Guild Wars 2

Hello! I’d like to make a thread about something that bugs me a bit for a long time: Lock cultural armors.

Being locked isn’t logical anymore, from a game / content point of view.
It’s incoherent within the cities, within the races, with the dungeons and with the gemstore.

1) Cities vendors
Let’s take for example humans. They will sell armors only to humans because they don’t want to take risks with other races.
Not far from them, it’s perfectly okay to sell to a charr a Seraph Greatsword. It’s obviously less dangerous to sell weapons than armors.
Other example are the asuran. A leather armor is more complex than a Peacemaker’s rifle.

2) Dungeon Armors (and races)
Enemies and ancestors are more tolerant than the cities vendors.
Ascalonian ghosts have armors for Charrs and Asuras, everyone can wear the nightmare’s court plant armors, the Flame Legion have armors made for humans…
Even the kodans have armors for everyone. None of these dungeons armors should, from a lore point of view, exist for everyone. But they do for the gameplay point of view (and it’s fine).

3) Gemstore
While a sylvari can’t buy Norn armors, it’s perfectly fine to be able to wear Braham’s armor.
And why would a charr or an Asura wear the Balthazar armor, or Grenth’s hood?

Conclusion
So far, everyone can wear almost everything from other cultures: Charrs can wear Nightmare’s Court armor, a Sylvari can run around with Seraph weapons, Asuran can worship human gods, norns can run around in Krytian armor and Humans can wear the Flame Legion armor.
Only the cultural vendors are the only close-minded vendors.

Gaining access to other cultural armors would improve the diversity of skins. The only problem would be making female versions of the Asura and Charr armors. But I do believe that everything can work well on other races. The medium Nightmare’s court mask and gloves aren’t that different to the Light T3 Sylvari armor, for example.

Also… Toymaker Tixx is already wearing the T1 Light Human leggings, as well as the T1 shoulders (not sure about this one). All of these with an Asuran helmet.

I think it would be cool if we could do somethings to unlock cultural armor to be used on other races, but doubt it will happen, because most players will probably be against it. (and anet might consider it to be too much)

The short answer is that they did not design the models for the other races, so cultural armor will remain locked until such time as they have nothing better to do than develop a ton of new armor models for no money.

It would be a lot of work for Anet, so do not expect it to happen, but I too would like to see the restrictions on cultural armour removed. I prefer to play humans mostly, but really like some of the armour styles of the Norn and Asura cultural armours.

At least with the Sylvari armor, it pulls color from your character’s skin color in addition to the dyeable spots. It also glows along with Sylvari glowing. Both things that I feel would require far too much effort to modify for the other races.

Yeah i can’t wait to see female norn heavy legs on asuras.

I like that cultural armour is worn only by race that is designed for, I want that every race has something unique, and It feels right way. What bothers me the most are OUTFITS, they have so many good parts, and would combine with so many parts.

One might say, Clipping, but, did you took your time and check all the combinations of armours on every class? I’ve found so much clipping that It got me frustrated to the point that we were not able to build Guild armour theme as we desired.

EDIT: OOWHHHH almost forgot…
Let me state also that, some parts are WAY OVERSIZED on some characters.. and some are just out of shape and they simply look stupid. For example Norn female and Human female same boots (Armaggedon heavy boots) and they are way oversized, take a look for yourself, u’ll be surprised.

EroticAndHeretic.7398:

Hello! I’d like to make a thread about something that bugs me a bit for a long time: Lock cultural armors.

Being locked isn’t logical anymore, from a game / content point of view.
It’s incoherent within the cities, within the races, with the dungeons and with the gemstore.

1) Cities vendors
Let’s take for example humans. They will sell armors only to humans because they don’t want to take risks with other races.
Not far from them, it’s perfectly okay to sell to a charr a Seraph Greatsword. It’s obviously less dangerous to sell weapons than armors.
Other example are the asuran. A leather armor is more complex than a Peacemaker’s rifle.

2) Dungeon Armors (and races)
Enemies and ancestors are more tolerant than the cities vendors.
Ascalonian ghosts have armors for Charrs and Asuras, everyone can wear the nightmare’s court plant armors, the Flame Legion have armors made for humans…
Even the kodans have armors for everyone. None of these dungeons armors should, from a lore point of view, exist for everyone. But they do for the gameplay point of view (and it’s fine).

3) Gemstore
While a sylvari can’t buy Norn armors, it’s perfectly fine to be able to wear Braham’s armor.
And why would a charr or an Asura wear the Balthazar armor, or Grenth’s hood?

Conclusion
So far, everyone can wear almost everything from other cultures: Charrs can wear Nightmare’s Court armor, a Sylvari can run around with Seraph weapons, Asuran can worship human gods, norns can run around in Krytian armor and Humans can wear the Flame Legion armor.
Only the cultural vendors are the only close-minded vendors.

Gaining access to other cultural armors would improve the diversity of skins. The only problem would be making female versions of the Asura and Charr armors. But I do believe that everything can work well on other races. The medium Nightmare’s court mask and gloves aren’t that different to the Light T3 Sylvari armor, for example.

Also… Toymaker Tixx is already wearing the T1 Light Human leggings, as well as the T1 shoulders (not sure about this one). All of these with an Asuran helmet.

Applying logic to a video game is.just.not the done thing, it would be like saying "anyone in heavy armor can’t jump. Lets face it, add the weight of the armor and weapons, and everything in your bags, you wouldn’t be able to run, let alone jump.

The reason armors are locked is a simple one. To get you to play each race, so you have to buy character slots, then get the gold to buy them, which might make some people buy gem to turn into gold. Also some armor would cause bugs where your character would be naked, nothing at all. This the mian reason for the lock.

From a lore standpoint of your dungeon armor theory, no the flame legion, nightmare court and ghosts do not have armor available for you. It’s armor crafted in their likelihood and style by the “good” NPCs, not made BY the villains.

As @Firelysm already said, it’s a method of exclusivity. It’s a way to show off “I’m a human look at my warrior, or thief” “I’m an asura look at how cool our armor is”. IT’s a means to feel worthwhile for playing that race. If you haven’t noticed a lot of players enjoy the cultural armor, which they should. For some it gives them a reason to play a sylvari necro, or a sylvari guardian. Change this to make it available to everyone, and you might as well change all our races to human.

BrotherBelial.3094:

The reason armors are locked is a simple one. To get you to play each race, so you have to buy character slots, then get the gold to buy them, which might make some people buy gem to turn into gold.

I do not necessarily agree with this. If they wanted to make money from the cultural armour they could easily add them as gem store skins, which would require a lot less work as they would not need to create a whole new race, with accompanying story and home city.

While I agree it may have been done that way to encourage players to make alts for other races, there are other reasons to make a different race besides a handful of skins and therefore I do not consider it a valid enough reason. Character customization is a very important thing to a lot of players, and limiting the options, even in the slightest way, can be annoying when all you want to do is find a way to make yourself look a little bit different to everyone else. The more skin options you have available the more chance you have of achieving that.

To me its one of those design choices that works for some players but not others. Some people will want to have unique skins for their chosen race, to give them an identity seperate from other races. While others are only concerned with having maximum freedom of customization. For me, I can see both arguements and kind of sit on the fence with it. I love to have as much choice as I can to customize the look of my characters, but I also like to have each race feel and look different.

For me though, the biggest problem arises between Norns and Humans. Because they are both anatomically identical, just different in size, it feels odd to prevent them from sharing cultural skins. Surely the norn would be able to make kid size versions for humans and I am sure humans could make extra large sized versions for norn. To me there is not enough of a difference between those two races to warrant restricted access to each other’s armour skins.

For me, the only reason I would accept for not getting this changed now, would be because of the extra work and resources it would involve to remove the restrictions.

Now i have not read the entirety of this post so bare with me please

it is easy to see the reason no other races than Sylvari are able to wear their cultural armors due to them beeing a big part of “them” as some mentioned here.

“Oxidia.8103” Yeah i can’t wait to see female norn heavy legs on asuras.
The Result of that would simply be the Asura would be using male norn armors for both genders.

like what happened with the Flamekissed armor skin if you remember that one.
the light armor skin was basicly T3 human Cultural with added flames. which brought a HUGE outburst wich i understand but all of the races and genders were able to use it .

Charr and asura would use Male Models on both genders but other than that it would look fine as far as i recall.

imo it would be cool to have all Cultural armors unlocked for all races but i ofcourse see the limitations and it would take quite a bit of work for some of the pieces. and races in between them. as they would basicly have to make a few new sets for the humanoid races.

Making Charr / Asura cultural armors actually fit on female bodies. wich i think is the reason it wont happen as that would be entirely new armor looks.
i for one would love to have less Skirts / waistcloths / dresses for heavy armor females and more “pants like” armors

Nah, I think cultural armors are the reason why I pick a race. They should stay as they are. A new tier or two would be awesome though! However, I think having them as just a gold sink is a little redundant. I think they should have requirements and use a different currency. For example, if I wanted Human Tier 1, then I would have to complete the level 30 personal story, have Queensdale, Kessex Hills, and Gendarran Fields completed, get a few “treasures” from the karma vendors, and then finally the skins (they should be changed to skins) would unlock and I could spend these “badges” that you get from completing any Task (1 per task). The armor could cost like a total of 20-30 Task badges. Of course the requirements for the higher tiers would be more rigorous to do, and still cost more. Badges could be put in your wallet and be account bound. What do you think about it?

Up until the outcry, T1 cultural human light armor WAS available and modeled for all the races.

Problem here was that it was via the gem store.

Doable? Very much so. Will they? Very unlikely at this point.

My only real issue with cultural armor is that it is not max level exotic for tier 3, yet costs what it does. If it is going to cost that much and only be available for a specific race then it needs to at least be max level exotic.

I really don’t find it worth my in game time/gold to buy those armor sets just for the skin since that is all they really are, which is a shame since some of them are nice.

You do realize what CULTURAL means, don’t you? Simply put, it applies only to that culture, hence it doesn’t belong to any other culture…end of discussion!

Zaklex.6308:

You do realize what CULTURAL means, don’t you? Simply put, it applies only to that culture, hence it doesn’t belong to any other culture…end of discussion!

I’m fairly certain I can wear clothes from a different culture to my own. They may not sell it to me, but if something is popular there is usually a way to get it. Also, culture by definition does not imply race. You can have different cultures within the same race and conversely different races within the same culture.

Rin.1046:

Zaklex.6308:

You do realize what CULTURAL means, don’t you? Simply put, it applies only to that culture, hence it doesn’t belong to any other culture…end of discussion!

I’m fairly certain I can wear clothes from a different culture to my own. They may not sell it to me, but if something is popular there is usually a way to get it. Also, culture by definition does not imply race. You can have different cultures within the same race and conversely different races within the same culture.

This is true. But it would be hilariously out of place if an Irish fellow was wearing traditional African garb. I mean, he can technically put it on, but I have a feeling he would get looks from everyone. Very confused looks.

Draknar.5748:

This is true. But it would be hilariously out of place if an Irish fellow was wearing traditional African garb. I mean, he can technically put it on, but I have a feeling he would get looks from everyone. Very confused looks.

You’re not making me want this any less, quite the opposite in fact

Zaklex.6308:

You do realize what CULTURAL means, don’t you? Simply put, it applies only to that culture, hence it doesn’t belong to any other culture…end of discussion!

Yet the various cultural weapon sets can be used by all races in the game.

Let me introduce you to High Councillor Flax
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/High_Councillor_Flax

Notice he is wearing parts of booka cultural armor.

Rin.1046:

Zaklex.6308:

You do realize what CULTURAL means, don’t you? Simply put, it applies only to that culture, hence it doesn’t belong to any other culture…end of discussion!

I’m fairly certain I can wear clothes from a different culture to my own. They may not sell it to me, but if something is popular there is usually a way to get it. Also, culture by definition does not imply race. You can have different cultures within the same race and conversely different races within the same culture.

You’re trying to pass off real world context to a fantasy world, it doesn’t work that way unfortunately.

Logic doesn’t necessarily apply, but it seems like it’d be a semi-easy way to include a bunch of “new” armor without having to go through the process of design creation. I really don’t see why they can’t tone down the autopilot a little bit to work on stuff like this. It doesn’t even have to be immediate, over two years they could have started this and then, thanks to the unity of all the races against Mordremoth – BAM! – suddenly the cultural armor vendors aren’t so nitpicky on who they sell to.

for those saying cultural armor can only be worn by the only race it was designed for i present to you the original flame kissed armor skin

Rin.1046:

BrotherBelial.3094:

The reason armors are locked is a simple one. To get you to play each race, so you have to buy character slots, then get the gold to buy them, which might make some people buy gem to turn into gold.

I do not necessarily agree with this. If they wanted to make money from the cultural armour they could easily add them as gem store skins, which would require a lot less work as they would not need to create a whole new race, with accompanying story and home city.

While I agree it may have been done that way to encourage players to make alts for other races, there are other reasons to make a different race besides a handful of skins and therefore I do not consider it a valid enough reason. Character customization is a very important thing to a lot of players, and limiting the options, even in the slightest way, can be annoying when all you want to do is find a way to make yourself look a little bit different to everyone else. The more skin options you have available the more chance you have of achieving that.

To me its one of those design choices that works for some players but not others. Some people will want to have unique skins for their chosen race, to give them an identity seperate from other races. While others are only concerned with having maximum freedom of customization. For me, I can see both arguements and kind of sit on the fence with it. I love to have as much choice as I can to customize the look of my characters, but I also like to have each race feel and look different.

For me though, the biggest problem arises between Norns and Humans. Because they are both anatomically identical, just different in size, it feels odd to prevent them from sharing cultural skins. Surely the norn would be able to make kid size versions for humans and I am sure humans could make extra large sized versions for norn. To me there is not enough of a difference between those two races to warrant restricted access to each other’s armour skins.

For me, the only reason I would accept for not getting this changed now, would be because of the extra work and resources it would involve to remove the restrictions.

Just because you don’t think it’s valid, by no means makes it invalid. The biggest problem with the skins where the bugs that made characters naked as the day they where born. Sure we might like to think its an easy fix, truth is it might not be that simple. Or it might just be a unexplained bug with those skins that they can not resolve. Sometimes bugs come up that you can fix with out braking something else. So you have to look for the least disruptive way to fix it. I think the race lock was the quick and easy fix for this bug.

And in any case. If they removed the lock, it wouldn’t belong till everyone looked the same again with the same combos anyway.

It’s a design choice to restrict any skins to certain races. It’s an extreme design choice to restrict all skins relating to Race A to be used by just Race A.

The current situation is a good compromise among different considerations:

• Player interest.
• Lore
• Developer resources (takes more time to make ‘charr armor’ work on humans)

I’m good with the status quo. I can see why some people might want things to change, but I’d rather ANet deliver new skins rather than retrofit existing cultural armor to fit someone’s high-concept of consistency.

Considering how easy it was for everyone to wear Human Racial back during that gem store mistake I’m sure they could easily change it if they wanted to.

I’m jelly of male Charrs for their skirtless medium armor chest, which is the only one in entire game outside of Glorious skin~ would love to have it on my Sylvari.

Just so you know, not all cultural skins actually fit the race they were ‘designed’ for. Charr armors for females still don’t scale down to female frame. Of course most armors don’t do well with charr frames (known problem since forever) sigh

Rin.1046:

Draknar.5748:

This is true. But it would be hilariously out of place if an Irish fellow was wearing traditional African garb. I mean, he can technically put it on, but I have a feeling he would get looks from everyone. Very confused looks.

You’re not making me want this any less, quite the opposite in fact

I know, haha, now I want it too!

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s a design choice to restrict any skins to certain races. It’s an extreme design choice to restrict all skins relating to Race A to be used by just Race A.

The current situation is a good compromise among different considerations:

• Player interest.
• Lore
• Developer resources (takes more time to make ‘charr armor’ work on humans)

I’m good with the status quo. I can see why some people might want things to change, but I’d rather ANet deliver new skins rather than retrofit existing cultural armor to fit someone’s high-concept of consistency.

Sad part is the charr cultural (light t3 legs are an example) clip with the race it was designed for.
While new skins are a good thing it feels like many are only designed for one race of gender and the needed variations are just after thoughts at best.