Guild Wars 2

Jam.4521:

If this was to happen I think it would require a system that showed your true armour class in PvP, you say you can rcognise it from skills but you shouldnt have to wait for you opponant to have played out several skills at you before having any idea what they are, and if there are 5 of them? which on is which? How can you concentrate fire on one class when they all look the same (you know this would be abused). Lotro had a cosmetic armour system which let you do this but it would only show your true armour in PvP which was better.

Though I would like to make my rifle warrior to look like a samurai or a pirate, you can’t beat a pirate, especially with my pirate runes making me shout ‘yarr’ and summon parrots…

Are you talking about sPvP or WvW? Because they could just make it unable to be applied to PvP armor. As for PvE, your argument has no basis.

For WvW I think it’d be even better! Think about it. You could be a squishy running around in heavy armor and people would leave you along thinking you were a warrior or guardian and go after the squishies… XD Or! You could be a bunker guardian in cloth armor who everyone tries to kill but they can’t! HILARIOUS!

Akari Storm.6809:

ekkue.3754:

ranged fighters wearing something that looks like armour is ridiculous?

i find it ridiculous that we are expected to run around in the middle of a raging battle wearing something that wouldn’t look out of place queued up outside an essex nightclub.

Ele elementalist Obsidian Armor from Guild Wars. Imo, not a far stretch to donning some heavier looking armor.

Let’s be real, I can create two identical human players. The only difference between the two is that I can cast spells with one. Hmm, even d/d eles play around in melee range, Mesmers melee with sword MH, necros, well you get the picture. Everyone is in range anyway. Theres no frontline, midline, backline here since there’s no true trinity.

Necromancer elite luxon was also a good example (apart from the fishnet tights obviously) and its almost re-skin, asuran.

irrimn.3192:

For WvW I think it’d be even better! Think about it. You could be a squishy running around in heavy armor and people would leave you along thinking you were a warrior or guardian and go after the squishies… XD Or! You could be a bunker guardian in cloth armor who everyone tries to kill but they can’t! HILARIOUS!

And if someone tried to recognize your class based on armor, and not weapons and skills used, he’d deserve the fail. Weapons and skills are way more distinct, and let you identify a class exactly. Armor would let you at best identify an armor group, which is not so useful.

With all the races and with armor classes being so generic, I don’t think the argument of armor being a defining aspect of certain classes holds much ground.

If I look at a Asura for example, it can be extermley difficult to tell what armor style they are wearing. The same goes for some charrs and norns, and with some armor sets that look somewhat like other sets. Then after discerning their armor style you have 2-3 classes they could be which can be impossible to tell by character looks alone.

This game is hardly like GW1 when it comes to this where every class had very distinct armor, weapon animations, and body types. Finding what class someone is in this game is just too difficult by looking at their armor; you really need to look at their skill effects and class symbol to accurately tell what they are.

Cushnahan.7058:

Totally support the OP here, as it is really stupid not to be able to wear all kinds of armor. It limits the game, is one thing.

The other is: To all the people who QQ about “It would ruin the game if an ele wore heavy armor”- What? Is your fun in the game dependent on someone else’s armor? You better quit right away. Does it bother you so much that someone else wants to be a knight while still casting? Why don’t you find another group then? You’re not forced to gear your ele with heavy/medium armor. But what you are forced to is gearing your ele with light armor. Enjoy the restriction.

So by your logic, I suppose you’d be ok to transmute town clothes on top of armor? Since limiting the game is bad and other people’s armor options shouldn’t ruin the game. We can have people in witch costumes and wintersday furs running around in W3. Thieves with daggers gripped in boxing glove gauntlets backstabbing, while zerg flys across the map on riding brooms.

Cushnahan.7058:

Totally support the OP here, as it is really stupid not to be able to wear all kinds of armor. It limits the game, is one thing.

The other is: To all the people who QQ about “It would ruin the game if an ele wore heavy armor”- What? Is your fun in the game dependent on someone else’s armor? You better quit right away. Does it bother you so much that someone else wants to be a knight while still casting? Why don’t you find another group then? You’re not forced to gear your ele with heavy/medium armor. But what you are forced to is gearing your ele with light armor. Enjoy the restriction.

In a game that is PVP based you have to have some differentiation between classes. You cannot have light classes running in heavy gear. It has nothing to do with “forcing restriction” and devs being evil or whatever you are claiming. It has everything to do with you spotting someone from far and knowing how to approach them. Not just finding out when you’re already half down on health.

I like the current system limiting people to light medium or heavy.

I’d prefer more options within those categories. For example a light chitinous armor – say a Karka set of light armor. Similarly, more helmets/hard masks available for medium or light armor wearers such as the Prowler helmet and Dry Bones skull mask. There is room for adding more armor-like light and medium sets that don’t cross over into heavy armors.

alfista.6094:

Cushnahan.7058:

Totally support the OP here, as it is really stupid not to be able to wear all kinds of armor. It limits the game, is one thing.

The other is: To all the people who QQ about “It would ruin the game if an ele wore heavy armor”- What? Is your fun in the game dependent on someone else’s armor? You better quit right away. Does it bother you so much that someone else wants to be a knight while still casting? Why don’t you find another group then? You’re not forced to gear your ele with heavy/medium armor. But what you are forced to is gearing your ele with light armor. Enjoy the restriction.

In a game that is PVP based you have to have some differentiation between classes. You cannot have light classes running in heavy gear. It has nothing to do with “forcing restriction” and devs being evil or whatever you are claiming. It has everything to do with you spotting someone from far and knowing how to approach them. Not just finding out when you’re already half down on health.

Fail already, you cannot tell at a glance if someone is Thief or Ranger, and there is a world of difference in the two. Making an ancient argument that has never really applied except as a crutch for some "PvP’ players. I would hate to see people like this try to PvP on an EQ2 server, not knowing if that plate wearer was Templar, Inquisitor, Shadowknight, Berserker, Paladin or Guard. Honestly, animations, weapons, behavior tell you far more than any visual armor does in most games. You know.. that “skill” thing PvP’rs like to boast about.

I disagreed 2 months ago and I still disagree now. I’d be okay if it’s just the head slot (you can hide that slot anyway) and I’d also be okay if it’s some iconic sets like a white mantle or a pirate armor from the cash shop but anyone can equip anything? No thanks. A warrior should look like a warrior and an ele should look like an ele.

Besides they would have to remodel every armor in the game to fit with any other armor in the game. Consider that even with the restrictions there’s still a lot of clipping issues they haven’t fixed. With no restrictions, it would be endless. Wonder why adventurer professions have no flowing skirts or kilts like the light and heavy professions do? Because their long trenchcoats would clip through it. (Try it for yourself with a trenchcoat and a draconic leg piece. Tell me how pretty it looks.) Breaking the armor rules would force the armor designers to re-design every piece of armor with much, much stricter rules so that each one works with anything, and as a result we’d all look bland and similar. We would probably look like in older MMOs like WoW where they just “draw” armor graphics on the character, instead of having tons of additional accessories and things that flow in the wind.

What we need is variety. Medium armors have way too many trenchcoat armors. Light armors have way too many skimpy armors. (If you’re playing a female character.) Heavy armor has the best variety but could use more sets like the barbaric one that are neither revealing nor armored from head to toes.

Someone mentionned WoW’s “transmogrify” system on the previous page but, actually, Blizzard has never lifted the limitation about armor types. (Can’t transmute plate to cloth) Also, while you can transmute weapons from one type to another, you can only do it for weapons you can actually equip. You also can’t transmute silly items like a fish as a weapon or invisible armor because they don’t want players to look silly. So Guild Wars 2’s restrictions on transmutation are just in line with those of WoW and sound pretty reasonable to me if we want to avoid absurd sets.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Fail already, you cannot tell at a glance if someone is Thief or Ranger, and there is a world of difference in the two. Making an ancient argument that has never really applied except as a crutch for some "PvP’ players. I would hate to see people like this try to PvP on an EQ2 server, not knowing if that plate wearer was Templar, Inquisitor, Shadowknight, Berserker, Paladin or Guard. Honestly, animations, weapons, behavior tell you far more than any visual armor does in most games. You know.. that “skill” thing PvP’rs like to boast about.

You can tell at a glance that he’s one of 3 possible things. Still better than one out of eight.

Totally support the OP.

And I think ANet will add this functionality when TESO comes out, since in that game any class will be able to wear any armor, stats and all, and ANet will want to compete at least visually.

Well if you want to look like other class, you can do it in fact =/

Here’s a light that looks like medium http://www.gw2armor.com/human/male/whispers/light/front.jpg
a medium that looks like a heavy http://www.gw2armor.com/human/male/ac/medium/front.jpg
a medium that looks like a light
http://www.gw2armor.com/human/male/cm/medium/front.jpg

Add that colours that confuse it more. (let’s be clear that you don’t look at the details if someone’s approaching you, you see an armor, you see a half naked dude/things that look like a ninja, you see a cape) Then where’s your anticipation of what you are facing?

Besides, you can look at it’s weapon or its first attack, that generally solves thing up… I don’t see many hammer/shield thieves heh

If you are a massive noob, you check out their armor first.
If you are a moderate noob, you check out their skill animations.

If you know what you are doing, you check that d**n class icon they have on display.

So in a scenario where you have 3 enemies in front of you:

If you know what you’re doing, you click each and every one of them and then decide how to proceed,
If you are a moderate noob, you wait for each of them to make some kind of animation to know what exactly they are,
If you’re a massive noob you look at them and narrow your choice down based on armor they are wearing.

IMO, if you know what you’re doing you use every hint you have on your disposal.

If you know what you are doing, you don’t wait. They won’t. And what will you do? Attack a clothie? What if they are a necro or a bunker ele? Armor won’t help you.

3vs1, you either attack or flee immediately, and let the situation unfold as you go. You don’t ponder their fashion sense.

Sender.7958:

Cushnahan.7058:

Totally support the OP here, as it is really stupid not to be able to wear all kinds of armor. It limits the game, is one thing.

The other is: To all the people who QQ about “It would ruin the game if an ele wore heavy armor”- What? Is your fun in the game dependent on someone else’s armor? You better quit right away. Does it bother you so much that someone else wants to be a knight while still casting? Why don’t you find another group then? You’re not forced to gear your ele with heavy/medium armor. But what you are forced to is gearing your ele with light armor. Enjoy the restriction.

So by your logic, I suppose you’d be ok to transmute town clothes on top of armor?

You could do it already in GW1. Never had a problem with that.
Of course, it was disabled in PvP arenas.

alfista.6094:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

Fail already, you cannot tell at a glance if someone is Thief or Ranger, and there is a world of difference in the two. Making an ancient argument that has never really applied except as a crutch for some "PvP’ players. I would hate to see people like this try to PvP on an EQ2 server, not knowing if that plate wearer was Templar, Inquisitor, Shadowknight, Berserker, Paladin or Guard. Honestly, animations, weapons, behavior tell you far more than any visual armor does in most games. You know.. that “skill” thing PvP’rs like to boast about.

You can tell at a glance that he’s one of 3 possible things. Still better than one out of eight.

And in that time you identified the guy as one of the 3 classes looking at the armor, i looked at his weapon and attacks and identified his class without caring what armor he was wearing. Or made an attack and looked and class icon after target bar appeared. Hell, he could have been naked and my method would still work. Yours wouldn’t.

Astralporing.1957:

And in that time you identified the guy as one of the 3 classes looking at the armor, i looked at his weapon and attacks and identified his class without caring what armor he was wearing. Or made an attack and looked and class icon after target bar appeared. Hell, he could have been naked and my method would still work. Yours wouldn’t.

Well of course it wouldn’t work. Not by itself. Just like your weapon and animation method doesn’t work until he actually attacks. Hell, even the icon isn’t reliable since it can still mean he’s one of many different builds. It doesn’t mean it’s not helpful tho.
What i’m trying to say is that it’s good to have more than one visual hint to get a sense of your surroundings in a chaotic place that is the battlefield, instead of relying only on one. If you can’t see that then i’m wasting my time.

I agree with the OP, more variation would be quite welcome

on a slightly different topic: why is an armour set considered “heavy” when it’s mostly straps of leather, barely covering the character, with a piece of plate attached to them?

if we don’t have the ability to mix and match, at least give us more options within the confines of each armour class

alfista.6094:

What i’m trying to say is that it’s good to have more than one visual hint to get a sense of your surroundings in a chaotic place that is the battlefield, instead of relying only on one. If you can’t see that then i’m wasting my time.

It’s funny, because i literally don’t see that. As in “i don’t even notice what armor my opponents are wearing in WvW, because i’m concentrating on other details”. Looking at armor is the least informative of all possible methods, and, what’s more, concentrating on it slows down identification by other means. Especially, since (as has been mentioned several times in this topic) there are armors that look as if they belonged to other cathegory, and can be easily mistaken unless very carefully observed (and known beforehand. And I bet almost noone can identify all the skins that are in the game atm).

Galen.9042:

GW2’s end game is built around cosmetics. Dungeon gear and Racial armour provide no better stats than level 80 epics. Arenanet gave us the tools, in the form of transmutation stones, to let us customize the appearance of our characters just the way we like it. As a roleplayer, I absolutely love this idea. The trouble is, the game doesn’t currently let us do that. Because you are still limited to light, medium, or heavy armour depending on your class. Take my Elementalist for example. She’s a corsair, and I’d love for her to look like a pirate. Unfortunately, virtually my only options are to make her look like [Edit] an Asian female.

I can think of no conceivable reason why this is. Obviously, it would throw off balance to let anyone have the higher stats from heavy armour. But what’s wrong with letting them just have the appearance of heavy armour? The current implementation of transmutation stones even seems to support this; if, for example, I tried to use the stats from the heavy armour on my light armour character, the item would show up as non-equippable!

You could make the argument that it makes classes less recognizable, but this doesn’t hold water either. For starters, if I see a medium armour class coming towards me in WvW, that could be one of any three classes. How do I tell which one it is? Well, either by looking at their class icon, or more typically, observing their abilities. The guy throwing grenades at me? Probably an engineer. The guy with two clones of himself who just teleported an entire army behind the walls of my keep? Probably a Mesmer. The unguilded human female with a Juvenile Brown Bear pet and a somewhat nonsensical name? Probably a bot. The fact is that when encountering other players, you recognize their class from their abilities, not their appearance. You might be able to argue that it would hurt SPvP, except you can’t use transmute stones there anyway, making it a moot point.

It would even be beneficial for Arenanet. More options for armour means more players wanting transmutation stones, which means more sales for Arenanet on the gem shop. It means more players running dungeons, because previously undesirable dungeons suddenly become desirable if you could choose any of the armour.

It’s win on all fronts. So why on Tyria can’t we do it?

It’s a bad idea. PvP and WvWvW wise this is a very poor idea. I understand you suggest only the cosmetics transporting across but this is not good for competitive gameplay. It can be exploited. Players in PvP and WvWvW could play a Warrior but transmute to look like a light armour class. When in the heat of a fight being able to easily distinguish what class is what is a must. I would fear structured teams having two mesmers in light armour with greatsword while 3 warriors, guardians or rangers transmuted to have the same light armour. It would completely mess up the quick, clear pace of PvP combat.

Astralporing.1957:

alfista.6094:

What i’m trying to say is that it’s good to have more than one visual hint to get a sense of your surroundings in a chaotic place that is the battlefield, instead of relying only on one. If you can’t see that then i’m wasting my time.

It’s funny, because i literally don’t see that. As in “i don’t even notice what armor my opponents are wearing in WvW, because i’m concentrating on other details”. Looking at armor is the least informative of all possible methods, and, what’s more, concentrating on it slows down identification by other means. Especially, since (as has been mentioned several times in this topic) there are armors that look as if they belonged to other cathegory, and can be easily mistaken unless very carefully observed (and known beforehand. And I bet almost noone can identify all the skins that are in the game atm).

Wrong. Armour is important is long duration fights. It lets you keep an eye on who is who. My guild ran around in WvWvW as all mesmers with the same armour. There were about 5 or 6 of us. It was complete chaos – people couldn’t work out who of us were players and who were clones and we were taking out groups of players much larger thn us because of this. Consider how that could be abused with transmuting other armour types.

did you ever looked really at armor in wvw?
you claim you do and didn’t ever notice the invaders all wears invader armor?
because if you did, probably you wouldn’t say this suggestion is confusing in wvw.
second the op said to do it out of spvp.
stop complaining about pvp and wvw they won’t be touched by this!

Gaudrath.6725:

If you are a massive noob, you check out their armor first.
If you are a moderate noob, you check out their skill animations.

If you know what you are doing, you check that d**n class icon they have on display.

…and if you are a true and total nub you actually think there are class icons in WvW.