Guild Wars 2

I’ve read enough from the Engineer players community to know that I’m not alone in thinking that the aesthetics of the engineer kits and turrets are particularly Charr-esque (or junk-esque). As an Asura engineer, this breaks me out of the experience a little. I’ve spent a good amount of gold to get the T3 cultural armor and spent additional gold to match my armor to my rifle (Mystic) (since we can’t dye weapons), so this is annoying that that is static.

I realize that adding race specific gadgetry is a large undertaking. The staff has their hands full as it is. I also realize that adding the ability to dye the kits is also more than the staff can afford at this point. If we can’t dye weapons, I don’t expect to dye kits.

I have a simple solution that would make me feel better in the mean time.

Let me hide the backpack part of the kits.

It doesn’t seem that the overhead would be too time consuming, and it would pull a large piece of what breaks the experience out of the equation. If I could just run around throwing grenades/bombs, hitting things with a wrench, or spraying things with the elixir gun (etc.) without a hobo pack on my back, it would feel significantly more satisfying.

Thanks for taking the time to read.

TL;DR
Allow hiding the backpack model on kits.

I hate to say this, but the huge backpacks from the kits are what prevent me from playing an Engineer. They are huge and imo, really ugly.

If they could be hidden, or if there was something smaller, like a bandolier.. I’d give Engi another go.

Or they could make uniqe models tied exclusively to the Asura. Kinda like the turrets for Sylvari engineers.

I’ve heard one catch with this idea, and that’s the identification of targets in PvP. If the engi doesn’t have the backpack, it may not be clear what they’re using in a fight. If that’s something the devs are concerned about, I’d say make the option to hide it restricted to PvE. However, since the backpack is on so many of the kits and also an item that the engineer can start with, I don’t see it having a large effect on PvP.

They could offer a set of skins, that drop in PvE/WvW/etc and/or are available from karma/token merchants. If you apply the skin, then all your kits have a certain look: a med kit would still look like a med kit, but it would be fancier than the default.

It would be expensive to design even one skin, so maybe they could start with 5 cultural ones.

I would even be excited to pay for ANY modification of the kit appearance via the gem shop. Even if I had to pay gems just to hide it, I’d be thrilled.

The engineer’s backpack could respect the setting of the hero window — show the backpack if the back item is not hidden, hide the backpack if it is. Not a perfect solution simply because low level engineers might not have a back item to be able to set the preference, but it should be fairly simple to implement.

Ideally, being able to change the appearance. With normal weapons players can transmute to many many different skins to satisfy their personal taste, but engineers with kits have no choices at all. I’d definitely be in favor of giving some variety options.

katirhi.5479:

I hate to say this, but the huge backpacks from the kits are what prevent me from playing an Engineer. They are huge and imo, really ugly.

If they could be hidden, or if there was something smaller, like a bandolier.. I’d give Engi another go.

This is exactly how I feel. It’s irrational for not playing a profession purely for one simple aesthetic thing, but I just really, really hate them for some reason. They’re just so big, clunky and don’t match with anything nice. ¯\(°_°)/¯
If we could get the option to hide it I would jump back to the engineer in a heartbeat – grenades and bombs are fun.

They are a visual part of the skill.

They tell others what you are using.

It may not be needed as much for the weapon kits, but for the tool kits like bombs and grenades, it’s necessary. for other to see what you are doing.