It seems clear that in Card Hunter characters will be very equipment driven. I am wondering if the character image (the cardboard miniature on the battleground) will change second the gear you have equipped...
Interesting as that might be, I rather hope they don't do that, at least not initially. I don't want them to take any longer making this game than they have to, and the difference right now seems like it would be mostly aesthetic, although I admit it would be cool to have personalization like that. I think that would be nice to see, but maybe added on later, unless they were planning to do it anyway.
Personally no offense to your idea but its kinda sorta a waste of time. Its nice to change gear and be flashy at times, but its far to much work for little payoff. Plus you lose the surprise factor of "Oh i didn't think he would put that in his deck!"
Yeah, making a figure that updates based on what you are carrying is certainly something we discussed a lot. It is beyond our resources at this stage though and, as Surgeon Fish said, it could actually lead to major spoilers about your deck build.
For competitive play, shown gear could be used to balance the amount of information on the opposing characters (too little information can be as unfun as too much). I mean theres no reason to go all the way and have it show the whole contents of their deck. (for example: a shown sword culd be any sword and there are more cards in the deck than equpment cards). Though, just having race and class specific character images does give you some informaion on the opposing decks. On the other hand, you could sell equipment packs, that lets the players themself choose equipment that their characters are shown wearing. If you are going to monetize on non gameplay stuff, then I think character customization is a big thing. Though I imagine, it wuld require some investment to develop the system so that characters culd be able to have their shown equipment switched out.
it would be very fun to watch your character progress and be able to see a difference as your equipment improves, however I understand that some people might not want to give so much information away when playing with other players, although character customization to some extend would be fantastic.
People like playing dress-up with their character model in RPG's, sure. But it takes large amounts of artistic effort to do something like that, particularly when using sprites and not 3-D models: the original Diablo was all pre-rendered sprites and showed exactly 3 armor models plus a few weapons; Diablo II was still 2-D but had a massive budget and so showed more models; and Diablo III is 3-D with a massive budget plus high expectations and so it finally shows everything. This is a fun project made on a personal budget using 2-D sprites, and so I find it unlikely that complete realism will occur at release. Also, I agree that showing off equipment itself may not be a good idea. It would also be impractical. If I define my deck using exactly one copy each of twelve different weapons, what should show up on my sprite? Even saying "oh, you just choose which of the twelve is in your hand" would be odd, as then there'd have to be a similar prompt for all other visual aspects, and the player would have to go through the prompts over and over as the deck changes.
You pretty much nailed it Sir Knight. We had a long discussion about this a while back and came to the conclusion that this would be a feature for Card Hunter 2.
Yep, and all it took was rampant speculation. Good job, team! Though now I'm thinking of a panel where Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter spoke about a novel series they were starting up, wherein nothing had yet been created and all was open. Someone asked a question; Stephen Baxter replied "That's a very good question that we will address in book 3."
well assuming that it's impractical to show your equipped items for any number of reasons, it would still be a nice feature to have some options for character customization, or changeable "skins" for each class.
I am only echoing a lot of what people have said above, I am all for dress-ups in solo or co-op play, but for pvp I prefer to hold my cards close to my chest. One of the biggest pulls that MTG has for me is finding that combination of card mechanics that allows me to put out some very innocuous looking cards (See I am no threat. Wow, my deck just isn't firing is it?) and then drop something which ties it all together into the death of all things (What's this I have on this here platter? Why, it appears to be your arse.)
Yeah, customizable skins are a big Do Want. Visible equipment is a No Thanks. I love it in games like Diablo. But not in a game like this where it's tipping my hand in PvP.
In LotRO, you have to show your gear in the PvP area, you can't use the massive amount of cosmetic discombobulation. Whilst I'd like a balance between the two ideas - cosmetic/practical, I'm happy to wait for CH 2.0. I'm also thinking that a neat way to separate some money from my wallet is extra 'skins' for my character. Possibly not even including the classic Vallejo chainmail bikini model...
I'd like to see different basic appearances (by class, gender, maybe different races if needed, or skin tone options), just for variety's sake, but don't really feel a major urge for everyone to have a totally unique card avatar that represents the composite of all their equipment or cards. Even if we have PvP options, I don't think I need to see what I'm facing thanks to my opponent's avatar. It's not like I could guess about an MtG opponent by what they were wearing.
Well if the devs let us make a card for them for winning, i already have mine ready http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k4/Riki_Makishi/Edit.jpg
