Focused Feedback: Aether Rewards

[The Curator]

Vanity Rewards - Aether Vendor Preview Images & Wave 4

• The name of the Prismatic Aether Particles salvage shortened down to Prismatic Aether.
• All Aether costume rewards now display a preview picture in the BenevoLabs vendor menu to help customers decide on which costume is best for them.

 Hmm, might get hunted if I wore these... 

 

Tier 1 Reward Additions

• New NPC costumes added to the Tier 1 Aether reward vendor offerings:
  • Costume: Council Zenith Warcry
  • Costume: Council Zenith MekMan
  • Costume: PPD Assault Suit
  • Costume: PPD Enforcer
  • Costume: Longbow Cataphract
  • Costume: Rularuu Honored Brute
  • Costume: Rularuu Bull Natterling
  • Costume: Rularuu Wisp Overlord
  • Costume: Shivan Destroyer

 

Tier 2 Reward Additions

• New NPC costumes added to the Tier 2 Aether reward vendor offerings:
  • Costume: Prototype FreedomCorp Heracles
  • Costume: Prototype FreedomCorp Phalanx Suit

 Sleek & shiny! 

 

Tier 3 Reward Additions

• New cosmetic effects added to the Tier 3 Aether reward vendor offerings:
  • Effect: Luminous (Peacebringer FX, original and tintable)
  • Effect: Umbral (Warshade FX, original and tintable)
  • Effect: Drone (Targetting Drone FX, original and tintable)
  • Effect: Reflection (Shadow Shard Reflection FX, original, tintable, and no transparency)
  • Effect: Entropic (Energy Aura FX, original and tintable)
  • Effect: Darkness (Dark Armor FX; Dark Embrace, Murky Cloud, and Cloak of Fear, originals and tintables)
  • Effect: Organic: (Bio-Armor geometry FX, original and tintable)
  • Effect: Puncture: (Spines geometry FX, original, tintable, thorns, spikes, crystal, and slate)
• All Tier 3 rewards except for Mini Mode can now be used in PvP.

 

Aether Reward Fixes

• Fixed incorrect coloration on the right arm and right leg of the Legacy Rikti Chief Soldier costume.

[Starhammer]

Having the picture is a great improvement, especially for some similar costumes. That said, I'd still love to see a "Preview" option next to "Buy" that gives you a version with a 1 minute duration or so. That would be especially useful for the higher tier (more expensive) options that may merely alter an effect. Obviously we can still workaround by looking at the effect on Beta, which is worth it before dropping 250 PAs (or more) on what may or may not be as desirable an effect as we hope... but a lot of folks aren't sufficiently familiar with using Beta, and it is a few more steps than would be optimal.

[arcane]

My main character currently has all available Aether rewards. Gonna be an expensive update 😬. Thank you for not adding a new T4 lol.

Edited January 20 by arcane

[Sinfa]

I can't find if its been said. But is there a chance of adding none humanoid costumes? I recall talk of being arachnos spiders or shivians, but have yet to see such costumes. I can understand from a gameplay perspective a ton of appearance can not work with powersets, but would love to know if there is ever a chance of the more exotic costumes/models to be avaiable. 

[Coyotedancer]

The Shivan will be good fun... I'd love to have a big, stompy Tuatha option myself.

 

 

 

Edited January 21 by Coyotedancer

[Cobalt Arachne]

21 hours ago, Sinfa said:

I can't find if its been said. But is there a chance of adding none humanoid costumes? I recall talk of being arachnos spiders or shivians, but have yet to see such costumes. I can understand from a gameplay perspective a ton of appearance can not work with powersets, but would love to know if there is ever a chance of the more exotic costumes/models to be avaiable. 

There's a hard technical limitation there...

All Aether costumes have to run on player sequencers, which is what allows them to execute and animate all powers that players can possibly access.

 

For non-humanoid models, if they cannot activate a power because their sequencer doesn't have animation compatibility, the game will simply not allow the activation of the power at all.

 

TLDR: Non-humanoid models cannot activate many player powers, which means they're not compatible as Aether costumes.

[Sinfa]

3 hours ago, Cobalt Arachne said:

There's a hard technical limitation there...

All Aether costumes have to run on player sequencers, which is what allows them to execute and animate all powers that players can possibly access.

 

For non-humanoid models, if they cannot activate a power because their sequencer doesn't have animation compatibility, the game will simply not allow the activation of the power at all.

 

TLDR: Non-humanoid models cannot activate many player powers, which means they're not compatible as Aether costumes.

Oh I figured that much, maybe there is an opportunity for social only costumes then? A category of special social transformation that disable all powers? Another thought is the gladiators, or actually play with NPC power sets as opposed to player ones. I know its a bit outside the box, but far to many fun costumes/mobs out there a lot of players like me would love to have access too. 

In any case I'll continue to have it as my pie in the sky daydream for now. 

[MGoblin256]

The Honored Brute costume model seems ridiculously small, even compared to the base minion-level Brutes. Definitely think it needs to be scaled up, if not to the size of the Honored Brute NPCs (which are quite massive), then maybe to that of a Noble Brute.

[Starhammer]

On 1/21/2024 at 12:16 PM, Cobalt Arachne said:

There's a hard technical limitation there...

All Aether costumes have to run on player sequencers, which is what allows them to execute and animate all powers that players can possibly access.

 

For non-humanoid models, if they cannot activate a power because their sequencer doesn't have animation compatibility, the game will simply not allow the activation of the power at all.

 

TLDR: Non-humanoid models cannot activate many player powers, which means they're not compatible as Aether costumes.

Obviously there's no way it could be relevant in time for this patch, but is there any potential that the code could be altered such that instead of failing to activate the power, it could activate the power without an animation? I'd really love to eventually don a Snake or Cobra costume, even if it means I can't [Kick] someone...

[Mintpie]

Is it possilble for the Puncture effect to have options to hide the green venom burst? Unless the FX is hard coded into the power's animations or something like that

[fiend]

For the "Darkness" power, would it be possible to include the "Cloak of Darkness" effect? It's one of my favorites, along with the warshade's "Shadow Cloak", but neither Darkness nor Umbral rewards have it.

 

Being able to completely hide your character's geometry like those two powers do opens up a lot of cool "invisible character" concepts that otherwise are impossible without using Warshade or Dark Armor. I posted a different suggestion about these a while back, where you can see a comparison of how they work significantly differently from regular cloak effects. They hide the character without hiding the aura, which is so cool.

 

Though, I could easily see this being a completely separate prismatic effect for a later wave - "Invisible" or something.

Edited January 26 by fiend

[Subber]

The backpiece on Cataphracts and Heracles should probably be removed - which does require creation of an alternate mesh that'll be only used for player-accessible versions of these - since unlike their NPC versions, they're non-functional and regularly clip through the doorways and ceilings (because player stands upright and NPC versions don't), while the rest of the robot fits just snug enough not to look janky (though obviously they will still clip through many doorways at this size). 

 

It'd also let jetpacks, and other temporary accessories that display on the back, show up unobstructed.

Edited January 28 by Subber

[Crimsanotic]

Making the mech costumes is both good and bad (good because it's cool, bad for the reasons posted above). I think a simpler solution to editing the mesh, which may or may not be easy depending on how it's all modeled and the topology of the mesh, might be offering both a small and large version. Though the prototype heracles might then be a feels bad if they're separate purchases.

Also, considering those were added and the vanguard base was redone, I'm surprised there isn't a vanguard HVAS costume available, either for vanguard merits or aether particles. Though if it were available for vanguard merits, there would need to be a way to give oneself the sufficient number to do so for testing purposes. If there's a command I'm unaware of what it is, but the test server P2W vendors don't offer them.

[fiend]

Two suggestions for "Organic"!

 

It might be better if instead of all of the effects at once, there were options to use only one of the power geometries at a time (i.e. "all", "right arm", "chest and right leg", "left leg" - I forget the exact powers these groupings correspond to) - I'm sure people will get use out of it either way, but it's quite a bulky effect when all are used at once, and being able to just use the right arm for example would open it up to more uses.

 

I see that it's also noted as being specifically the geometry FX, but the "adaptation" effects from Bio Armor would also make for an excellent aether reward - if not for being bundled into "Organic", then for a future one maybe. They're such unique particle effects. Defensive and offensive adaptation both would fit well into a ton of character concepts for sure.

Edited January 29 by fiend

[Random Robot]

Gonna be "that guy" and repeat the oft-requested "non-bobblehead" option for Mini Mode.

[Random Robot]

Could we get the standard Longbow Sergeant as a costume option?

[Ice Ember]

I am still dumbfounded by how expensive tier 3 options are.

 

I still have not earned enough in game to get one. Tier 2 either.

 

If I add them together from multiple characters I can. I do the WST on multiple characters each week.

[Flambeaux]

On 2/4/2024 at 8:00 PM, Ice Ember said:

I am still dumbfounded by how expensive tier 3 options are.

 

I still have not earned enough in game to get one. Tier 2 either.

 

If I add them together from multiple characters I can. I do the WST on multiple characters each week.

 

I don't normally post on the forums but I wanted to follow up on this.  Prismatic Aether Particles are pretty consistently selling for 2.6 million inf on Wentworths, so the 250 particle costume powers clock in at 650 million. I can't help but wonder who these are aimed at? I've been playing since Homecoming started and I could afford -one- of these costumes if I wanted to bankrupt myself. I've been saving particles since they started dropping and I have about 70. I play a -lot-, but I don't farm and I like to roll new alts all the time and play mostly at lower levels. I care a lot about my characters and put a lot of effort into their themes, backstories and how they look so it feels like these cosmetic aura powers should be aimed at people like me, but I don't think I have a hope of ever getting one, let alone cosmetic powers for my hundreds of alts.

 

Is there a lot of crossover between RPers/Costume Freaks and the uber-rich farmer types?

[Random Robot]

38 minutes ago, Flambeaux said:

 

I don't normally post on the forums but I wanted to follow up on this.  Prismatic Aether Particles are pretty consistently selling for 2.6 million inf on Wentworths, so the 250 particle costume powers clock in at 650 million. I can't help but wonder who these are aimed at? I've been playing since Homecoming started and I could afford -one- of these costumes if I wanted to bankrupt myself. I've been saving particles since they started dropping and I have about 70. I play a -lot-, but I don't farm and I like to roll new alts all the time and play mostly at lower levels. I care a lot about my characters and put a lot of effort into their themes, backstories and how they look so it feels like these cosmetic aura powers should be aimed at people like me, but I don't think I have a hope of ever getting one, let alone cosmetic powers for my hundreds of alts.

 

Is there a lot of crossover between RPers/Costume Freaks and the uber-rich farmer types?

 

100% agree. I consider myself a mid-tier powergamer and I farm every so often to afford to purple out my toons and I still think the t3 aether powers are out of reach. If I remember right PAPs were introduced to be an inf sink but I can't imagine the venn diagram of "fire farmers with too much money" and "people who want to look pretty in pocket D" has much overlap. It feels like it's funnelling the inf in the wrong direction and might cause RPers who don't normally farm to start.

Edited February 6 by Random Robot

[Thraxen]

Even the person in the screenshot example can’t afford to buy one  

[Random Robot]

I think the devs expected the price of PAPs to fall a lot lower than they have. If they were at 400k then a T1 costume would be 4mil, T2 40mil, T3 100mil, which is still pretty expensive for a non powergamer but achievable.

[lemming]

There's an explanation and they are meant to drain the pockets of the ones with lots of influence, though I think it's not that big of a cross over.

And with the aura effects, I know they don't want too many of them out there.   I've done a few of the effects by running everyone of my chars thru the halloween badges, but not sure if I would get close to having enough for more than one big ticket item.  And I don't feel like spending that much on cosmetics.

[arcane]

A T3 Aether effect/transformation costs no more than a build for a new alt (substantially less now, in fact). And that’s something most players can pull together in a week or two. I don’t think they cost too much at all. I have 22 mini modes in addition to my main having everything, and I’m perpetually broke.

Edited February 6 by arcane

[sbloyd]

A lot depends on playing style and what one finds fun versus tolerable versus tedious.  My riches were built off the Auction House and Converter Roulette.  I can absolutely see how many would find such a thing tedious to the extreme; I get around the tedium by having a second monitor and watching Warhammer 40k battles while I churn my sales... and I don't push it near as hard as some of our mercantile heroes.

 

I don't think it's appropriate to tell someone "you're just not trying hard enough" when they say they can't afford to purchase enough Aether for a tier 3 costume.  If it weren't for my deep pockets I wouldn't be able to afford it either, as my play interests don't get me any Aether at all (with the exception of the Halloween event, and that was almost accidental).  Adding new avenues to access Aether is a good thing, IMHO.

[Random Robot]

6 hours ago, arcane said:

A T3 Aether effect/transformation costs no more than a build for a new alt (substantially less now, in fact). And that’s something most players can pull together in a week or two. I don’t think they cost too much at all. I have 22 mini modes in addition to my main having everything, and I’m perpetually broke.