More Widow and Arachnos soldier uniform slots!

[irishhawk]

It sucks we only get one uniform for our VAT characters.  How about at least one more?  That way we can have one custom colored and styled and the other one can be more canonical in color and ranking within the Arachnos military?  Would that be difficult to do?

[Vanden]

15 hours ago, irishhawk said:

Would that be difficult to do?

I'm going to guess "probably."

Edited August 25, 2019 by Vanden

[Steampunkette]

Basically impossible.

 

GETTING the Arachnos Costume Slot was an amazing kludge that broke the game's UI in a bunch of new and insteresting ways! See, when the game was live, you normally could only get 4 additional costume slots at levels 20, 30, and 40 from the 3 tailors and the Halloween Salvage got you a 4th. Much later they added in an additional 5 you could purchase in the store.

 

But when Arachnos Soldiers went live, you didn't 'Lose' your first slot to the Soldier/Widow Costume. It granted you an extra one but it didn't -show- that because the UI couldn't. So you'd do the 20, 30, and 40 missions and it would look like your character had room for no more costumes because of the 2 costumes you got at level 1.

 

But you could still get a 6th costume slot unlocked turning in Halloween Salvage. You just couldn't see it or edit it, so whatever was in your first not-Arachnos costume slot was added to that one, and you could only swap to it using /cc 5 

 

I -think- at this point you can get up to 11 costume slots. But I don't know if the CC command has a 10 argument. I -imagine- it does. But it'll still be locked away and uneditable if that's the case.

 

They could not get an "This slot is Canon Arachnos" toggle in place to allow you to do multiple Arachnos outfits, so they broke things to give you the extra costume.

[gameboy1234]

Regardless of any assumed issues with coding this, +1.  If we don't ask for stuff, that's the only way for sure we won't get it.

 

Given that there's now a bunch of free help available I don't see why someone couldn't be asked to look at this again.

[Steampunkette]

This isn't "assumed". This suggestion came up on the Live Forums more than a few times. I'm paraphrasing the Live Dev response to the idea. 

 

It was a massive technical hurdle that they even got the one slot in that they accepted the UI being broken forever after i12.

[Megajoule]

Customer: "So, a couple of weeks, then?"

 

Coder: *headdesk*

[RazorDaemon]

I also have no idea of how difficult it may or may not be, but I very much want and would appreciate the Widow and Soldier exclusive costumes being available in more slots (obviously still exclusive to Widows and Soldiers).

Edited February 8 by RazorDaemon
Edit: (Sorry for thread necro, didn't want to start a new thread when there's existing one(s))

[Rudra]

@Steampunkette is quite right about the problem with the Arachnos costume slot. Sorry, but it won't happen. We barely got the 1 slot. We even had the devs explaining this back on Live.

 

(Edit: For clarification, VEATs have all the same costume slots as everyone else, plus their own special costume slot. To access the last costume slot on a VEAT requires using a slash command if I remember correctly. And since costume slots cannot be converted to VEAT costume slots, and just adding the 1 costume slot for the VEAT's Arachnos minion look all but broke the game while also pushing the VEATs' costume slots beyond the game's display, we won't be getting a 2nd.)

Edited February 8 by Rudra

[RazorDaemon]

On 8/25/2019 at 2:29 PM, Steampunkette said:

Basically impossible.

 

GETTING the Arachnos Costume Slot was an amazing kludge that broke the game's UI in a bunch of new and insteresting ways! See, when the game was live, you normally could only get 4 additional costume slots at levels 20, 30, and 40 from the 3 tailors and the Halloween Salvage got you a 4th. Much later they added in an additional 5 you could purchase in the store.

 

But when Arachnos Soldiers went live, you didn't 'Lose' your first slot to the Soldier/Widow Costume. It granted you an extra one but it didn't -show- that because the UI couldn't. So you'd do the 20, 30, and 40 missions and it would look like your character had room for no more costumes because of the 2 costumes you got at level 1.

 

But you could still get a 6th costume slot unlocked turning in Halloween Salvage. You just couldn't see it or edit it, so whatever was in your first not-Arachnos costume slot was added to that one, and you could only swap to it using /cc 5 

 

I -think- at this point you can get up to 11 costume slots. But I don't know if the CC command has a 10 argument. I -imagine- it does. But it'll still be locked away and uneditable if that's the case.

 

They could not get an "This slot is Canon Arachnos" toggle in place to allow you to do multiple Arachnos outfits, so they broke things to give you the extra costume.

I don't pretend to know what's involved, and I absolutely acknowledge how complicated it might be. Asking the custom Widow and Soldier specific costume parts to be added as available to everyone is a big jump, and diminishes the specific pieces to the Widows and Soldiers that we wouldn't want to do. If an Arachnos Soldier or Widow has to sacrifice a costume slot with  limitations of Class-Specific costume pieces/options I think would be acceptable, maybe 2-3 being Widow/Soldier specific and the rest are just as they are now.

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, RazorDaemon said:

I don't pretend to know what's involved, and I absolutely acknowledge how complicated it might be. Asking the custom Widow and Soldier specific costume parts to be added as available to everyone is a big jump, and diminishes the specific pieces to the Widows and Soldiers that we wouldn't want to do. If an Arachnos Soldier or Widow has to sacrifice a costume slot with  limitations of Class-Specific costume pieces/options I think would be acceptable, maybe 2-3 being Widow/Soldier specific and the rest are just as they are now.

The problem is that they can't sacrifice a costume slot. That was part of the problem when the Live devs were making the VEATs. They had to add an extra costume slot, which the game couldn't really handle, and the devs barely got to work.

[Lockely]

Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes (or a dozen) can make all the difference in the world. CoH is under new management. I'd prefer to hear it from a Homecoming dev that it's "impossible," because as someone with a programming background myself, nothing is "impossible" just "really inconvenient" or "not worth the man hours to refactor other systems to get it to work." Expanding the backpack in WoW was "impossible" too, but they eventually did it. 

Additional examples: In FFXIV, YoshiP (the producer) was on record stating that both a checkmark on consumable collection items you had already obtained was not possible with the game's code, as well as damage type colored/demarked scrolling combat text for enemy spells (i.e. physical vs magic vs unaspected).  We now have both.

Impossible is usually a cost-benefit analysis away from possible. You just need to spend the time refactoring legacy code to make it happen, and that is, quite frankly, excruciatingly hard in these old MMOs. Doable, but that's time you could spend working on new things instead.

Edited February 8 by Lockely

[RazorDaemon]

On 2/8/2024 at 1:32 AM, Rudra said:

The problem is that they can't sacrifice a costume slot. That was part of the problem when the Live devs were making the VEATs. They had to add an extra costume slot, which the game couldn't really handle, and the devs barely got to work.

Then maybe things like sacrificing a standard costume slot is the wrong approach. Maybe, IMO, feel free to disagree, VEAT specific costume pieces can be made for any/all? I mean currently we can put the Wolf and Crab Spider as well as Widow Helm on any character. I don't think it's a big deal if they were to add the other costume pieces for all as well. Whatever would be the easiest way to do it, be it a new Chest category with limitations, or add it to Unique tops, I would be happy if I could choose the VEAT Wolf Armor for every costume slot on my Arachnos Soldier even if it means anyone can have it. After all, at this point I can make an Arachnos Soldier and make him into a Hero. So does it really matter is someone makes a lvl 1 Hero with an Arachnos Soldier defector backstory, implication, or wearing a trophy?

[Rudra]

7 hours ago, RazorDaemon said:

Then maybe things like sacrificing a standard costume slot is the wrong approach. Maybe, IMO, feel free to disagree, VEAT specific costume pieces can be made for any/all? I mean currently we can put the Wolf and Crab Spider as well as Widow Helm on any character. I don't think it's a big deal if they were to add the other costume pieces for all as well. Whatever would be the easiest way to do it, be it a new Chest category with limitations, or add it to Unique tops, I would be happy if I could choose the VEAT Wolf Armor for every costume slot on my Arachnos Soldier even if it means anyone can have it. After all, at this point I can make an Arachnos Soldier and make him into a Hero. So does it really matter is someone makes a lvl 1 Hero with an Arachnos Soldier defector backstory, implication, or wearing a trophy?

While some parts are interchangeable like that, most of the VEAT costume is a single model.

[RazorDaemon]

On 2/21/2024 at 12:08 PM, Rudra said:

While some parts are interchangeable like that, most of the VEAT costume is a single model.

I could tell, and I understand it may be a massive pain to do something like get in there and separate the chest/shoulders/back etc. I figured it'd be similar to how Jackets or Unique Tops toga limit many other options, though I understand it would be more limiting than even the Toga, if you don't like the limitations then it'd be the same as our current options, otherwise it'd just mean any character could have a VEAT costume if they'd like.

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, RazorDaemon said:

I could tell, and I understand it may be a massive pain to do something like get in there and separate the chest/shoulders/back etc. I figured it'd be similar to how Jackets or Unique Tops toga limit many other options, though I understand it would be more limiting than even the Toga, if you don't like the limitations then it'd be the same as our current options, otherwise it'd just mean any character could have a VEAT costume if they'd like.

Don't get me wrong, I want several things I see on VEATs for some of my other characters. I would love to use the Crab Spider arm blades for instance. (Or at least carry those over on my VEATs to their variant looks.)