Guild Wars 2

Since you guys think that we’re all are so simple minded that we’re incapable of avoiding clipping during creation of our own costumes, so we need to be restricted from such combinations like children “ironically chuckles” I would like to propose an alternative way to increase outfit sales by:

1.Letting outfit parts that don’t clip with anything to be used separately from outfit as stand-alone costume parts AFTER you buy them for an extra, smaller than whole outfit, price. But it must be noted that opportunity to buy those extra parts should be present AT ALL TIMES for outfit owners.

2.Keeping outfit parts that do clip with other existing armor parts usable only with a whole outfit.

This way you can make everyone happy, including your own company, by increasing an amount of sellable items in gemstore for minimal work (just separating some armor pieces from outfit)

I like how you gave your idea the adjective “best” in the post title. It’s a great start for a discussion

They’d have to rework the whole outfit UI to make a new outfit panel for outfits made of bits and pieces of other outfits, a wardrobe of outfit bits and pieces, and find the parts that don’t clip then make and sell them separately. Might take a bit more effort than you would think at first glance of your suggestion.

I wonder though, do we need to fill in the whole outfit? Can we run around in (outfit) shoes and shoulder pads only? If so, count me in. ^^

I’m not sure this addresses the fact that Outfits are of an entirely different weight than any of the other armors (they aren’t Heavy, Medium nor Light), and thus, may not be able to be mixed with any…regardless of clipping.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They’d have to rework the whole outfit UI to make a new outfit panel for outfits made of bits and pieces of other outfits, a wardrobe of outfit bits and pieces, and find the parts that don’t clip then make and sell them separately. Might take a bit more effort than you would think at first glance of your suggestion.

I wonder though, do we need to fill in the whole outfit? Can we run around in (outfit) shoes and shoulder pads only? If so, count me in. ^^

Nah, no new UI is needed, they can just add all those parts to gem store and allow those parts to be sold only if certain conditions are met (Just like they did with anniversary boxes for example)

Havok.6073:

I like how you gave your idea the adjective “best” in the post title. It’s a great start for a discussion

^,v,^
Indeed, it’s not really a topic for discussion but more of a thread created to convey an idea that would satisfy ALOT of people out there.

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They’d have to rework the whole outfit UI to make a new outfit panel for outfits made of bits and pieces of other outfits, a wardrobe of outfit bits and pieces, and find the parts that don’t clip then make and sell them separately. Might take a bit more effort than you would think at first glance of your suggestion.

I wonder though, do we need to fill in the whole outfit? Can we run around in (outfit) shoes and shoulder pads only? If so, count me in. ^^

Nah, no new UI is needed, they can just add all those parts to gem store and allow those parts to be sold only if certain conditions are met (Just like they did with anniversary boxes for example)

Are you talking about making parts of oufits into armor pieces? If that’s what you meant, how is that going to increase the sales of outfits.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They’d have to rework the whole outfit UI to make a new outfit panel for outfits made of bits and pieces of other outfits, a wardrobe of outfit bits and pieces, and find the parts that don’t clip then make and sell them separately. Might take a bit more effort than you would think at first glance of your suggestion.

I wonder though, do we need to fill in the whole outfit? Can we run around in (outfit) shoes and shoulder pads only? If so, count me in. ^^

Nah, no new UI is needed, they can just add all those parts to gem store and allow those parts to be sold only if certain conditions are met (Just like they did with anniversary boxes for example)

Are you talking about making parts of oufits into armor pieces? If that’s what you meant, how is that going to increase the sales of outfits.

It is already stated in original post, they become unlocked for purchase only after outfit itself is owned.

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They’d have to rework the whole outfit UI to make a new outfit panel for outfits made of bits and pieces of other outfits, a wardrobe of outfit bits and pieces, and find the parts that don’t clip then make and sell them separately. Might take a bit more effort than you would think at first glance of your suggestion.

I wonder though, do we need to fill in the whole outfit? Can we run around in (outfit) shoes and shoulder pads only? If so, count me in. ^^

Nah, no new UI is needed, they can just add all those parts to gem store and allow those parts to be sold only if certain conditions are met (Just like they did with anniversary boxes for example)

Are you talking about making parts of oufits into armor pieces? If that’s what you meant, how is that going to increase the sales of outfits.

It is already stated in original post, they become unlocked for purchase only after outfit itself is owned.

That’s what I thought you were proposing.

If you think that people will want to buy a whole outfit just to be allowed to buy individual armor pieces, then you’ve not tried to force people to spend money on things they dislike or don’t want before. I guarantee that requiring buying the outfit in order to buy armor pieces will be the most unpopular concept in the gemstore, if not in the whole game, and many an outraged forum post will be posted.

The OP misunderstands the niche that outfits serve: because they are “seamless” and their own weight, they do not need to be compared with any armor skins or other outfits. They do not have “pieces”. There are therefore no such things as “outfit parts” and no way to determine which do or don’t clip — the things that are parts and have been determined to clip or not are called armor pieces and already available.

The point of outfits is that they stand alone. That’s why they take less time and that’s why ANet can churn them out quickly.

The best thing they could do to get me to buy more outfits is make it possible to dye each one different colours on the same character.

I like that they’re not armour because it makes them more convenient for me. I have my armour to fight in and then any time I’m in town, or at a guild party or anywhere the armour looks inappropriate I can switch to one of several outfits for a different look – with just a couple of clicks and without having to fill my bags with alternative armour pieces. (I also wish they’d bring back the keyboard shortcut to switch between the two which town clothes had).

I don’t mind that they’re all one piece because most of the ones I buy wouldn’t work as mix and match anyway (although I do miss the combination of the pirate costume and default human town clothes I had under the old system).

What puts me off getting more is that either they have to work with the dye scheme I’ve chosen for each character or I have to come up with a new dye scheme and make that work with all my current outfits as well. So any new outfit either has to be right for the character and their current dyes or so perfect it’s worth changing all the others, and that rarely happens.

(I know some people change the dyes each time they change outfit, but that ruins the quick and easy switching which is the main thing I like about them.)

If they could change that I’d buy a lot more outfits.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They’d have to rework the whole outfit UI to make a new outfit panel for outfits made of bits and pieces of other outfits, a wardrobe of outfit bits and pieces, and find the parts that don’t clip then make and sell them separately. Might take a bit more effort than you would think at first glance of your suggestion.

I wonder though, do we need to fill in the whole outfit? Can we run around in (outfit) shoes and shoulder pads only? If so, count me in. ^^

Nah, no new UI is needed, they can just add all those parts to gem store and allow those parts to be sold only if certain conditions are met (Just like they did with anniversary boxes for example)

Are you talking about making parts of oufits into armor pieces? If that’s what you meant, how is that going to increase the sales of outfits.

It is already stated in original post, they become unlocked for purchase only after outfit itself is owned.

That’s what I thought you were proposing.

If you think that people will want to buy a whole outfit just to be allowed to buy individual armor pieces, then you’ve not tried to force people to spend money on things they dislike or don’t want before. I guarantee that requiring buying the outfit in order to buy armor pieces will be the most unpopular concept in the gemstore, if not in the whole game, and many an outraged forum post will be posted.

I agree.

A new helmet skin or gloves or whatever costs what? 200-500 gems? A new outfit is typically 800.

If I had to spend 800 gems on something I don’t want simply for permission to buy the thing I do want…well I just wouldn’t bother. I’d stick with the stuff I can get for free.

That cost can be in gold if extra 50-100 gems is so scary for people.
And we all know that even if you state that you won’t bother buying them right now, you will in future, because price increase would be minimal. All it takes for them is just to create an outfit piece that you would like and you would buy a whole outfit just to get that part.
As for it being unfair… lol, gambling and lockboxes are unfair, but people got used to them, so they will get used to extra little price too.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The OP misunderstands the niche that outfits serve: because they are “seamless” and their own weight, they do not need to be compared with any armor skins or other outfits. They do not have “pieces”. There are therefore no such things as “outfit parts” and no way to determine which do or don’t clip — the things that are parts and have been determined to clip or not are called armor pieces and already available.

The point of outfits is that they stand alone. That’s why they take less time and that’s why ANet can churn them out quickly.

While some outfits do indeed fit this niche, many outfits have clearly distinguishable shoulder pads, boots, gloves, masks or helmets…

There have been many cases where I ran into another player and thought “those shoulder pads are amazing and would fit my character perfectly”. Only to search the wardrobe for half an hour without finding said shoulder pads before realizing they’re part of an outfit.

The model, texture and bone-weighting are already there. You just have to separate them from the remaining outfit (something that isn’t even necessary for the helmets), turn them into a standalone item and put them on the gemshop. I’ve done the process many times first for Oblivion and then Skyrim armors (replace gemshop with nexusmods).

dragonkain.3984:

That cost can be in gold if extra 50-100 gems is so scary for people.
And we all know that even if you state that you won’t bother buying them right now, you will in future, because price increase would be minimal. All it takes for them is just to create an outfit piece that you would like and you would buy a whole outfit just to get that part.
As for it being unfair… lol, gambling and lockboxes are unfair, but people got used to them, so they will get used to extra little price too.

Extra 50-100 gems?

You have to buy the outfit first. That’s the hangup. You’re asking people who don’t like outfits or don’t like that outfit or who don’t have the money/gems to buy a 700 gem outfit, to first shell out the 700 gems and then have the ability to buy the the 50-100 gems item they want.

It’s not 50-100 gems. It’s 750-800 gems.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

That cost can be in gold if extra 50-100 gems is so scary for people.
And we all know that even if you state that you won’t bother buying them right now, you will in future, because price increase would be minimal. All it takes for them is just to create an outfit piece that you would like and you would buy a whole outfit just to get that part.
As for it being unfair… lol, gambling and lockboxes are unfair, but people got used to them, so they will get used to extra little price too.

Extra 50-100 gems?

You have to buy the outfit first. That’s the hangup. You’re asking people who don’t like outfits or don’t like that outfit or who don’t have the money/gems to buy a 700 gem outfit, to first shell out the 700 gems and then have the ability to buy the the 50-100 gems item they want.

It’s not 50-100 gems. It’s 750-800 gems.

True, but it’s better for business like that.

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

That cost can be in gold if extra 50-100 gems is so scary for people.
And we all know that even if you state that you won’t bother buying them right now, you will in future, because price increase would be minimal. All it takes for them is just to create an outfit piece that you would like and you would buy a whole outfit just to get that part.
As for it being unfair… lol, gambling and lockboxes are unfair, but people got used to them, so they will get used to extra little price too.

Extra 50-100 gems?

You have to buy the outfit first. That’s the hangup. You’re asking people who don’t like outfits or don’t like that outfit or who don’t have the money/gems to buy a 700 gem outfit, to first shell out the 700 gems and then have the ability to buy the the 50-100 gems item they want.

It’s not 50-100 gems. It’s 750-800 gems.

True, but it’s better for business like that.

Forcing people to buy things they do not want and won’t use that is up to 7 times more expensive than what they want to buy is poor business practice. Not only is it unlikely to generate repeat business but dissatisfied customers will verbally trash your business to future possible customers and discourage them from buying.

You can’t ask someone to first make an unwanted $8-$9 purchase before they can make their 62 cent to $1.25 purchase and expect them to be happy about it, or come back for a second purchase.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

That cost can be in gold if extra 50-100 gems is so scary for people.
And we all know that even if you state that you won’t bother buying them right now, you will in future, because price increase would be minimal. All it takes for them is just to create an outfit piece that you would like and you would buy a whole outfit just to get that part.
As for it being unfair… lol, gambling and lockboxes are unfair, but people got used to them, so they will get used to extra little price too.

Extra 50-100 gems?

You have to buy the outfit first. That’s the hangup. You’re asking people who don’t like outfits or don’t like that outfit or who don’t have the money/gems to buy a 700 gem outfit, to first shell out the 700 gems and then have the ability to buy the the 50-100 gems item they want.

It’s not 50-100 gems. It’s 750-800 gems.

True, but it’s better for business like that.

Forcing people to buy things they do not want and won’t use that is up to 7 times more expensive than what they want to buy is poor business practice. Not only is it unlikely to generate repeat business but dissatisfied customers will verbally trash your business to future possible customers and discourage them from buying.

You can’t ask someone to first make an unwanted $8-$9 purchase before they can make their 62 cent to $1.25 purchase and expect them to be happy about it, or come back for a second purchase.

It is much better strategy than selling each piece for 500 gems like they did before, I can bet it was super unpopular because whole outfit costs 800 and one piece was selling for 500, now if you make them super cheap, but lock them behind the outfit purchase, it would actually produce much more customers than selling them separately for such high price tbh.

I would be happy if they would just let us change the helm at least…

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

dragonkain.3984:

That cost can be in gold if extra 50-100 gems is so scary for people.
And we all know that even if you state that you won’t bother buying them right now, you will in future, because price increase would be minimal. All it takes for them is just to create an outfit piece that you would like and you would buy a whole outfit just to get that part.
As for it being unfair… lol, gambling and lockboxes are unfair, but people got used to them, so they will get used to extra little price too.

Extra 50-100 gems?

You have to buy the outfit first. That’s the hangup. You’re asking people who don’t like outfits or don’t like that outfit or who don’t have the money/gems to buy a 700 gem outfit, to first shell out the 700 gems and then have the ability to buy the the 50-100 gems item they want.

It’s not 50-100 gems. It’s 750-800 gems.

True, but it’s better for business like that.

Forcing people to buy things they do not want and won’t use that is up to 7 times more expensive than what they want to buy is poor business practice. Not only is it unlikely to generate repeat business but dissatisfied customers will verbally trash your business to future possible customers and discourage them from buying.

You can’t ask someone to first make an unwanted $8-$9 purchase before they can make their 62 cent to $1.25 purchase and expect them to be happy about it, or come back for a second purchase.

It is much better strategy than selling each piece for 500 gems like they did before, I can bet it was super unpopular because whole outfit costs 800 and one piece was selling for 500, now if you make them super cheap, but lock them behind the outfit purchase, it would actually produce much more customers than selling them separately for such high price tbh.

Nope. It won’t. It’s s terrible strategy, especially since the people who most want the armor pieces loathe outfits and would never buy them.

Again, asking people to first pay $8-9 for something they don’t want in order to buy a 62 cent item is not going to work.

Ain’t no one is going to do that. They’ll refuse to buy, you’ll lose the sale you could have made and you’ll lose their good will.

I would buy a couple outfits only to get their boots and headgear. It would feel awful, but I would for a few specific ones.

Ardid.7203:

I would buy a couple outfits only to get their boots and headgear. It would feel awful, but I would for a few specific ones.

Or you could have what the gemstore offers now, which is buy the items separately without the required outfit prepurchase, such as the Braham’s shoulder piece.

This suggestion seems like offering individual pieces for around 1000 Gems. I’m not sure how many players would buy such items. I suppose some would.

It’s rather moot, though, as if the Devs could easily cut up the pieces of Outfits and offer them for sale, they would have done that in the first place. In fact, they wouldn’t even create Outfits, but just offer individual Armor items.

Actually ANet has already tried something somewhat similar. Items bundled together in the gemstore as one purchase only where you had to buy what you don’t want to get what you do want. For example, the Bandit Sniper Appearance pack

Obviously they were trying out making you buy items you didn’t want to get the items you do want. It must not have worked out well as they’ve allowed the option to buy the items separately after that.

Well, the whole point is, unless it is horribly unfair towards players (financially speaking) and doesn’t require minimum effort from devs, it’s most likely not gonna happen at all, so the only realistic way of us getting those armor parts that I see them going is this one. “Shrugs” And ye, I have no faith in humanity’s good intentions.

The idea of outfits is horrific in most cases imo.

Saying it is to make them “Seamless”. They will be seamless with or without them being armor pieces. Just let me break the seam and add my own twist if I so choose so!

If it looks absolutely terrible, well I won’t break the seam.

I mean hell, they could even break specific parts off that would make some outfits sell REALLY well. Think if you could transmog one of your accessories (Or something that normally cant be transmoged) and get the Zodiacs blue skin effect.

The Zodiac armor is horrific, but I think the skin effect is awesome. I’d be willing to pay for that.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ardid.7203:

I would buy a couple outfits only to get their boots and headgear. It would feel awful, but I would for a few specific ones.

Or you could have what the gemstore offers now, which is buy the items separately without the required outfit prepurchase, such as the Braham’s shoulder piece.

I have already bought what separate armor pieces the gemstore offer that I like. (I have bought most of them, really…)

But they don’t offer the Arcane or Ghostly Outfits cowl or boots in the gemstore, nor they offer Taimi’s, Sentinel, Lyssa or Balthazar boots.

Of course, the ideal for me would be to simply buy these as separate armor pieces and thats it. But I could EVEN be willing to buy the outfits if by doing that I can access that parts as mix’n match items. Just because decent boots for asura are so rare…

Ardid.7203:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ardid.7203:

I would buy a couple outfits only to get their boots and headgear. It would feel awful, but I would for a few specific ones.

Or you could have what the gemstore offers now, which is buy the items separately without the required outfit prepurchase, such as the Braham’s shoulder piece.

I have already bought what separate armor pieces the gemstore offer that I like. (I have bought most of them, really…)

But they don’t offer the Arcane or Ghostly Outfits cowl or boots in the gemstore, nor they offer Taimi’s, Sentinel, Lyssa or Balthazar boots.

Of course, the ideal for me would be to simply buy these as separate armor pieces and thats it. But I could EVEN be willing to buy the outfits if by doing that I can access that parts as mix’n match items. Just because decent boots for asura are so rare…

No doubt people would if that was the only option.

However nothing is stopping ANet from making armor pieces now and selling them separately. Artificially tying outfits and armor pieces together won’t make more armor pieces appear in the gemstore. People already snap up individual armor pieces so lack of sales is not the reason they aren’t in the gemstore.

At this time I think I should point out my signature. I personally see no reason to tell a company that they should change their current practice and stop selling individual $1 items and instead tie an unnecessary $8 prepurchase to the $1 item.

What you should be doing instead is asking for more individual $1-2 armor pieces in the gemstore, including parts of outfits as armor. Not asking for a company to artificially tie two purchases together.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

It’s rather moot, though, as if the Devs could easily cut up the pieces of Outfits and offer them for sale, they would have done that in the first place. In fact, they wouldn’t even create Outfits, but just offer individual Armor items.

And there is the truth. If it was so easy they’d still be making armour sets, not outfits.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The OP misunderstands the niche that outfits serve: because they are “seamless” and their own weight, they do not need to be compared with any armor skins or other outfits. They do not have “pieces”. There are therefore no such things as “outfit parts” and no way to determine which do or don’t clip — the things that are parts and have been determined to clip or not are called armor pieces and already available.

The point of outfits is that they stand alone. That’s why they take less time and that’s why ANet can churn them out quickly.

While some outfits do indeed fit this niche, many outfits have clearly distinguishable shoulder pads, boots, gloves, masks or helmets…

There have been many cases where I ran into another player and thought “those shoulder pads are amazing and would fit my character perfectly”. Only to search the wardrobe for half an hour without finding said shoulder pads before realizing they’re part of an outfit.

The model, texture and bone-weighting are already there. You just have to separate them from the remaining outfit (something that isn’t even necessary for the helmets), turn them into a standalone item and put them on the gemshop. I’ve done the process many times first for Oblivion and then Skyrim armors (replace gemshop with nexusmods).

“You just have to separate them” — yes, that’s the part that takes time. The reason ANet can spit out the extra outfits is because they aren’t separated.

They’d have to rework the whole outfit UI to make a new outfit panel for outfits made of bits and pieces of other outfits, a wardrobe of outfit bits and pieces, and find the parts that don’t clip then make and sell them separately. Might take a bit more effort than you would think at first glance of your suggestion.

That’s not true. All they’d need to do is:

1. Keep outfits exactly as they are now.

2. ALSO, in addition to that, unlock in the wardrobe any clothing pieces that could potentially be mixed and matched with other pieces, which could then be used as any other clothing skin.

Let players decide what they want to do with that, and if it ends up looking silly, that’s their business.

So for example, a player gets the new Sunspear outfit, then the outfit appears in their inventory, and they can equip it as an outfit if they like, same as now. They would ALSO get, in their wardrobe, the Sunspear Helm, in all three clothing weights, Sunspear Pauldrons, likely in all three weights, and Sunspear gloves probably too. Not positive on that. Then they would also get the Sunspear legs, boots, and torso in whatever the native “weight” of the armor, which I assume is heavy.

Maybe some of these would clip funny if you mixed and matched them with the wrong pieces, but if so, leave it up to the player to decide. Ideally they would also make the tweaks necessary to make them as adaptible as possible, like to make it so that the gloves and boots can be in “hands/feet only” mode for use with long pants and sleaves that otherwise clip.

Ideally though, they would just get their kitten together and unify their armor system. I’d hoped that they would do this for PoF but it doesn’t look like they have. One of their biggest problems is how the three armor weights have different skeletons, which means that you can’t mix and match certain portions of them because they wouldn’t line up in the same places. They need to fix this, just deciding on a single skeleton and then taking the time to re-map all existing armors to fit that skeleton. I’m aware that this is not an insignificant effort, but it is a NECESSARY EFFORT.

Get it done, ANet. Put a team on it, and get it done.

But, you assume wrong. The native weight of Outfit armor is neither Heavy, Medium, nor Light. It is its own weight. Which is the issue with mixing it with any existing armor(s).

Ohoni, what you’ve just described is cutting up the outfits into armor pieces and making 6 different armor pieces from them. This is exactly what they’ve said takes them far too long to do: making armor sets.

Should it take that long? Not in my opinion. They designed a game with looks progression and mix-match armor, they really should have coded in such away as to allow them to crank out new pieces relatively quickly. I’m not defending the design. But I do accept they are telling the truth that for whatever reason, they cannot feasibly churn out armor pieces using the armor rigging as coded.

I understand that you would like them to take the effort to completely redo all the armor in the game to work together and to be able to speedily make individual armor pieces (I would too, if only it could happen). However, I wouldn’t characterize it as “ALL they need to do.” Like it was a mere trifle. Remember, the outfits don’t have pieces. They are a seamless cover.

(I will concede on some pieces though, to wit the old town clothes — they had those individual and to this day you can hide shoulders and gloves on the Cook’s Outfit. Rather than redo the whole system, I think they should turn the Town Clothes into armor pieces and offer those. Perhaps give the original level one cultural clothes free to new characters and make us re-pay for the others? After all, they did refund a crap ton of gems when they ruined Town Clothes by making them tonics, so we’ve been made whole in the legal sense).

But, you assume wrong. The native weight of Outfit armor is neither Heavy, Medium, nor Light. It is its own weight. Which is the issue with mixing it with any existing armor(s).

I don’t think that’s true. Have you seen an official source on that? Making them have their own weight would seem to be inefficient to me. My assumption to this point is that each outfit uses one of the existing weights, whichever one matches the shape they’re trying to achieve. Obviously this doesn’t prevent players from wearing the Outfit doing their own weight class, but I think if you put a Warrior in an Outfit with a “light weight skeleton,” then it’s just a Warrior in a light armor skin.

The real problems with mixing and matching in the current model is that the chests and legs are hard to mix and match, because the waistlines are often in different locations from weight to weight.

Ohoni, what you’ve just described is cutting up the outfits into armor pieces and making 6 different armor pieces from them. This is exactly what they’ve said takes them far too long to do: making armor sets.

Yes, and they need to get over that. If it takes them “too long” then they need to take that time regardless. It’s better to have one 6-piece armor set than to have ten one-piece outfits.

But I do accept they are telling the truth that for whatever reason, they cannot feasibly churn out armor pieces using the armor rigging as coded.

But my point is, after five years, they’ve let that flaw lay too long. It’s past time to fix it. If that means completely rebuilding their rigging systems and hand-tweaking every existing armor set in the game, then that’s what they need to do. There is absolutely no excuse that remains adequate.

Remember, the outfits don’t have pieces. They are a seamless cover.

Breaking the outfits into pieces shouldn’t take an extraordinary amount of time. It might not be an automatic process, but in 3D modeling terms it’s not a huge deal to snap one bit off from the rest and clean up the edges a bit. If it is at all difficult, then it’s only because they lacked foresight when originally modelling them and boxed themselves into a corner, and the players should not have to suffer for that.

Ohoni.6057:

But, you assume wrong. The native weight of Outfit armor is neither Heavy, Medium, nor Light. It is its own weight. Which is the issue with mixing it with any existing armor(s).

I don’t think that’s true. Have you seen an official source on that? Making them have their own weight would seem to be inefficient to me. My assumption to this point is that each outfit uses one of the existing weights, whichever one matches the shape they’re trying to achieve. Obviously this doesn’t prevent players from wearing the Outfit doing their own weight class, but I think if you put a Warrior in an Outfit with a “light weight skeleton,” then it’s just a Warrior in a light armor skin.
(Snip)

Townclothes were a fourth armor class. I don’t think they’ve ever explicitly said but it’s reasonable to assume that outfits (which are not armor but are onesies that slip over armor) and which are a replacement for townclothes are not one of the armor classes but are the 4th armor class.

(About townclothes)
“It helps if you think of town clothes as a 4th weight class of armor”

Edit: and this sentence from the same post
“Outfits give us a way to create highly stylized looks that aren’t constrained to armor slots or weight class.”

Ohoni.6057:

But, you assume wrong. The native weight of Outfit armor is neither Heavy, Medium, nor Light. It is its own weight. Which is the issue with mixing it with any existing armor(s).

I don’t think that’s true. Have you seen an official source on that? Making them have their own weight would seem to be inefficient to me. My assumption to this point is that each outfit uses one of the existing weights, whichever one matches the shape they’re trying to achieve. Obviously this doesn’t prevent players from wearing the Outfit doing their own weight class, but I think if you put a Warrior in an Outfit with a “light weight skeleton,” then it’s just a Warrior in a light armor skin.

The real problems with mixing and matching in the current model is that the chests and legs are hard to mix and match, because the waistlines are often in different locations from weight to weight.

Ohoni, what you’ve just described is cutting up the outfits into armor pieces and making 6 different armor pieces from them. This is exactly what they’ve said takes them far too long to do: making armor sets.

Yes, and they need to get over that. If it takes them “too long” then they need to take that time regardless. It’s better to have one 6-piece armor set than to have ten one-piece outfits.

But I do accept they are telling the truth that for whatever reason, they cannot feasibly churn out armor pieces using the armor rigging as coded.

But my point is, after five years, they’ve let that flaw lay too long. It’s past time to fix it. If that means completely rebuilding their rigging systems and hand-tweaking every existing armor set in the game, then that’s what they need to do. There is absolutely no excuse that remains adequate.

Remember, the outfits don’t have pieces. They are a seamless cover.

Breaking the outfits into pieces shouldn’t take an extraordinary amount of time. It might not be an automatic process, but in 3D modeling terms it’s not a huge deal to snap one bit off from the rest and clean up the edges a bit. If it is at all difficult, then it’s only because they lacked foresight when originally modelling them and boxed themselves into a corner, and the players should not have to suffer for that.

Go back and see what they’ve said about outfits. You still are missing the entire reason they exist is because they don’t bring any of the baggage of pieces. There is simply no difference between what you describe and having armor pieces.

Honestly, if it was that easy, do you really think that it’s never occurred to them to try this? Do you think this is the first time it’s been suggested? Do you think they like being constantly criticized for the slowness of releasing armor pieces?

Rename the outfits to ‘’Zero Outfits’’ and from now on whatever outdit it created in PoF can be mismatched with other new outfits .

Give the old tier 1 outfits the chance to unlock a ingame skin .
And if you have that skin already you get gold/gems , or get some lesser aura/burning hands/footprints .
If you have the same patterned outfits unlocked (3 ice/diamont) the ’’effect’’ is increased till you die ingame , forcing you to kill again many mobs/players

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Ohoni.6057:

But, you assume wrong. The native weight of Outfit armor is neither Heavy, Medium, nor Light. It is its own weight. Which is the issue with mixing it with any existing armor(s).

I don’t think that’s true. Have you seen an official source on that? Making them have their own weight would seem to be inefficient to me. My assumption to this point is that each outfit uses one of the existing weights, whichever one matches the shape they’re trying to achieve. Obviously this doesn’t prevent players from wearing the Outfit doing their own weight class, but I think if you put a Warrior in an Outfit with a “light weight skeleton,” then it’s just a Warrior in a light armor skin.
(Snip)

Townclothes were a fourth armor class. I don’t think they’ve ever explicitly said but it’s reasonable to assume that outfits (which are not armor but are onesies that slip over armor) and which are a replacement for townclothes are not one of the armor classes but are the 4th armor class.

(About townclothes)
“It helps if you think of town clothes as a 4th weight class of armor”

Edit: and this sentence from the same post
“Outfits give us a way to create highly stylized looks that aren’t constrained to armor slots or weight class.”

Those imply that Outfits and Townclothes don’t count as a weight class, but I still don’t believe they confirm it, from an underlying systems mechanic. I think both of those comments can still indicate that while we players should think of them as a 4th weight or whatever, since they can be worn by all classes, I don’t believe that they have bespoke rigging or anything like that. I think they are still built on the skeleton of the existing armor weights.

Now they might cheat a bit, and have a chest and leg pieces that couldn’t be separated along the traditional lines and not clip with other types of clothing in that set, but that’s true of a handful of other armors too, like some of the CoF armor where if you put on the chest then it ignores the leggings you have entirely, because to do otherwise would likely lead to clipping issues.

Go back and see what they’ve said about outfits. You still are missing the entire reason they exist is because they don’t bring any of the baggage of pieces. There is simply no difference between what you describe and having armor pieces.

Yes, and my point is, they need to have more armor pieces.

I’m not saying that this would be easy, I’m saying that this is necessary, whether it is easy or not. Whatever reasons they have for doing Outfits instead of armor, they are not good enough to only have Outfits instead of armor. They need to get over those reasons.

Honestly, if it was that easy, do you really think that it’s never occurred to them to try this? Do you think this is the first time it’s been suggested? Do you think they like being constantly criticized for the slowness of releasing armor pieces?

Which is why, over the past several years, they should have been moving Heaven and Earth behind the scenes to make this happen. They shouldn’t need us to keep prodding them over it.

Go back and see what they’ve said about outfits. You still are missing the entire reason they exist is because they don’t bring any of the baggage of pieces. There is simply no difference between what you describe and having armor pieces.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, and my point is, they need to have more armor pieces.

No, they really don’t need to. You want them to (and to be fair, you’re hardly alone — I’d love to see more, too). You just aren’t prepared to accept that wanting things isn’t enough.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not saying that this would be easy, I’m saying that this is necessary, whether it is easy or not. Whatever reasons they have for doing Outfits instead of armor, they are not good enough to only have Outfits instead of armor. They need to get over those reasons.

You don’t “get over” cost:benefit. It’s an actual business issue figuring out how to determine the best game that makes them enough money that they can keep on making the game.

Honestly, if it was that easy, do you really think that it’s never occurred to them to try this? Do you think this is the first time it’s been suggested? Do you think they like being constantly criticized for the slowness of releasing armor pieces?

Ohoni.6057:

Which is why, over the past several years, they should have been moving Heaven and Earth behind the scenes to make this happen. They shouldn’t need us to keep prodding them over it.

No, they really shouldn’t be moving Heaven & Earth, because that’s a terrible use for their limited resources. Should they be figuring out how to get out of the hole they dug for themselves with armor skins? Sure … and they are.

But you make it sound like it’s like someone deciding to stop smoking, that it’s just a matter of will power (which isn’t always true for all smokers, but that’s a different discussion). It might never be cost effective in GW2 to do this and that, by itself, won’t ruin the game (it will hamper its growth and success, sure; it won’t kill the game).

If they move Heaven & Earth to change the setup, then they’ll risk the disappointment of HoT, which was an expac that offered a lot of new underling mechanics, but not enough content for a lot of folks.

No, they really don’t need to. You want them to (and to be fair, you’re hardly alone — I’d love to see more, too). You just aren’t prepared to accept that wanting things isn’t enough.

In an entertainment product, I absolutely consider the two words to be interchangeable. You don’t need anything, therefore everything you want is a need if you want it enough. But fair enough, if we’re being pedantic, they don’t need to do it, but the effort involved would inevitably be far outweighed by the benefits.

You don’t “get over” cost:benefit.

And I’m saying that if they still think that the cost:benefit is balancing out to “not worth it,” then they are way undervaluing the benefit side of the equation.

If they move Heaven & Earth to change the setup, then they’ll risk the disappointment of HoT, which was an expac that offered a lot of new underling mechanics, but not enough content for a lot of folks.

Really though, the sorts of people who would be working on a problem like this would tend to be very different people than the ones building content. Also, they added mounts, which seems like a decently heavy lift, yet in the grand scheme of things would be WAY low on the list of beneficial priorities below “fully interchangeable armor pieces.”

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

“You just have to separate them” — yes, that’s the part that takes time. The reason ANet can spit out the extra outfits is because they aren’t separated.

You literally open the outfit in a 3D editor, select anything that isn’t the part you want and press delete. Maybe smooth the edges a bit and that’s it. Depending on the data format importing and exporting the outfit to the editor takes longer than the actual editing.

Separating for example the boots from the Ceremonial Plated Outfit shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes per race and gender. Maybe an additional 5 minutes if the 3D editor is crap or the outfit has a lot of overhead data pointing to now deleted parts that needs to be deleted too.

Now turning the skins into actual objects is something else. Obviously I can only talk about the games I’ve modified so far (which were obviously all single player), but creating a new item, assigning 3D data, price, stats and placing it in the game world never took me more than 10 minutes once I’ve figured out the tool.

All in all I just don’t buy the argument, that making an armor set is more work than making an outfit. The only difference is, that you don’t have to pay attention to clipping with other sets when making outfits, which somewhat increases the amount of possible designs. By having clear guidelines (for example a glove can maximum go up to x cm above the elbow) you can even remove the need to check a new armor piece for clipping.

While some outfits make good use of this new freedom, the majority of them does not. Example: The Crystal Arbiter Outfit could’ve been an excellent heavy armor skin. Boots, Gloves, Shoulders and even Cuirass and Trousers are clearly distinguishable from each other. Comparing it to a real heavy armor set, it looks to me like even the seams are at the right places.

ANet’s approach to this is simply: If we can offer the new outfit to all weight types, we’ll get 3 times the money for the same amount of work. And that calculation would be correct if everyone bought outfits with the same enthusiasm as armor sets.

Now, since I’ve already pointed out how little work it is to separate an outfit into it’s respective armor pieces, how about this? Just offer the outfit AND offer it as an armor set. Or offer some pieces of it as separate skins, if the whole outfit can’t be converted into armor skins without making awkward cuts. Though, even if the torso can’t be separated from the trousers in a non-awkward way, a solution like ANet used for the Flame Legion Vestments can be used to avoid making such a cut.

costumes will only be a success when you can use parts of the costume as well and not being forced to use the entire costume. Also a nice feature would be to partly buy a costume, like trousers or boots only.

BunjiKugashira.9754:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

“You just have to separate them” — yes, that’s the part that takes time. The reason ANet can spit out the extra outfits is because they aren’t separated.

You literally open the outfit in a 3D editor, select anything that isn’t the part you want and press delete. Maybe smooth the edges a bit and that’s it. Depending on the data format importing and exporting the outfit to the editor takes longer than the actual editing.

You think it’s that easy and ANet is simply refusing to do it? That’s an interesting theory, but it’s not supported by the evidence.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

BunjiKugashira.9754:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

“You just have to separate them” — yes, that’s the part that takes time. The reason ANet can spit out the extra outfits is because they aren’t separated.

You literally open the outfit in a 3D editor, select anything that isn’t the part you want and press delete. Maybe smooth the edges a bit and that’s it. Depending on the data format importing and exporting the outfit to the editor takes longer than the actual editing.

You think it’s that easy and ANet is simply refusing to do it? That’s an interesting theory, but it’s not supported by the evidence.

I don’t just think it’s that easy, unless ANet uses some off-the-charts voodoo rubbish, it should be the same process as for any other game. Look up a Blender tutorial on how to make armor if you’re interested.

The process is the same for any game. Only the data format is different. Some games (like Oblivion and Skyrim) require to add additional data to the 3D model via an additional tool before the model can be used ingame. But that’s only because Blender doesn’t completely support Bethesda’s .nif format. For games where the 3D format is completely supported by the editing tool, the process is much simpler.

The important thing about turning outfits into armor is that all the time consuming work, namely the creating, texturing and weighting of the model is already done. As long as you don’t move any meshes around, there is no need for re-weighting the whole thing.

• weighting has nothing to do with heavy medium or light armor weights. It refers to the process of assigning a group of meshes to a bone in the underlying skeleton. For example all meshes of a helmet would be assigned to the head-bone with a weight of 1, so the helmet moves exactly like the head does.