Guild Wars 2

I recently rolled sylvari for the first time, it was all cool and naturey and stuff, up until. I saw their armor, right out of the tree, my character was wearing chainmail and a helmet characters stick out like sore thumbs, unless you’re human. There’s really no need to flesh the idea out.
Every race should get race-themed armor at the start, they won’t look impressive so that armor later on would still look nice:

Humans would have a more millitia garb
Norn would have ceremonial clothes or fur coats
Asura would student look clothes
Sylvari would have leaves n’ stuff
and Charr would have standard armor, but with their legion’s symbol a la guild armor

Starter armor would no longer be acquired on start, but through class-quests early on. It’d sort out lore issues, like how my sylvari met a warlord before awakening.

Yea, that always did bug me about how the Sylvari you play as is essentially a newborn, and how Sylvari are supposed to have their clothes grow out of them, but this not happening with your character.
I support this idea.

This would be a huge amount of work, but I support more culturally appropriate starter clothing as well.

I actually think the current starter clothing is 110% appropriate to humans; which makes it inappropriate for every other race. Most of the more “generic” clothing (dropped, white vendor, all crafted heavy, most crafted medium) is very appropriate to humans, but very inappropriate for every other race.
Norn should have armor that is like their NPCs; very heavy furs and cloths, but actually leaving a lot of the body exposed. (Aside, the Norn cultural armor is hands down my favorite.)
Sylvari need more plant armor. Nothing looks more wrong than a Sylvari wearing chain mail, and the medium armor isn’t much better. Light armor you can at least get a really cheap winged set and transmute it onto all your gear – but you shouldn’t have to to not look absurd. I would actually rather see something like the cook’s outfit in the gem shop, where most armor simply calls up a reskinned version when worn by a Sylvari. Its not the model or styles that are inappropriate on any armor: it is the material the armors are made of.

Asurans and Charr aren’t nearly as bad, since their body models already force slightly modified versions of each armor. I actually think that the human-based generic models look (amusingly) the least wrong on the Charr. The biggest problem with these two is all the hats that remove their ears/horns respectively.
Asurans do at least need to have the female models of all bare-chested armors modified. They are the sort to cover every bit of skin in the first place, and the females feel particularly wrong with bare-chested armor that was intended for human males.

Lillium.6481:

This would be a huge amount of work, but I support more culturally appropriate starter clothing as well.

It’s only 15 models and I think it would be worth it.

The human, charr, norn, and asura already look ok in the starter armor. It’s only the sylvari that look soooo out of place. I would have been fine with them having one male and one female sylvari starter armor that all professions used. So only two armor skins.

In the beginning zones they have cultural weapons drop. Why not add in cultural armour drops? It would also give a use for the 50 some transmutation crystals you might get before 80….

I mean lets be honest, if you have an even simple sylvari starter set, wouldn’t you be likely to transmute it to keep that look until you had access to other sylvari clothing?

I see no reason why it can’t be similar themed gear, but in it’s own style.

Example: Light armour female: Weird criss cross top with that semi-ugly skirt thing. Why not have a criss cross top (one large leaf crosses each way growing from the back, and leaves coming from the spine up over the shoulders) and a skirt made from a few large leaves that is roughly the same basic shape?
Wrist guards could be a single leaf, kinda like a lily flower, and the boots could be the same.

They would be simple, but they would match the lore.

Charr should have armour specific to their chosen legion, but simple.

Make it so each can only be worn by the respective race.

I agree that for the Sylvari race in particular it is jolting to see yourself fighting through the nightmare in human clothing and then have it reissued to you once you get out. Makes it seem like you have a problem because you can’t grow your armor the proper way for Sylvari. Not that I don’t think Sylvari should be able to wear standard armors if they like but I feel that the default should be racial armor and then it’s unique if a Sylvari chooses to wear human armor.

To be honest, wouldn’t best idea be to simply make every race start with their basic cultural armor?

Nobody is buying the first tier anyways. It would set apart the races at start, giving it a good special feeling. The sylvari looks wierd, starting in a chainmail.

These races could buy these armors at their armor crafters, and the generic (and quite bland) starting armors could be removed entirely. Let’s increase the differences a bit.