Guild Wars 2

The part that makes me cry, is that the people who asked to wear Town Clothes in combat wanted more variety in what they could wear.

Now they have hats. That is about the only thing that got turned into armor skins. I’m sure they are as happy with the results as the rest of us.

This was by far the worst part of this update. I Lost my Pirate outfits.

Nerf the individual Town Clothes?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-15-2014/first#post3896029

Town clothes have been replaced by the wardrobe and outfits as a way to customize characters in and out of combat.

Some single-piece town clothes that are no longer available have been converted to endless tonics that transform the player into a complete casual look, including that single piece of clothing.

The single-piece town clothes were nerfed?

The Town Clothes section has been removed. The single-piece clothing has been converted into potions. The potions last 15 minutes. Those potions choose the rest of your outfit for you. And those outfits can’t be dyed…

Why not just convert all of the single-piece town clothes into their own individual armor skins? If someone bought a Striped Silk Vest with Shirt, why not stick it in the new Wardrobe under ‘Chest’? If someone bought the Khaki Cargo Shorts, why not put it in the new Wardrobe under ‘Leggings’? Do one of the programmer’s think there would be some sort of exploit in doing this?

The way this was handled seems so lazy. Every shirt gets matched up to the same Riding Gloves, Riding Boots, and Riding Pants. The Khaki Shorts get paired with a fitted casual shirt that gives the impression that it’s really cold out here, but it’s summer from the waist down.

Also, I’ve heard that you can apply for a refund on your town clothes, but you only get your money back in Gems. That’s not a refund. That’s trading in your cosmetic clothing for something else in the online store. :/

The million-dollar question is this, what was the point of dropping the old town clothes system? I know the full costumes have been moved to the new Outfit section, but the single-piece town clothes are not part of the new wardrobe system (like I expected) and are a potion instead. All of the old limitations are still there. If you attack anything your town clothes wear off. If a mob hits you your town clothes wear off. So what was the purpose of converting town clothes into tonics? Surely someone at ArenaNet can give us a reason for this?

Unless this gets fixed in a future patch I will never spend cash on GW2 Gems ever again. I know a lot of other people feel the same way, and I doubt the goal of selling micro-transaction fluff is to drive business away. When you troll your own consumer base, you begin your own death spiral.

PS – I am not a roleplayer, this effects everyone who buys fluff.

Gwen, I too like mixing and matching outfits. Previously, I could sort-of do it with the Town clothes (limited to other town clothes I had acquired), and now that mixing and matching is gone. Honestly, tho, I hadn’t done much with the town clothes… there wasn’t much I could kill while wearing them. No different than tonics. I still can’t kill much while wearing those one-piece items. ‘Boo?’ but I know there are some constraints in mixing and matching armor sets. There was a time where you could preview your heavy leggins with a light armor chestpiece and medium gloves. Then it was found that bugged in bad ways. I won’t twist Anets arm for failing to add an EXTRA feature. but yes, you did lose the ability to mix and match town clothes… perhaps that particular bit can be re-introduced? Let us mix and match pieces from town clothing, much like we can do wit hPvE/PvP armor today?

Gwen.7981:

Nerf the individual Town Clothes?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-April-15-2014/first#post3896029

Town clothes have been replaced by the wardrobe and outfits as a way to customize characters in and out of combat.

Some single-piece town clothes that are no longer available have been converted to endless tonics that transform the player into a complete casual look, including that single piece of clothing.

The single-piece town clothes were nerfed?

The Town Clothes section has been removed. The single-piece clothing has been converted into potions. The potions last 15 minutes. Those potions choose the rest of your outfit for you. And those outfits can’t be dyed…

Why not just convert all of the single-piece town clothes into their own individual armor skins? If someone bought a Striped Silk Vest with Shirt, why not stick it in the new Wardrobe under ‘Chest’? If someone bought the Khaki Cargo Shorts, why not put it in the new Wardrobe under ‘Leggings’? Do one of the programmer’s think there would be some sort of exploit in doing this?

The way this was handled seems so lazy. Every shirt gets matched up to the same Riding Gloves, Riding Boots, and Riding Pants. The Khaki Shorts get paired with a fitted casual shirt that gives the impression that it’s really cold out here, but it’s summer from the waist down.

Also, I’ve heard that you can apply for a refund on your town clothes, but you only get your money back in Gems. That’s not a refund. That’s trading in your cosmetic clothing for something else in the online store. :/

The million-dollar question is this, what was the point of dropping the old town clothes system? I know the full costumes have been moved to the new Outfit section, but the single-piece town clothes are not part of the new wardrobe system (like I expected) and are a potion instead. All of the old limitations are still there. If you attack anything your town clothes wear off. If a mob hits you your town clothes wear off. So what was the purpose of converting town clothes into tonics? Surely someone at ArenaNet can give us a reason for this?

Unless this gets fixed in a future patch I will never spend cash on GW2 Gems ever again. I know a lot of other people feel the same way, and I doubt the goal of selling micro-transaction fluff is to drive business away. When you troll your own consumer base, you begin your own death spiral.

PS – I am not a roleplayer, this effects everyone who buys fluff.

I held A button, and pressed Start…

Alas however,

…The patch was to strong…

Okay, I’m getting refunds for all the townclothes I bought (and yeah, it was a lot) and I’d resigned myself to that.

But my sylvari starter bikini turned into a tonic. And UNDYABLE RED AND BLACK tonic.

Most of my characters are sylvari. Why didn’t you guys make the default dye on sylvari leaves… you know, LEAF COLORS? Or just take the tone from the skin, the way some of the cultural armor does?

I was resigned to losing my townclothes because all of my sylvari at least could still wear their original townclothes, but now I can’t even use them! They look HORRIBLE on all my sylvari.

Can we PLEASE get those turned into outfits so we can dye them? Please?

I don’t really care about cosmetic changes, I wanted them to open a new section of the map.

I can’t describe how much I dislike this feature pack for the reasons below. You’re in the process of ruining a game that we loved. It’s really sad.

(Loosing town clothes mix and match, loosing town clothes color changes on some and limited color changes on others, the new interface is terribly confusing and difficult to use, it’s really easy to accidentally transmute things now, can’t use glasses/sunglasses with town clothes outfits… to name a few of the things that I hate most.)

Please… we loved the game the way it was. Stop making things “better”.

BTW, was the personality Charm, Dignity, Ferocity thing removed with this feature pack? If so… why?? I enjoyed this feature. Maybe the icons have just been moved someplace that I haven’t looked yet.

Willowfalls.9814:

BTW, was the personality Charm, Dignity, Ferocity thing removed with this feature pack? If so… why?? I enjoyed this feature. Maybe the icons have just been moved someplace that I haven’t looked yet.

They’re gone. #OperationEradicateAllRPers

Feycat.4370:

But my sylvari starter bikini turned into a tonic. And UNDYABLE RED AND BLACK tonic.

Ughh… I hadn’t logged on to my sylvari yet, so I wasn’t thinking about this. Every time I turn around, this nightmare gets worse. It’s amazing… in a single patch, they managed to remove all my motivation to play.

I wonder how many times arena net will ruin the game by patching the game to make more profit from gems …

I want my gold back i used it to buy gems now i have to pay transmutation stones to make my skins work never !!!

I like the new wardrobe even if it has some flaws. Playing around with the skins and dyes on my toons is really great. But there is one major flaw: the weapon preview. Holstered weapons dont show their special effects and smaller weapons get covered by your cloth so you dont see any preview. Hope this will be fixed.

Love the fact that I no longer have to fill my inventory/bank with useless gear just to keep the skins I want available. For me, this has actually made collecting skins a viable activity (wasn’t before due to inventory restrictions). So imo the new wardrobe system is a vast improvement in this area.

However, was never happy with GW2’s nickel-and-dime approach to monetizing every cosmetic change, and this hasn’t changed for me. In fact, as others have pointed out, things seem to have got worse for leveling characters due to only one charge for map completion instead of 3 stones under the old system. After experiencing the wardrobe systems in DCUO (once a skin is unlocked, you can swap skins any time you like for free) and LOTRO, this still feels archaic and restrictive to me.

I’m really disappointed in this one Anet. Let me just say that I don’t uber enjoy town clothes or outfits as some on here do, but I did pay for a few items I thought were fun over the last year and a half. This is all about expectation at the time of purchase. I purchased my riding pants set to use as town clothes and cruise around on my kittened broom. I’m not even upset with the change to the system, if it was needed to fix the backend systems of the game. The problem I have is that I have to ask for a refund. You knew you were going to drop this bomb on the community and that the new system would no longer meet those previous expectations. Yet we have to ask for the refund? You should have foreseen this and issued the refunds at the time of go-live for the patch. Weak sauce Anet…

The issue i have is that i dont think ANet took into consideration the people who transmute their gear ( 6-8 peices) 6-7 times while lvling. I would hit lvl 11 find gear i like and how i wanted my char to look and the that is how my char would look while i lvl’ed . That was one of the things i loved about this game, you could be a lvl 15 but still look good as opposed to other games where you look like a clown while you lvl’ed up.

While i lvl’ed, i got 3 stones for exploration of cities and countless others through other means so i had plenty to transmute my gear a number of times while i lvl’ed. Now if i want to do that i have to keep remaking chars and mindlessly explore cities for hours to get the number of charges i would need to do the same thing that i have been doing or i can buy them in the gem store and since i dont spend real money on this stuff i have to use gold.

Now the exchange for gold to gems is ridiculous and the amount of gold i would have spend converting it to gems is equally ridiculous. i love lvling alts and doing it the way ive grown used to while i played this game and ANet has taken that from me and killed an aspect of the game that i enjoyed. Way to go.

Feycat.4370:

Okay, I’m getting refunds for all the townclothes I bought (and yeah, it was a lot) and I’d resigned myself to that.

But my sylvari starter bikini turned into a tonic. And UNDYABLE RED AND BLACK tonic.

Most of my characters are sylvari. Why didn’t you guys make the default dye on sylvari leaves… you know, LEAF COLORS? Or just take the tone from the skin, the way some of the cultural armor does?

I was resigned to losing my townclothes because all of my sylvari at least could still wear their original townclothes, but now I can’t even use them! They look HORRIBLE on all my sylvari.

Can we PLEASE get those turned into outfits so we can dye them? Please?

I know, right? And we can’t even ask for refunds for those basic town clothes, because they weren’t bought in the gem store. But to me, they were a majorly appealing part of the unique feel of each of the races.

This change to the basic racial townclothes feels, to me, as if they suddenly turned all Cultural Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 armor into undyable, unmatchable, black and red tonics. It’s beyond unacceptable.

Awbee.8405:

This change to the basic racial townclothes feels, to me, as if they suddenly turned all Cultural Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 armor into undyable, unmatchable, black and red tonics. It’s beyond unacceptable.

You forgot “and lasting for 15 minutes”.

Hystery.8415:

Awbee.8405:

This change to the basic racial townclothes feels, to me, as if they suddenly turned all Cultural Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 armor into undyable, unmatchable, black and red tonics. It’s beyond unacceptable.

You forgot “and lasting for 15 minutes”.

Oh, of course! It’s such an engaging mechanic to keep you on your toes during gameplay! Feel the thrill as you forget to click your Tier 3 tonic in your dungeon of choice! Pure adrenaline! It’s a FEATURE, not a bug!

… on another note, I also can’t refund my Wintersday dress, because it’s not a tonic.

I really wonder if outfits will be popular. They are so incredibly lacking in customization, it boggles my mind. I would in theory have liked to wear the pirate pants on a Light armor character of mine, seeing how they’re actual pants, which is a nice variety for light armor characters. But I can’t combine them with any other piece of armor. I also can’t combine them with any other outfit / former town clothes piece. I can only wear the full set. That is so incredibly boring.

That also means there is zero to look for with regards to outfit, at least when you enjoy your character not looking like a clone of 1000 other characters. So what if they release school girl outfits or posh clothing outfits or whatever else. You will never be able to combine those with anything else, you will always have the exact same look as everyone else. What is the point?

Awbee.8405:

… on another note, I also can’t refund my Wintersday dress, because it’s not a tonic.

Reopen your ticket. You should be allowed a refund for it.

Stated here by Michael Henninger, the Game Support Lead:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Customer-Support-and-the-Feature-Pack/first

Hello, everyone! We wanted to take a minute to let you know about a couple of item types that we’ll be doing refunds for after the feature pack is live. We will be granting refunds for the following items:

Gem refunds for items you are unhappy with due to changes in the way the item functions:

• Tonics that used to be Town Clothes that were purchased in the Gem Store
• Outfits that used to be Town Clothes that were purchased in the Gem Store

Duplicate Gem Store Purchase Refunds:

• Duplicates skins that were purchased in the Gem Store
• Duplicates of Tonics/Outfits that were purchased from the Gem Store

Bolded the important parts. They say they WILL give you a refund for outfits. Send them that link in response and that quote and show them that Anet has already stated that we WILL get refunds for them, not that we might.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Bolded the important parts. They say they WILL give you a refund for outfits. Send them that link in response and that quote and show them that Anet has already stated that we WILL get refunds for them, not that we might.

Ah, thanks! I didn’t know that. I guess earmuffs are un-refundable though, because they were turned into armor? Genius decision, cause the only thing I ever wanted to wear the earmuffs with was the Wintersday dress … and I’m pretty sure those were meant and designed to be worn together, since they were released on the exact same day, both as town clothes.

I probably won’t ask for a refund on either though. I have no use for their gems. I’m not logging in again until they fix this. If they do fix it, I’ll want to use my Wintersday dress again. If they don’t fix it, I won’t ever use their gems again anyways.

Achievement Skins (Hall of Monuments and Zenith skins, for example) cost 0 transmutation charges.

Anyone else think LS event skins (Scarlet’s mask, injector backpack, etc) should also cost 0? And one “baseline” starter set for each armor type (light, medium, heavy) and weapon to cost 0 for those that want a consistent look for free until they hit level 80?

The conversion rate is insane. A few days ago I was able to make my level 20’s look cool for the cost of 6 transmutation stones per outfit, today I have to pay 18 stones. I have a bunch of level 20 alts and I waited for this wardrobe system because I thought it would be easier (and it is). I love knowing what it’ll look like beforehand, but that really isn’t worth the cost of 12 extra stones per character.
Can’t it be 1/3rd of a transmutation charge to transmutate gear under level 80? I can’t see how it isn’t implemented like this, I certainly did not expect this. Makes no sense at all to me.

I still dont get it they knew this was going to happend, they knew that people were going to rage about this. they also knew they couldent make all towncloths into outfits so they turned them into the one thing that people never liked tonics and decided to do it anyways couldent they have experimented with it them selfs and fix all the bugs that this sistem would bring for us with out just slaping it in our faces. Did they even try to get real gamers to test this befor puting it out?

Here is what I honestly do no understand, so please bear with me Anet:

Prior to the update town clothes were their own separate pieces. I’m not talking about what was bought from the store. I’m just talking about the clothes you literally start the game with on your character. Those town clothes.

They were individual pieces. WHY then could you not just turn those into skins? What possible logic would there be not to turn those into skins with a flag on them that made it so they could only apply to the particular race/gender they belonged to?

That’s what I don’t get either. Before, the town clothes were a toggle. Nifty by itself, but they seemed to want to make them into something better. Instead, the programmers got lazy and changed them into potions. I would view the different options like this:

BEST Town clothing is reskinable from the wardrobe for free
GOOD Town clothes have their own inventory, can be switched via a toggle (old system)
BAD Town clothing is reskinable from the wardrobe with $$$ transmutation charges
WORST Town clothes are a 15-minute potion (new system)

It doesn’t make any sense. They could do a rollback and the system would get better.

This is the equivalent of removing the /dance emote from the game and giving the reason “we believe using emotes 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.”

By the way, that’s an actual quote for the reason behind the single-piece town clothes nerf.

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.

Seriously!? O_O

That’s a quote that belongs in a Dilbert comic.

The worst thing for me are :
a) transmutation cost is now 3 times as high for low level items.
=> basic transmutation stone should have been 1 transmutation charge
=> lvl 80 stones = 3 charges
=> <lvl 80 gear and alike should cost 1 charge, lvl 80 (+) cost 3 charges.
1st use of wearable costume should be free, next 1 charge if below 80, 3 if 80
That way the cost would have been the same.
b) the costume weapons are now “stupid” tonics which take inv slot
c) the loss of towncloathes , but that gets into a + change of beeing able to use some as “armor”

I’ve already asked for a refund for two of my outfits and I’m debating moving on and asking for the rest as well. I guess we’ll see what happens?

I guess I’m secretly hoping that the tonics will go back to being town clothes, so I haven’t asked about them yet. It’s weird because I bought more than 3 pieces of town clothes, but it seems some were “fused” into a single tonic. I wonder how refunds for that is gonna work….

Editing to add that I would love it if they took the “outfits” and broke them up into 5 or 6 pieces so I could put my individual town clothes into an “outfit” slot and toggle that on and off. I would be so happy with that. _

I’ve have been playing the Guild Wars series since the Prophecies days and have had no problem supporting ArenaNet with my cash, so I continued to do so in Guild Wars 2. You could say I have grown up with Guild Wars. I understand changes need to be made to the game to ensure its long term growth and continued development, but I also understand once your sales begin to peak and diminish that ArenaNet has to rely on micro-transactions and sales in the gemstore to keep its revenue stream going. This is where I feel kind of betrayed, not only did I buy the game, I decided to pay for cosmetic items through the gemstore, both in the act of nodding my head to ArenaNet in gratitude for a great game, but also in a vain attempt to make my character look unique in towns. I bought my town clothing with the intent of using it as advertised, a shirt, a pair of pants, etc. I am now left with a barely functional and horribly thought out compromise which allows for no individuality or mix and matching. This is particularly insulting since the people who purchased things from the gem store are those who continued to support Guild Wars 2 after they bought the game. Due to this patch, these long term supporters are now the worst effected. Now I don’t want to debate what you should do, but if I may make some suggestions that may ease some of the suffering and take load of your refund department:

- Make town clothes an available armor skin and allow mix and matching

- Apologize for this whole mess

- Perhaps in the future give “the players” a chance to beta test these new features before they are rolled out

- Elaborate further on specific changes. IE saying town clothing is being converted to “tonics” was rather general and didn’t tell us much

As a short closing statement, I would like to remind ArenaNet that the only reason why there are so many upset people from this is because they really enjoy your game and that they care about it.

Constantine.7582:

Elaborate further on specific changes. IE saying town clothing is being converted to “tonics” was rather general and didn’t tell us much

As a short closing statement, I would like to remind ArenaNet that the only reason why there are so many upset people from this is because they really enjoy your game and that they care about it.

This and this. I’m getting annoyed with other players defending Anet on this issue in the forums (and in game). “Rpers gotta stop QQing!” etc (which is hilarious cause of a lot of people who have complained have stated they are not rpers). I wouldn’t be so upset about it if I didn’t care about the game. And I love it enough that I made a decision to support Anet with my wallet.

A good user-interface is a user-interface where you can access what you need easily and smooth with as few clicks as possible, unless you’re doing something deeper.

Overall, GW2 has had a flawless user-interface and things have still been improving since release. But now, something finally bugs me.

Whenever I want to access my equipment panel to overlook my stats or change some pieces of equipment for other stats it brings me to the recent hero panel I opened or to the root panel. This puts the equipment panel 1 button press and 1 or 2 clicks away, and since stats are mandatory values in an mmorpg I feel this panel in particular should be the prioritized panel.

Small note since I’m starting to feel ungrateful:
Overall, I have been enjoying this recent patch a lot, a big thanks to everyone who brought us all of the new features and changes.

Made an example of where I’d want to go when I open the Hero-panel.

Agreed with this. As much as I like all the new UI changes, it would be a very welcome change to have the Equipment panel made the default when you open the character screen.

+1 on this.

+1 on this, definitely.

Yeah, I understand why they did it the way they did, but it probably makes more sense to make the equipment panel always open by default.

I don’t understand. It just ends up looking sloppy and unprofessional with vast amounts of unused space. Honestly, the game’s UI has been getting worse with every tweak they’ve done and we still don’t have basic options like turning off LW/PS/Daily tracking or toggle mouselook.

Absolutely. I dislike all the white space on the first hero screen now. It has lost functionality, too, which is never a good thing. I don’t mind most of the UI changes but I miss the ‘quick look’ at my stats that tapping H provided. It’s strange how the hero panel now feels cluttered yet the main screen is so empty o.o;

aaand improve that by adding a filter like show exotic acended gear only

Welp. Having used the wardrobe system as extensively as I decided I would both with…

It’s alright. It’s a slightly more convenient system that costs more for base cosmetic changes but costs less (in the long run) for 80 gear reskins.

But it seems kind of like a joke to hype it. Its nothing special, nothing that has not been done before, and worse its a less convenient form of whats been done in other games.

Basically, it feels like a colossal waste of effort. Yes. It was slightly less time consuming to get my thief a new set of exotics skinned now that I’ve settled on a Venom Share build. It saved me about thirty silver, and technically cost me less crystals then it would have before.

All in all. I dunno. Its a moderate improvement over the old system that doesn’t do anything to change peoples overstuffed inventories full of cosmetic gear. The conversion price sucks, they’re way overpriced for what they do compared to competitors. (WoW’s transmog costs, “appearance” slots in most other games, LOTRO’s wardrobe, etc.)

So. Not awful. Not the end of everything, but not terribly exciting. It also sort of sucks that our outfits have less functionality now and town clothes are gone. I’ve…kinda no interest in buying any anymore. And I’m really glad I didn’t bite the bullet and purchase any of the ones that were already around in the past.

Also, the “ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS? IT COSTS 0 CRYSTALS!” Thing for dying… that is awful. I flipped the kitten out and thought Anet was trying to make me pay to ~color~ my outfits. And worse? Its inspired paranoia that this is going to be the future. Especially after the dye unlocker stuff we’ve seen leaked from China.

Edit: I forgot to state. The money saved would be allot more if I was interested, for instance, in multiple identical sets of armor for respeccing on the fly that looked similar/identical. Especially if these pieces were using Cultural skins. So that is a notable plus. I still don’t think the cons are worth it in the long run, but there are good aspects to the wardrobe. I think overall its a slight improvement over the previous system and I love collecting things, so there’s that.

I agree with equip being the default panel Its annoying to have to switch in between every time I press H.

You shouldn’t have to every time, it memorizes where you were.

I have to agree to the O.P. on this, many times I want to look at my stats on the fly, now I have to dedicate time to doing that. Hopefully the Devs will come up with some way to rearrange things and make it a little bit more user friendly.

Thirteen pages and counting, consisting mostly of complaints, and I haven’t seen a single response from the company acknowledging the feelings of the player base. Someone please tell me that I’ve just missed it somewhere else, and they are looking at options to help alleviate some of the pain we’re feeling around town clothes.

I know their policy is that they usually won’t respond directly to people’s complaints in the thread itself, but surely there should be some official communication saying, “we’ve heard you, and we are considering what we can do to make it right.” And no, I don’t consider refunding gems “making it right”.

I think it’s fair to say that there are a lot of people waiting for that message from the company before making a final decision on what to do. As for me and the people I play with, that’s our feeling right now. Maybe they’ll acknowledge that they made a mistake or underestimated the strong feelings of the player base. If not, it’s a real shame. In the mean time, I’m filling my time with other games as I am too disheartened to play at this point.

Surely this was an oversight. No gaming company would sell costumes as vanity items and then force the players to use them as skins on their hard-earned combat armour. They’ll have to refund thousands of gems unless they patch this ASAP.

By the way, don’t forget to put the keybind for town clothes back in that patch.

Willowfalls.9814:

Thirteen pages and counting, consisting mostly of complaints, and I haven’t seen a single response from the company acknowledging the feelings of the player base. Someone please tell me that I’ve just missed it somewhere else, and they are looking at options to help alleviate some of the pain we’re feeling around town clothes.

I know their policy is that they usually won’t respond directly to people’s complaints in the thread itself, but surely there should be some official communication saying, “we’ve heard you, and we are considering what we can do to make it right.” And no, I don’t consider refunding gems “making it right”.

I think it’s fair to say that there are a lot of people waiting for that message from the company before making a final decision on what to do. As for me and the people I play with, that’s our feeling right now. Maybe they’ll acknowledge that they made a mistake or underestimated the strong feelings of the player base. If not, it’s a real shame. In the mean time, I’m filling my time with other games as I am too disheartened to play at this point.

A lot of us in this thread were hoping for some sort of similar confirmation. I can try to dig up a few of the dev’s responses when I am not on my way to work, but my impression was that they didn’t really address the heart of people’s complaints. Initially they said (or at least I was under the impression) that refunds for outfits would not be available. There was a rather massive outburst over that so it seems they’ve changed their minds.

Ghostwolf.9863:

A good user-interface is a user-interface where you can access what you need easily and smooth with as few clicks as possible, unless you’re doing something deeper.

Overall, GW2 has had a flawless user-interface and things have still been improving since release. But now, something finally bugs me.

Whenever I want to access my equipment panel to overlook my stats or change some pieces of equipment for other stats it brings me to the recent hero panel I opened or to the root panel. This puts the equipment panel 1 button press and 1 or 2 clicks away, and since stats are mandatory values in an mmorpg I feel this panel in particular should be the prioritized panel.

Small note since I’m starting to feel ungrateful:
Overall, I have been enjoying this recent patch a lot, a big thanks to everyone who brought us all of the new features and changes.

Made an example of where I’d want to go when I open the Hero-panel.

I agree.

The equipment page is the most used page, I go there to view my stats, change weapons, check my tools, etc, so I use it very often. I don’t dye my clothes as often therefore that should be a click or two away, not equipment.

HyruleanHyroe.1473:

Rejerh.1784:

The wardrobe in itself… sucks (sry to use this term but it sums it all). You cannot do previews on the skins before applying them for a charge. (well… Ohh you mean preview right in the middle of the screen?? Well when I want to apply a torch skin to my torch and it is at my belt… I cannot see what type of flames it produces. Same for some scepters and staffs. I also cannot see what I look like when I hold my weapon in my hand).

Yes, you can preview all of these things. There are checkboxes for “Wielded” and “weapon only” in the preview window. That’ll give you your particle effects etc. If you click on each armor piece you want in your bank storage, it will also add it to your preview. You can customize to your heart’s content without ever spending a charge.

Sorry but I dont know what you are talking about… when I select a skin there is no way to see the wielded (etc…) tick boxes that are available usually when you right click an item in your bags/banks within the wardrobe.

this is how my end to WoW started…
since the patch i spent ~1-2 hours ingame to rearrange stuff, get my skins, get some colors, then find out what happened to my town-tonics – logged out went to the forums – have not logged in since.

At this point I think it would be nice if dyes were bound to pieces of armor – so if you swap armor sets you can use different colors for each without having to reselect them each time. The bank wardrobe tab made me realize it’d also be nice to be able to pick dyes a little more sanely on the previewer – currently I basically have to look up the dye to preview on the BLTC if I want to check that out at the same time, to figure out how an armor piece I haven’t got would look when dyed in various ways. It’s a little awkward. If I could select dyes from a palette in the previewer instead of the “preview” option on a dye item, I think we’d be in business.

Wardrobe as a whole is great for better visibility of the things I can get though. It was much harder to find that info before.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with my two leftover transmutation stones. Hmm.

Had some hands on time with the new systems.

Having a cosmetic system is better than not having one, I suppose, and this one is largely functional particularly for end game characters who don’t often switch appearances. For those who want to play around with various looks or who want to keep a consistent look in place while levelling, this new system is, quite frankly, terrible. It also does nothing to learn from two other Free to Play MMOs that place a huge cash shop importance on cosmetics, those being Lord of the Rings Online and The Secret World.

As for the system itself, the UI is muddled and confusing, and the system also doesn’t seem to be very well explained. Being able to apply dyes and use select skins like the unlockable achievement gauntlets for no charge is good. The changes to the Dye system are also very good. However, having to continually use transmutation charges for everything else, even if you’ve already applied that skin to an item before is not good. Making a player spend money every time they want to change their appearance does the absolute opposite of what a cosmetics system should do and the new system doesn’t solve any issues of the old system. Your cosmetic system should encourage players to spend more time (and, in the long run, more money) on cosmetic items. Your cosmetic system should not make players clench their wallets and avoid changing their cosmetics around because they don’t want to be repeatedly dinged for every change. Oh, and your cosmetic system should absolutely under no circumstances specifically hurt the experience of those in your player base who are perhaps most likely to be the ones interested in using a cosmetic system, those being the roleplayers and more casual town dwellers.

A much better system than what is in place here can be found in the aforementioned LOTRO and TSW. Both have a separation of cosmetic and stat items, though LOTRO uses armour/clothing to provide stats and TSW separates stats from clothing/armour entirely. You can set your stat items/equipment on one “page” and update is as necessary just as in your standard MMO. Your appearance items, however, are kept on an entirely separate “page” and you can either change them as often as you want or only set them once and let all of the stat changes just happen in the layer “underneath.” Because you’re not charged for each individual change, however, you feel encouraged to experiment with different looks as you see fit, whether it be due to boredom or a change in scenario (RPing for example). You feel more encouraged to actually buy more cosmetic items either in game or in the cash shop as well because you know you’re going to be able to use it however and whenever you see fit without being double/triple/quadruple charged. You’re also able in those games to mix and match as you see fit because there are rarely one piece outfits that you can’t change. You may even consider it worthwhile to buy an entire set of clothing just because you, for example, really like only the gloves or shirt.

In short, it’s nice to see a proper cosmetic system arrive in GW2. Even in it’s current flawed existence, it’s still much better than the old Transmutation Crystal scheme. Once you look beyond the surface, however, you quickly see that most of the old Trans Crystal issues are still there along with a host of new ones. At the end of the day, I have to say that what is most surprising to me is just that in developing this new system it appears that the developers made two major mistakes. First, they did not actually take into account that the players not only wanted a cosmetic system but wanted it for specific reasons. Second, they did not look to the obvious examples already in existence of cosmetic systems done right and instead tried to create their own.

On a somewhat related side note, this new wardrobe system has reminded me just how terrible the search tool in the Trading Post is. Why is there still no way to filter armour pieces by weight class? No.. seriously?

After finding out that you only get guaranteed Transmutation Charges from completing the 4 main cities, and that any other map completion there’s only a small chance of getting -1- charge, I really wish that each full costume change only cost 1 Charge. For example – no matter if you’re doing everything, including weapons or just a top and a pair of gloves, 1 charge to cover it all would make it more likely for me to change my appearance.

As it is, I have a lvl 30 sylvari wearing the T2 armour. I’d like to keep her look whilst I level, but at the moment every 5 levels I’d be spending 6-8 Transmutation Charges just to keep the same look but with updated stats! I cannot afford to purchase these things from the market, nor do I have enough in-game gold to do it that way either. So, this means I either carry on levelling in whatever hodge-podge stuff I craft/pick up until level 80 when I can re-apply the look I want, or I have to make an alt to farm the Charges ad-nausium.

I’ve already mentioned how I feel about the changes to Town Clothes earlier in the thread, so I won’t repeat myself. I’ve applied for a refund, though I’ll not be using it to buy Transformation Charges.