Guild Wars 2

Good evening, Developers. This is Kendansa.

There’s a good chance that my post will vanish in the long list of suggestions on this forum, but on the off-chance someone finds it, please read it!

I play on Tarnished Coast (the unofficial Roleplaying server), and in many games I am a cosmetic equipment enthusiast. Currently, I am disappointed by the lack of variety concerning armor appearances, and the complete absence of other town clothes. Some players may have suggested adding town clothes vendors, but I still feel that wouldn’t provide the variety really needed in a game with such a large community.

Therefore, I would like to propose that ArenaNet institute regular community contests, in which players can design and submit their ideas for clothing, armor, weapons, and skins (depending on the theme of the contest). Each account can submit one design for one server, to help keep things organized. From there, Devs can choose three to five designs from every server, and post them on the GW2 site. From there, the community votes on their favorite. The winner and two runner-ups will have their designs put into the game as permanent gem store items, as well as receiving some sort of prize.

I understand that not every player who wants to participate will have drawing skill. For that reason, I suggest that a base template be provided (depending on the contest’s theme) that users can print or save to their computer and use as a base for their designs. The template should be a light grey outline, so that players could design freely.

I feel that a contest on occasion is a great way to get the player-base involved and let them know that the developers care about their ideas and opinions. It would also satisfy those looking for more designs for their characters to wear, and take some burden off of overworked designers.

I have heard tell of other sites and games that have had great success with contests such as these. Considering there is an entire subforum dedicated to fan-artists of the game, it is almost guaranteed that there will be a great amount of participation. It is also a great opportunity to scout out potential design recruits for ArenaNet.

All things considered, there are few (if any) losses and many gains to be had by implementing my suggestions. Players of all types would benefit, as would gem sales, which help keep the game afloat.

There’s never anything wrong with community involvement.

Sincerely, Kendansa

As an artist and avid cosmetic enthusiast myself, I love this idea and would definitely participate.

I know of many others that would also be interested. I do hope a developer sees this.

Man, I’d pick up the pencil if I had good reason such things would be implemented. But I also know my meager skills couldn’t compare to what the community could offer. Even an annual contest would be pretty sweet. I’d hope it could be player-voted, but only once all submissions were in.

Pluses to this idea!

The ArenaNet Workshop.

But seriously, they did this several times for GW1 weapons. I would be surprised if they didn’t do it again for GW2. Community involvement is a great way to take some stress off of concept designers and also give the players a way to directly contribute to a game. With a game that is heavily invested in cosmetics like GW2, there’s honestly no way to go wrong with this idea.

I agree wholeheartedly. What does everyone else think? Any more suggestions pertaining to this sort of thing? What kind of contests would you all like to see? Themed? General design?

Nice idea. You have my support on this. I don’t know if they’ll ever do this kind of thing, cause it’d have to be real high quality to actually get in-game. But sure! If you think you can do it, please do! The more looks, the better. Engaged community members FTW

I completely agree, they should do this kind of stuff more often, after all they could hire ppl for fast modelling on maya or smtg anyway to add weapons more often (at least those that wouldn’t require animations), the armors would take a bit more work though but I think it’s doable.

However my best suggestion is to completely make available already existing ones, many skins are missing from either pve or pvp alike, so…

Armors would take a bit more work on everyone’s part, not just the modelers. It would be the contest participants that would have to come up with the armor’s appearance from four views on eight different models (norn, human, sylvari male/female, plus one design each for charr and asura).

@Kendansa.9370

It’s not just that kendansa, armors aren’t just skins they are models, even thought best guess is armors are already configured to fit specific animations on the many character models it’d probably require testing and tweaking to avoid weird animations and crippling issues, which can’t simply be addressed with short-term modelling jobs.

It’d require at least one of those who already worked with Anet in the past to get the right tools and things done fast, which is likely to be working on next patches already.

^ Sadly this is true. 3D modelling stuff is kinda tricky. My friend does it for art as he’s going into graphics and animation. It’s time consuming, I tried it and it took me ages to make one little thing.

I dunno having a community concept would be nice to provide Anet designers a nice concept basis. I do it if I had time, I for one would like a few more practical armour sets. E.g some nicer plate armours.

I might post here as I have an idea in the bank. My artistic skills are probably average at best compared to the other fan artists some of their stuff are awesome!

@Glitch.6849

Well anet used to run art contests for new weapons’ designs and stuff so it might happen, I just hope a bit more than once every 6 months or a year.

Yeah. I guess there are a lot of complications, but I’d still like to see more skins and townclothes…