsword, but IIRC, those 2 sets basically started off as clones of each other in the first place...

[arcane]

So, Titan Weapons

[Saiyajinzoningen]

i dunno if this is possible but how about a mirror mode?

so after each animation is played the weapon ends up on the other hand

this gives the illusion the weapon is switching hands after each power is used.

[Indystruck]

would never happen because of Shield, basically

[biostem]

1 minute ago, Indystruck said:

would never happen because of Shield, basically

Not really - it'd just be excluded from being taken along with shield, like other powersets already are...

[Rudra]

26 minutes ago, biostem said:

29 minutes ago, Indystruck said:

would never happen because of Shield, basically

Not really - it'd just be excluded from being taken along with shield, like other powersets already are...

Except the proposal isn't a new power set that could be coded to preclude shields. It is a request for alternate weapon models and their animations to be added to an existing power set that does not preclude shields. So that poses a problem. Say you make a Broadsword/Shield character. Then you go into the character creator and change your one-handed weapon to one of the two-handed options the OP makes possible. What happens to the /Shield secondary? Game says you can't do that, I believe primarily because of the animation problem, but now you have a means to work around it. Does your secondary get disabled? You can't change it. Does the game get new code disabling the shield models and animations with the shield set? If the latter, then why even bother having the shield lockout? Just disable the lockout and remove the shield models and animations then. Or go to clipping hell and live with it.

[biostem]

Just now, Rudra said:

Say you make a Broadsword/Shield character. Then you go into the character creator and change your one-handed weapon to one of the two-handed options the OP makes possible.

The alternate animation options would have to become locked-out if you took shield as your secondary - basically a more specific extension of the aforementioned restrictions.

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, biostem said:

The alternate animation options would have to become locked-out if you took shield as your secondary - basically a more specific extension of the aforementioned restrictions.

Which begs the question I was avoiding in my response. Is the lockout coded to the sets, to the powers, or to the animations? (My money is on the sets.) And even ignoring that, you choose your weapon models after you choose your power sets. So now you have to either be able to disable the model with their corresponding animations to prevent two-handed use if the player chose shield, which requires a whole new level of coding complexity, or require the chosen model + animation choice to disable the shield power set if chosen and force the player to a previous point in character creation to choose a suitable power set that can make use of that. As opposed to going Titan Weapon or Katana after requesting the desired weapon models be added to them.

 

 

Edited August 31, 2023 by Rudra
Edited to correct "beggars" to "begs".

[Owl Girl]

maybe this is the Wrong Place to mention it, but i've always hated the restrictions on which power sets can be used with Shield Defense. i don't care if You don't think Staff Fighting with Shield Defense makes sense, i don't think it makes sense that i can't Aim my Assault Rifle. i just cut a Titan in half with a sword. since when did we care about extreme realism in our game about comic book hero dress-up?

[Indystruck]

It was never about what would be realistic, it was about the animations not breaking.

[Sakura Tenshi]

I’ve actually kind of wanted this myself. It’s definitely a pie in the sky pipe dream with how animation is incredibly difficult if not practically impossible for this game, but it’s still on my own wish list if anything was put in the table.

 

some specifics I would have is also making katana have a “one handed” animation variant with some broadsword customizations opened up, mostly to allow for fencer type fighters and all that.

[Starhammer]

So if you want to play a Shield Wielder without using the Shield powerset, so as to have something in that off hand, it's not perfect but on the Left Glove only, use a Black Knight gauntlet, it's almost a spiked shield in it's own right, and helps with that off hand emptiness on single handed weapon sets.

It also shows that it wouldn't "break the animation" to have Shield available to Two-Handed weapon sets. What it would do is create clipping issues with some combinations of shields and weapons. Some of the devs seem allergic to potentially sub-optimal clipping, but if they could move past that, we could add many of the shield options as a Left Glove choice (or even mirrored for Right Glove... I'd love to make a dual shields Super Strength/Shield brute )