Guild Wars 2

Seriously. It’s been brought up many times, but it needs to be said again. Please, for all the love on Gods earth, stop with just releasing costumes without any option at all to get the respective skins unlocked.

Over the years I’ve bought quite some skin-set just because I wanted a specific skin out of it. I’ve bought transmutation-charges to fit my newly obtained skin to the items I wanted (aside the one free appearance change for one item that came with buying the skins). I also bought a few costumes, but that’s not worth mentioning compared to what I’d surely spend in gems and charges if I just could buy skin-sets.
Right now I’d like Taimis boots or the vest from the Doomsday-package.

Of course it’s, as ANet had once stated, easier (cheaper and faster eventually) to create set packs of costumes. But for a game that once claimed to have a vast and great character customization, it became quite dull.

So please, take the time to create skin-sets again, if possible also for the already available costumes and all new. It sure takes a few more resources to create seperate usable ones, but many people will buy them plus the transmutation-charges.

Satisfied customers and profit. It’s a win/win.

//Edit:
Whilst we’re at it, consider changing the availability of lower armour tiers for higher armoured characters.
Heavy can also use medium and light.
Medium can also use light.
Light stays light.

But more separate skins first, please.

MO has stated that it takes roughly 10 times the man hours to create a mix and match armor set, really 3 sets one for each weight.

With an outfit costing 700 gems while each of the three weights cost 800 gems. It’s easy to see at those prices that they need to sell fewer outfits to pay off the development costs than the three armor skins. The sooner it’s development is paid off, the sooner ANet profits from developing that new item.

Behellagh.1468:

MO has stated that it takes roughly 10 times the man hours to create a mix and match armor set, really 3 sets one for each weight.

With an outfit costing 700 gems while each of the three weights cost 800 gems. It’s easy to see at those prices that they need to sell fewer outfits to pay off the development costs than the three armor skins. The sooner it’s development is paid off, the sooner ANet profits from developing that new item.

I’m not sure where you got the 10x figure, but it is true that MO mentioned that armor sets are more difficult to make. Whatever the case, Armor sets have the mix and match advantage, which means that saturating the game with them is much more difficult.

Since outfits cover your entire body, you don’t need to buy that many, so their appeal gets lost quickly. The fact that you can’t save dyes on specific outfits does not help either.

Reddit AMA from March.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0o34v3/?context=3

I have defended ArenaNet before as I actually do understand their reasons for it. There is also the fact that the game is build around attracting new players which most commonly purchase outfits. It makes sense.

But even with all of that, I still feel like they underestimate the mix-matching factor of armor sets a little. Many sets are being bought for one of the pieces only.
Phoenix lightarmor boots, Phalanx heavy pants and Aether Blade heavy pants are just the first ones to come to mind.
And even if you liked the full set but ended up getting bored of it like you do with the outfits, those pieces will stop people from feeling like they simply wasted money on something they never use. They gained many great options to mix-and-match with.
This is the reason why I do not bother to buy outfits. I like it, I get bored of it quickly, I do not really use it again.

Additionally, I wonder who else feels the same way that they would have bought many of the outfits if they actually were armor skins. There is usually a piece or two that we really like and would love to have as a seperate skin.

considering how devoted to skins and customization this game is, you would think they would spend more time on it.

Frenchtoastersticks.8061:

considering how devoted to skins and customization this game is, you would think they would spend more time on it.

THEY’RE EXPENSIVE TO MAKE.

ANet would have to sell 9 times as much armor simply to pay off the cost of development versus outfits. It’s simple math. The Gem Shop pays for the game’s continued development. They can’t have a new item take forever to pay off it’s development, it’s income needs to feed the rest of development. That’s why they are holding off full armor sets to paid expansions.

They can’t change the math.

just refuse to buy outfits.
“oh its just easier to churn out outfits.” is not an acceptable answer imho.
this is an MMO, character customisation is one of the most important aspects.
a large portion of the playerbase is done seeing one-piece cashgrabs coming out every few weeks while the pool of new armour choices remains derelict and barren.

so yeah, just boycot outfits.
or if on the rare occasion, one comes out that you actually want, convert gold.
but above all else, make sure they don’t make money from outfits.

Behellagh.1468:

That’s why they are holding off full armor sets to paid expansions.

They can’t change the math.

we can’t change the math either, 3…that is how many armour sets you got for $60 per weight class from HoT.

saying “oh they’ll release them with the expansions” only works when they do what other MMOs do and release a plethora of them, not THREE.

I see a lot of dislike for outfits on the forum and people saying they don’t buy and won’t wear. But when I’m in game I frequently see players wearing outfits. I’ll be in a group of people and look around and see, this person is wearing an outfit and that person is wearing an outfit. I also see how frequently new outfits arrive in the gem store and I know that businesses don’t keep on selling things unless they are making good money off them. I suspect that outfits are much more popular than people who dislike them think.

People who dislike them are often very vocal and post why. But people who like them, they don’t start threads saying they like outfits and they don’t post in threads that don’t like outfits because liking outfits is more passive and they don’t have the arguments about outfits.

I do like some of the costumes myself, and I’ve bought quite some too already. But I’ve bought and always will buy more skins than costumes. For the sole reason that I like to mix them with other gear to create a more unique, and to me satisfying, look for my character.
So no disliking of costumes from me. I’d just love to see them also released as skin-packs so we can use single parts out of them instead of being forced a full unchangable outfit. And I’m sure I’m not the only one looking at is this way.

//Edit:
And nobody can tell me that selling skin-packs, despite the more effort it is to create them, isn’t profitable. It’s just -not as profitable- as just selling costumes. That’s min/max’ing profits here, nothing else. ANet used to be a tad different in that regard, but obviously that has changed.
I also see a lot of people wearing costumes, but I see even more that use a singular skin out of an once or still today available skin-pack. So people buy both.
As was said, for a game that’s so much about character customization by the looks of ones avatar, it’s quite disturbing that we’re not given more options to truely style our characters.

Their policy has been changed to outfits in the gemstore, armor in the game. If, as they say, a set of armor for a 3 armor weights, 5 races and 2 sexes takes 9 months to make then all the wishing in the world isn’t going to get armor made faster. In the meantime outfits are cheap and easy to make and brings them needed money. So, any people calling for no more/fewer outfits and more armor are not going to get either.

That’s just not true. They need to make the costume also fit for 5 races and 2 sexes. Just the 3 armour weights don’t account into the time needed to make them. And splitting the outfit into several parts isn’t that much of an issue. It’s cutting the already created mesh and setting the new items an ID. What does take more time is recreating the armour to be differently looking for the 3 armour weights. If they all would look the same, there would be not much more effort needed in creation.

Outfits don’t have seams. They don’t have natural cutoff points because they were made to be continuous pieces where elements of the outfit flow across what is a boundary in armor. You can’t take a “pair of scissors” and make identical cuts across outfits of varying styles where there is no cutoff points of design and make the pieces from different outfits fit together. They’ll have design elements suddenly cut off or suddenly start and it won’t look good. If they try to respect one outfits cutoff points then it won’t match another’s.

In addition, not only would it require the remake of every outfit in game, it would require the remake of the hero panel to make a brand new wardrobe for the outfits and a remake of the hero panel so that there is now a section to apply outfit pieces to the char just like there’s a armor pieces section.

So, not much effort? That’s reworking all the outfits to cut up designs that weren’t made to be sectioned and fit with other outfits, and reworking the hero panel to add both a wardrobe and a new outfit section.

Edit: it would also require reworking the outfit dye sections as currently it’s set up as 4 panels that dyes across the whole outfit in different places and where it dyes is different for each outfit.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Their policy has been changed to outfits in the gemstore, armor in the game. If, as they say, a set of armor for a 3 armor weights, 5 races and 2 sexes takes 9 months to make then all the wishing in the world isn’t going to get armor made faster. In the meantime outfits are cheap and easy to make and brings them needed money. So, any people calling for no more/fewer outfits and more armor are not going to get either.

The 3 armor weights thing does not affect profits, because they sell each weight seperately. The whole 9 months estimate also assumes making all 3 weights, and does not count the manpower of the gemstore team, since the gemstore team is not currently working on armors. Also, there may be a decent amount of people who use outfits, but that doesn’t mean that they will keep buying outfits. Since oufits cannot be mixed, there is less incentive to keep buying additional ones once you have a good amount of them.

Sure, armor sets will cost more to make even with all that I said above, but there is some merit to making them, especially once player outfit wardrobes saturate.

Cutting an existing mesh is just that. And it fits perfectly together later, so there’s no excuse here. What may be needed is blending the edges of the texture a bit to cover the cutting lines, but that isn’t much more than a days work (max: if done properly) for a gifted designer.
It also doesn’t need an extension of the hero panel as those items would be armour skins and just fit in with the existing armour panel.

Regardless of what we see as the effort needed would be, there’s metric tons of people that’ll buy those skin-packs just to have a particular skin for a set item available. People have done it before and with more skins released, will do so again – buying sets for one or more separate skins to mix-match their appearance. They’ll also buy transmutation-charges to use those skins on other characters. They’ll eventually also buy one particular outfit as a whole should they really like it.
Matter of fact is, the effort in creating such skins definitely is covered by the money people will put out to obtain those, it’s eventually just not as much profit as one can make with just creating a costume and charging the same amount of gems.

We all love ANet for their content and their game. We like them for the way they’ve so far, within the boundaries of a company, tried to listen. We accept their decisions and still support their game. But paying one guy solely employed to make the costumes fit for use as armour skins isn’t too much asked by the profit we generate them.

I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t matter if it’s armor or outfit, so long as it looks good and unique looking, I’ll sport it and buy it. Mix and match is nice but not if they don’t blend very well.

I don’t mind either, my main annoyance is that most outfits doesn’t let you disable shoulders and gloves. If they did that I’d like a lot of them much more. Would love to see full head/shoulder/hand on/off as per normal armors.

And still want GW1 style outfit options for on/off for city/combat-maps. And hopefully also separate all head gear from outfits, so you can wear ANY headgear with any outfit etc. Oh and make more of the old Town Clothes into outfits (anything else is not going to happen, unfortunately).

So,…
- give us a new tab for town clothing, like we had during the beginning times of the game
- give us the choice to obtain costumes also as skin-packs

alternatively:
- give us the option to toggle all slots of a costume on/off and also a second option there to toggle if we want to show nothing or the item of our current actual armour

I’d like to be able to wear different helm armor with the outfits. Like wearing the glasses or bunny ears. My toon wears glasses, it would be nice to have his same look when wearing and outfit. Just being able to have that option would be a nice help.

Nejra Korjenic.5238:

So,…
- give us a new tab for town clothing, like we had during the beginning times of the game
- give us the choice to obtain costumes also as skin-packs

alternatively:
- give us the option to toggle all slots of a costume on/off and also a second option there to toggle if we want to show nothing or the item of our current actual armour

Unfortunately:
- They moved away from that system entirely in favor of costumes, it won’t return ever. No matter how much we beg and whine.
- That would require even more work than making the skin packs in the first place, not going to happen.
- Not possible either, the costumes are made as a complete set, many of them doesn’t have anything at all under the shoulder-pads etc. It would unfortunately be too much work for what it is worth (for them, they’re a company). Afaik there is no possible way to even accomplish mixing armor/outfit parts like that, the game can’t do it the way it’s setup.

I’m not happy about these things either, but if we’re going to ask for something, it would be better to ask for something that has a chance of happening.

joneirikb.7506:

Nejra Korjenic.5238:

So,…
- give us a new tab for town clothing, like we had during the beginning times of the game
- give us the choice to obtain costumes also as skin-packs

alternatively:
- give us the option to toggle all slots of a costume on/off and also a second option there to toggle if we want to show nothing or the item of our current actual armour

Unfortunately:
- They moved away from that system entirely in favor of costumes, it won’t return ever. No matter how much we beg and whine.
- That would require even more work than making the skin packs in the first place, not going to happen.
- Not possible either, the costumes are made as a complete set, many of them doesn’t have anything at all under the shoulder-pads etc. It would unfortunately be too much work for what it is worth (for them, they’re a company). Afaik there is no possible way to even accomplish mixing armor/outfit parts like that, the game can’t do it the way it’s setup.

I’m not happy about these things either, but if we’re going to ask for something, it would be better to ask for something that has a chance of happening.

Two outfit improvements that could happen are:

-Enabling helmet skins to be used with the outfit, since the head of the outfit can be hidden already.
-Saving dyejobs to particular outfits, to make swapping them more convenient. Right now, swapping them is only convenient if they are undyed or if you want all of them to have the same colors.

Behellagh.1468:

Frenchtoastersticks.8061:

considering how devoted to skins and customization this game is, you would think they would spend more time on it.

THEY’RE EXPENSIVE TO MAKE.

ANet would have to sell 9 times as much armor simply to pay off the cost of development versus outfits. It’s simple math. The Gem Shop pays for the game’s continued development. They can’t have a new item take forever to pay off it’s development, it’s income needs to feed the rest of development. That’s why they are holding off full armor sets to paid expansions.

They can’t change the math.

you dont need to yell i can read. but not only does the expense of it not change what i said but it just isnt an excuse. This game revolves a lot around character appearance, outfits getting split is unlikely and thats fine but ONLY making new outfits when plenty of people would rather have separate sets is silly. they lose customers by not making separate sets but i highly doubt they lose as many the other way around.

I’m not so fond of outfits either, because I usually think they’re dull or just not worth it, compared to the possibilities given by armor set, mix and matching and colour playing.

Of course, I’d love to be able to use only one part of outfits in an armor set, and I understand it’s easier to make, hence easier to get a steady flow of money. So, they should have a bigger staff dedicated to skins ; they just won’t hire anyone.

A possible solution for more money would be to use the wardrobe tab :

• For each of the icons in it (weapons skins, amor skins, outfits, gliders, as well as dyes), add a right-click option “buy for x gems”.
• Prices would depend on given item : droppable, craftable, dungeon, PvP WvW, racial, BLTC only etc.
• BLTC would provide discounts : specific sylvari bundle : 10% off !
• Incentive would be more collections.

Look at HoT release, we barely got new gear and weapons.
Meanwhile, every other MMO gets new sets and weapons with expansions. Even games with a smaller dev team.

Another reason why HoT is a failure in my eyes and no more than a half-baked DLC