Guild Wars 2

How about those armor piece that I obtained before, example COF armor set , but then I replace it with other skin

Are we still be able to unlock it, or have to farm it again in order to unlock it?

I think I’m beginning to understand the technical limitations, though I still resent the sacrifices made for the sake of this change. Having a plate chest piece and riding pants would have to be possible, for instance, and that wouldn’t work out very well. Hmm.

What about a system that let you effectively have a primary appearance, which would be your combat armour transmuted however you like, and a customisable town appearance consisting of statless ‘just for looks’ town clothing that you could mix and match and dye, and then set and apply in another menu? From there, you could then make it visible instead of your combat armour, but it would not mix with combat armour, and would have no stats of its own.

You could then have your in-battle customisation that’s much more visible when you’re dungeoning and WvWing and such, and it solves the issue of mixing town and combat armour.

It would be a considerable amount of work, and I appreciate that it may not be deemed worth it, but I’m… trying to come up with some reasonable solutions so that everyone’s happy.

(I’ve edited this four times already. Just realised what I’m describing is essentially the same as the current system, but with town clothing being visible even when combat stat armour is in use. Sorry. Not sure why that was so hard to describe.)

Ezekiel.1985:

So fix the holes or let us as players elect to be OK with them rather than giving us a half-finished system.

ACtually yeah, that’s my general take on this whole thing?

There are issues doing this?

THEN FIX THE ISSUES

Don’t give us a corner-cutting workaround that most of us don’t even like compared to the old system.

Are you ready to wait 3 months for the fixes?

nGumball.1283:

Ezekiel.1985:

So fix the holes or let us as players elect to be OK with them rather than giving us a half-finished system.

ACtually yeah, that’s my general take on this whole thing?

There are issues doing this?

THEN FIX THE ISSUES

Don’t give us a corner-cutting workaround that most of us don’t even like compared to the old system.

Are you ready to wait 3 months for the fixes?

I would rather wait 3 months for the fixes than for them to put in this system that’s basically half-finished.

Sorry if this has been asked already.

Would it be possible to have an overriding hat slot so that all the hat items we bought for our characters won’t be put to waste? I know we can hide the hat pieces from the sets but wearing the devil horns with the bloody prince’s outfit would now be impossible, unless we had the hat slot override.

Anyway, loving everything else that the update is offering.
Keep up the good work ANet.

Veomouse

Fenrina.2954:

Djinn.9245:

If the issues are simply clipping, I say let people do it anyway. As many people have pointed out, there are already clipping issues. People can preview items and decide if they don’t like the clipping or can deal with it.

It’s more than just clipping. He makes it sound like there’s large holes in the model or a graphics issue just as bad if they’re combined.

3d models are basically groups of connecting geometric planes. The seam is where one row of planes connects with another. If two seams don’t meet correctly, you can end up with overlapping planes (clipping) or even empty space.

This is fixable, they just have to go all the way back to the basic mesh and rework it to have seams in the correct spots, which would probably break the animations (so then they would have to deal with that). It would be quite a bit of work, still, the dev post above really is blowing it out of proportions in my opinion, and it is worth the effort.

And there are only eight such costume sets, it wouldn’t take three months even for a single person to do.

Conncept.7638:

Fenrina.2954:

Djinn.9245:

If the issues are simply clipping, I say let people do it anyway. As many people have pointed out, there are already clipping issues. People can preview items and decide if they don’t like the clipping or can deal with it.

It’s more than just clipping. He makes it sound like there’s large holes in the model or a graphics issue just as bad if they’re combined.

3d models are basically groups of connecting geometric planes. The seam is where one row of planes connects with another. If two seams don’t meet correctly, you can end up with overlapping planes (clipping) or even empty space.

This is fixable, they just have to go all the way back to the basic mesh and rework it to have seams in the correct spots, which would probably break the animations (so then they would have to deal with that). It would be quite a bit of work, still, the dev post above really is blowing it out of proportions in my opinion, and it is worth the effort.

And there are only eight such costume sets, it wouldn’t take three months even if they only assigned one guy to it.

You can start a company and compete in the market with GW2. You seem to know more about games than Anet and Blizzard.

I want to look like this before and after the patch. If I can still do that then I will likely be alright.

I’d just want the town clothing panel to just be the same then as it is now. Make all the other stuff an addition. Don’t take away my creative freedom if that’s what’s happening.

nGumball.1283:

Conncept.7638:

Fenrina.2954:

Djinn.9245:

If the issues are simply clipping, I say let people do it anyway. As many people have pointed out, there are already clipping issues. People can preview items and decide if they don’t like the clipping or can deal with it.

It’s more than just clipping. He makes it sound like there’s large holes in the model or a graphics issue just as bad if they’re combined.

3d models are basically groups of connecting geometric planes. The seam is where one row of planes connects with another. If two seams don’t meet correctly, you can end up with overlapping planes (clipping) or even empty space.

This is fixable, they just have to go all the way back to the basic mesh and rework it to have seams in the correct spots, which would probably break the animations (so then they would have to deal with that). It would be quite a bit of work, still, the dev post above really is blowing it out of proportions in my opinion, and it is worth the effort.

And there are only eight such costume sets, it wouldn’t take three months even if they only assigned one guy to it.

You can start a company and compete in the market with GW2. You seem to know more about games than Anet and Blizzard.

Certainly not, I’m just a design student, I haven’t even done my internship yet, but maybe someday

Fenrina.2954:

Djinn.9245:

If the issues are simply clipping, I say let people do it anyway. As many people have pointed out, there are already clipping issues. People can preview items and decide if they don’t like the clipping or can deal with it.

It’s more than just clipping. He makes it sound like there’s large holes in the model or a graphics issue just as bad if they’re combined.

Then you fire up the art team and tell them to adjust the character meshes so there isn’t an issue with waists not meeting in the middle. If that means the bottom of some of the tops needs to be pulled out and down to cover the gap with cloth flaps then so be it. I refuse to accept any “it just won’t look right” talk when so many shoulder pads float 3-6 inches away from the body.

None of this sounds like the only option and looks a lot more like “this is the easiest thing we could come up with”

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Bonefield has a pretty good understanding here of why some mix and match is not easy at all. Some armor and clothing combinations are fundamentally not mixable, (for more than just clipping reasons)

Before I start think of what I am about to say as a game of Tetris, and you can’t have any open spaces when you make the pieces meet.

So after reading that linked article, and what I can piece together let me see if I under stand the problem. (This will all be described from a 2d perspective) On cloth armor the dividing line is at the waist, and medium armor has more of an “n” shape (with a really thick top line) that way the trench coat can hang down over the pants. As town cloths where based off light armor the have the flat waist line divide.

So if you put say a trench coat on with the cargo pants, the “n” shape of the boundaries for it would collide with the horizontal line that make the boundaries for the town cloths. Resulting in something like this n, where the strike through is the top border for the pants, and this over lap causes conflict. Again I am just guessing here as anet as not said any specifics about the problem.

And by turning them into tonic the can bypass this problem by removing those borders of short because the set would be inside one complete shape.

Now that I have covered what I think the problem they are having is, I also have a possible solution. This would take a fair amount of work but not much more then they have to do now with building missing pieces for sets.

Sticking with the trench coat example we already know that medium pants are designed to fit into the middle of that “n”. why don’t they copy the “raw” mesh of the cargo pants, and place them in the file of an already existing medium pants file. There by over riding the medium plants “visually”, but still maintaining that matching border seam that medium pants need to work with medium tops. (Adjustments would have to be made as one can’t simple copy and paste a mesh and it line up correctly) I hope you where able to follow what I meant there, trying to phrase it in a way most people can understand.

Yes is know that would require them to do this for every piece of town clothing for it to work with leather, and possible metal depending on how its divided. (Should already work with cloth as that’s what its said to be based off of.) But by the time you take into account how many hours it would take to design and make missing piece to complete “sets” for towns clothes, they in theory would equals about the same. If it even equals twice as many hours (doubt it) it would still have the benefit of keeping the players happy. Which should be priority #1.

edited- to fix typing errors, been a long day………..

Conncept.7638:

3d models are basically groups of connecting geometric planes. The seam is where one row of planes connects with another. If two seams don’t meet correctly, you can end up with overlapping planes (clipping) or even empty space.

Yeah. Also, I’m doing some animation tests with the basic human female town clothes. There aren’t any animation issues outside of clipping and some conjures being temperamental. Even then, they just don’t animate, but the skill works. The added skills work just fine (yes, I can use 1-5 with a conjure). Given that, I’m doubtful there were major skill animation issues beyond clipping. Granted, I can’t test as far as anet can.

It does look like they didn’t like mixing the armors and clothes together. And I don’t know why they just didn’t enforce that somehow. :/

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Bonefield.9813:

Ezekiel.1985:

…
With that said, you say “not possible”, and that’s just not true. It IS possible, they just don’t want to bother with it, which is incredibly stupid. Skin replacement is one of the easiest things out there in coding, when the skins are already present. It’s essentially like turning a light switch.

That’s not entirely true.

Each of the armor weights in the game is constructed differently, which is probably one of the reasons we haven’t seen mixing and matching between different weights. It’s also likely the reason we see so many trenchcoats on medium armor—it’s specifically designed to support coats that go over pants. Light armor divides at the waist, and town clothes followed the same rules. If you read this blog post, you can pick up some hints as to how things were coded and why going back to change things would be more difficult than just find-and-replace:

In Guild Wars 2, weight classes determine the profession distribution and the seam rules for our armor coordination. We realized there were times when we desperately wanted to break those rules, so we developed a solution to do so. For example, town clothes work similar to the light armor system. There is a waist seam that allows mixing and matching to work relatively smoothly between pieces, which gives the player as much creative freedom as possible. But for clothing, it would be a travesty to never have a long trench coat, which has a seam overlap that would follow medium armor seam rules.

To solve this dilemma, we have created sets. Sets are two or more sections of armor fused into one to prevent mixing troubles that allow us to design with far less seam constraints. For example, we could have an outfit with a large trench coat, an inside vest and shirt, and pants. You’ve seen this before in my previous clothing blog post. That outfit is one piece.

I suspect this is why many town clothes pieces, such as the pirate captain’s outfit and Bloody Prince set, operate as one piece. And although I have zero technical expertise in this area, I think it probably follows that in order to make town clothes body pieces wearable in combat at all, it either works as an all-or-nothing system or they have to go back and change all of the armor in the game to follow the same seam rules (which might break several current armor sets, too). That would be a massive undertaking, and in the end it’s probably better that the lesser-used system takes a hit.

I’m not exactly happy with it, and I wish things hadn’t been designed that way in the first place (mostly because I’d like to see mixed armor weights), but establishing outfits as an overlay allows them some freedom to keep releasing costumes for holidays and making some sets of “universal” armor which don’t necessitate revamping the whole of GW2’s armor system. Since outfits use a separate system from transmutes, they can also probably be disallowed in PvP if it becomes a problem.

I can only speculate as to the choice to make some pieces tonics, but that might be the place to lean—respectfully—if we’d rather see them as outfits which can be dyed and used in combat.

Bonefield has a pretty good understanding here of why some mix and match is not easy at all. Some armor and clothing combinations are fundamentally not mixable, (for more than just clipping reasons)

Could you help us understand what the problem is, then? If I understand correctly, both Light and Heavy armor classes have seams at or near the waist (which explains a lot about armors like the HoM Coat being split) but Medium armor classes have their seam in a different place, so as to facilitate the trenchcoat styled attire.

There are Medium class armor skins that don’t drape as far down, though. Could the same methodology that allows for those to be “cut short” of their seam so to speak not be applied to the Town Clothes in question for purposes of applying the skin to Medium armors?

Yumeijin.5439:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Bonefield.9813:

Ezekiel.1985:

…
With that said, you say “not possible”, and that’s just not true. It IS possible, they just don’t want to bother with it, which is incredibly stupid. Skin replacement is one of the easiest things out there in coding, when the skins are already present. It’s essentially like turning a light switch.

That’s not entirely true.

Each of the armor weights in the game is constructed differently, which is probably one of the reasons we haven’t seen mixing and matching between different weights. It’s also likely the reason we see so many trenchcoats on medium armor—it’s specifically designed to support coats that go over pants. Light armor divides at the waist, and town clothes followed the same rules. If you read this blog post, you can pick up some hints as to how things were coded and why going back to change things would be more difficult than just find-and-replace:

In Guild Wars 2, weight classes determine the profession distribution and the seam rules for our armor coordination. We realized there were times when we desperately wanted to break those rules, so we developed a solution to do so. For example, town clothes work similar to the light armor system. There is a waist seam that allows mixing and matching to work relatively smoothly between pieces, which gives the player as much creative freedom as possible. But for clothing, it would be a travesty to never have a long trench coat, which has a seam overlap that would follow medium armor seam rules.

To solve this dilemma, we have created sets. Sets are two or more sections of armor fused into one to prevent mixing troubles that allow us to design with far less seam constraints. For example, we could have an outfit with a large trench coat, an inside vest and shirt, and pants. You’ve seen this before in my previous clothing blog post. That outfit is one piece.

I suspect this is why many town clothes pieces, such as the pirate captain’s outfit and Bloody Prince set, operate as one piece. And although I have zero technical expertise in this area, I think it probably follows that in order to make town clothes body pieces wearable in combat at all, it either works as an all-or-nothing system or they have to go back and change all of the armor in the game to follow the same seam rules (which might break several current armor sets, too). That would be a massive undertaking, and in the end it’s probably better that the lesser-used system takes a hit.

I’m not exactly happy with it, and I wish things hadn’t been designed that way in the first place (mostly because I’d like to see mixed armor weights), but establishing outfits as an overlay allows them some freedom to keep releasing costumes for holidays and making some sets of “universal” armor which don’t necessitate revamping the whole of GW2’s armor system. Since outfits use a separate system from transmutes, they can also probably be disallowed in PvP if it becomes a problem.

I can only speculate as to the choice to make some pieces tonics, but that might be the place to lean—respectfully—if we’d rather see them as outfits which can be dyed and used in combat.

Bonefield has a pretty good understanding here of why some mix and match is not easy at all. Some armor and clothing combinations are fundamentally not mixable, (for more than just clipping reasons)

Could you help us understand what the problem is, then? If I understand correctly, both Light and Heavy armor classes have seams at or near the waist (which explains a lot about armors like the HoM Coat being split) but Medium armor classes have their seam in a different place, so as to facilitate the trenchcoat styled attire.

There are Medium class armor skins that don’t drape as far down, though. Could the same methodology that allows for those to be “cut short” of their seam so to speak not be applied to the Town Clothes in question for purposes of applying the skin to Medium armors?

Medium is still at the waist. The coats are just longer parts of the chest mesh that are rigged to deform properly when you run in it. Nothing more. All the weights have the same break points. It just isn’t as obvious in heavy armor because they don’t have armor with long sleeves or pant legs that deform boots to end at the ankle or gloves to end at the wrist like medium and light do.

I just want to say how much I love the new system. Once the system is in place I’ll buy a set (or two!) of armor and/or town clothes as a thank you (I haven’t bought a set of either yet)! These are issues that I’ve wanted since the beginning of the game. As a GW1 player, I LOVE this change. It is like how the costume keeper in GW worked.

I do want to know though, do we get a hat slot? As in, can we mix and match hats with town clothes sets (not just make invisible the helm)? I’d like to put reading glasses on a character plus the town clothes (we had a hat slot and an outfit slot in GW1, so if it’s the same way, thank you so so much! – even if not, it’s MUCH better than it was).

Edit: Okay, it seems there isn’t even a hat slot. Nonetheless, that is one thing that I hope is feasible in the future. Hats were possible in GW (not separate pants and tops), so I’m hoping for them in the future (I don’t really care if separate pants and tops are ever implemented).

Substance E.4852:

Yumeijin.5439:

Could you help us understand what the problem is, then? If I understand correctly, both Light and Heavy armor classes have seams at or near the waist (which explains a lot about armors like the HoM Coat being split) but Medium armor classes have their seam in a different place, so as to facilitate the trenchcoat styled attire.

There are Medium class armor skins that don’t drape as far down, though. Could the same methodology that allows for those to be “cut short” of their seam so to speak not be applied to the Town Clothes in question for purposes of applying the skin to Medium armors?

Medium is still at the waist. The coats are just longer parts of the chest mesh that are rigged to deform properly when you run in it. Nothing more. All the weights have the same break points. It just isn’t as obvious in heavy armor because they don’t have armor with long sleeves or pant legs that deform boots to end at the ankle or gloves to end at the wrist like medium and light do.

If that’s the case, I’m not sure where the problem lies. Is there something problematic about having a chest mesh that doesn’t include a drape?

ProsaicPudding.6437 and Jajuju.6970 have pretty well summed it up for me – take time, fix it to not lose functionality “just because.”

I’m still holding fast to my opinion. if this change is the only way to be able to use town clothes in combat, then no thank you. i’ll keep the split.

nGumball.1283:

Ezekiel.1985:

So fix the holes or let us as players elect to be OK with them rather than giving us a half-finished system.

ACtually yeah, that’s my general take on this whole thing?

There are issues doing this?

THEN FIX THE ISSUES

Don’t give us a corner-cutting workaround that most of us don’t even like compared to the old system.

Are you ready to wait 3 months for the fixes?

Absolutely.

nGumball.1283:

You can start a company and compete in the market with GW2. You seem to know more about games than Anet and Blizzard.

You seem to have a grasp of sarcasm. You should build, fund, and manage a comedy club because obviously you know everything about everything to do with comedy. :P

Seriously though, adding an opinion on a single aspect of game design that happens to be involved in the issue at hand is something that contributes to the discussion. Making sarcastic remarks is something that does not. Weren’t we politely requested to be civil earlier?

To get back to the topic at hand, it seems like we’re not going to get much of anywhere until at least tomorrow, because a consensus on what answers to give us was apparently not reached today, and there isn’t really any work day left (although Curtis has been valiantly trying to answer questions about the changes we desperately hope will not be implemented, in the meantime). It will be much easier to try to brainstorm solutions once we know what exactly the problems are that necessitated tonicization, but in the meantime we can certainly try to figure things out as best we can and just hope the issue will be clarified soon.

(Nudge nudge wink wink ANet. I’m telling you exactly how to make people happy: by telling us what the problem is. Because curiosity killed the Skritt and it’s kinda killing us right now. Be as technical as you want because there are apparently at least a couple of us who understand 3-D models and animation who can translate for Music/English majors like me if they need to.)

I can see where this is going , Anet wont budge on this. that’s fine. I wont be buying any more outfits or “town tonics” .

Resistance is futile , you will be assimilated.

Bensozia.8071:

I can see where this is going , Anet wont budge on this. that’s fine. I wont be buying any more outfits or “town tonics” .

---

Resistance is futile , you will be assimilated.

When some toys/clothes had special skills giving you speed and people started to abuse them in WvW, people said that Anet will never respond and they will never support the company again because they are trash who only seek money.

The feature got quickly modified and not a single appreciation thread was opened. You know why? because people believe in the philosophy: I paid 50 dollars, the company is trash if they do anything against my will and they aren’t doing me a favor if they do anything good, because the game is about me, YES ME’’.

Maybe a way to conserve the current customization along with implementing the new system would be to only allow town clothes to be transmuted with other town clothes?

For example: I have a hoodie, the riding pants, and a light armor top & bottom. I can combine the hoodie with the riding pants, but neither one with the light armor top & bottoms. This could resolve any conflicts between armor & town clothes, plus allow people to maintain their looks.

I may hold an unpopular opinion, but to be able to mix and match armor and town clothes would be pretty cool for me…To have a system where you can transmute the appearance of one clothing item onto another (either town or armor) would be interesting. I’m really excited for the update, but I’m extremely concerned about this technical downside because it’s a HUGE downside for me. If there can be a workaround in the future, I’d be happy.

nGumball.1283:

Bensozia.8071:

I can see where this is going , Anet wont budge on this. that’s fine. I wont be buying any more outfits or “town tonics” .

---

Resistance is futile , you will be assimilated.

When some toys/clothes had special skills giving you speed and people started to abuse them in WvW, people said that Anet will never respond and they will never support the company again because they are trash who only seek money.

The feature got quickly modified and not a single appreciation thread was opened. You know why? because people believe in the philosophy: I paid 50 dollars, the company is trash if they do anything against my will and they aren’t doing me a favor if they do anything good, because the game is about me, YES ME’’.

I’ll still play and get other items just not the outfits. And ive seen plenty of players thanking Anet for the good things. The wardrobe feature is absolutely great and all the other things like the dye changes. The town clothes is my only gripe.

I just want to fight in this:

Reminiscent Valkyrie.3109:

The GW2 Dragon shirt shouldn’t even HAVE clipping problems, it’s just a top that can be transmuted to armor.

This is the one I absolutely don’t understand

It’s a skintight top, how the everloving kitten would it cause graphical bugs?

BTYM.8230:

It’s a skintight top, how the everloving kitten would it cause graphical bugs?

I think it has something to do with mixing town clothes and armor together. That seems to be what Curtis is implying. I doesn’t look like clothes on their own have many issues to deal with. I’ve found all of one bug…

There is a way to test to see how a given town clothes will react. Use utility/elite skills or use a bundle (including conjures). They are usable with town clothes as long as you don’t get hit or hit something. That should reveal if there is any graphical issues with a given town clothes setup. (You may want to hotkey the “Look Behind” command.)

Fenrina.2954:

BTYM.8230:

It’s a skintight top, how the everloving kitten would it cause graphical bugs?

I think it has something to do with mixing town clothes and armor together. That seems to be what Curtis is implying. I doesn’t look like clothes on their own have many issues to deal with. I’ve found all of one bug…

There is a way to test to see how a given town clothes will react. Use utility/elite skills or use a bundle (including conjures). They are usable with town clothes as long as you don’t get hit or hit something. That should reveal if there is any graphical issues with a given town clothes setup. (You may want to hotkey the “Look Behind” command.)

I just tried this and sure there’s some clipping but nothing worse than the current clipping on actual armor. I still don’t see why they can’t simply(I use this term loosely because yes I do programming) remove the out of combat only restriction on town clothes or go with one of the other ideas posted in this thread.

Edit: Also you say mixing town clothes and armor together and so far we’ve been told only head items will show through but town clothes will hide everything else. So there really isn’t a whole lot of mixing going on between armor and costumes.

Please Anet, don’t put an end to my adventuring spirit…. it just wouldn’t be the same.

Throwing my feedback into the “totally not pleased with the town clothes changes” hat.

I like most of the wardrobe changes, but I too am pretty upset with the “all or nothing” change to town clothes outfits and the inability to mix-and-match outfit pieces going forward. Several months ago, I bought the Chef outfit from the gemstore (using IRL money!) for my Sylvari with the intent to only use a couple pieces from the outfit to augment her starting town clothes (Sylvari diaper FTL). With this purchase, I finally had a nice Sylvari town clothes look that I was happy with. I’m not a roleplayer, but I am quite passionate about my Sylvari’s town clothes look. With this change to town clothes, I will no longer be able to use this mix-and-match outfit that I paid IRL money for. Had I known that we would not be able to mix-and-match outfit town clothes in the future, I would have never have purchased this town clothes outfit.

What’s even more upsetting than the town clothes change is that even though the functionality of the outfit I purchased will be changed and will NOT be what it was at the time of purchase, according to the customer support page for town clothes, I will not be eligible for a refund…

Customer support will be able to fulfill gem refund requests only for town clothes that become endless tonics. Such requests must be made after the Town Clothes system changes take effect; refund requests cannot be processed prior to the April Feature Build. Customer Support is not able to fulfill requests for refunds other than those related to Town Clothes that become endless tonics. This means that town clothes that become skins are not eligible for a refund.

This is pretty messed up. I paid IRL money for this outfit with the understanding that I would be able to mix-and-match. The ONLY reason I purchased this outfit was because of the ability to mix-and-match. When I made my purchase, development of the revamped town clothes system was well underway, but there was absolutely NO warning at the time of purchase that the mix-and-match functionality would be going away. The item that I paid IRL money for is being changed from what it was at the time of purchase and I will no longer be able to use the mix-and-match functionality going forward. This item is completely worthless to me now. Yet I will not be able to get a refund.

I hate getting overly emotional and using the term “bait and switch” rashly. But with the functionality changing and becoming more restrictive coupled with the inability to get a refund, it’s honestly kinda feels like one.

I know I’ll be FAR more cautious paying IRL money for items in the gem store going forward.

Silent Avenger.6928:

I just tried this and sure there’s some clipping but nothing worse than the current clipping on actual armor. I still don’t see why they can’t simply(I use this term loosely because yes I do programming) remove the out of combat only restriction on town clothes or go with one of the other ideas posted in this thread.

Pretty much what I was seeing. And just (likewise) loosening the combat only restriction is one of the things I’ve suggested.

Silent Avenger.6928:

Edit: Also you say mixing town clothes and armor together and so far we’ve been told only head items will show through but town clothes will hide everything else. So there really isn’t a whole lot of mixing going on between armor and costumes.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Some armor and clothing combinations are fundamentally not mixable, (for more than just clipping reasons)

Not sure how else to interpret this line. :/ It sounds like they tried and failed.

All or nothing? This is certainly a step back. I like how you can use them in combat now but since it’s all or nothing will we be-able to see our backpiece?

The glitches they’re talking about might be more related to the texture mapping than clipping. I know that some costume set pieces themselves don’t ‘play nice’ with each other – the Wintersday Earmuffs textures seem to overlap with the textures used for other pieces like the Mad Prince’s Shirt, and the default boots/chestpiece.

These issues may be much more pronounced when combining regular armor sets with costume sets, which could explain why only SOME town clothes pieces are being retired.

I remember the same type of texture glitches would pop up when previewing multiple weights together, back when that was still possible.

Does anybody know what will happen to the default racial Town Clothes? Nothing is mentioned about them…

… And I like them. :c

I would much rather have the ability to wear town clothes OR armor with the new system

You could mix and match town clothes like normal and wear them in combat, but you couldn’t mix armor with town clothes

I think that makes way more sense than completely screwing up all of the town clothes since most town clothes aren’t going to be wearable with armor anyway…

I was assuming that the town clothes were going to remain mostly the same, and maybe when switching to the town clothes, your wardrobe changes from armor skins to town clothes skins and you could apply town clothes skins freely…I was excited.
But we got this instead.

Nope nope nope.

PLEASE reconsider this.

Also, I don’t care what anyone says, being able to use town clothes in combat is a not necessary. In fact I think it’s kind of dumb. You don’t wear fuzzy hats and poofy dresses into battle. It’s stupid and immersion breaking. We didn’t need this. There was NOTHING wrong with the town clothes system the way it was.

With the new costume system, that means no more Santa

Mine has been one of the many voices asking for more customization and clothing/armor options. While I like the wardrobe addition, the clothing and customization systems have taken a giant step back with these proposed changes. I thought horizontal progression and character customization was supposed to be the big end game draw! That’s why we get all these skin rewards, right?

I understand that armor weights have different seams and placements on the models, but why can’t players choose a weight version of the 5-piece “outfit” they purchased? When you removed stat sets from armor in order to revise those systems, we were able to choose new stat sets. Can’t you do something similar with town clothes outfits in letting players choose their weight by piece or set? Sure, you’d have to make light/med/heavy versions of each piece of town clothing, but I personally think it would be worth the effort.

I am very surprised it took them a YEAR to make this system & it has so man problems with it. In the mean-time they’ve been salivating over how awesome the new Scarlet “Living Story” is. ugh.. Anet’s priorities are so bizarre.

At this rate these “big projects on the back burner” will be done by 2018.

Please Arenanet rework the weight limitations its worth it even if it takes some time. Make town clothes into seperate pieces and mixable with normal armor and please let us mix armor skins from different weight classes.

Going to miss my town clothes. How I dress my characters greatly affects my love for the game. Why Anet keeps insisting on fixing unbroken things is beyond me. VERY unhappy about this.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

A few more details on toys. Costume brawl toys are not tonics… Almost all of them will be usable with armor, outfits, tonics and other transforms.

The exception is boxing gloves, which is a brawl toy plus tonic in one.. so it will not combine with other looks, and Sonic Tunneling Tool… which scrubs transforms off you when you go underground.

So you wanna destroy my dance-band!?

HOW DARE YOU!!

Since some light has been shed upon the mix&match issues, I can understand the changes being made. But I’m still disappointed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m truly excited for most changes announced for the update so far. But I’m definitely going to miss dressing my charr up like a fancy gentleman. (see attachment below.)

That being said, I hope you devs will continue to look into improving the system and, hopefully/eventually, give us the mix/match options back somehow. I for one won’t refund my tonics. Instead I’ll keep them around in hopes they can someday be returned to their original glory.

I need to start this with some clarity. I don’t dislike ArenaNet. I have former schoolmates and friends who work in ArenaNet, heck. I’ve visited ArenaNet and drank your guys’ soda.

So I… I don’t want to sound cruel. But honestly? Between Living Story and this town clothes change, I can’t honestly imagine how disconnected people in judgement positions are.

Do you understand that the primary customer for town clothes isn’t going to be happy with this change? This would have been fine had it been in place from day one. Or even if the very obvious ‘outfits’ were maintained as an ‘outfit set’.

But I’m sorry? The old mix and match town clothing shouldn’t be arbitrarily turned into a set. They existed for roleplayers, and to be honest they were the only thing in the game that seemed to support roleplay. I don’t want to oversell roleplay, but Tarnished Coast was the largest server on launch due to Roleplayers—and was only broken up due to WvWvW encouragement… But look at other games. Moonguard and Wyrmrest are highly populous at all hours every day. Its not effected by ups and downs in WoW’s population or expansion rushing. Those two servers are always up, all day, every day, and Moonguard is always stuffed to the brim.

Look at Everquest II for that matter, Antonia Bayle is the heart of EQII and has maintained a steady population long, long after the game ran into severe problems. Roleplayers are, honestly, without a doubt, just from the empirical server population evidence the stable core of any MMO. Now, the only thing that was made for them, the only thing that generally made them pleased? Is being taken away.

Of course other people used Town Clothes, and to be honest, they’re all quite in their rights to be kittened. I’d be? I haven’t even bought any. I just can see what its done to my friends lists. Hell, one of my friends just threw his arms up in the air and purchased a WoW subscription. Because between this and the LS? No offense. You’ve kind of turned a wonderful world into a joke, and now taken away our ability to do something. I’m fine with adding in new things. But why are you taking away our things?

Seriously. WHY ARE WE LOSING SOMETHING WE ALREADY HAVE? The fact is honestly, as near as I can see. You’ve obviously failed here. Wardrobes were a good idea, I wish we had something of a ‘clothing bank’ as well (heck, I know plenty of people who have more inventory filled with clothing then they do anything else) but that’s an aside. Its not critical to anyone’s enjoyment.

Even the idea of discontinuing further Town Clothes is a reasonable idea if they’re seen as not profitable. I understand putting in silly ‘combat’ skins even. (I don’t like it, it makes me twitch and think of the artistic collapse of TF2, but its not something anyone’s going to be shocked by.) I don’t see any logical reason to remove town clothes as they exist now. To do so is simply to kitten off the people who actually enjoyed this feature, the people who have spent money on it. You’re really just throwing loyalty in their faces, and people don’t like that.

It also couldn’t come at a worse time, EQL is opening up its alpha soon, Wildstar’s doing the same, ESO is nearing launch. I don’t necessarily think any of that is a ‘game killer’ and I’d be bitterly depressed if GW2 ‘died’. But taking someone’s possessions and turning them into something as gross as a ~endless tonic~ of all kitten things is going to make no one happy.

You’re going to have people accuse you of being ~run~ by Scarlet at this rate.

A question for the devs;

Would it be possible to just keep the town-clothes window in addition to the new wardrobe? Allow me to elaborate what I’m thinking. We already have the town clothes system in place, with the items functioning as we bought them. Looking at the notes, it seems to be that outfits and tonics are the features people have the most problems with, whereas the armor skins like fuzzy animal hats that can function with armor are generally accepted by the community. However, the outfits and tonics would be impossible to mix and match due to seaming and design issues.

Would it be possible to simply leave the town clothes that would become outfits or tonics as town clothes in the town clothes panel, as they were? With mixing and matching, but only with other town clothes? I mean theoretically, they could be toggled to work in combat as a replacement visual to your armor, but still be programmed to work only with other town clothes in the town clothes panel to prevent the seam and armor weight design issues.

I don’t know if this would be possible as well, but perhaps the town clothes you were going to make into armor skins anyway could be able to function as armor and town clothes, and thus interact with both? That way, you at least get to have a few items that are guaranteed to work with combat, but don’t lose their interactivity with other previously purchased town clothes. The same could work with toys, where they function both within costume brawl and combat.

I make this suggestion about keeping the town clothes tab in addition to the wardrobe because the community has expressed that they feel their purchase has been disrespected, but there’s really no way to fix some of the clothes they possess. Gem refunds on tonics wouldn’t necessarily lead players to want to buy anything with said gems, or purchase gems in the future. However, keeping the the town clothes tab wouldn’t necessarily do the game any harm, and would leave them to interact only with other town clothes, but interchangeable and dyable, out of respect for the initial purchase.

The only other solution I could think of to appease the people who wrote on the 15 pages of this thread is to promise to completely remake all the town clothes as interchangeable armor skins, designed slightly differently for the different armor weights, which would be a huge undertaking. However, that would secure future player investment in gem store items. I think the main problem arising from this is that players don’t feel safe or content to purchase in the gem store anymore, and that’s not good. Thus, I implore you to maybe reconsider whether you want to take away the town clothes tab altogether, or simply change how it functions.

Kojast.6304:

Everyone, I’m just as upset as most in this thread, but can we please keep it civil? As devs have said in the past, they care about the game and they do not make changes to “slap the community in the face.” Can we please not threaten them with any sort of violence and refrain from assuming they are out to spite or ignore the community? Even if you feel this way, it is not productive nor will it help the situation.

I absolutely agree that no one should threaten the Devs; no one should threaten anybody at all, ever. But I do think that if we feel ignored and overlooked, we should tell them so. Even if they are not doing it intentionally, they ought to know about the impression they are making on us and how it affects us.

Right now I do feel ignored since they have the CDI threads but decided not to ask us in advance how we would feel about having town clothes taken away (a very big change, especially since it concerns items purchased with real money), and I am getting the impression that they were not prepared to deal with their customers’ reactions at all, even though they must have understood that there would be some backlash. As someone who has spent real money on items that will no longer be what they were, I feel stepped on. The items I have spent money to support the game are being taken away, and this has hurt my trust in the company as well as my enjoyment derived from the game.

If we speak up about how we feel when they go about things like this they might reconsider treating us in such a manner in the future, so I would not call it completely unproductive.

To me, there are just too many backdraws with this update. I am happy about the dyes and skin unlock, but not only are many of my town clothes being taken away, I will also no longer be able to use the headpieces as before. I did not purchase sunglasses to wear in combat, but now my only way to use them will be to pay a charge to put the look on a combat item. I do not want this, and would have protested against it in a CDI thread. Leveling will be less fun as well since I will not be able to afford transmuting below 80 skins as I level now that they will cost the same to transmute as 80 skins. I understand that you want to make money, but sneakingly adding a high cost to a much-used quality of life feature we have come to rely on but have not had to pay for in the past feels pretty low.

Since there’s a lot of negativity in this thread, I’d just like to say I appreciate the effort the devs are making. Contrary to what the forum warriors demanding to get their way believe, ArenaNet does not have unlimited time, resources, and personnel to spend on completely reworking large parts of the game’s already-entrenched structure. They are probably just as frustrated at the imperfect solution as a lot of people here, so keep that in mind.

Having said that, I want to thank you for finally making town clothes useable in combat. That’s something I stridently demanded in my turn, back during the beta, and was disappointed. So thank you for finally making that possible. Also I am very much looking forward to having my mesmer wear glasses or a top hat with her normal armor, so thank you as well for making at least those pieces mixable.

The only request I would like to make is that the all-in-one outfit system should ideally function just as GW1’s costume system did, which did allow mixing and matching of head and body costume pieces – and with the additional ability to display them in tandem with body and head armor pieces, respectively. (As an example, imagine displaying the Pirate outfit as your body piece with the Magnus’ Eyepatch armor piece, or conversely, displaying the Chef Hat outfit headgear with your normal armor.)

That would be good enough for me – and as that was also a system that was implemented later in the game’s life (actually very late in the game’s life), I’ll continue to hope this will be made possible. Even so, I’m very grateful for the changes you are making, and I hope you won’t be discouraged by the people shouting here, who are apparently so fixated on keeping what they had in the past that they overlook the fact these changes are creating new channels through which to deliver future cosmetic releases, and thus hopefully making outfit and clothing options as the game moves forward much more dynamic. Thanks again.

Conncept.7638:

Devildoc.6721:

EnemyCrusher.7324:

Why not simply convert town clothes into armor skins and keep the costume pieces separate? That way everyone can continue to mix-and-match, and there is no need to introduce the confusion and frustration of town clothes tonics.

Because most of the townsclothes costumes have the pants and shirt parts already added together.

They basically need to leave town clothes alone.

That’s not as big a problem as one would think. There are several existing armor pieces that take up the slots for both the head and shoulders, chest and shoulders, or chest and hands, it would be no different having a chest item covering the chest and legs. And even if they didn’t wish to do it that way, they are two seperate meshes and can be seperated with some work.

EDIT: Wait, I forgot, there already IS one. The Cof Light chest armor takes up both the chest and leg slots.

it doesn’t take up the leg slot, but rather it it’s a robe that overlaps any legs you’re wearing, though some legs may clip.

WereScrib.7154:

I don’t see any logical reason to remove town clothes as they exist now. To do so is simply to kitten off the people who actually enjoyed this feature, the people who have spent money on it.

This. I spent my money on gems to buy something that I wanted to have fun with in MY OWN way.

I did not spend money on gems to buy something only to have it changed in a way where I cannot use it how I WANT TO USE IT.