Resizer (powerup)

[Silk Kanishk]

Name: Resizer
Type: Cosmetic changes
Function: Supersize or minimize yourself upon use. Will have two separate powerups for this.
Alternate Names Suggested: Eat me, Drink me, zOMGnat!, zOMGiant!  

[DrQuint]

Since I herpa derped before... sticking this where the idea kinda belongs:

DrQuint

Since we're going down the path of messing with animation effects that alter the players (the resizers) why not think of MORE powerups like those?

Clone army:
I had the perfect picture for this:

Your avatar turns into 7 of you, stacked in the same space and all move as if they were one. You become an army of you! With friends dressed the same, you could fill screens with apparently hundreds of people all looking the same!
I'm certain there was ways to prevent lag in coding if there's several of the same element on screen.

Borrow:
Hide underground. Helps with Hide and Seek. This quite literally already happens whenever you step on water in gold beach. So it's just a stretch and some testing to prevent the thing from breaking and maybe it could be done. Specially funny to surprise people by jumping out with a bunch of friends.

Player Interaction:
Why not give players stuff that works like the animation of sweetheart? I mean, what if you wanted to blow a kiss to someone? Red said Sweetheart should be left alone. I grant him that, but still...
What if you could get noisemakers to play a sound to entertain, signal (a whistle) or annoy others(vuvuzela noise maker)?
What if on New Year's Eve we could buy and launch fireworks of several kinds together for screen-shots. And "physics" Heart Balloons attached to your avatar on valentine's?



There's a lot one can do in terms of limited use cosmetics and since the resizers are a possibility, I feel it's appropriate to pitch in all of the similar ideas! If sold cheap, people would buy loads an loads of them. 25GC for 25 Fireworks would be a cent to do something pretty and exclusive in the game: Why not?

inb4flashanimatordev

Anyways, I actually can't wait to see something like this. It'd be incredibly fun to see what users can come up with. Most would be "See, I made a giant X!", but still... so much potential.

Giant Cows and Life-sized Food would be classics.


Oh yeah, I keep stressing this: If someone resized uses a ring, they should go back to normal. While giant runs would be fun, I see it being more like handing out grievers a new tool, since the over-sized avatars can fill scree-space.
If you're playing, please keep that stuff away...  

[Lei_Trigar]

Heh, this one will bring many laughs in the game. Resizer will most likely be the most popular name, as the others take to long to type out, we're all lazy like that. xp Maybe Resizer- and Resizer+?

Also, how will this work exactly? Will it work like; use 1 you gain 1.5x use another totally gain is 1.7x and 3 max at 2.0x? Cause the larger they get the more lag it will cause.

Or will it be like a slider bar (like the old Lv adjuster was) and just choose the size you want at will?

Duration should be 20min. Now, should it end when you get dazed or keep it the full Duration? Also I think this item shouldn't work when fighting in Boss instances.  

[DrQuint]

Lei_Trigar

Resizer will most likely be the most popular name

I didn't like it much.

But I hated zOMG-x.

And "Y Me" could get people lost a bit.

So yeah, resizer gets the point across, much like the current powerups. So... it's my vote.

Did I mention this is the only powerup I'm really, really looking forward to? I'd trade the rest for the ability to name summons. And make them give small stat boosts.  

[Lei_Trigar]

DrQuint

Lei_Trigar

Resizer will most likely be the most popular name

I didn't like it much.

But I hated zOMG-x.

And "Y Me" could get people lost a bit.

So yeah, resizer gets the point across, much like the current powerups. So... it's my vote.

Did I mention this is the only powerup I'm really, really looking forward to? I'd trade the rest for the ability to name summons. And make them give small stat boosts.

yeah i posted in the Summon section about those same things.  

[Beenz]

Rambling thoughts, which you may or may not have thought about. I also don't know if the coding would be very plausible or not. But since this suggestion is currently about cosmetic appearances, my main concern would be that either very few would bother to buy it past the first few days, or, people would buy it for the purposes of trolling and lagging a screen.

Troll fix:
Give users an option to block boost effects initiated by other players. Actually I think this would be quite nice anyway since when you've got 20 or so dazed people on the same screen using Revive... it's pretty but you end up moving at the speed of a ten tonne brick. This also gives people a chance to ignore any trolling effects from the size-changer.

As for the problem of people getting bored of the boost after a while, my initial thought was to make the size-changers into rings, however I can't think of any decent uses for the effects of the ring past exploding yourself (bigger!you) and giving yourself a huge dodge boost (smaller!you). Also since ring animations don't last long anyway the whole thing would probably get rather messy. So ignore this paragraph, I'm rambling now. 8D;  

[Silk Kanishk]

While I initially had my reservations about cosmetic powerups, I feel it might actually be more commonly used. I can't tell you the sheer number of raids I've been involved in zOMG! I have seen "I AM" items increase tenfold in prices in anticipation of a coming raid. With that in mind, it's easy to see how powerups that take the same experience one step further would do really well. Having them as powerups also gives zOMG! a certain exclusivity as they cant be used in the towns and Rallies.

I'm more worried about lag and other glitch related issues that will surely arise. Hopefully there will be an option for other users to turn off these effects? confused

As a final note, there are plans for even more cosmetic powerups that might be revealed in further meats. pirate  

[DrQuint]

Beenz

So ignore this paragraph, I'm rambling now. 8D;

I won't. And I guess I get extended by Silk's thought on it, since he has some ideas coming up.

I doubt the interest in this kind of stuff would die, as long as the effects were noticeable.
Also, as long as Dev Meats happen. If you can gather 20 people togheter, someone WILL use a cosmetic effect, and someone WILL want to buy one as well. This needs saying. I really have a feeling these are a cool idea.

Anyways, troll fix: YES! Thank you beenz heart  

[Kayi Laa]

While I don't think a ring is the best choice for this, I do believe that cosmetic power-ups, like summons, should not be used up when they are activated. There are so many free-to-play MMOs out there that always fall into this trap of making cosmetic items last for "xx days", and a large portion of the population that likes the game soon finds themselves avoiding buying ANY powerups for it, just because they feel ripped off that something so common-place and trivial is going to exhaust itself and demand they go buy it again.

To avoid insane oversizing/undersizing of avatars, I would suggest a simple limit in both directions. 50% to 200% size adjustment, for example, should be more than enough of a range for almost anything people would want to do.

(Edit: Is it possible to setup using rage on a powerup? Rage Ranks to decide how powerful of an effect the Resizer has would be rather effective, I think.)


However, just to add, summons have also long been known as a source of minor lag and irritation, especially when many of them (and the more noisy ones) are all together. It would be nice to have a "turn summons off" button.

This is not 100% crucial at the moment, since summons are purely vanity, and most people remove their summons before instances. But once they start giving power-ups, more and more people are going to spam summons, and I doubt you'll see any of the over the top, insane max-staters in-game who isn't trying to walk around with an extra +30 luck (or whatever stat) by maxing summons.  

[Silk Kanishk]

Kayi Laa

Wow! I agree with Kayi here. Regular powerups have use in either easing out gameplay or getting out of a tough spot,(i.e affect regular gameplay) so it makes sense to limit them to a number of uses which requires repurchasing but for a purely cosmetic powerup which has no practical application. I doubt people would appreciate feeling strained by a limited no. of uses. Hmmm...

I suppose they could be sold like the summon fluffs and cheepz were with a higher price tag. 3nodding

And I love your suggestion for using rage as a way of controlling the size. It was something we were debating about even during the meet.

jonjon21428

Nice one, Jon! Now if Jk would just accept his invite already. xp  

[Gtsluvr]

Ahh the pair of powerups I would do anything possible to have come true. emotion_dowant
(Obvious reasoning related to my buggy RP of course whee )

I do see concerns about lag with growth and maybe it should be just a simple 2 use cap on that one? For shrinking though I don't see the harm in getting to be very tiny though. During instances people can select those tiny players with the crew panel anyway so up to 3 uses for that one would be great.

Something like this would be awesome.

Growth
1st use = 1.5x
2nd use = 2.0x
3rd use = return to normal

Shrink
1st use = -1.5x
2nd use = -2.0x
3rd use = -2.5x
4th use = return to normal

These powerups could be used like summons are to activate each size level. When it's "Used" 2 or 3 times, the user to normal size on the following use.

In my mind ideal cost & time frame could either be: 250GC and Forever ... I wish. emotion_awesome
If it could be anything reasonable: 99GC and last for up to a month?
If it had to be limited: 49GC with 30 days?
Either way would be with unlimited time.

99 or 49 to not make it a hard sell. Unlimited use since it would be used quite often during long instance runs/roleplays.

So in the end, the Roleplay aspect would be quite attractive with these powerups. I can totally see crews made of Giant Robos/Mechas, Dwarves, Imps, Lots of Fairies and even people Insect size (like me emotion_awesome ) , which would be fun to see.  

[Kayi Laa]

Growth won't be a major cause of lag, since the actual filesize of the sprites is going to be the same, and there will only be minor issues with resizing. It's like how some maps are zoomed Waaaaay out, and some are WAAAY in. (Examples, Right before the Aqueduct null vs. the facility overview in SS.)

The only real concerns are having a limit (not unlimited adjustment so griefers can take up the whole screen, or shrink to near-invisible), and the costs to the players. As vanity items, I don't think players should have to, or will want to, pay repeatedly for the same product. This was already proven with animated items.  

[DrQuint]

Kayi Laa

Growth won't be a major cause of lag, since the actual filesize of the sprites is going to be the same, and there will only be minor issues with resizing. It's like how some maps are zoomed Waaaaay out, and some are WAAAY in. (Examples, Right before the Aqueduct null vs. the facility overview in SS.)

The only real concerns are having a limit (not unlimited adjustment so griefers can take up the whole screen, or shrink to near-invisible), and the costs to the players. As vanity items, I don't think players should have to, or will want to, pay repeatedly for the same product. This was already proven with animated items.

Actually, several people noticed some lag when Halzy went full-screen sized. Me included. Just by BEING large.

I disagree regarding no one wanting to buy cosmetics with limited uses. Several MMOs do this kind of stuff, and the smallest stuff, some of which outright emotes, are sold in limited amount with a degree of success. The fire works I mentioned, for example, were done in Perfect World and Farmville as single use items, and they keep doing it yearly due to demand. If gaia can provide a low enough price and good amount of uses/time limit, there's no reason why people won't get them.

If you want to go with the animated item example, be mindful that the refill were expensive and people were just not bothering because of the price. Asking around polls would show that people just thought the original price gaia was going to push (forgot how much it was) to be far too much, but that they would still pay if it was less. It ended up being less, but gaia did throw the bone and remove the need anyways. Just saying, it's important to make sure to know where's the line diving between something simply being not wanted or you being the one just not providing a good service. But anyways, I don't hold it that they SHOULD be of limited uses. Just saying that there's no "right" answer. It's up to gaia to carefully ponder this and make sure they take the right answer, whichever it be.

Personally, I find that giving it either unlimited use,, or time-based limited to be preferable. Why? Because then I could resize to larger/smaller aspects without wasting the powerup faster.  

[Thard_Verad]

I forsee people having a lot of fun with this powerup. Since this one has no practical use, it should be fairly inexpensive. If it will be limited by charges, it should be 40/100 (same as Supercharger) or higher.