Guild Wars 2

Hello Suggestion Board & Arena Net,

Something that has been on my mind ever since I started noticing the heavy armor choices for Asura is how I would love the ability to transmutate certain armors to have the same stats as heavy armor (so my class would still have restrictions) while also possessing the appearance of other armor types, such as light or medium armor.

It would add a whole new level of character customization if players could -really- mix things up. Granted I know this wouldn’t be a small task to accomplish, hence the idea of it being its own transmutation stone type.

The idea is fairly simple. Players who decide to transmutate a Heavy and, say, Light Armor together would be allowed to choose the stats for the class type they use. So for this example, we’ll say that the player wears Heavy Armor and so he would choose the stats for the Heavy Armor item, but then he could also choose the appearance of the light armor (and whatever runes are within the items. You know, typical transmutation stuff).

As I have said in my suggestion for PvE Dragon Slayer armor, cosmetic design means a lot to me in-game (especially as a role player) and so being able to look truly unique and stand out among the others is something I would totally dig.

Now yes there would be issues with clipping when using certain armors, but I would think players would have the common sense to make sure things don’t clip -prior- to using the transmutation stones. If they don’t, well, they can always get another armor type right?

Now of course players might complain “Oh but seeing how a class looks is how we know what class they play!” Really? So if I were to put a guardian and a warrior, both with a greatsword, right next to each other and standing completely still, then you would still be able to figure out which one is which? Indeed. Or perhaps this transmutation stone would only be able to work for PvE armor types so that in PvP, it wouldn’t matter.

And, let’s face it, in World vs. World it wouldn’t matter much either because people travel in packs. Zerg groups, as they call them. So having a bunch of warriors wearing priory skirts wouldn’t make much of a difference, would it?

Indeed not.

I just think the asura goggles should be usable in any armour type.

It always makes me question why whenever I see these types of suggestions. Why a warrior would like to run around wearing cloth robes smacking peoples faces in is really beyound me.

In my opinion these ideas are horrible and i’ll state why. First it goes against any lore behind characters, warriors and guardians wear heavy armor becasue in lore they are the front liners, the ones taking the beating while fighting up close. If a warrior went head to head with another warrior wearing nothing but cloth robes he would be slaughtered, they where the armor for a reason. A class like a theif wears leather armor because they are also close combat, but they need to be flexable in order to avoid damage and strike quickly. How can a tiny asura thief jump over a norns head wearing heavy armor? They can’t. It would weigh them down too much and make would remove the quick fast strike burst game style that thiefs have, lore wise anyway.
Yes some may say “This is a game not real life”, but the game has lore. Hey why not make every class the same so nobody can moan about anything.

Furthermore, it would affect WvW slightly, while you can tell what class a player is by their buffs, you want to be able to see from a distance who is in the group. If you saw 3 players runing up with a GS and robes it could be either a warrior, guardian, ranger, mesmer and ele. All 4 of those clases could look identical and that would be horrible.
There is a reason why almost every game has different armor types for different professions and while Anet want to break away from common games, I highly doubt this ever happening.

lol, elite — you didn’t play rift, did you? our costume options there were phenomenal; we had outfits we could equip at choice that appeared to be this game’s equivalent of “town clothes,” and we took extreme delight in mixing, matching, colorizing, and wholly personalizing our “look.”

the pvp thing was addressed, in rift, when rift disabled the ability to wear personalized armor in pvp. the community reacted with extreme outrage, as our weapons were NOT changed. the general consensus was, this makes it MORE challenging, and if i can’t tell that polearm-wielding guy running at me is a warrior, that’s MY problem, not everyone else’s.

the ability exists, and is utilized, and folk are quite happy with it, in other games. i do hope gw2/anet give us more options on customizing our appearance — thus enabling better character immersion for myself, and many like me.

I really hope they implement this eventually. It would expand the options for character appearance tremendously.

EliteZ.1682:

It always makes me question why whenever I see these types of suggestions. Why a warrior would like to run around wearing cloth robes smacking peoples faces in is really beyound me.

Transmutation stones retain the magical properties of an item while giving it the appearance of another. There’s really no reason that a special magical fashion stone couldn’t give the impression that a piece of armor is much heavier or lighter than it actually is, although it would make sense for that particular service to be more expensive. It’s already possible to find light armors made almost entirely out of leather and metal, and heavy armors that are primarily cloth and bare skin (or plant material, for that matter). And you can already choose between function and style for every type of armor, coming up with outfits that are purely practical or wearing something completely outlandish that would never work in a real fight by any stretch of the imagination.