Guild Wars 2

Now every helmet/hat/hood turns your character bald, whilst before you could see at least a little bit of hair. Why this change? It is pretty ugly in my opinion. Can we have our hair back? There must be another solution to clipping issues rather than turning characters bald. :S

TERA had a separate set of hairstyles for clipping issues. Each one was attached to your regular hairstyle so you couldn’t really choose, but if you had a high collar for example you’d have some sort of updo to prevent your normal hair from clipping and they looked pretty good.

I think ANet could do something similar – have default hairdos for both armor and weapon clipping issues, as well as a general “Hat” hairstyle. So when you choose a hairstyle there are 2 alternate versions attached to it to solve those problems.

Although they’d have to add a toggle in the Options menu so we can turn that off, because I know a lot of people with longer hairstyles may not care enough about armor/weapon clipping. If I had to choose I’d rather see my pretty long hair with minor clipping instead of an updo I didn’t choose just to fit my weapon.

I agree. Either that or design hoods so it doesn’t look like you suddenly joined the monk-hood and shaved your head.

This is something that greatly annoys me on my female Asura. I want to buy some of the gem shop hats but can’t because they make her bald.

I thought this said hair underwear.. or something.. but on topic, I find this obnoxious also. Whyyyy. -_-

I kinda agree… hehe. My ranger wearing the witch hat i just found turns bald… feels kind of awkward. Plus, i think my toon would look way more handsome if the hair i had selected is there under that hat

Wasselin.1235:

I agree. Either that or design hoods so it doesn’t look like you suddenly joined the monk-hood and shaved your head.

Now, if we could actually make a bald female (like you could in GW1)….

this is a problem they also had in GW1, and which is why I hardly ever wore those hats, except on my monk (who was bald…)

I think I’ve seen a no hair option for females in GW2 too while going into character creation. However, I believe nobody actually chooses that…

Id MUCH RATHER have hair clipping then no hair.

Tear updo option was lovely as well.

Don’t really want a bald character; refuse to use the witch hat. :/

I personally think it’s developer laziness. There are ways around this, but they require more work from the art department than simply removing a character’s hair.
The best implementation would be independent models including the headgear for each and every hairstyle in the game.

Of course, there is also the issue of displaying more unique assets in the game, but when compared to how customisable each character is by default, this is really a non-issue and wouldn’t greatly impact performance.

But there’s signs of this kind of laziness throughout the game, such as all classes in a race sharing the same voice actor, lack of unique situational animations for cutscenes and other related scripted events, unfinished emotes, dance animations being restricted to race where they were divided by sex and class in the first game, etcetera, etcetera.

I love the game, but there are so many areas like this that just stink of shoddy workmanship.

I noticed this the other day for the first time actually on my Necro. I almost always run with no head piece showing, so never noticed; but, finally got the hood I wanted, used a fine t-stone put it on… then noticed my character’s head was suddenly shaved and looked stupid… lol

After the chuckle over wasted fine t-stone and effort I put into getting said combination, and warning others (whom ALL already had noticed – apparently I was late to this party); I turned off my hard earned Hood and went on.

I would like to see this fixed though. It’s silly to suddenly go bald just because a head piece is put on.

Agreed.

This does seem like a really specific and minor thing to put resources in to. Meaning it mechanically effects nothing, doesn’t block anything, and isn’t causing performance or stability issues. But it was really jarring when I put the witch hat on my Psylocke inspired thief that has long, luxurious, purple hair…and suddenly bald.

As far as I know though, this has always been how it worked. My thief didn’t seem to have hair with the free baseball cap we got at launch also. But that was a novelty costume thing that didn’t really fit with the world (like goofy boxing gloves), so I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I just put that hat in storage and never thought of it again.

Some visual indication of still having hair underneath hats and hoods would be a really nice thing to have eventually.

I wonder if this is a design limitation or an engine limitation.

I’ve got to agree, equipping a number of headgears (Light from my view) and suddenly having my female Sylvari turning bald is … disconcerting to the point that I either never have them shown in the past, or specifically hunted down the ones that still looked decent or were simply a head accessory rather then a hood/hat.

The ONLY decent headpiece that wasn’t an accessory (like say Exalted Masque) that I found my for Sylvari was the crafted Winged Headpiece, which is a hood that actually looks nice. Thats the only one.

I’ve always been annoyed that my character’s hair changed when I put on a hat. What’s the point of choosing a hair style when it changes constantly?

I wish the developers would give a word about this, or at least a reason for the change.

Edited topic title to describe better the um… problem.

Hermes.7014:

I wish the developers would give a word about this, or at least a reason for the change.

Considering hats have made us all bald since 2005 in the Guild Wars universe, I don’t know that there’s anything that will be done. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

This actually doesn’t look that bad on a asura, since they look as if they’re wearing wigs anyway. =D

I remember seeing that in TERA where characters would get a different hair-do depending on the armor they had on which is fantastic.

As for GW2….. I saw it at first with the witch hat and laughed pretty hard. It’s pathetic given how much love went into the design of the game just to be completely put off with something as simple as going bald when putting on a hat…

Something needs to be done about this because not only does it look ridiculous, but it basically renders a GOOD chunk of head pieces useless if no one is gonna show them. That is an insult to the artists.

Now I suddenly have this mental picture in my head of how every single character in GW2 is really bald and wearing a wig of some sort. And whenever they want to put on a hat, they take off their wig, store it somewhere about their person, and then put on the hat. And when taking off the hat, they swap back :P

But yeah, on female chars (and most male ones), that baldness thing makes the witch hat (and others) pretty much obsolete

There used to at least be hairlines, but those have gone away in a recent patch. I’m not sure if it’s a bug or the result of trying to handle culling. Either way, I miss it.

Indeed! I agree, the bald look when you put on a hat looks odd and can’t say I like it much. Also I wish you could wear a hat with your armor like you could in GW1. My necro in GW1 wears the Horns of Grenth all the time… ahhh the good olde days.

As an asura i get this a lot….as well as all my face items and masks hovering a foot in front of my face.

/hide helmet never comes off on my sylvari. nothing looks fuglier than a bald sylvari wearing a hood.

I agree, but the thing is. Imagine making all new models on all helms and hats with all the different types of hairs and hair colors = more pixels which = more money. A lot of games are built around pixel limitations to meet the minimal requirements of what the game, as a whole is speced for.

I would love to see a game that shows your hair style of what you picked for your character under that helm or hat, and is still as big and complex as GW2 with very little clipping. Someone mentioned Tera did something to show your hair under your hat/helm, but I had not played Tera long enough to notice what they did.

Imagine how big the game would be if the hairs in GW2 showed the styles of what you picked for your characters + the animation on long hairs under helms/hats?

This game is supposed to be all about looks (with the Legendaries being nothing but skins and such) but still wearing hat’s makes you bald.
We need a philosaraptor to rise some question here!

For a game that prides itself on amazing art design (i remember the vids on youtube with that art specialist fella) clipping hair boggles the mind especially beards poking through face masks on my ranger.

I can’t walk around in my tophat anymore since it makes my character bald and ugly.

Nothing ill meant to bald people, I love you all.

Headgear should work with at-least two hair styles (one long and one short).

Then give the ability to change just our hair style. In the same way you change dyes on armor. Even if it costs gems for permanent hair styles.

Mungrul.9358:

But there’s signs of this kind of laziness throughout the game, such as all classes in a race sharing the same voice actor, lack of unique situational animations for cutscenes and other related scripted events, unfinished emotes, dance animations being restricted to race where they were divided by sex and class in the first game, etcetera, etcetera.

Er, so you think it’s “laziness” that they paid for 10 different voice actors (2 per race) instead of 80 (2 genders * 5 races * 8 profs)? No, I’m pretty sure they did it for financial reasons, and I think it’s ridiculous to hold that against them.

There are areas of the game that stink of rushed development, certainly. Legendaries come to mind rather instantly, as do many late-game areas and explorable dungeons. The hair problems this game has are on that list, too.

But it’s not “laziness” to try and cut down on your game’s costs. Especially considering that a particularly recent MMO that spent 9 figures on its game ended up hemorrhaging players within mere months and reverting to F2P soon after. Why would you pay exorbitant amounts of money to make any MMO knowing that most of your players will leave within the initial few months?

how about charr horns disappearing

Pretty much why the headgear slot is unchecked in my character window.

I’d settle for the pre-halloween patch helmet-hair we had. Its sort of dumb that we actually did have some form of hair under hats but it was removed…

The biggest thing that they could change if they added different hairstyles under helmets is to get rid of the stupid hanging cloth on so many of the hats/helmets. There are so many cheesy designs that are forced to dance around the issue of covering bald characters.

@critickitten:
They used “Star” voice actors that have a huge presence in a high percentage of games releases over the past few years. People like Nolan North, Steve Blum and Jennifer Hale.
If they were being sensible, they would have gone for cheaper voice actors, resulting in more being available and also a lot of voices not made contemptuous by over-familiarity.

They could also have hired English actors instead of North Americans doing bad English accents for the Sylvari. I’ve heard us Brits are ridiculously cheap to hire when compared to American voice talent.

So, it would be too much work to fix the hair conflict, but it wasn’t too much work to make graphics for an entire equipment slot that many people instinctively toggle invisible, due to said conflict? Doesn’t ArenaNet want to sell headwear like the Witch’s Hat, Wintersday Hat, etc., in the gem store?

Mungrul.9358:

@critickitten:
They used “Star” voice actors that have a huge presence in a high percentage of games releases over the past few years. People like Nolan North, Steve Blum and Jennifer Hale.
If they were being sensible, they would have gone for cheaper voice actors, resulting in more being available and also a lot of voices not made contemptuous by over-familiarity.

They could also have hired English actors instead of North Americans doing bad English accents for the Sylvari. I’ve heard us Brits are ridiculously cheap to hire when compared to American voice talent.

Oh, good, so instead of just most of the voice acting being bad, we could’ve had all of the voice acting be bad instead but done it for cheap!

Sounds like quite an improvement! :p

Steve Blum’s VAing in this game makes him essentially a god among insects, and the other major VAs do a respectable job as well. The bad VAing tends to come not from the high-paid ones, but from the amateurs they hired to do the generic voices. I can’t imagine having the entire game full of those mediocre-at-best voice actors, I might have pulled my hair out.