Items will no longer reduce a characters size?

[Youny]

I’m a role-player at heart. I use the game mechanics like size, weight, gender, race, side, profession etc as an important part in creating and playing my characters. With the planned change to make items like Bracers of Shrinking Flesh and Gardener’s Gloves not reduce a characters size a big part of the life on Rubi-Ka is suddenly taken away from us. No one can run around as a child, a teenager, a young leet or a tiny atrox. Rubi-Ka will be populated by only adults..

I understand that size is simply a visual to enhance the storytelling, however this seemingly small change has a big effect for me at least. It broke the game for me as some would say. I’ll tell you why – one of my favorite characters to play is a 9 year old orphaned Asian boy called Jason. He more or less saved the game for me, and is part of the reason I am still around. Yes, he’s an agent. Yes, I rolled him as that because of the ruse 1 nanoprogram, so I could run around actually looking the part too. I don’t do PvM or PvP on him, much at any rate. He’s not even being role-played as an agent, actually he’s a wanna-be soldier. When the ruse size change is removed, he could have still been the approximately the same size if he could wear the Bracer of Shrinking Flesh, but they don’t work either. This leaves me no other option than to kill off my character, and I really would have liked to be able to make that decision on my own.

Would it be possible to look into other ways of shrinking your character? Maybe make the Bracers of Shrinking Flesh non-combat flagged? Perhaps even remove the title level requirement on them, so one could choose the one with the reduction that suits your character? Purely social changes. Personally I wouldn’t care if I couldn’t do combat on my short character, but if it was still possible, then that would also be nice. RP is not always just social, it can be combat related too…

[Pafpuf]

Yeah they should have simply made the items disable attacking, completely removing them makes no sense (like most of the patch notes).

[Accell]

I think Youny hit the mark... make the bracers social only along with any other scale reducing items... that would solve the problem of a perceived unfair advantage (mainly only in PvP). Remove Title level locks on those same items... if they get moved to social tab, what is the harm?

[Ekarona]

I understand removing those from nanos, the sizes enfs and agents got were rather stupid in reality.

The regular stuff I disagree. It's a waste of item slots anyway and just how much you can achieve in reducement or enlargement is rather resonable.

[Baby]

While I agree that Enfs got wayy to big and Agents in Ruse 4 got wayy to small, I still think that it made sense that these profs got the feature. In a roleplay/storyline way.

I agree with Youny (This name sounds so familiar, have you played on DNW?) a lot. I'm not too much into RP anymore, but I still liked the diversity of the looks of certain chars/profs. Only reason I rolled an Agent was, that I wanted a miniature Trox to sneak around. Now that being gone, I don't know if I will still have the same fun playing him, even though the seize won't change any gameplay actually.

[doctorgore]

Halloween nanos can have the size crap.

[Hilfy]

Would love to see something kept in-game that allowed for size change. It adds a lot to characters when you can vary them from the standard three heights.

Keeping the bracers sounds like a good way to go as it gives you options for how much you want to change the character. If that does not work, maybe adding some social nanos or a neck item you can click and have it cycle through different +/- size percentages.

Either way, I'm hoping someone in FC comes up with a way of keeping this effect in-game.

[BlockAndLode]

I've always used bracers on my characters. Having an absurdly tall Nanomage Nanotechnician or a short Atrox Keeper makes the game fun for me. It adds a bit of character to the character... removing these completely removes something unique to AO. At the very least, please make them social only instead of removing them completely...

[Difs]

using bracers shows your toon smaller/taller only from your side of view and for people closer to you
if you zone people see you with your normal size (even tho you see yourself smaller/taller)

[Zoleem]

I really am having trouble understanding why gear items that reduce size could not be attached with the same tag as Bracelet of Pacifism = Once worn, one is not able to attack.
There is a RP community out there that is dependent on certain items, in order to make their characters alive. Don't kill these characters, please.

[Tussa]

I understand the game technical reasons behind the change, but surely there must be a way to retain some size changes without it being a problem in combat?

The bracers and size nanos give social options for the roleplaying community and also add individuality to personal expression in AO. Surely, it must be possible to make a social item in whatever slot that can affect the character size +/- without going into extreme size changes?

[Sidology]

Being small is like the only reason to be a agent.

Edit: And being able to change your fez at will!

[Traderjill]

I understand the game technical reasons behind the change

What are they?

[Tussa]

Well, not game technical really - that was me throwing words I don't understand around . But I figured that with 10 ft tall enforces whose body poke through the ceiling, or agents who are so tiny you can hardly see them, there's bound to be combat problems... in PvM or PvP, or both. Why else would they remove something like this?

[Baby]

I got iBehe on Test last night and it still made me taller. (Now thinking of it, I can't believe I forgot to test Enlarge.) Also have I seen a mini pit lizard.
From social channel I picked up something like they reduced the original size of the lizard, so the scale nano wasn't needed anymore. (I've been kept pretty busy IRL at that time, so I couldn't follow the convo completely and just got this out of it.)

But if this was true, I wonder if it is possible to give players the possibility to choose a smaller character size, when creating the char! So there's no more "sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller", but you still can be small/big if you like. Even though I think it would be funny to see all different profs in different sizes, I would also like if only Agent/Enf could do this when creating the char.

[Ophiuchus]

I don't understand removing the concept from the game entirely. I just don't. Why take away fun social stuff? Just disassociate it from combat-related buffs, gear etc. Same goes for Advy Tree morph. Give it back for social!

[TheNilvarg]

I understand that size is simply a visual to enhance the storytelling, however this seemingly small change has a big effect for me at least. It broke the game for me as some would say. I’ll tell you why – one of my favorite characters to play is a 9 year old orphaned Asian boy called Jason. He more or less saved the game for me, and is part of the reason I am still around.

Weird...

[Tussa]

Weird...

You may think so. I'm sure some think what you do is weird too, whatever that is. Just cause you don't understand a thing doesn't make it any less important to people. Live and let live, dude

[lunarmyst]

If FC wants to get rid of everything unique in this game why dont they just call the damn game World of Anarchy already. Agents being tiny and enfos as tall as buildings is super unique and no game has anything like this. If you cant find a tiny agent for pvp who cares, they are probably in sneak on top of building trying to gank you anyways. Why change all this stuff that has no bearing on anything other being a little annoying when your enfo's head is sticking through the ceiling of a mission.

[Agrestus]

I'll put my support in for this. All the quirky modifying items in AO are an extra little part of what makes this game unique. Whether it's simply so that your character looks that little bit more special or cool, or for storyline purposes such as taking part in events (which AO was always big about).

Agents being tiny and enfos being huge was always something a little daft to me, but it's become a part of the variety of this game, and it'll be a shame to see it dumbed down into everyone becoming that little bit more of a generic copy of each other (thank you for social tabs, at least).

For the events and RP side of things, it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's still an integral part of the variety you see in AO and while some people may not take part in it fully, some events are pretty damn interesting to watch.

I use the modification items for a variety of purposes. A bracer of growing flesh just to give that little bit of extra height to a dominant character, or using the cloaking devices to make characters semi-transparent to pretend they're holograms for a unique approach to an event.

If it's something unavoidable that this needs to be done, I'd understand. But at the very least, set up a social-only replacement so that content that people enjoy isn't removed from the game!