Guild Wars 2

EDIT: It was not made clear that I am not asking for the following to be changed, only that my likes and dislikes noted here be considered in future armor designs, or that options right by me be made available…. I’m not asking for anyone else to get Flamekissed out of armor they already have and like.

First off, Pictures, item codes etc thanks to argos-soft.net and in game screen shots. All have been altered via mspaint to attempt to condense and illustrate what I’m trying to point out, and I appologize for the bad editing and spelling ahead of time.
Second, I dislike the art and style of humans, sylvari, charr and asura so much that I do not play the ones I have. Go Norn or go home. And I play female characters, so all my screenshots and suggestions are built around that. However the points I wish to make here should apply regardless of race and gender.
And lastly, I like mixing armor sets. Generally out of some distain for specific parts of any given “full set” and I don’t care if the current sets are left in place. But I would like to see more armors that work along what I am attempting to point out. If I were possessed of any grace with drawing, I would do that instead. But I am not, so this is as close as I can come.
I will break it down to 1 post per point to make it easier for me to organize.

Asymmetry.
To do asymmetry correctly it needs to be done with style and function. This means it needs to look like it belongs and must not have the appearance of being especially restrictive to the wearer’s movement. Part of the style points also is where the asymmetry is located, how drastic it is, and whether there is any need for it to exist there at all.
Asymmetry makes more sense from a functional and style standpoint being put around certain areas of the body more so than others. Namely the chest, abdomen and footware. Gloves, shoulders and headgear to a lesser extent and any asymmetry in these areas needs to be very, very small. The shoulders and headgear especially because the unalterable, high camera angle has us seeing the most of.

Odd attachments and sleeves.
There are several sets of armors that have pieces on them with very nice potential for making mixed armor sets, save for the sleeves, which cover gloves and ruin the attempted look by removing the ability to add style either by means of ornamentation or just “bulk” via the gloves, or in some cases, an odd attachment that is typically undyeable, unremovable and non-sensical to the rest of the set.

Showing skin.
I understand this one lights a fire under someone’s behind every time the subject is even mentioned. That said, I like to see some skin. As always, there is a right way, and a wrong way. The best way I can explain “the right way” by me is to say: The armor needs to project an air of confidence, readyness. The look should say, “Give me a reason to enjoy killing you slowly.” For me with female characters, part of that is to show a certain amount of skin, in the right places, to make the dare, but have the style and coverage so that it doesn’t become, “Hey, I’m easy.”
Style pointers for females and skin also: When the chest and leggings are separated, a flat line across the top of the leggings, such as a belt, makes the outfit appear stuffy, where a downward curve, a “V” shape or a slanted line exentuates the shape of the hips, while still being quite able to cover enough not to scare the ESRB.
The pictures associated with this one are more for pointing out what I am looking for in the mid section around the belly and hips, as I feel the rest doesn’t need a whole lot of explanation.

And finally because it MUST be pointed out:
They got right once, then wronged everyone who wanted the right one.

Sorry, but you can’t beat this and I’m still waiting on a replacement that shows they cared some.

Sorry to burst your bubble but, having and OCD in asymmetry doesn’t mean we all have it, I actually like the designs a lot.
And your second point is style I guess? Umm yeah so you know, style in the end is just like PERSONAL TASE, it’s PERSONAL. That being said I think most of the armors look gorgeous, and since the guys that made them are designers, you know with a degree, I think they know what they’re doing .

I have to agree with the OP, I never understood the single shoulder attachments as they don’t make any sense to me. Thankfully they have given me the option to “hide” the shoulders. But then I’m also one that suggests that anet allow us to select sleeve/glove/legging/skirt length options of each set.
There are so many people with differing style opinions that I think providing different lengths would be nice. Some people like long skirts, some people would like to wear shorts, some would like long gloves and some would prefer sleeveless while others prefer full coverage. Why can’t we have it all? :-)

You do realize those red circles are purely subjective?

I love it. A nice, long-winded post just to drive home the idea that, “Guys, I really want Human Tier 3 Light Cultural Armor on all the races again!”

Also, people have their own tastes. There’s dozens of armor sets in game, and you can mix and match, and dye them. If you STILL can’t find something to replace the, rightfully so, exclusive to humans Tier 3 Cultural Armor, then maybe you should broaden your horizons and really experiment with the mixing and matching.

/Agree with Nick

Extremely subjective

Essentially this boils down to what one person likes, another may not. Conversely what the first does not like, the other person may. We are not all the same. We all have likes and dislikes and desires when it comes to armor.

Fasalina.6571:

Sorry to burst your bubble but, having and OCD in asymmetry doesn’t mean we all have it, I actually like the designs a lot.
And your second point is style I guess? Umm yeah so you know, style in the end is just like PERSONAL TASE, it’s PERSONAL. That being said I think most of the armors look gorgeous, and since the guys that made them are designers, you know with a degree, I think they know what they’re doing .

I’m not saying to remove what’s there, mostly either add symmetric options to the worst offenders, or just do it right. Asymmetry can be done right by me, it’s just that where they do it wrong, they REALLY do it wrong. :P

As for personal tastes and designed by guys, there is no answer to personal taste to be sure, but some guys are better at designing fantasy women’s clothing than others. And as I pointed out, they did have it right one time. Exactly 1 time.

Now, IF they made a Norn shaped human physique and put some of the Norn faces in human character creation, this would also make my thread here obsolete without answering to any of my issues with their other designs as all their stuff is geared towards humans, and thus comes out frequently looking plain bad on the Norns because of scaling/shaping issues and other stuff I have complaint and change request posts for going all the way back to the beta forums.

Mega Messiah.1734:

I love it. A nice, long-winded post just to drive home the idea that, “Guys, I really want Human Tier 3 Light Cultural Armor on all the races again!”

Also, people have their own tastes. There’s dozens of armor sets in game, and you can mix and match, and dye them. If you STILL can’t find something to replace the, rightfully so, exclusive to humans Tier 3 Cultural Armor, then maybe you should broaden your horizons and really experiment with the mixing and matching.

Spent hundreds of gold, many dungeon tokens, many gems before flamekissed trying just that and thus far nothing. And you make an assumption in a hostile tone there…that isn’t appreciated. They don’t have to use “human t3” I was just pointing out that they made one that worked, why have they not been able to pull it off like that again without another outright copycat?

Nick.6972:

You do realize those red circles are purely subjective?

Yes, care to answer why you think I can’t voice my likes and dislikes though?
I was pointing out what I do and do not like, and by extension, what I would and would not like to see in the future.

Gonna look awful either way, ultimately a waste of time and resources.

@OP
I completely agree with your critique on armor designs in your initial posts.

I’m still in the process of working on some armor designs and I plan to cover all races and genders in each design, but when I finish them I’ll be sure to ask your opinion of them to see if our desires for armor designs match up with what I am working to design. I hope to submit them to Anet here on the forums for them to use freely. Maybe they just can’t come up with any ideas or hire people who are able to. During a discussion on armor designs with a dev here on the forums, I finally came out and directly asked them if the lack of armor being released and of variations to existing armor is due to a bottleneck in the design phase or the modeling phase and offered both my designs and my models free for their use. Not surprisingly, there was no response to my question and no further posts on the matter.

For a game touted as having armor and appearances as being very important, and horizontal progression as being primarily aesthetic in nature (armor), most players seem happy with any armor scraps that are occasionally thrown our way. It’s quite odd.
Most (and in some cases all) armor is:

• Limited in mix-n-match capability (clipping, conflicting designs, inconsistent material and dye appearances as mentioned below)
• Commonly lacking (and/or having oddly chosen) dye channel areas
• Rigid in design and lacking alternate variations
• Lacking the ability to flip elements of the armor to the opposite side
• Very oddly designed and is ruined with excessive artistic elements that do not belong with the rest of the armor design and cannot be hidden or dyed (and sometimes contains elements that can be dyed by one species/gender and are undyeable on others)
• Too inconsistent in how dyes appear and interact with different materials on the same armor, and even with the same materials on the same armor
• Lacking in quality and often clip with other armor items from the same set, as well as occasionally completely missing textures on the backs of areas of the armor
• Plagued by red texture bleed areas on edges and at texture seams (and sometimes more visible the further you zoom your camera away from your character)

There are a lot of armor designs I really like, and a lot of them that I like specific elements of. However, my overall feeling on armor made for Gw2 (from design to rate of release, from customization to implementation) is summed up in one word: Lacking

Oh yes, stop it with those midriff baring chest pieces for light armor! I mean really it makes me think they don’t fit my necromancer or something, when they would otherwise look great.

Yes, it’s a manifesto and all my personal opinions. But the majority of the negative feedback reads you think I am asking for the current items be changed on those who already have them like say…flamekissed… I am only pointing out features that I like, dislike or wish could have been done differently according to the blurb above each picture.

As for Sylvari and “tree elves” that was my initial impression of them in the release video announcing their presence in Tyria, and all I’m asking for there is 1 or two faces to be added… you bunch of dragon minions

I never really put too much thought into it before, but now that you have I have to admit I agree that these are also many of the reasons I don’t like many of these armors either. I’ve been challenged to come up with an armor set on my human guardian and norn necromancer that I’m really excited about. I have one for each that I like, but there certainly isn’t many other options I’m excited about.

ArchonWing.9480:

Oh yes, stop it with those midriff baring chest pieces for light armor! I mean really it makes me think they don’t fit my necromancer or something, when they would otherwise look great.

I like the midriff, but think they are done wrong in some cases…but there were armors in GW1 for necromancers that were quite covering, but I wore them proudly because they spoke to me by saying, “I will enjoy making you my minion.”
Example: http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/thumb/0/07/Necromancer_Elite_Sunspear_armor_f.jpg/316px-Necromancer_Elite_Sunspear_armor_f.jpg

Stone.6751:

I never really put too much thought into it before, but now that you have I have to admit I agree that these are also many of the reasons I don’t like many of these armors either. I’ve been challenged to come up with an armor set on my human guardian and norn necromancer that I’m really excited about. I have one for each that I like, but there certainly isn’t many other options I’m excited about.

A part of my history of gripes is that the armor models appear to be built solely for humans and not a whole lot of thought appears to be given to tweaking the way the armors wrap around other races, Norn females especially have really strange sizing and placement issues on key pieces of clothing that would frame the head and hips, or pull a look together without making her appear awkwardly top-heavy (giant chest armor, giant shoulders, tiny head, gloves, boots…makes for some really strange visuals imo, nothing you can’t fix with sizing the gloves/boots a little larger and toning the shoulders down usually…or up in a very few anomalous cases).

To point out a different race, the Sylvari have odd sizing on the boots and frequently unusually small shoulder gear (physique issue from having very, very small chests, but also very wide hips…compared to humans) Charr have the tail issue…probably others, though I admit, the one charr I have is wearing cultural armor because it fits my idea of the “feel” of the race so much better than any other. Asura generally the same, they have taken on what I think is an odd shape and I can’t see how armor would appear on them differently than it does… but again, not a race of choice for me (mine wears cultural armor.. which I would take that t3 heavy and throw it on a human guardian in a heartbeat once I knew I wasn’t going to get flamekissed for it again)

I have to agree OP’s post is 100% subjective

but what I do agree is the Flamekissed point, that is not subjective, it was a mess but there was a lesson to be learned: NEVER listen to the forum whiners… I hope something like that never happens again.

Also, Norn females wear that armor way better than those puny, non-muscular humans, they know it and they will carry that shame forever.

korelg.7862:

I have to agree OP’s post is 100% subjective

but what I do agree is the Flamekissed point, that is not subjective, it was a mess but there was a lesson to be learned: NEVER listen to the forum whiners… I hope something like that never happens again.

Also, Norn females wear that armor way better than those puny, non-muscular humans, they know it and they will carry that shame forever.

The skins and likely mesh is never coming back, I get that… but other than the long, long series of mistakes leading to the flameskissing of my money (wasted), the biggest miscarriage of justice on pure style is that the look was changed to the feathered armor set which looks 100% horrible on all races except humans, and that t3 skin/mesh actually looked real good on everyone else. The secondary to that is me wondering why they didn’t see that and why they don’t appear to care enough to investigate why the set comes out looking so nice across the board. :/

Lynne.8416:

I have to agree with the OP, I never understood the single shoulder attachments as they don’t make any sense to me. Thankfully they have given me the option to “hide” the shoulders. But then I’m also one that suggests that anet allow us to select sleeve/glove/legging/skirt length options of each set.

Just because you don’t understand doesn’t mean its a design mistake.

Many styles of armor throughout history would have one heavily armored arm and shoulder and one light or even completely unarmored one. This was because they wanted their sword arm to remain as flexible as possible while still having as much protection as possible. Jousting armor would take this to even further extremes, having so much armor on one shoulder that it could hardly be moved except to raise and lower a lance. Other armors were made for a sidelong fighting style, meaning ideally one half of the body wouldn’t even be exposed to your opponent. Asymmetrical armor is just as realistic as symmetrical.

And I don’t really understand the problem, the OP isn’t even showing half the armors in the game, there are plenty of asymmetrical armors, and seemingly none specifically or extremely deviate from his desired aesthetics in terms of functionality, all can be explained based on what the end purpose of the armor is.

However I can say that I do agree with the oddly attachments, stupidly placed unhideable sleeves and hanging bits so often prevent a set from being mixable with anything. I don’t want to see chests with a completely hideable option, but an option to hide anything removed from or jutting out of the main body would be awesome. Or even just an option to hide sleeves in favor of gloves and boots over pants would be a huge step in helping character customization.

As for showing skin, they is plenty of realistic armor and plenty of unrealistic, and lots of players like one, the other, or both. I would like to see a continued mix released to please everyone. If I don’t like it I don’t have to use it.

I get behind the notion of the female armors showing too much skin in some instances.
Armor should be foremost practical, then stylish and some in contrast to their male counterpart are just insulting (looking at you gemstore Phalanx).

That said, i am not against the skin showing armors, since there is certainly a market for them. It just has to be the right balance.

What i cannot get behind is your disliking of asymetry.
It is a style and in some cases even a practical part of the armor itself.
The pitfighter armor for example (i think it was that armor) has a long armguard on the left side.
The side that used to defend, where you wield your shield (since we cannot choose left and right hand style), so it makes sense to have more armor there, while having the other arm free to fluidly swing your weapon.

Art of course is a subjecive thing, but i enjoy some asymetry in my armor.
My Aetherblade breastplate has only one gear on one breast. It would look silly if it had one on both, since my male mesmer would have some gear breasts then.

i agree of course on the practical part. Asymetry, like i said with the guard mechanism, has to be practical before artsy.
However, if the armor itself is not a combatarmor, but based on normal clothing i have to say, that there is nothing wrong with asymetry, since at this point it is symply design by choice and not by neccecity…

Sidenote: Yes, there should be less clipping. I wish they would work on that… It was a pain to find good boots, that fit over my ascalon pants and not halway to the back..

A couple posts here mention real armors..
In reality, people carried shields generally, or some other form of defensive weapon when they wore armor asymmetric as such. In this case, for the purposes of guild wars 2, the shield is a highly marginalized weapon, we could argue why all day, but the short end is that I certainly don’t see many shields being wielded, and generally when they are, it is only for a specific fight before going back to another weapon.

Also, general fantasy arguments about armor and being covered blah blah… The market for “gladiator armors” is the reason for a lot of it, and I can accept it… my post is all about actually offering different versions of many of these sets. Having said that I actually love some of the full coverage armors, like human t3 heavy, asura t3 heavy, CM heavy armor…even though i want the version that NPCs wear because I would not ever wear something so beat up irl for both style and function reasons (Wearing compromised metal into battle? Ever hear of stress fractures? Sorry, I’d get it fixed first).

Again, I was stung hard by the flamekissed fiasco and still refused to let that lay, but I am not going to be one asking that others have their stuff forcibly changed on them because of my gripes, as happened to me. If anything is released for current sets as the ones I pointed out, I feel it should be options on the same sets added to what is already there. If not that, then I would like to see more of these considerations added to future armors because they have plenty of individual pieces that might just make perfect mix/match sets if not for being of totally different designs, if not for asymmetry that blows my mind, if not for weird dye channels, sleeves that force the set to accentuate the wrong parts and thus make my characters appear shaped oddly

EXAMPLE: Norn female in feathered armor, meet feathered chest and skirt… gloves too small..makes her upper body seem puny compard to the… skirt way too large, causes her to appear to have a badonkadonk, too much material here compared to the rest of the outfit, unbalances the entire set on the lower end made worse by the….. boots have odd gaps and are not sized to compensate gaps or the overdoing of the shoulders (they are good height, but far, far too “bulky” when combined with the legs in comparison to the upper body which can only be balanced out at this point with gloves and…… shoulders are too big and too far away from the head for their size, making her shoulders appear too wide, and thus her head too small… The set is mostly bottom heavy while the shoulders are set off to the side too far making her chest appear wider than I find pleasing, and her head becomes awkwardly small in the same process.

This is my critique of the feathered armor set, why I have never liked it, and yes, I chose it because I am sore over the flamekissed armor.
Does it need to be removed? I wouldn’t cry about that happening, but NO, it actually looks decent(ish) on humans, and some people like it.
So what do I want with it? To point out what I find wrong, why I find it wrong in the hopes that in the future, more armors will be made along the lines of my gone-forever t3 flamekissed… because that is THE ONLY light armor I have ever seen that didn’t cause one or more of the issues above. As I said in my OP, I have no blessings with drawing, all I can do is try and point at what I like and why.
Other armors issues I have are related specifically to the armor mesh Norn females use (same one as males as best I can tell), so on heavy and medium armors, shoulders stick out off the body in ways that I don’t see making any sense at all (invader medium armor anyone? look at that shoulder and tell me why that’s right).

EDITED to clean up a little, and the remove the breasts mention because I ignored it in the critique, but the rest still stands, and the breasts do not balance the odd shapes the look causes

“Give me a reason to enjoy killing you slowly"

Sorry? What were you saying about needing to show skin with that mentality? See attached image.

Totally realize that it’s really just taking a pot shot at the one line, but I do want to make a legit commentary here and not just poking fun at you.

This entire thread is going to spark a huge debate because of the subjectivity of fashion. There really is no right or wrong answer here because everybody’s going to lean towards different things. Do I personally have anything against showing some skin? Considering I do have T3 on my female necro, not at all. However my other armor set for them that gets used more frequently covers every inch of her.

Ultimately this entire thread is going to devolve very quickly into a back and forth about how you dislike one armor and then another person’s going to go “but way I like that armor” which is precisely what happening with the whole T3 and Flamekissed armor fiasco.

My recommendation is just to agree to disagree and hope that Anet makes more armors that are to your liking. As changing armors mid-game is, to be perfectly frank, kinda problematic as your very post indicates.

Ratphink.4751:

“Give me a reason to enjoy killing you slowly"

Sorry? What were you saying about needing to show skin with that mentality? See attached image.

Totally realize that it’s really just taking a pot shot at the one line, but I do want to make a legit commentary here and not just poking fun at you.

This entire thread is going to spark a huge debate because of the subjectivity of fashion. There really is no right or wrong answer here because everybody’s going to lean towards different things. Do I personally have anything against showing some skin? Considering I do have T3 on my female necro, not at all. However my other armor set for them that gets used more frequently covers every inch of her.

Ultimately this entire thread is going to devolve very quickly into a back and forth about how you dislike one armor and then another person’s going to go “but way I like that armor” which is precisely what happening with the whole T3 and Flamekissed armor fiasco.

My recommendation is just to agree to disagree and hope that Anet makes more armors that are to your liking. As changing armors mid-game is, to be perfectly frank, kinda problematic as your very post indicates.

Well, my OP was made to point out what I am getting at. It is 100% subjective, and if others like/dislike certain things it’s okay, I keep responding in part to see if someone else comes to add their likes/dislikes (and why, thus my rather harsh review of feathered..and new flamekissed by extension). Some of my more trolly posts are directed at people who’s post come across as hostile and don’t offer a “why” beyond saying “you’re wrong.” I am amazed at how little discussion appears to go into general armor design just because, as in GW1, it IS the endgame that so many other posts don’t seem to see. We aren’t supposed to buy a precourser’s worth of mats for stats, we are supposed to spend that much (and more, sure) just for a skin. Looks being the endgame, I wish for more discussion on it.

To the image there, while the art style of the image there throws me a little, that is a very nice armor for full coverage, and one I likely would make an alternate armor set out of if it was kept to what I can see in the picture without landing on any of the turn-offs I mentioned above (as i have done with CM heavy, in spite of my functional issues with damaged looking gear)

To clarify farther: Full coverage sets suffer the same setbacks as the revealing ones.

Draconic heavy armor? Boots are too wide, and too short, shoudlers too small, helmet too large. I do like the skirt being attached to a set of plate armor in that case (the one on zodiac heavy was similarly well done) even if it needs more colorable ornamentation on the huge swaths of material than they have. But the draconic chest also needs some work imo because it doesn’t feel as “armor-y” to me to match the full coverage look. The helmet of the set deserves commendation because it successfully looks armored, and excuses the fact that all armors have the neck (KILL ZONE, HELLO) ignored outside a few skin tight collars (or GW1 necro mouth pieces…don’t go there).

Heavy Temple armor? Good stuff mostly, the helmet is too big (dem horns), and the back of neck needs covering, whole thing nees more dye channels, but also a version otherwise identical without the spikes (and a smaller helmet) would be excellent (as the spikes cause some unusual sizing issues to be overly accentuated).

Bit more revealing? Vigil armor: perfect on males, females why the 1 shoulder? nonsensical change between male and female. Open bits on the heavy in female armor I like, and aren’t over-the-top. The choice of the asymmetry in the legs there is great. The helmet is a little small though, and the shoulders generally too large, one or both could be altered in scale alone to make it perfect to my eyes.

Heavy Phalanx armor. I have a token dude, and he wears this. Great, great armor, I love it on him. Females version is needlessly different, but similar with your picture, and the CM heavy, As it is now, If I could get the male version on females, I would use it.
My points are generally genderless (I don’t mind male characters running around half naked in so-called “armor” too, it would actually feel a bit more real, or less awkward..less stuffy? IDK how to put it, maybe more natural? But I think in many cases they can apply to full coverage armor as much as they do to skimpy things.

I’m not sure Paizo would appreciate Anet making an armor based on some of their artwork for Pathfinder. But yeah, if the Heavy Phalanx had turned out similar for female characters, I’d have no problem making a new character just to have it for them. Like you mentioned, the change in Aesthetics between the two genders is too radical. I don’t mind so much the skin being shown, but that the two look like completely different armor sets. I had similar complaints about the Vabbian Armor on GW1 for the necromancer. The two armor sets were just so jarringly different! I understood what they went for with the male (I thought they were at least going for a Vizier look), but man on man it did not turn out well.

I think actually my problem with the Vigil armor for female characters is that the asymetry is on the wrong side. The larger shoulder pad should be on the right shoulder, as if I remember correctly, shields are equipped in the left hand. You don’t need more armor on the shield arm because it add’s disproportionate weight/unnecessary protection to an arm that is already got additional armor. I’d love to see the shoulder moved to the right arm, but otherwise I enjoy the assymetry there personally.

I don’t mind the overall aesthetic of the Temple Armor though, in fact I’d simply like to see something similar in design with a less ‘Dark Knight’ look and more of a paladin style to it. I find the Female Characters in this game are in dire need of some serious ‘Knight in Shining Full Plate’ looks on a whole.