Guild Wars 2

We had a interesting discussion in my guild last night about armor designs.

We’ve seen people have many different opinions on armors (and outfits, more recently).

Are Warriors and Guardians going to have access to the Revernant Blind-fold armor? does it take away from that professions “look” if the other classes can access that? Is it a dangerous path to go down towards profession-locked armors?

Some people feel that the best looking armors for Charrs and Asura are their race-locked cultural armors, because they where made for them – Do you want fewer armors of overall higher quality that fits each race, or do you want everything to be mix and match?

With specializations, we are getting sub classes, and some specializations comes with their own themes. For a Ranger to be a Druid, should there be druid-looking exclusive armor? will it be okay if thiefs and engineers can equip those druid medium armor? should regular rangers have access to it?

Given what we know, what we have seen in the past two years, I wonder if designing armors is a major headache for ArenaNet? They have no problem putting out a tons of weapons, and right now, on the TP, there is a lot of skins of all sorts of varieties and styles that comes from 70 gold – all the way to around 1000. There is a lot of stuff there.

But with armors, every model has to fit each of the five races, multiplied with the gender, which means that each armor set requires considerable (?) work by hand, sculpturing and texturing across 10 different character models, which all scales in height and all have different “bodytypes”. With the addition of a massive color hue dye spectrum, I am beginning to wonder if Outfits where an act of desperation?

They ´have said in the past that it was due to clipping, and that is probably true? is that why we have not seen cloaks, capes or hooded back-piece robes? is it physics related? is it clipping? does it create problems with displaying the unequipped weapon on your back, when you’re not fighting?

TL;DR :;There is a lot of things to speculate on, but if you worked at ArenaNet, and you where in charge of the direction of armor design in GW2, in the expansion and in the general live game, what direction would you take it in? How would you do it? Do you prefer the achievement hellfire/radiant unlock way? the caprice style of working towards an entire set? or the entire path it took to craft the backpiece mawdrey?

Would you pool more resources from the people making outfits and weapons and just use them for general armors? if it meant you could produce twice as many armors, if you reduced the customization levels of dye, would you do it? if you could churn out armors faster if they where race locked would you do that?

Are Warriors and Guardians going to have access to the Revernant Blind-fold armor? does it take away from that professions “look” if the other classes can access that? Is it a dangerous path to go down towards profession-locked armors?

Since the profession based helms are available for all of that armor weight I don’t see why the revenant mask would be any different.

Some people feel that the best looking armors for Charrs and Asura are their race-locked cultural armors, because they where made for them – Do you want fewer armors of overall higher quality that fits each race, or do you want everything to be mix and match?

I generally like more options, though it would be nice if they spent a bit more time making sure that the armors don’t clip terribly with ears/tails/toes (hellfire helm on an asura, I’m looking at you.)

With specializations, we are getting sub classes, and some specializations comes with their own themes. For a Ranger to be a Druid, should there be druid-looking exclusive armor?

I think that would be cool though I would be fine with it if the armor was not exclusive.

With the addition of a massive color hue dye spectrum, I am beginning to wonder if Outfits where an act of desperation?

I don’t know about desperation but I doubt they’re going to be lacking new armors in HoT. I have a feeling outfits are basically their equivalent to a small snack a few hours before dinner to keep us from starving, if you know what I mean.

Sad Swordfish.9743:

Are Warriors and Guardians going to have access to the Revernant Blind-fold armor? does it take away from that professions “look” if the other classes can access that? Is it a dangerous path to go down towards profession-locked armors?

I don’t see any reason why Warriors can’t have Revenant armor. Warriors can already wear the Guardian’s shoulder pads and light armor classes can already share Necro’s face paint, Ele’s head jewel and Mesmers masks among each other.

Some people feel that the best looking armors for Charrs and Asura are their race-locked cultural armors, because they where made for them – Do you want fewer armors of overall higher quality that fits each race, or do you want everything to be mix and match?

I’d like to see another set of racial armor, but I think if I had to choose between 3 racial sets per race or 15 new armor sets for all races, I’d go for the 15 new sets.

With specializations, we are getting sub classes, and some specializations comes with their own themes. For a Ranger to be a Druid, should there be druid-looking exclusive armor? will it be okay if thiefs and engineers can equip those druid medium armor? should regular rangers have access to it?

I think it would be cool if there was Druid related armor, but it should not be exclusive to Druid. For example, we already have Magitech and the Aetherblade set as Engi-ish armor but all medium classes can wear it, I like that.

Armor has never been the defining feature in differentiating classes and I don’t expect it to be so in the future. A lot of racial armors are nice, but I hated having to pay for them with gold (“Oh hey, thanks for saving us on numerous occasions. How would you like this spiffy armor? No I don’t want your karma, empty your pockets or go away.”) and I hope we never have to repeat that again. Also, the whole exclusiveness of racial armor seems unnecessary to me. Why can’t my sylvari wear human armor? And are you honestly telling me that after becoming a grandmaster craftsman and buying the racial armor that I am unable to craft a similar or just differently-sized armor for my other characters? Yeah, that’s a load of malarkey.

I say no thanks to armor with arbitrary restrictions. It’s bad enough that it’s restricted by weight even when it makes no bloody sense.

Also, we already have blindfolds. My mesmer has been wearing one for ages.

The blindfold will likely be a starter item (like the Thief Hoods and Necro masks/eyes). If you unlock them, you can likely use them (on Heavys). There are light blindfold head pieces now (maybe others I’m unware of).

I think much of this discussion should be less about what would be good/bad for players but what a volume of graphics and animation work it is for the team to do a single new armor set…..(not just a re-texture / skin of an old armor, tho that also takes more effort than most players would think).

Only considering how this effects players is dismissing the REAL reason new armors don’t drop from the sky every other week….

If i had ANYTHING to say over at a-nets design department then armor would be heavily themed towards the professions rather then going some "eh… i guess that could be a (insert class here) armor " route but without restrictions to other classes within the same weight class. Basically instead of getting a generic and boring leather coat drop you might get a ranger themed top with hunting trophies such as animal teeth and tails that decorate it… or a with utility belt and pouches decorated leather harness or a ninja\assassin like tunic with throwing knives. If you are a medium class you could equip it no problem. Basically almost all armors would have a clear design to them and look like they are meant to be for a certain class….rest is up to the players. I mean we already got warriors in ballgowns, mesmers with heavy platemail and lich like looking guardians running arround. So yea…