Guild Wars 2

I’m sure this has been posted before, but one thing that really bothers me about the guardian is that it’s a heavy armour type. I chose it as my main because of how it was the natural descendant of the Monk (especially having chosen Dwayna) from GW1, and really wish it could have light armour style robes. And yes, I’m fully aware of outfits. Whilst I see their appeal, my point/proposal is somewhat different.
What if you could wear different armour types? Imagine a heavy armour wearing Reaper (sort of a Death Knight). And a light armour wearing Guardian. Now, I appreciate this is technically a difficult aspect to implement in the game, and will no doubt introduce all sorts of balance issues. But I’m curious to hear from people if this indeed something that has the potential to be implemented (ala Elder Scrolls Online), and if you would want to see such a thing in the game.

I know you mentioned outfits but really that’s the only solution. I don’t see them going and recoding all armor to get this to work. It would be a huge time investment and personally I would rather see them investing elsewhere. That would be why I object.

weight classes
originally the answer that they kept using was something along the lines of “we don’t want to have light armour characters looking like they’re heavily armoured and vice versa”
sure, it made sense, until they started churning out outfits like this and this

now-a-days there is no real reason why we can’t just use all skins,

clipping
sometimes they use the “clipping” excuse, but i could make a character using currently ingame armour and make the ultimate clipping character.
most of us won’t care about slight clipping, and those that do aren’t forced to use pieces that clip.

in reality there is no real reason anymore, other than “boy, that sounds like a lot of work for us to do!”

In fairness, Liewec, having light armour on a heavy type (or vice versa) would mean different stats. What I would happily settle for is an all type wardrobe system, where I can transmute skins from a light type to my heavy type character. That way, no balance issues would be created. Ultimately, I would prefer ‘real’ (as in not through a wardrobe system) light armour on my heavy, but as I said, I’d settle for a transmutation, which is still superior to an outfit (more dye options, mixing and matching etc).

Yakkus.8765:

In fairness, Liewec, having light armour on a heavy type (or vice versa) would mean different stats.

oh yeah i should have been more clear, i was just on about skins, making the actual armour wearable would cause balancing issues

The whole “Light armor classes shouldn’t look like they have heavy armor!” concept also loses merit when one can very easily build a light armor class that has a higher toughness stat than a heavy class.

Liewec.2896:

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in reality there is no real reason anymore, other than “boy, that sounds like a lot of work for us to do!”

but thats been the reason to justify why they wont add a build saving feature in the game… so it still holds up.

All Anet has to do is sell us “outfit” slots. What they would be is a customized armor creation that you could wear at any time. So if you made one using a heavy armor you could only use heavy armor in that slot (gets around the clipping issue) but it would allow you to put a light or medium character in heavy armor and vice versa. It could also be used by people who like many different looks but do not have the charges to change when they want to. You might argue: but Anet won’t make money off of selling charges. To which I say: changing a piece in these slots would still cost a charge but equipping and un-equipping would not. It would let people customize their character to their liking while not messing with clipping issues or balance issues.

I’ve thought more about this, and I feel that the transmutation option would be the most feasible. Ultimately, all the models are already there (i.e. for race and gender), it isn’t really a technical issue (as opposed to say, transmuting cultural armour skins, which would require starting from scratch to fit the models on other races). Thus, if I wanted to go with a classic cleric/monk look, I could simply transmute Devout or Winged skins on to my heavy. If I wanted the “Death Knight” look to my necro, hey presto, Armageddon skin. Perhaps if there are enough people who want this, it can be implemented

Anet explained (sort of) when they introduced outfits that each armor weight uses a different mesh for programming. Its because of this system that they couldn’t “just make town clothes into armor skins.” Town cloths were essentially a 4th weight class with it’s own mesh system.

In order to do what a lot of people have asked for them to do (let us use any skin on any weight), this system would require reworking. They may or may not be entertaining such, though I highly doubt we’d hear anything if they were, until they were positive they could do it. However, I don’t think it would be financially worth while for them to sink the time into it.