Sidegrade - Visual Change

[Zekeen]

Greetings once more Planetside Vets and Recruits - Today I come with a thought on sidegrades that I don't believe has been covered. If it has been covered, someone redirect me to the answer. I'm not putting this in ideas because this could be planned and we don't know about it, just calling a little bit of attention to a thought. In any case -

When a weapon uses a sidegrade, should the model of the weapon have a slight alteration?

This is a VERY minor subject. If we get it, awesome, if we don't... well we can live without it, it'd just be nice.

A sidegraded weapon that doesn't show any visual difference would feel weird. Imagine having 2 handguns. Once fires light fast bullets, the other is a super slow hand cannon. Both look alike, and when switching from them, you just get a bit of that ick feel, like nothing has changed, even if the difference is great. But what if there was a slight difference of each gun that looked like a part was affected? A longer clip, a lengthened barrel, some sort of velocity enhancement on the front, ect.

Now, these wouldn't need to be big, just small enough, and only be based on what is increased, not decreased. This wouldn't add much work really. Just a bit of a base model change.

Problem would be if it was a moving part and the gun needed some re-animating for the model. There's also the case that more gun models could cause more harddrive needed with all the sidegrades we'll have. There is a way that a single gun model just doesn't show mods on it without it being a sidegrade, but who knows how they would do it. Extra work for just visuals can always be problematic.

In any case, let's ask and see what they plan for visual differences of modifications and sidegrades and if they don't have them, do you guys think they should? Or maybe just over time look into it, because no one wants to lose "6 months" to a non-necessary gameplay implementation.

[Malorn]

From what I've seen this is the case.

The PC gamer article showed a magrider with different upgrades with distinct visual changes.

Higby's soldier and tank also looked different in the GDC videos, and the different sights seemed to be obvious on the weapons themselves, from iron sights to red-dot sight it was visually distinguishable.

[Synapses]

Originally Posted by Malorn

From what I've seen this is the case.

The PC gamer article showed a magrider with different upgrades with distinct visual changes.

Higby's soldier and tank also looked different in the GDC videos, and the different sights seemed to be obvious on the weapons themselves, from iron sights to red-dot sight it was visually distinguishable.

Malorn, did Higs ever end up answering your wall-o-questions?

[Zekeen]

Well, we know mods will have visual appearances, like scopes and such, but sidegrades are completely different. They just change about the dmg, firerate, recoil, ect of the weapon

Unlike scopes, you could say it's all internal changes and doesn't need a visual. But that's why I brought this up. We know mods show visual changes, which is already awesome, but do sidegrades have any bit of a change?

[Vancha]

Originally Posted by Zekeen

Well, we know mods will have visual appearances, like scopes and such, but sidegrades are completely different. They just change about the dmg, firerate, recoil, ect of the weapon

Unlike scopes, you could say it's all internal changes and doesn't need a visual. But that's why I brought this up. We know mods show visual changes, which is already awesome, but do sidegrades have any bit of a change?

Do we know that sidegrades are purely statistical?

I'd expect a sidegrade to be something like...

Auraxium-Tipped Bolts
Bolt Driver
+5% Damage
-10% Range
Increased Bullet Drop

If it were something like that and I had a break-action reload, I'd certainly expect to see the bolts I was sliding into my gun to have some visual difference from the "default" bolts.

[Zekeen]

Originally Posted by Vancha

Do we know that sidegrades are purely statistical?

I'd expect a sidegrade to be something like...

Auraxium-Tipped Bolts
Bolt Driver
+5% Damage
-10% Range
Increased Bullet Drop

If it were something like that and I had a break-action reload, I'd certainly expect to see the bolts I was sliding into my gun to have some visual difference from the "default" bolts.

We don't know if they are statistical or not, this post is mostly to call attention to it to find out. And if not, should and can it be implemented with ease.

If you think of a gun has a sidegrade that is les accurate and fires faster, how do you really show that? Can be shown subtly but there? This is the kind of stuff I'm going at.

[DaddyTickles]

Originally Posted by Zekeen

We don't know if they are statistical or not, this post is mostly to call attention to it to find out. And if not, should and can it be implemented with ease.

If you think of a gun has a sidegrade that is les accurate and fires faster, how do you really show that? Can be shown subtly but there? This is the kind of stuff I'm going at.

I think you can expect to see longer barrels or big chokes on barrels to signify sidegrades. And, y'know stuff like that.

Whether you'll have time to appreciate the detail before you are fighting for your life is quite a different matter.

[captainkapautz]

Have to necro this thread cause it's relevant to my interests.

So far the only difference between sidegrades seems to be name only, which is something that I hope will change during beta.