Guild Wars 2

Wubdor.5190:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

You’ll see more outfits coming out this summer and additions to the game more often usable by your characters.

and you can look forward to more new outfits coming very soon.

You’re out of your mind if you think I will trust you as a company with my money once more. What else will change that I paid money for and can’t get a proper refund for? Gems I can get returned, but not the money I bought them with.
I really don’t want to come off as offensive, but I’m thoroughly disappointed in the entirety of Arenanet.

Absolutly right.
Well, up to the point of “entirety of Arenanet”, Im not sure I’d go that far but no way I’ll be giving them my money again.

Thanks for another update, but I definitely didn’t want to hear that you’re following through after all these complaints. You’re not supposed to lose features with a feature patch. Especially since a lot of us paid a good amount of real money for these items.
I don’t want my Dragon Emblem Shirt as a tonic.
I don’t want my hoodie as a tonic.
I don’t want ANY of my outfits combined into one.
Yes, I am surprised about how many of my town clothing items AREN’T armor compatible. Totally unacceptable.

And honestly, the last thing I want to hear is that you’re adding more outfits down the line. Oh goody. Not. You’re seriously trying to make us feel better by saying you’re adding new outfits down the line? Really? Really? You honestly think I’m going to buy anything from the gem store after this?

I cannot believe you’re honestly going to to through with this. You made your bed when you first introduced town clothing and nearly everyone said it was a sub-optimal idea. Sleep in it.

I agree with Gem refunds, but i believe they need to put the outfits part of the refund system and not only the tonics, as they will also loose functionality.

I bought this things from the Gem Store, advance this is hurting the trust we have on the things we buy from with gems in the part they can be changed / made useless at any point.

Wubdor.5190:

You’re out of your mind if you think I will trust you as a company with my money once more. What else will change that I paid money for and can’t get a proper refund for? Gems I can get returned, but not the money I bought them with.
I really don’t want to come off as offensive, but I’m thoroughly disappointed in the entirety of Arenanet.

Basically this. I don’t care any further what new stuff Anet plans on releasing later down the road. They are “slapping us in the face” with this change.

We spend money on these outfits and support the game with our money. And this is the thanks we get in return? You taking away our outfits that we paid money for, and turning them into tonics that we can’t use? What is the point in giving you anymore money now if this is how you treat your paying supporters? How do we know that in the future you aren’t going to take away more stuff that we have already paid money for?

Well all I have to say is congratulations. If you are trying to stop us from giving you money any more, than you’ve done a pretty good job on that. Sorry but it is not worth spending any more money on this game if these are the kind of tactics we have to look forward to in the future for supporting this game.

DarkOcean.8746:

You’re not supposed to lose features with a feature patch.

DarkOcean.8746:

You’re not supposed to lose features with a feature patch.

DarkOcean.8746:

You’re not supposed to lose features with a feature patch.

DarkOcean.8746:

You’re not supposed to lose features with a feature patch.

I THINK THIS BEARS REPEATING

Why not just keep the town clothes tab separated as is now, but equipping a town clothes piece in one slot will automatically overwrite the rest with the correct set (or “complimentary” pieces if the item is unique, as you describe the new tonics), still allowing the player to place a different piece in one of the empty slots to replace the set skin? This is of course not counting the head piece, which is separate and can be worn with standard armor.

Come on Anet, this isn’t rocket science.

We will no more be able to mix and match.

So, to resume, after the changes will be done, it will be like I have paid with my real money for the Executioner’s outfit, a costume I’ll never wear because I bought it only for the gloves and the boots (rest of the set I don’t like).
So it’s like I paid with real money for nothing. Oh well, then we can consider it a donation !

Go ahead and release more stuff that can be used in combat for people to buy.

Just leave us with the town clothes we have now, without combat capability. They will be old school town clothes and EVERYTHING we have been doing with them all along will remain.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We do understand and sincerely apologize that there are creative combinations of town clothes that will not exist anymore. Many have asked why remove town clothes as a concept. It boils down to we believe better armor skinning and the outfit system is something we can add more options to more often and will produce a better supported RP game for everyone with more variety in the future. In short, a healthier game.

To expand more on what I mean by better support, It helps if you think of town clothes as a 4th weight class of armor. Clothing was meant to offer visual options that break the class roles, however we were never completely happy with the way it was isolated from the rest of the game and still felt largely the same. Many pieces could have easily been mistaken for light or medium armor. In many ways it was more akin to building an alt character because town-clothes and armor were so separated. Additionally, every time we added something to town-clothes, it didn’t really help someone building their light, medium, or heavy look. And there was no way to add combat gear fairly without creating 3 versions on the back end (light, medium, and heavy). As a customization platform and sustainable expansion design it left a lot to be desired.

When we started looking at bringing more of the clothing back into armor with mix and match styles there are some fundamental incompatible things between weight classes. (part of how we set up every armor to allow many dye channels and styles per piece).. There really is no way at this point over six years since we started development to make absolutely everything work together. So we needed something new to continue to grow in the future.

Outfits give us a way to create highly stylized looks that aren’t constrained to armor slots or weight class. In addition to armor skins that are easier and cheaper to collect across characters and the account dye system we do believe the options across a players whole account are much more attractive now. You’ll see more outfits coming out this summer and additions to the game more often usable by your characters. We try not to allow too much ‘hoarder’ design where we just keep stacking more and more options on leaving lots of unsupported things hanging around. Yes, we do have to give up some of our current closet space and clothing to fit the new wardrobe in. Again, apologies for that.

As always we ask you to try out the new system of customization and see what’s available to you. I think many people will be surprised by how many pieces have become armor compatible. We hope the benefits to the outfit system and wardrobe in terms of future support and additions will be clear, and you can look forward to more new outfits coming very soon.

Thank you for your reply. Is it possible for you to list the different town clothes and how they will be transformed? I think it would help us to know exactly what we are looking at.

Personally, I am happy to shelve my medium armor trench coats for a more uniform system that allows greater mix and match potential. What I don’t want is to say goodbye to my Gogo bunny.

You have to say goodbye to that bunny because you can’t wear more than one tonic at once. And you can’t dye them.

I’ll add my tuppence worth, for all the good it may do.
I’ll agree that on the whole the patch is looking grand. The wardrobe, dye system it’s all looking good.
But, this town clothes being made into sets, tonics and un-dyeable. Sorry, I just can’t agree with that.
I like many other role-players have spent time and money, real-life money, on getting our looks just right.
And not just individual looks. I’ve a Whispers Lightbringer character that I use mixed up town clothing as disguises. Granted, she may not be as affected, but my others will.
Please ANet, reconsider this. I’ve supported many changes in the past, even those to my beloved Thief, but this one I just cannot.

Titan Cronus.9216:

Wubdor.5190:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

You’ll see more outfits coming out this summer and additions to the game more often usable by your characters.

and you can look forward to more new outfits coming very soon.

You’re out of your mind if you think I will trust you as a company with my money once more. What else will change that I paid money for and can’t get a proper refund for? Gems I can get returned, but not the money I bought them with.
I really don’t want to come off as offensive, but I’m thoroughly disappointed in the entirety of Arenanet.

Absolutly right.
Well, up to the point of “entirety of Arenanet”, Im not sure I’d go that far but no way I’ll be giving them my money again.

This.
I’m not going to give you any more money after this, anet. How am I supposed to trust that you won’t change the system again? What if you decide to just destroy the functionality of something else I buy?

Whatever, no skin off of my back. I’ll just spend my money on a company who doesn’t make a whole swath of my purchases useless.

Anet NO ONE wants the tonics, the undyeable, unmixable tonics for items we bought to dye and to mix!

Why can’t you just leave them as they are and don’t give them combat capability? This would be far more acceptable. You’ve retired most of them anyway. Just don’t sell any more in that category.

Hmmm

I said I would live with sets if I had to. But i just took a look at them and, um, ick. Not one of them looks good as a set except maybe the chef. I will be asking for a gem refund for every single one of them. And if they don’t want to refund gems, well I can always find some other game to spend the 50-75$ a month I was spending on trans stones/mini/make over kits and town clothes. I was wasting too much time on GW2 anyway.

Anet listen to his community but they just listen to, they don’t do more.

Initially I was very excited about the wardrobe and town clothes being made available for combat, which meant I could finally walk around with my guardian wearing the town clothes below together with Infinite Light.

But then I got a lot of the excitement drained out of me when I learned this combination of town clothes will be disappearing completely because I’m not allowed to mix-and-match these pieces, one of which is from the executioner costume.

Also the below pic is not photoshopped, just changed between normal outfit and town clothes very quickly while taking screenies, as there’s a brief gap where the sword doesn’t disappear.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

As always we ask you to try out the new system of customization and see what’s available to you. I think many people will be surprised by how many pieces have become armor compatible.

Since both my shirt and my gloves have been confirmed to become endless tonics, the best I can hope for is that my Endless Tonic of the Dragon Emblem Shirt outfit and Endless Tonic of wearing a pair of Boxing Gloves will not overwrite each other, and my Sunglasses armor skin will still be displayed while under effects of the tonic(s).

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We hope the benefits to the outfit system and wardrobe in terms of future support and additions will be clear, and you can look forward to more new outfits coming very soon.

I’ll be looking forward to what new things we’ll get, hopefully good things

While I am a bit annoyed that I can no longer mix-and-match to my liking, I can understand why this was a necessary change to be able to expand upon the system.

EDIT: Though I do still wonder why I can’t simply use my Dragon Emblem Shirt as an armor skin; if it is in regards to being unable to identify what armor class someone is at a glance, the Pirate Captain’s Outfit (e.g.) will make anyone look like a Medium armor user, so I don’t see why the Dragon Emblem Shirt couldn’t be allowed as armor skin.

(Looks like this is going to have to be a two-part post. But I’m sorry, this “answer” raises more questions than it answers.)

Curtis, thank you for the answer, and I’m sorry you have to be the mouthpiece for the decisions of a group and take all the flak for it. (Please read every “you” in the following post as a plural you or a y’all or something, because this is meant for everyone who came up with the words you posted, not for you personally.) But it still doesn’t make sense to me.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We do understand and sincerely apologize that there are creative combinations of town clothes that will not exist anymore. Many have asked why remove town clothes as a concept. It boils down to we believe better armor skinning and the outfit system is something we can add more options to more often and will produce a better supported RP game for everyone with more variety in the future. In short, a healthier game.

This is a reduction in variety, though. Every single “outfit,” including new outfits you make, will look the same with only dye changes and hat/no hat as the options, and the tonics will look entirely identical! How does combining everything into one piece make for more variety unless your clothing designers suddenly become clothes-making dynamos and put out dozens of outfits? (And I hope you don’t expect to charge the same price for a single uncustomizeable “outfit” as you did for a set of town clothes!) Is it really entirely impossible to implement mix-and-match outfits that consist only of town clothes, since they will continue to be separate from armor anyways? This is the exact opposite of “more options”!

Curtis Johnson.8456:

To expand more on what I mean by better support, It helps if you think of town clothes as a 4th weight class of armor. Clothing was meant to offer visual options that break the class roles, however we were never completely happy with the way it was isolated from the rest of the game and still felt largely the same. Many pieces could have easily been mistaken for light or medium armor. In many ways it was more akin to building an alt character because town-clothes and armor were so separated. Additionally, every time we added something to town-clothes, it didn’t really help someone building their light, medium, or heavy look. And there was no way to add combat gear fairly without creating 3 versions on the back end (light, medium, and heavy). As a customization platform and sustainable expansion design it left a lot to be desired.

So town clothing was meant to act as a separate class of armor… but because it didn’t help people build looks in the OTHER three classes of armor, you decided it wasn’t working? Doesn’t the fact that people could wear it no matter what armor class they had mean it was working? If town clothes could be mistaken for light or medium armor, then how does giving them to Heavy armor wearers in combat but only as entire outfits without even the ability to change your hat fix that? I still do not understand the logic here. Also, there are plenty of people who buy sets of combat armor and then split those sets across different characters— so am I to interpret the desire to create armor sets that don’t have 3 different weights to mean that you want new armor sets to be “outfits” too, and ALSO unsplittable!?

Curtis Johnson.8456:

When we started looking at bringing more of the clothing back into armor with mix and match styles there are some fundamental incompatible things between weight classes. (part of how we set up every armor to allow many dye channels and styles per piece).. There really is no way at this point over six years since we started development to make absolutely everything work together. So we needed something new to continue to grow in the future.

As you are going to implement them, town clothes will still not mix with armor. We won’t be able to mix armor with town clothes, but why are you taking away the ability to mix town clothes with town clothes? You still haven’t answered the question!

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Outfits give us a way to create highly stylized looks that aren’t constrained to armor slots or weight class.

Yes, we have been enjoying doing that ourselves. Thank you.

Nooooo my Mad King boots are the best ever and now I can’t wear them separately.

Part 2:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

In addition to armor skins that are easier and cheaper to collect across characters and the account dye system we do believe the options across a players whole account are much more attractive now.

Yes, the wardrobe in general is going to be lovely, but this thread isn’t about that. It’s about something being taken away that really looks like it didn’t need to be taken away in order for the wardrobe to function, and we still don’t have any answers as to why it apparently does have to be taken away in order for the other changes to work.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

You’ll see more outfits coming out this summer and additions to the game more often usable by your characters.

I think it’s been fairly well-established that very few people use entire outfits. Why would more entire outfits make us happy? This answer also seems to assume that your clothing designers will suddenly become capable of designing entire outfits for Charr that do not look ridiculous. There is no evidence to support the idea that they have this capability, given that players of Charr have to pick and choose pieces of armor and town clothing very carefully to make them look decent in their eyes. I’m not saying I could do any better, but I am saying that dressing a Charr is not easy, and allowing some individual choice in the matter is probably safer than assuming that you’ll be capable of doing a very difficult task.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We try not to allow too much ‘hoarder’ design where we just keep stacking more and more options on leaving lots of unsupported things hanging around.

The town clothes paper doll has never broken before, to my knowledge. I sincerely doubt leaving it in the game would necessitate any further support beyond un-removing the ability to use it. That would even leave the designers with the freedom to create new outfits that aren’t all in one piece if they ever decide they want to! (And what designer DOESN’T appreciate a bit of creative freedom here and there? I can’t imagine they’re all satisfied with this unnecessary change either.)

Curtis Johnson.8456:

I think many people will be surprised by how many pieces have become armor compatible.

Wait, hold on. I thought you were saying that there were problems mixing town clothes and armor. Now you’re saying a lot of them are going to be compatible? How is it easier to make them compatible with armor, which they weren’t designed to be compatible with, and not each other, which they are designed to be compatible with?

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We hope the benefits to the outfit system and wardrobe in terms of future support and additions will be clear

They are not.

Perhaps this answer was formulated before the people involved read the suggestions regarding being able to construct one’s own outfits using town clothes with other town clothes and not with armor pieces, since it is apparent that you will not be making town clothes compatible with armor, but only with itself as a full outfit or tonic. (Except for some items that you refuse to specify, so we have no idea how many or if you’re underestimating our threshold for surprise. I have to admit you’re doing a brilliant job of lowering my expectations, though.)

Right now, it seems like you’re saying that because some single items of town clothing can’t mix with the various weights of armor, you’re going to stop allowing any town clothes to be mixed with each other. In other words, your reasoning for being unable to do something we would like you to do is that you can’t do something that we didn’t really expect you to be able to do in the first place.

Your answer has described why you’d like town clothes to be useable in combat, and why you’d like some of them but not others to be useable with armor…? But there is not a single thing in there that describes why town clothes can no longer be used with other town clothes. Is there really truly no way at all to be able to cobble together your own “Outfit”? And if there’s something in the way of that, what IS it!? Otherwise, there is no logical reason not to give Outfits their own paper doll like town clothes have now.

cakesphere.5910:

I’d like all my kittening money back for all the wardrobe pieces I’ve bought.

To clarify this for everyone, you will only be able to get a refund for town clothes that become endless tonics.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/45944258-Town-Clothes

I would love to read the notes from the meeting where this was discussed just to try to grasp how anyone could think this would make the player base happier than before the change.

Being able to wear my aviators with my hoodie as armor skins along with the rest of my t3 medium human? Awesome! A+ plus change for sure…

Being able to only wear my glasses with regular armor and not being able to also use the halo tonic I spent a week grinding for at the same time? Turbo lame…

videoboy.4162:

Curtis Johnson.8456:

Snipped

So, if I’m understanding you correctly, we’re losing the functionality of certain pieces of Town Clothing but, in doing so, we’re gaining a system that will allow you to provide us with even more variety, in a shorter amount of time?

That sounds like a good trade to me.

If your definition of “variety” is “more outfits, but the only way they can be customized is by dye color.” There’s only a single “outfit” slot, not a proper paper doll, so any outfit they create in the future will not be mix-and-match. It has been confirmed that they only way to change an Outfit is to dye it and to hide or show the hat.

There was also a rather troubling remark in there about how they didn’t like having to design an armor set for each different armor weight when they brought out new ones in the gem store. That means that new armor sets are also likely to be Outfits, since the stated purpose of Outfits is to provide a way to use an armor set without it being dependent on which armor weight you use, which means they won’t have mixable parts either. This might speed up the rate at which they can make new armors, but it also means that every single one of them will be uncustomizable because they will have to fit into only a single slot.

In other words, it really doesn’t look like a good trade at all unless they have some sort of Fount of Infinite Variety, because it will take a lot of variety in future to make up for taking away the ability to mix and match town clothes AND future gem store armors.

PurebladeProductions.4875:

cakesphere.5910:

I’d like all my kittening money back for all the wardrobe pieces I’ve bought.

To clarify this for everyone, you will only be able to get a refund for town clothes that become endless tonics.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/45944258-Town-Clothes

And even then, it’s a gem refund.

As I think about this more, here is what really really worries me.

New armor looks were already almost gem store exclusive. The only new ingame armor we have seen since launch is ascended.

Now, instead of having to make 6 pieces of armor for 3 classes and 5 races each time they come up with a new look, all they need to do is design a single look across all three classes and only two (or maybe 3) separate pieces (body, head and gloves [assuming gloves can be hidden like the helm]).

In other words, I think this has nothing to do with “benefits” to the player and is really the first step in avoiding new armor looks. They will simply make new outfits and call it good.

I doubt we will see anymore new armors or armor skins from this point forward other than maybe helms or gloves.

(oops, I see Twyll beat me to it while I was typing)

this does NOT look good for the future of this game.

PurebladeProductions.4875:

cakesphere.5910:

I’d like all my kittening money back for all the wardrobe pieces I’ve bought.

To clarify this for everyone, you will only be able to get a refund for town clothes that become endless tonics.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/45944258-Town-Clothes

So I won’t even be able to get gems back for the individual pieces? UGH.
Just what I wanted, a bunch of utterly useless clothes that I can’t even get a refund for.

PurebladeProductions.4875:

(snip)
Since both my shirt and my gloves have been confirmed to become endless tonics, the best I can hope for is that my Endless Tonic of the Dragon Emblem Shirt outfit and Endless Tonic of wearing a pair of Boxing Gloves will not overwrite each other, and my Sunglasses armor skin will still be displayed while under effects of the tonic(s).

It’s been confirmed earlier in the thread that endless tonics will still be only one-at-a-time, and I’m pretty sure it would be even harder to make multiple tonics compatible with one another than it would be to make things remain compatible that already are compatible with one another.

PurebladeProductions.4875:

I’ll be looking forward to what new things we’ll get, hopefully good things

Given that the new things are implied to be more outfits, not just in place of town clothes but in place of gem store armor sets that come out in sets of three different weights, I sincerely doubt they will be good things. They will be things that are easier and faster to make, perhaps… but not good things.

cakesphere.5910:

PurebladeProductions.4875:

cakesphere.5910:

I’d like all my kittening money back for all the wardrobe pieces I’ve bought.

To clarify this for everyone, you will only be able to get a refund for town clothes that become endless tonics.

https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/45944258-Town-Clothes

So I won’t even be able to get gems back for the individual pieces? UGH.
Just what I wanted, a bunch of utterly useless clothes that I can’t even get a refund for.

Oh, I intend to file continual daily support tickets and updates until I get my gems back, reminding them each time that while I am doing so, they are not getting any more money from me.

Couldn’t you just make ALL current Town Clothes into armor skins?

FORGET the “costume” junk that has no mix ‘n’ match flexibility.

FORGET the “tonics” that will need to be reapplied every time we zone.

If it takes a little while to “separate” things like the Pirate Costume into individual parts, that’s okay! We’ll wait!

Is there any reason you can’t meet us halfway? Go ahead and combine the Town Clothes with the Armors if you feel you must for some reason. But make it SIMPLER than “costumes” and “Tonics”. Make EVERYTHING an individual armor skin.

Twyll Blackleaf excellent posts. There’s some odd things going on, saying it’s a problem if you can’t tell the difference between weight classes by looks and then letting everyone run into battle as a cook?

I will never buy a complete outfit that cannot be separated. What for, where’s the creativity in that? I was thinking of buying the Aetherblade medium for one part of it, I had looked up the preview codes and was fiddling around with the choices when this bombshell hit. SO GLAD I never bought it.

Lamont.5973:

As I think about this more, here is what really really worries me.

New armor looks were already almost gem store exclusive. The only new ingame armor we have seen since launch is ascended.

Now, instead of having to make 6 pieces of armor for 3 classes and 5 races each time they come up with a new look, all they need to do is design a single look across all three classes and only two (or maybe 3) separate pieces (body, head and gloves [assuming gloves can be hidden like the helm]).

In other words, I think this has nothing to do with “benefits” to the player and is really the first step in avoiding new armor looks. They will simply make new outfits and call it good.

I doubt we will see anymore new armors or armor skins from this point forward other than maybe helms or gloves.

(oops, I see Twyll beat me to it while I was typing)

this does NOT look good for the future of this game.

I really, really hate to be so skeptical— I have been trying so hard to be optimistic about all this and say “Anet will listen to us!” and “we’ll get answers!”— but I am very much afraid you might be right. If the point of Outfits is to make it easier to make armor sets available to ALL armor classes, you’d think mixing and matching would be even more desirable for that feature— unless you want to reduce the time you spend on it so you can make more money for less effort. I hate having to type that! I don’t want to believe a thing like that! But what other explanation is there, if everything in that post by Curtis was true?

I believe this thread may now need to start including not just pictures of people mixing and matching town clothes, but people mixing and matching gem store armors (if they have them. I was planning on buying a gem store armor to use just the skirt for a character in the future… but I guess I won’t be doing that now!).

Edit to add: I’m sure current gem store armors will remain in separate pieces, at least, because it won’t take any— Cogs forbid!— extra work to have them remain that way… I just don’t want to buy that skin now until I see that this Outfit thing really won’t be used in the way we’re now afraid it will be.

Hamfast.8719:

Couldn’t you just make ALL current Town Clothes into armor skins?

FORGET the “costume” junk that has no mix ‘n’ match flexibility.

FORGET the “tonics” that will need to be reapplied every time we zone.

If it takes a little while to “separate” things like the Pirate Costume into individual parts, that’s okay! We’ll wait!

Is there any reason you can’t meet us halfway? Go ahead and combine the Town Clothes with the Armors if you feel you must for some reason. But make it SIMPLER than “costumes” and “Tonics”. Make EVERYTHING an individual armor skin.

I would still dislike this as I actually LIKE having a town clothes set for shenanigans and an all business armor set that I can switch to with the push of a button, but just making them all skins would be better than the way it is now.
I mean, not that much better, but still better.

I still don’t understand what the problem with having a segregated town clothes set and a combat set is in the first place.

Narthexia, I think the Aether stuff won’t be affected by this as it was already made to apply to armor pieces. It’s only town clothes to worry about.

shogei.8015:

Personally, I am happy to shelve my medium armor trench coats for a more uniform system that allows greater mix and match potential. What I don’t want is to say goodbye to my Gogo bunny.

If this patch goes through as planned… Given that you can’t stack endless tonics…

RIP, Gogo bunny :C

Two poster inbound:

We do understand and sincerely apologize that there are creative combinations of town clothes that will not exist anymore. Many have asked why remove town clothes as a concept. It boils down to we believe better armor skinning and the outfit system is something we can add more options to more often and will produce a better supported RP game for everyone with more variety in the future. In short, a healthier game.

While that’s certainly true for the Wardrobe system in regards to Armor, it’s most assuredly not the case with your intent for Town Clothes. You’re not adding more options, and changing Town Clothes into “Outfits” certainly doesn’t change anything that allows you to release them more frequently.

To expand more on what I mean by better support, It helps if you think of town clothes as a 4th weight class of armor. Clothing was meant to offer visual options that break the class roles, however we were never completely happy with the way it was isolated from the rest of the game and still felt largely the same. Many pieces could have easily been mistaken for light or medium armor.

You seem to be seeing a problem here where there is none. Is it bad that clothes could have been mistaken for armor at a glance? Why?

In many ways it was more akin to building an alt character because town-clothes and armor were so separated.

This seems arbitrary. Why is this separation bad?

Additionally, every time we added something to town-clothes, it didn’t really help someone building their light, medium, or heavy look.

Again, why is this bad? Every time you add something to Light armor, it doesn’t help someone build their Medium armor look. Every time you add something to Heavy, it doesn’t help someone building their Town Clothes look.

And there was no way to add combat gear fairly without creating 3 versions on the back end (light, medium, and heavy).

While I can understand this is not ideal on the back end, it’s still leaps and bounds better than removing options on our end.

As a customization platform and sustainable expansion design it left a lot to be desired.

No more so than any other armor slots.

When we started looking at bringing more of the clothing back into armor with mix and match styles there are some fundamental incompatible things between weight classes. (part of how we set up every armor to allow many dye channels and styles per piece)..

You’ve still yet to explain precisely how things are “incompatible.”

There really is no way at this point over six years since we started development to make absolutely everything work together.

This seems like hand waving to me. I sincerely doubt this is a problem the caliber of which is completely insoluble. Of course, that’s difficult to say given you haven’t told us what the problem is other than some nebulous “there’s problems with how they work beyond clipping” or “they’re incompatible.” Elaborate, please.

So we needed something new to continue to grow in the future.

Outfits give us a way to create highly stylized looks that aren’t constrained to armor slots or weight class.

So do armor skins, which can also be used in combat, dyed, and be mixed and matched.

In addition to armor skins that are easier and cheaper to collect across characters and the account dye system we do believe the options across a players whole account are much more attractive now.

They are, for regular armor. For Town Clothes, they’re far less attractive.

You’ll see more outfits coming out this summer and additions to the game more often usable by your characters.

This doesn’t address our concerns in the least, nor does it ameliorate the frustration of being unable to mix and match pieces from outfits.

We try not to allow too much ‘hoarder’ design where we just keep stacking more and more options on leaving lots of unsupported things hanging around. Yes, we do have to give up some of our current closet space and clothing to fit the new wardrobe in. Again, apologies for that.

I’m not seeing where Outfits, a seemingly superfluous system in its entirety, eliminates that “hoarder” design of unsupported aspects (which, btw, were only unsupported when Town Clothes stopped being released) in a way superior or even equitable to turning the clothes into Armor Skins would.

As always we ask you to try out the new system of customization and see what’s available to you.

Even though it’s inferior. Why would people want to do that, and why would it change their opinions on anything?

I think many people will be surprised by how many pieces have become armor compatible.

A list would be nice. I still believe anything less than “all of them” is unacceptable, though.

We hope the benefits to the outfit system and wardrobe in terms of future support and additions will be clear, and you can look forward to more new outfits coming very soon.

The benefits of the Wardrobe system are readily apparent.

There don’t seem to be any benefits to the outfit system, and as such I don’t look forward to any outfits.

Twyll Blackleaf.9641:

Lamont.5973:

As I think about this more, here is what really really worries me.

New armor looks were already almost gem store exclusive. The only new ingame armor we have seen since launch is ascended.

Now, instead of having to make 6 pieces of armor for 3 classes and 5 races each time they come up with a new look, all they need to do is design a single look across all three classes and only two (or maybe 3) separate pieces (body, head and gloves [assuming gloves can be hidden like the helm]).

In other words, I think this has nothing to do with “benefits” to the player and is really the first step in avoiding new armor looks. They will simply make new outfits and call it good.

I doubt we will see anymore new armors or armor skins from this point forward other than maybe helms or gloves.

(oops, I see Twyll beat me to it while I was typing)

this does NOT look good for the future of this game.

I really, really hate to be so skeptical— I have been trying so hard to be optimistic about all this and say “Anet will listen to us!” and “we’ll get answers!”— but I am very much afraid you might be right. If the point of Outfits is to make it easier to make armor sets available to ALL armor classes, you’d think mixing and matching would be even more desirable for that feature— unless you want to reduce the time you spend on it so you can make more money for less effort. I hate having to type that! I don’t want to believe a thing like that! But what other explanation is there, if everything in that post by Curtis was true?

I believe this thread may now need to start including not just pictures of people mixing and matching town clothes, but people mixing and matching gem store armors (if they have them. I was planning on buying a gem store armor to use just the skirt for a character in the future… but I guess I won’t be doing that now!).

Unfortunately, I think we have an example of this in GW1. Once they came out with costumes, as I recall, we saw no new armors. Essentially, costumes just tided players over until GW2.

With no new expansions announced, a living living story that was, well, meh, and now costumes instead of armor, this does not look like a game in which the designers are planning for an extended future.

Lamont.5973:

Twyll Blackleaf.9641:

Lamont.5973:

As I think about this more, here is what really really worries me.

New armor looks were already almost gem store exclusive. The only new ingame armor we have seen since launch is ascended.

Now, instead of having to make 6 pieces of armor for 3 classes and 5 races each time they come up with a new look, all they need to do is design a single look across all three classes and only two (or maybe 3) separate pieces (body, head and gloves [assuming gloves can be hidden like the helm]).

In other words, I think this has nothing to do with “benefits” to the player and is really the first step in avoiding new armor looks. They will simply make new outfits and call it good.

I doubt we will see anymore new armors or armor skins from this point forward other than maybe helms or gloves.

(oops, I see Twyll beat me to it while I was typing)

this does NOT look good for the future of this game.

I really, really hate to be so skeptical— I have been trying so hard to be optimistic about all this and say “Anet will listen to us!” and “we’ll get answers!”— but I am very much afraid you might be right. If the point of Outfits is to make it easier to make armor sets available to ALL armor classes, you’d think mixing and matching would be even more desirable for that feature— unless you want to reduce the time you spend on it so you can make more money for less effort. I hate having to type that! I don’t want to believe a thing like that! But what other explanation is there, if everything in that post by Curtis was true?

I believe this thread may now need to start including not just pictures of people mixing and matching town clothes, but people mixing and matching gem store armors (if they have them. I was planning on buying a gem store armor to use just the skirt for a character in the future… but I guess I won’t be doing that now!).

Unfortunately, I think we have an example of this in GW1. Once they came out with costumes, as I recall, we saw no new armors. Essentially, costumes just tided players over until GW2.

With no new expansions announced, a living living story that was, well, meh, and now costumes instead of armor, this does not look like a game in which the designers are planning for an extended future.

True, but we didn’t start seeing the costume craze until they started the “Guild Wars Beyond” which was long after they stopped focusing on GW and put all their creative effort into GW2. Most of every thing they did after Eye of the North was to hype GW2 and to bring GW oldbies back to the game.

We really won’t see any difference here. As someone already pointed out, the only non-gemstore armor set we have gotten since launch is the ascended armor.

Even my characters doth protest.

You might as well lock and trash this thread, A.net.

Because all you’re going to hear from this point on is blind, seething rage.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

We do understand and sincerely apologize that there are creative combinations of town clothes that will not exist anymore. Many have asked why remove town clothes as a concept. It boils down to we believe better armor skinning and the outfit system is something we can add more options to more often and will produce a better supported RP game for everyone with more variety in the future. In short, a healthier game.

…

This post should have been the article that was put up. I appreciate where you are trying to take this… it would be great if, rather than preset looks, we could create custom outfits out of our stand alone pieces. Think of all the outfits we’d have already designed for you… and I’ll think of that same number and realize that that is a ton of combos that you’d have to deal with adding to the new system.

I yield this round to the devs, but I still will want this look for my thief…

Any chance of taking any ideas from the pictures and making them into outfits for the game? Please? There are a few in this thread that I’d really like to see preserved.

I guess you aren’t a single skrit working in isolation after all.

chemiclord.3978:

You might as well lock and trash this thread, A.net.

Because all you’re going to hear from this point on is blind, seething rage.

you may have been one post too soon, sorry.

chemiclord.3978:

You might as well lock and trash this thread, A.net.

Because all you’re going to hear from this point on is blind, seething rage.

I object, good sir! (assuming sir because “lord”)

My rage may be seething, but it is certainly not blind!

In fact, I rather wish I did not see what I do see. I’d rather go back to having blind, happy calm rather than alert, seething rage. I don’t want to have to start figuratively jumping at every noise and checking every shadow because some highly discouraging things were implied by game creators I really want to trust.

I really hope I’m seeing things that aren’t there and inferring inferences that weren’t implied. I really really hope that’s the case. But I don’t know if I can be optimistic about it at this point.

Curtis Johnson.8456
Snipped

Thank you for your response. Given in mind everything you have stated, I am interested in exactly what the justification was in creating and releasing for sale mix-and-match Halloween and Wintersday town clothes when the loss of functionality of those as separate, mix-and-match pieces was in jeopardy, as the changes to the town clothes system in the upcoming release and loss of town close was undoubtedly in the planning stages when those items were offered for sale?

Sir Lysander.9842:

Curtis Johnson.8456
Snipped

Thank you for your response. Given in mind everything you have stated, I am interested in exactly what the justification was in creating and releasing for sale mix-and-match Halloween and Wintersday town clothes when the loss of functionality of those as separate, mix-and-match pieces was in jeopardy, as the changes to the town clothes system in the upcoming release and loss of town close was undoubtedly in the planning stages when those items were offered for sale?

I honestly wonder if they have any idea what most people do with this stuff. Maybe they are so far removed as to not know that people don’t use complete sets and didn’t have a clue that people would be upset that this stuff and future stuffs was going to be one skin covers all.

A feature patch that removes features. Huh. Way to innovate the industry yet again Anet.

Apologize by refunding all my costumes. This is just absolutely frustrating, but I guess I’ve already become accustomed to this. If TESO pushed Anet to push out this “features” patch, maybe Wildstar will force town clothing back into the game. I admit, it was nice having those outfits once upon a time, but I guess that’s come to an end. Farewell, awesome customizable outfits!

Oh, and with all this talk about “muh clipping is ruining muh gaem”, maybe you guys should look at the Charr. Are we going to be in danger of losing an entire race because of it? Last time I checked, their cultural still clips on them. I also agree with what others have said. This really sets a very poor precedent for the future, as costume outfits were basically the last leg for GW1. I really want to be wrong, but I just don’t know anymore.

Twyll, your dismissal of Curtis’ whole reasoning was really funny to read and spot on.

Curtis, thanks for answering in this thread. It is good to know that the devs read our concerns. But honestly your explanation seems to demostrate that you – and I mean ArenaNet with that – are confused about why you had town clothes in the first place and what you wanted to achieve with them.
You say town clothes don’t help people to form the light, medium or heavy look. Yeah, of course, because that’s the purpose of town clothes. They ought to help form people’s town clothes look.
The main reason I bought town clothes was so that my warrior could wear something else than heavy armor while visiting a city or so that my necro could wear trousers.

Look, other games which have much, much, much better costume systems than GW2, allow players to wear alternative armor or costumes for visual effect only, therefore increasing the incentive to get a variety of skins. The only thing GW2, a game that supposedly centers on skins, had as a comparable feature was town clothes. And now you’re scrapping that feature for confused reasons, while other games expand and improve such features to the enjoyment of their players.
This is just… not reasonable.

Sir Lysander.9842:

Thank you for your response. Given in mind everything you have stated, I am interested in exactly what the justification was in creating and releasing for sale mix-and-match Halloween and Wintersday town clothes when the loss of functionality of those as separate, mix-and-match pieces was in jeopardy, as the changes to the town clothes system in the upcoming release and loss of town close was undoubtedly in the planning stages when those items were offered for sale?

You raise a good question, sir. They say this system has been in the planning stages since the wallet dropped last year. If I recall correctly, the wallet dropped in the spring. BEFORE the new town clothes were made available. Honestly, I was hoping for some sort of compromise or something, but I’m back to wanting to pull my hair out over trying to understand why, in wanting to offer more customization options for our characters, you would take away the chief avenue of customization we as character creators had to begin with. Believe it or not, a troupe of characters all wearing the same outfit but dyed different colours is still a troupe of characters all wearing the same one-piece, all-or-nothing, cookie cutter outfit. Just because it’s in a different colour does not mean that it is unique. Also, by making it so that costumes such as the cooks outfit, the pirate outfit, and the halloween costumes are available as armor skin, you adding less variety, especially since they will be made available for each armor class. This is ridiculous. You seem to be convinced that you are moving foreward, but all I can see is regression.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

-snip-

Honestly at it’s best this is a bit of a copout. You’re saying “give us a chance” but it’s very clear from the attitudes displayed in explaining and responding to this issue that no one at ArenaNet really cares what people think. You seem to not care that you’ve alienated a large portion of the playerbase, and that the tonic solution for some of these items improves nothing for anybody. I get that the dragon emblem T-shirt is now a tonic, that’s fine. It was always a promotional item not tied to gemstore purchases, etc….

Why the heck are the hoodies going into the same system? that makes no sense whatsoever. What about the Cargo Shorts, and Riding Pants/Gloves/Boots? Are they going to be tonics as well? Because if they are, what on earth do you expect us to do with a tonic for a pair of pants or shoes that you’ve already stated won’t match up with the other gear slots they’re supposed to go with? So far every item you’ve given an example for as a skin is a hat. It’s genuinely like you guys said “screw it, we already got their money, and even if we give them gems back, we still have their money.”

What I don’t get about all this with the town clothes is you guys did SO WELL with everything else on this patch. The dyes, the skins overall…. That was all great, so why even mess with this stuff? It didn’t need to be changed, all this nonsense about a “fourth layer” of gear or whatever aside, it blows my mind that you guys could do so great with almost every other aspect of this upcoming patch and fail so monumentally here. It’s like this was just phoned in because “nobody cares about townclothes.”

Oh, for the record, when you “sincerely apologize” about something, and it’s obvious that you really don’t care, and are just coming up with excuses that don’t even make sense (town clothes don’t match the light/heavy armor scheme? OF COURSE THEY DON’T the whole point is to have a break from that), no one is actually going to believe in the false sincerity you claim to have.

Those glasses are definitely “single items”, as described in the blog post. They’re not part of a costume set.

The hoodie they described as becoming tonics was also a “single item.” As usual their communication is vague and contradictory with itself.

ASaturnus.4980:

Twyll, your dismissal of Curtis’ whole reasoning was really funny to read and spot on.

Curtis, thanks for answering in this thread. It is good to know that the devs read our concerns. But honestly your explanation seems to demostrate that you – and I mean ArenaNet with that – are confused about why you had town clothes in the first place and what you wanted to achieve with them.
You say town clothes don’t help people to form the light, medium or heavy look. Yeah, of course, because that’s the purpose of town clothes. They ought to help form people’s town clothes look.
The main reason I bought town clothes was so that my warrior could wear something else than heavy armor while visiting a city or so that my necro could wear trousers.

Look, other games which have much, much, much better costume systems than GW2, allow players to wear alternative armor or costumes for visual effect only, therefore increasing the incentive to get a variety of skins. The only thing GW2, a game that supposedly centers on skins, had as a comparable feature was town clothes. And now you’re scrapping that feature for confused reasons, while other games expand and improve such features to the enjoyment of their players.
This is just… not reasonable.

Bolding that point for emphasis. I think that’s pretty much what a lot of people are trying to say, here.