bird or bat flying

[The Mighty Paladin]

why don't we have a flying power that lets you turn into a bird or bat?

there are lots of characters who would use it.

[The Mighty Paladin]

oh yeah you could make it an effect attached to fly and hover and assessable by changing costumes.

[srmalloy]

28 minutes ago, The Mighty Paladin said:

why don't we have a flying power that lets you turn into a bird or bat?

there are lots of characters who would use it.

Two options. Make it a cosmetic variation for Fly and Mystic Flight... and then come up with new animations for every single power in the game that can be used while flying. Or make it a separate power like Rocket Board that suppresses all your powers while using it. I can see enough downsides to the latter than I expect it would get much less use than you might think, and the former involves enough work to make it prohibitive for the minor upside of the visual change.

[Techwright]

Those animal travel powers that exist, that are sold for INF at the P2W vendors, those were prestige items in the original game.  I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe those were created to generate a bit more real-world currency for the game owners of the original game.  The same is true with the specialty flight powers at the P2W vendors, such as the disk and rocket boards.   You'll notice one cannot combat with those, only fly around.    We do have wings, big and small, in the costume shop that people have create bat costumes from, and those do work with combat flight powers.  We just don't have a pure bat look like the wolf or big cat prestige travel power looks.

[The Mighty Paladin]

10 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Two options. Make it a cosmetic variation for Fly and Mystic Flight... and then come up with new animations for every single power in the game that can be used while flying. Or make it a separate power like Rocket Board that suppresses all your powers while using it. I can see enough downsides to the latter than I expect it would get much less use than you might think, and the former involves enough work to make it prohibitive for the minor upside of the visual change.

There is a middle ground.

Make it suppress melee range attacks only. Then you could fly in bird form, blasting people with lighting but unable to use martial arts or super strength. I think this solves the problem.

[Rudra]

9 minutes ago, The Mighty Paladin said:

22 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

Two options. Make it a cosmetic variation for Fly and Mystic Flight... and then come up with new animations for every single power in the game that can be used while flying. Or make it a separate power like Rocket Board that suppresses all your powers while using it. I can see enough downsides to the latter than I expect it would get much less use than you might think, and the former involves enough work to make it prohibitive for the minor upside of the visual change.

There is a middle ground.

Make it suppress melee range attacks only. Then you could fly in bird form, blasting people with lighting but unable to use martial arts or super strength. I think this solves the problem.

No, it wouldn't. Firstly, that would be translated as the devs favoring ranged attacks for having animations/attacks over melee. Secondly, because ranged weapon use would still be broken.

[srmalloy]

10 minutes ago, The Mighty Paladin said:

There is a middle ground.

Make it suppress melee range attacks only. Then you could fly in bird form, blasting people with lighting but unable to use martial arts or super strength. I think this solves the problem.

So you only have to create new animations for all the ranged attacks, then?

[Rudra]

3 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

14 minutes ago, The Mighty Paladin said:

There is a middle ground.

Make it suppress melee range attacks only. Then you could fly in bird form, blasting people with lighting but unable to use martial arts or super strength. I think this solves the problem.

So you only have to create new animations for all the ranged attacks, then?

No, the author is simply assuming that the current animations would suffice despite the breaks/errors in the animation.

[The Mighty Paladin]

no I'm assuming you wouldn't need any animations for the ranged attacks, just the power effects. Although it occurs to me you would also have to block gun and bow attacks. 

[srmalloy]

44 minutes ago, Rudra said:

No, the author is simply assuming that the current animations would suffice despite the breaks/errors in the animation.

So the existing 'one arm extended' snipe stance works how in bird form? Or the double-arm-forward animation from Fire Blast? You still have to animate the character mesh doing something to have a visible animation; it doesn't just magically transfer to the new mesh. And the flying animation for a bird form is going to be considerably different from the existing hover/flight animations, so attacks from those postures don't simply transfer across.

[Rudra]

2 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

So the existing 'one arm extended' snipe stance works how in bird form? Or the double-arm-forward animation from Fire Blast? You still have to animate the character mesh doing something to have a visible animation; it doesn't just magically transfer to the new mesh. And the flying animation for a bird form is going to be considerably different from the existing hover/flight animations, so attacks from those postures don't simply transfer across.

I did say breaks and errors. I'm not arguing with you, just explaining my understanding of the post.

[Coyotedancer]

I think it would be fun to have even if it worked like the rocketboard and ground-based animal transformations. 

 

Would *everyone* use it? No. Of course not. But things don't have to be universal to be fun, viable ideas.

[srmalloy]

7 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I did say breaks and errors. I'm not arguing with you, just explaining my understanding of the post.

Yes, but what I'm seeing is that he's continuing to argue for the power while excluding entire powersets from being able to use it -- AR, Dual Pistols, Archery -- an Archery/Tactical Arrow Blaster might as well have all their powers suppressed by Bird Form Flight. When you have to presuppose gimping a significant fraction of the playerbase -- all melee powersets, all ranged powersets using a weapon -- to use the power, it's feeling more and more like an "I want this how I want it, and I don't care how many other players are inconvenienced when they use it" suggestion. As Coyotedancer says, it's much easier conceptually to make it work like Rocket Board or the other prestige flight powers.

Edited October 15, 2023 by srmalloy

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

I did say breaks and errors. I'm not arguing with you, just explaining my understanding of the post.

Yes, but what I'm seeing is that he's continuing to argue for the power while excluding entire powersets from being able to use it -- AR, Dual Pistols, Archery -- an Archery/Tactical Arrow Blaster might as well have all their powers suppressed by Bird Form Flight. When you have to presuppose gimping a significant fraction of the playerbase -- all melee powersets, all ranged powersets using a weapon -- to use the power, it's feeling more and more like an "I want this how I want it, and I don't care how many other players are inconvenienced when they use it" suggestion

I made that point too.  Quote below:

2 hours ago, Rudra said:

No, it wouldn't. Firstly, that would be translated as the devs favoring ranged attacks for having animations/attacks over melee. Secondly, because ranged weapon use would still be broken.

We are in agreement.

[The Mighty Paladin]

Every time I suggest anything be added to the game I get the same thing a list of reasons why it's just to hard. No one here seems willing to even TRY anything. I will not be making any more suggestions. after this one: DELETE THE SUGGESTIONS AND FEEDBACK SECTION FROM THE FORUM.  it makes sense if you're never going to accept any suggestions.

[Rudra]

10 minutes ago, The Mighty Paladin said:

Every time I suggest anything be added to the game I get the same thing a list of reasons why it's just to hard. No one here seems willing to even TRY anything. I will not be making any more suggestions. after this one: DELETE THE SUGGESTIONS AND FEEDBACK SECTION FROM THE FORUM.  it makes sense if you're never going to accept any suggestions.

Except your suggestion can be implemented. The simplest approach is to make it work like the wolf and panther travel powers. You turn into a bat, a swarm of bats, or a bird and fly around. You won't be able to attack while in that state, but you can still turn into them.

[srmalloy]

58 minutes ago, The Mighty Paladin said:

Every time I suggest anything be added to the game I get the same thing a list of reasons why it's just to hard.

No, we're giving you a list of reasons why it's hard to do as a regular travel power that still allows you to use all your attacks while the power is active. Your response is "well, we'll just make it so half the playerbase can't use attacks while it's active", and don't seem to see how suggesting a new ability that can't be used equally and fairly by all characters is inherently divisive and gets downgraded for consideration. As Rudra says, and as I noted in my original reply, there's nothing (except maybe having the bat, bird, and other meshes to use for it -- I'm not sure whether the existing meshes from various powers are detailed enough to be used easily, but that's a much smaller issue) preventing it from being another animal-transformation travel power, where it suppresses your ability to use attacks while active.

[Greycat]

1 hour ago, The Mighty Paladin said:

Every time I suggest anything be added to the game I get the same thing a list of reasons why it's just to hard. No one here seems willing to even TRY anything. I will not be making any more suggestions. after this one: DELETE THE SUGGESTIONS AND FEEDBACK SECTION FROM THE FORUM.  it makes sense if you're never going to accept any suggestions.

 

It's called "feedback and discussion."

 

If you can't handle that, well...

 

Besides, nobody talking about it is a dev. It doesn't *matter* whether anyone here accepts or rejects suggestions (and the "never accept any suggestions" is patently false - all you need to do is actually look,) unless they're specifically labeled as a dev (and it's easy to tell who those are)  and saying yes or no for some reason.

 

And yawanna know what? Even a dev saying no isn't necessarily permanent. I fought for quite some time on live to get Sonic Dispersion's graphics changed because they were causing *actual, physical pain* to people. i was watching multiple friends disappear for days to deal with migraines, for instance. (And watching - and reporting - others getting some sick glee out of tormenting the people affected by it.)  I was a pest about it, posting about it repeatedly. One of the live devs said "no, we can't do that" - that it couldn't technically be done. And not much later... they were changed.

 

So calm down, go have a juice box or whatever.  Untwist the undies. If you can't handle discussion and disagreement, just drop whatever suggestion in the forum and go do something else instead of getting worked up. Otherwise, look at what's being argued, make your case, be willing to make adjustments or explanations  and who  knows, one of them might make it in in some form.

[Greycat]

3 hours ago, srmalloy said:

So the existing 'one arm extended' snipe stance works how in bird form? Or the double-arm-forward animation from Fire Blast? You still have to animate the character mesh doing something to have a visible animation; it doesn't just magically transfer to the new mesh. And the flying animation for a bird form is going to be considerably different from the existing hover/flight animations, so attacks from those postures don't simply transfer across.

 

... I'm *idly* curious...

 

WAAAAAYY back, we were supposed to have an EAT, Avilians (think I'm spelling that... think I have an extra i in there) specifically because the devs couldn't, at the time, figure out how to give players wings. They were going to be our winged AT. (They're the source of the "like human, but very light" bones you find when you recover some artifacts from the Hellions in the Hollows.) Pretty sure it was one of the first EATs that was axed, honestly, since... we got wings.

 

While I *highly* doubt it after a decade plus of live development and them not being in, plus people poking around after sunset, I half wonder if there's any trace of even prototype animation buried deep in the files somewhere that would cover this. Or at least be a starting point.

 

(Old EAT reference of mine, from 9/2010)

 

Or, I don't know... something with the water/floating animation. But it would depend on the form and how it was handled.

 

 

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

While I *highly* doubt it after a decade plus of live development and them not being in, plus people poking around after sunset, I half wonder if there's any trace of even prototype animation buried deep in the files somewhere that would cover this. Or at least be a starting point.

That would depend heavily on the details of the Avilan design — whether they were to have been humans with wings (from a hexapod ancestor, like centaurs) or like pterosaurs, where the hands are part of the wing structure. If the former, as we got winged characters in game, then any residual animations left in the data files aren't likely to be much use; if the latter, they still might not be usable, but would take some examination to make the determination.

[srmalloy]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

And yawanna know what? Even a dev saying no isn't necessarily permanent.

And just because it's hard doesn't mean it won't be taken for development. In the short run, is it more likely to be done as an animal-transformation travel power like Panther Run? Yes. As a 'character assumes an avian form, but can still use their powers' travel power? I think it would be too much work for just a special travel power. As a basis for an aviform body type? That has more potential, although the one example of a fully non-android body type — nova-form Kheldians — and they have an extremely limited number of power animations. Is there enough presence of aviform individuals (or the desire to have aviform characters) to make the development effort worthwhile compared to putting that effort elsewhere? I don't know; they seem to be a niche character type.