as someone coming from a War of the Roses and Mount&Blade background, I have grown extremely fond of armor that is keeping close to realism, but I find myself very retricted in this game as far as that is concerned.
There are a myriad of skin-showing pseudo-armor, gear fit for the catwalk and heavy plate monsters only a true Space Marine could hope to wear without suffocating in his own sweat in a matter of minutes; but there are maybe a handful of armors that look kinda normal. This is a real problem for anyone who wants to have meaningful diversity in his outfit but who can’t suspend disbelief walking around with pauldrons as thick as his head or a harness fit for a Powergirl special issue comic.
I love it when people use ‘realism’ to describe armor when speaking about an environment with fire breathing dragons, frost breathing dragons, plague bringing undead, way points, teleports, all forms of magic, rat-people, plant-people, horse-people, cat-people, giants…do tell, realistically what type of armor will protect you from a plague? Well realistically we all need to wear hazard suits when fighting undead..but you can’t move as freely in hazard suits so you can’t attack…realistically speaking of course. Or what about say Fire elemental-that thing has got to be a million degrees…what realistic armor would you wear in that situation? Everyone needs fire-resistant suits…but again…you can’t really leap through the air in that now can you?
Tell me-would you like the idea of Mount and blade suddenly having skimpy outfits? No? Didn’t think so. You want ‘realistic’ armor you go for a game that focuses on such things-this game focuses on FANTASY armor. I think you should learn to appreciate differences in games.
When free speech ends, tyranny begins.
The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.
(…) can’t suspend disbelief walking around with pauldrons as thick as his head (…)
Thats mostly a Norn problem, big one.
I feel the same way about Greatswords, they released the game with a fair variety of believable and “high fantasy” but since that all we got was “high fantasy” ones.
My favorite is still the Ebonblade, I also like the Kymswarden and Khrysaor for example.
I have my fingers crossed with the upcoming WvW skins.
Agreed OP. The appearance of functionality and ‘in context’ believability are extremely important to any game art design, even in a fantasy genre. This is actually taught in game concept design and 3d modeling schools routinely.
I’ve done some armor designing for games, here is an armor mod I made for Skyrim:
The armor is made from rendered dragon parts and even though we all know dragons aren’t real, it’s pretty easy to suspend disbelief if it makes sense in context with the world of the game.
The traditional ‘Steam-Punk’ aesthetic is also a good example of this. While GW2 for the most part is pretty good about this, I do think we need some more believable armors to choose from.
~An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.~
Well, their armor aproach in the core game was mostly “realistic” or “usefull”.
Very few armor were not practical to wear, depending on the armor class of course.
There are actually very few skimpy clothes in the game and only recently they changed to go the more “stylish” route, in which they added more “glitter” and “effects” to every new piece of equipment in game.
I think this is more of a problem for me. Most armor we have seen is actually practical or “realistic” given the enviroment.
However i agree. I would love some more armor imitating actual armor or clothing for their respective classes.
