I'm angry about Staff Fighting!!

[Polecat]

4 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Looks like this differs depending on the model gender and size - the character model I've been using never grasps the "unwrapped" bit.

The staff of Stheno looks particularly ridiculous; even if it's a shorter weapon model than the rest...

Anyways; the discrepancy ought to be easy to rectify by stretching the weapon model a bit - see some of the currently "pointy at both ends" albeit asymmetrical options:

In this case whilst the male model is holding it closer to their chest; the female model still has their hand firmly on the central shaft (stop giggling, you at the back!)

 

This can be seen more clearly during the extend/retract stage of the thrust (I said STOP IT!)

To me it still looks like there's nothing wrong with the pose itself, only the points at which the model's hands are making contact with the weapon; which AFAIK is quite tweakable. It also ought to be possible to extend the "left" portion of the staff here a bit too (although admittedly there may be a bit of a balancing act between that and not accidentally cutting off their own feet during a Guarded Spin!)

(Pics snipped for brevity)

Actually, your set of pictures probably indicates an interesting problem that likely extends to all the weapons, and one I vaguely remember hearing when the game was live. The model of the weapon is dictated by the size of the avatar's hands. Thus the "heavy" model would have larger weapons than any, while the female model has the smallest. Now I freely admit I may be misremembering something, but a quick glance through the various weapons does make it SEEM like that's true at a glance....

 

If so, that could further complicate newer models, as it still requires one singular model fit all three body types.

[srmalloy]

17 hours ago, Maelwys said:

If you take the second screenshot in my post further up as a reference point, at no stage in any of the attack animations do either of the character's hands touch the staff outside of the "wrapped" middle area. The Ranged attack (Serpent's Reach) does involve them holding the staff pretty close to their body then letting go with their "offhand" as they extend it out... but they're still grasping it in the middle with their main hand.

Checking just now, Eye of the Storm, about 3/4 of the way through the 'on your back' part of the animation, you're grasping the shaft near the butt, Serpent's Reach has you choke way down on the shaft right before the full extension, although it snaps back to the middle when you recover that it took me several repeats from different angles to be sure, and Sky Splitter pulls both hands down close to the butt right before the final overhead smash. All three of them are overlookable if you're not paying attention, so if you're willing to ignore them for the rest of the visuals, taking a pair of the VK-99 Event Horizon models, cut off the pommels, and butt the grips together would give you a fair version of a doublesaber, and taking the naginata staff style, removing the tsuba and blade, cutting the entire hilt off the VK-99 and mounting the blade on it would make a decent polesaber. Neither of them give you the brightness that a proper version would want, but CoH's game engine has... not issues, but entire subscriptions... with object lighting (if you have your detail turned up, in the warehouse maps, you can sometimes see faint white curved lines at the bottom of the illumination cones from the ceiling lights; these are the bottoms of the mostly-transparent polygons used to fake the lighting).

[srmalloy]

2 hours ago, Polecat said:

Actually, your set of pictures probably indicates an interesting problem that likely extends to all the weapons, and one I vaguely remember hearing when the game was live. The model of the weapon is dictated by the size of the avatar's hands.

This was a 'fix' put in back on Live; originally, the weapon models didn't resize with the character, resulting in Huge characters with tiny weapons, and TW characters with their height slider turned all the way down having truly anime-esque weapons, á la the Bustermarm from Fairy Tale. This was patched so that the weapons would scale more appropriately to the character's size, to the lamentation of some of the playerbase.

[Polecat]

1 hour ago, srmalloy said:

This was a 'fix' put in back on Live; originally, the weapon models didn't resize with the character, resulting in Huge characters with tiny weapons, and TW characters with their height slider turned all the way down having truly anime-esque weapons, á la the Bustermarm from Fairy Tale. This was patched so that the weapons would scale more appropriately to the character's size, to the lamentation of some of the playerbase.

You have a better memory than I. I might have been in CoH since release, but I won't claim my memory of what they did was very clear, beyond my annoyance at the Enhancement Diversification patch at the time (5 stacking damage was the only way my old rad defender used to stay relevant on DPS back in the day). Thank you for clarifying my hazy memory of it.

[srmalloy]

1 minute ago, Polecat said:

beyond my annoyance at the Enhancement Diversification patch at the time (5 stacking damage was the only way my old rad defender used to stay relevant on DPS back in the day).

I retired a level 49 Katana/Regen Scrapper over ED and the Great Regen Nerf; I'd built him to run five- or six-slotted damage, and Instant Healing running, relying on Focused Accuracy to get his hit chance back up to an acceptable level, where I'd learned where the sweet spot was for defeating enough mobs to reduce incoming damage to below his regen rate before he ran out of HP. Between ED and the 'restructuring' of Regen, it would have required completely restructuring the character as well as making me relearn the secondary from scratch.

[Britannic]

Would be nice to have a few spear options.

[Spaghetti Betty]

3 hours ago, srmalloy said:

grasping the shaft

 

3 hours ago, srmalloy said:

choke way down on the shaft right before the full extension

*spits out coffee*

[Snarky]

[Maelwys]

[Luminara]

On 11/28/2024 at 3:42 PM, Spaghetti Betty said:

*spits out coffee*

 

Making room?

Also, you missed the butt stuff.

 

On 11/28/2024 at 11:53 AM, srmalloy said:

grasping the shaft near the butt

 

On 11/28/2024 at 11:53 AM, srmalloy said:

pulls both hands down close to the butt right before the final overhead smash

 

[Spaghetti Betty]

9 minutes ago, Luminara said:

Making room?

I prefer a different kind of noodle in my mouth!

[Seed22]

14 hours ago, Spaghetti Betty said:

I prefer a different kind of noodle in my mouth!

The only noodle going in my mouth is ramen and yakamein. 
 

Now I’m hungry 🙃

[Polecat]

Despite the humor, I probably should gt the thread back on track and point out that, despite complaining about the powerset, this thread is about just wanting more cosmetic options for Staff Fighting. Personally, I'd be happy with a few Elemental options and maybe a couple more non-lethal looking options. But that latter one, Non-lethal weapons, has been a longstanding issue with CoH. I mean, we're cutting up people with swords, shooting them with bullets and rayguns, and it's only sending them to some teleporter that brings 'em back instantly, ready for round two? Yeah...  doubt. As someone who likes to play heroes, I at least like to pretend I'm using non-lethal options, and not...  lighting a person on fire until they die.

 

Comic logic is weird.

[srmalloy]

5 hours ago, Polecat said:

As someone who likes to play heroes, I at least like to pretend I'm using non-lethal options,

Shooting high-velocity, armor-piercing arrest warrants, yes...