Guild Wars 2

When I joined GW2 I was disappointed that characters in heavy armor couldn’t wear medium or cloth armor. I was reminded of how much I dislike this when I discovered that a new update made it impossible to even preview armor of a different class.

I can understand why a light armor character might be fully restricted to light armor – MMOs have always done that – but never before have I heard of heavily armored characters being restricted to their own.

I’m sure this complaint has been made before, and I know it’s of little consequence to players who don’t care about fashion or role-playing, but some of us would like it a lot if our warriors could walk around town wearing leather jackets.

Please, ArenaNet – let characters wear armor lighter than their own (with a penalty, of course). If not, could we at least be able to transmute them, or make them function the same way town clothes do?

preview issue is temporary™ as stated by mods.

and yeah i with i could wear heavy skins on my mesmer too. want some sexy helms

I agree with Fletcher! There’s no reason to restrict Soldier-type professions to wear only heavy armor; any reason for the restrictions like gear-stealing or whatever else doesn’t hold up in GW2, where almost all armor is gotten through crafting or tokens anyway.

It’s purely for style, and isn’t exploitable in the slightest. It’d be a wonderful QOL improvement for those of us who like making our characters look good.

Why would anyone want to nerf his/her character with lower armor? Heavy armor gives higher armor rating, who would ever want to use Medium or Light that give far less? :S

maddoctor.2738:

Why would anyone want to nerf his/her character with lower armor? Heavy armor gives higher armor rating, who would ever want to use Medium or Light that give far less? :S

You’re missing the point. It’s not for a gameplay advantage, it’s for looks and fun. Like town clothes.

maddoctor.2738:

Why would anyone want to nerf his/her character with lower armor? Heavy armor gives higher armor rating, who would ever want to use Medium or Light that give far less? :S

I don’t know, because it’s fashionable? Not all players keep gear exclusively for actual gameplay; some of us just want to RP in it, or even wear it casually while hanging out in the city.

As I said:

I’m sure this complaint has been made before, and I know it’s of little consequence to players who don’t care about fashion or role-playing, but some of us would like it a lot if our warriors could walk around town wearing leather jackets.

Then the “issue” would probably be easily solved if they made pieces of gear available as Town Clothes, or even more Town Clothing variety! For gameplay/graphic reasons I’d say they won’t change the type of armor you can wear (they changed what we can preview because it caused clipping issues, imagine wearing those pieces!) but Town Clothing is entirely different and certainly doable. While they are at it, maybe they should allow crafters to craft Town Cloth versions of armor, only for the “Looks”. It’s silly to pay for all those mats just to get the looks you want!

All the while you have different professions/classes you will have these restrictions unfortunately. Personally I would like to have the option to transmute any skin onto any armour type, but I cannot see that happening. Though the armour type helps you to narrow down what profession your enemy is, it is the skills they use that really reveals their profession. So having complete freedom to wear whatever armour style you like would not negatively effect the game in my opinion.

That said, another reason it is restricted may be due to the models. Some armour combinations may produce unacceptable clipping or overlap. For example, medium armour coats may not combine well with heavy or light armour skirts.

Also, if you open up all armour to all professions, people will most likely request all weapons available to all professions as well. Not that I’d mind that, but I think it would have more techical and balancing issues involved.

So long as they add more skin options for each armour type, and those skins are varied and appealing to a wide range of players (not just the ones that like skirts and long coats), I’ll be happy.

Edit: I like your idea of craftable town cloths, maddoctor. It has my vote.

Thank you for the feedback on this idea. I think the town clothes option would certainly work out best. The clipping might be part of the reason, but honestly, even a lot of items of the same armor class have clipping issues.

Also I’d like to note that I don’t think reducing armor restrictions would be a can of worms regarding weapons. Players understand that their weapons are their abilities, so it’d be unrealistic to demand less weapon restrictions.