Guild Wars 2

Hey. I remember the talks about Guild Wars 2, a while before the actual release and betas. During one of the Q&A sessions someone asked about armors and your team replied something in the lines of: “…in Guild Wars 2 you can look exactly like you want to. If you want to look like a homeless person – you can, and you will be just as efficient as others are…”

Well… So far I haven’t seen any clothing that resembles a homeless person’s clothing. Dyes were supposed to be account wide according to your promises, yet they aren’t – that’s fine, I guess. But what happened to the bum set?

Anyways, my real question is about racial cultural armor – can it ever be made available for all races? I don’t see why not. It makes complete sense since any of these races are theoretically capable of putting clothes on. From a logical point of view – there are no contradictions. I am a somewhat casual-looking white guy, but no one is stopping me from dressing up like a black hip-hop star, right?

In my view if you expand on armors like I have mentioned – things will only get better. Models will probably need some considerable amounts of tweaking, but it would be pretty great.

I’m writing this since all of those talks left me with a certain impression in mind – that we will have (almost) full cosmetic freedom. I can understand if a cloth character is not able to wear plate armor, but this one-race-only thing is not so nice to be honest.

I want my asura to wear norn female Cultural 3.

Make it happen Anet!

I don’t think you really need to… with xmute kits you simply need to create a lvl 1 toon, grab money from your bank, buy the armor, xmute the skin onto a white item, place item in bank, log onto the character you actually want the skin on, xmute the white item’s skin (which is the cultural skin) onto whatever gear you want.

Now I don’t think this works for say heavy plate on elementalist robes, but you can potentially get a racial armor skin onto a different race.

Bruno Sardine.2907:

I don’t think you really need to… with xmute kits you simply need to create a lvl 1 toon, grab money from your bank, buy the armor, xmute the skin onto a white item, place item in bank, log onto the character you actually want the skin on, xmute the white item’s skin (which is the cultural skin) onto whatever gear you want.

As soon as I learned about this trick, I was wondering if it could be applied to Racial armors. Have you actually tried doing this to confirm that it’s possible?

you cannot transmute racial gear as the method above implies, Anet fixed this awhile back because it bugged out and actually caused your character to become naked.

That is of course impossible. I’ve tried doing this with a back item – I wanted to get an Engineers starting Tookit backpack and slap it on my Elementalist – it failed. On the other hand – it worked with Necromancer starting helms, for instance. I could get the skull/ blue eyes on my ele. The problem with racial armors is probably that they have only been designed for the certain races’ body types. If you remember – people could preview and transmute those a while ago and a ton of players were running completely naked because of a bug (missing textures).

I’ve never tried, but if i did, i’d use the least expensive piece available to try it with (T1). I have no interest in this idea, so i will not be doing it.

Those that tested transmute, you didn’t use heavy item on a light character, did you? You used light on light, yes? (heavy on heavy; med on medium. Transmute a medium racial style item onto medium non-racial item; etc)

I am however interested in new sets (masterwork craft recipes from heart vendors), and eventual new legendary styles (dislike strongly, the rainbow shortbow). I imagine these potential wants of mine, might be added to the game in about a year. /shrug

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Bruno Sardine.2907:

I don’t think you really need to… with xmute kits you simply need to create a lvl 1 toon, grab money from your bank, buy the armor, xmute the skin onto a white item, place item in bank, log onto the character you actually want the skin on, xmute the white item’s skin (which is the cultural skin) onto whatever gear you want.

As soon as I learned about this trick, I was wondering if it could be applied to Racial armors. Have you actually tried doing this to confirm that it’s possible?

I have tested this and can confirm that this does NOT work.
Even when transmuted with a white item, it still retains the “required race: xyz” condition.

It does however work with the cultural weapons, and the Asuran weapons look awesome on the larger races as they all carry a pink particle effect trail which is far more visable on larger races.

This is just what I suggested in a similar post in the suggestions forum.
I’ll renew my question to the developers: why in Tyria aren’t races allowed to wear stuff crafted by each other? I thought the Guild Wars were long over and races were already in alliance.

Oh… maybe that method only works on the faction gear then (vigil, priory, whispers)

racial weapons… I bought human style dagger with my norn. Transmuted the T1 style (or was it T2?) to my Exotic dagger. Many (if not all) exotic crafted weapons have a bad style for them (shortbow, dagger). Weapons appear to be made of small stones or tile textured. /puke on nearest Quaggan

Cutural weapons are already available to all races. It’s just the armor sets because probably of um… laziness?

BFNK.6748:

Hey. I remember the talks about Guild Wars 2, a while before the actual release and betas. During one of the Q&A sessions someone asked about armors and your team replied something in the lines of: “…in Guild Wars 2 you can look exactly like you want to. If you want to look like a homeless person – you can, and you will be just as efficient as others are…”

Well… So far I haven’t seen any clothing that resembles a homeless person’s clothing. Dyes were supposed to be account wide according to your promises, yet they aren’t – that’s fine, I guess. But what happened to the bum set?

Anyways, my real question is about racial cultural armor – can it ever be made available for all races? I don’t see why not. It makes complete sense since any of these races are theoretically capable of putting clothes on. From a logical point of view – there are no contradictions. I am a somewhat casual-looking white guy, but no one is stopping me from dressing up like a black hip-hop star, right?

In my view if you expand on armors like I have mentioned – things will only get better. Models will probably need some considerable amounts of tweaking, but it would be pretty great.

I’m writing this since all of those talks left me with a certain impression in mind – that we will have (almost) full cosmetic freedom. I can understand if a cloth character is not able to wear plate armor, but this one-race-only thing is not so nice to be honest.

They can’t for the simple fact that the armors are designed to work on the races they are made for. There’s no way they could make the charr heavy t3 armor work on other races without completely changing it’s design.

Besides that… why? Let each race have something unique.

BFNK.6748:

I’m writing this since all of those talks left me with a certain impression in mind – that we will have (almost) full cosmetic freedom. I can understand if a cloth character is not able to wear plate armor, but this one-race-only thing is not so nice to be honest.

Cultural armor is about the only thing I can understand. Even so, I’d rather everything be available to everybody. As a cosmetic choice, “going native” makes a lot more sense to me than “homeless person”. Also, cultural aesthetics are already shared through dungeon armors, so I don’t get the arbitrary restrictions.

As for armor types, I never identify a character’s profession by what they’re wearing (and good thing too, ‘cuz I’d frequently be wrong). Instead, I always go by what they do. Many of the sets don’t really visually convey the armor type they’re supposed to represent. So I don’t see why some armors (or even all) can’t be cross-type.

Bottom line, due to the cited hype, I expected a high degree of customization in this game. I’m sorry to say it’s not really there, and much of the design seems to work against ever reaching that level. It’s not completely horrible (if it was, I wouldn’t be here), but it’s a considerable distance away from “you can look exactly like you want to.”

For a few of my characters, that just isn’t an option. I would prefer everyone look relatively distinct. That ain’t been happening either. I see the same handful of sets constantly recurring on all races.

Remove restrictions. Introduce new sets into the cash shop, and in game. Get rid of “fine transmutation stones” (with a wider variety of cosmetic options, the demand for reg. stones would increase), and let us actually make our characters look the way we want them to, as promised.

Hermes.7014:

This is just what I suggested in a similar post in the suggestions forum.
I’ll renew my question to the developers: why in Tyria aren’t races allowed to wear stuff crafted by each other? I thought the Guild Wars were long over and races were already in alliance.

Just because they are working together that doesn’t mean that really have to like each other.

I don’t think that the racial requirement will ever be dropped. It gives the races something unique. Also why would those vendors give something that in their culture is a status symbols to outsiders?

my norn warrior does not want anyone wearing her gear, especially midgets.

fellyn.5083:

Besides that… why? Let each race have something unique.

That seems like a fine idea at the outset.

The result, however, isn’t uniqueness, it’s uniformity. If you want to look “cultural”, your options are extremely limited. Consequently, anyone who wants a cultural look ends up looking much like anyone else who wanted the same thing… which seems to undermine the point of it?

As I see it, to do the concept right, there’d have to be many, many more cultural set options. But that would be a tremendous increase of workload, and likely not worth the hassle.

The more options we all have, the more diverse and distinctive characters will look.

Personally, I want to be able to look across a field and be able to visually identify a certain character. I used to have that. I don’t have it here, and I miss it. And going on 4 months without any substantial additions to our options hasn’t gone unnoticed by me.

Yes, it’s true that opening all of these armors to every race will result in uniformity, but currently most T1 and T2 cultural sets are just… well… crappy. Actually, most of the armor sets doesn’t strike me with anything too amazing. I am not trying to sound like an kitten, just look at the sets from Guild Wars 1 – they are gorgeous. Either they fired some very talented people, or the designers just got swept in a tasteless direction. In order to back up my argument – here are some examples:

Necro – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/b/b9/Necromancer_Elite_Profane_armor_m.jpg
Warrior – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/9/97/Warrior_Elite_Gladiator_armor_f.jpg
Monk – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/c/cd/Monk_Labyrinthine_armor_f.jpg
Another necro – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/04/Necromancer_Elite_Necrotic_armor_m.jpg
One of my top favorites, Water ele – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/8/8c/Elementalist_Elite_Iceforged_armor_f.jpg

And then, the FoW armor sets (later ranamed to the less tasteful ‘Obsidian’ Armor)
Ele – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/5/5a/Elementalist_Obsidian_armor_f.jpg
The rest – http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Obsidian_armor

The armors I’ve listed are from the very beginning of GW, so they are very outdated. Imagine how they could look right now, in GW2. But we still don’t have them…

The current choice is just poor, not because we don’t have as many options, but rather because most of these options suck.

exelion.2369:

Hermes.7014:

This is just what I suggested in a similar post in the suggestions forum.
I’ll renew my question to the developers: why in Tyria aren’t races allowed to wear stuff crafted by each other? I thought the Guild Wars were long over and races were already in alliance.

Just because they are working together that doesn’t mean that really have to like each other.

I don’t think that the racial requirement will ever be dropped. It gives the races something unique. Also why would those vendors give something that in their culture is a status symbols to outsiders?

And they have to like other people to make a deal of commerce with them?

However, I still don’t see a point. There already is uniqueness. Armor sets certainly look alike on different races, but they’re still different depending on the body shape.
A plate armor on a Norn will look differently on a Charr. Why can’t that be done with cultural sets as well?

Race is already the unique feature. The gown does not make the friar.

BFNK.6748:

Yes, it’s true that opening all of these armors to every race will result in uniformity

I’m not sure if you’re referring to my post here, but if you are, that’s not what I was saying. I was asserting the opposite.

Cultural armors promote a level of character uniformity within the context of a particular race. Due to the highly stylized looks involved, even a totally different color palette does little to offset this lack of variety.

In other words, there are some armor pieces out there that can have their appearance dramatically altered by just changing their color(s). From what I’ve seen, this is much less true with cultural armor, because the pronounced style overwhelms the palette.

If restrictions on cultural armors aren’t going to be lifted, then I’d like to see a lot more cultural pieces introduced. Preferably, they wouldn’t even be full sets, but rather items designed for mixing and matching with the current sets. It’d also be nice if some were not restricted and were compatible with the culturally-themed dungeon sets. If a human wants to “go native” with a Sylvari look, for example, there should be more than one costuming option.

NO!!! The cultural set’s need to stay for that race, if you want a specific look then please roll that race. It adds something to each race to give them a very signature and unique look that you should only be able to get by being that race.

BFNK.6748:

Yes, it’s true that opening all of these armors to every race will result in uniformity, but currently most T1 and T2 cultural sets are just… well… crappy. Actually, most of the armor sets doesn’t strike me with anything too amazing. I am not trying to sound like an kitten, just look at the sets from Guild Wars 1 – they are gorgeous. Either they fired some very talented people, or the designers just got swept in a tasteless direction. In order to back up my argument – here are some examples:

Necro – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/b/b9/Necromancer_Elite_Profane_armor_m.jpg
Warrior – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/9/97/Warrior_Elite_Gladiator_armor_f.jpg
Monk – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/c/cd/Monk_Labyrinthine_armor_f.jpg
Another necro – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/04/Necromancer_Elite_Necrotic_armor_m.jpg
One of my top favorites, Water ele – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/8/8c/Elementalist_Elite_Iceforged_armor_f.jpg

And then, the FoW armor sets (later ranamed to the less tasteful ‘Obsidian’ Armor)
Ele – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/5/5a/Elementalist_Obsidian_armor_f.jpg
The rest – http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Obsidian_armor

The armors I’ve listed are from the very beginning of GW, so they are very outdated. Imagine how they could look right now, in GW2. But we still don’t have them…

The current choice is just poor, not because we don’t have as many options, but rather because most of these options suck.

There’s lot’s of options in the game as is, many of them most people really like, and that includes T1-2 Culturals, I know I love some of them! As for the images you linked, GW2 takes place 250 years AFTER GW1 and most of those armors look very old fashioned for the industrial era the world is entering in GW2 I bet many of the old signature looks will be available as armor skins in the gem shop in the future, along with all new skins at some point too. At least we can hope.

Shanna.4762:

NO!!! The cultural set’s need to stay for that race, if you want a specific look then please roll that race. It adds something to each race to give them a very signature and unique look that you should only be able to get by being that race.

I take that nobody read my previous post.

However, please roll that race? There is people like me who value their time, and they can’t just be rolling character after character to get different looks that cost more than 100 gold, at least for a tier 3.
Remember that time is worth more than all the gold in the world.

Shanna.4762:

NO!!! The cultural set’s need to stay for that race, if you want a specific look then please roll that race. It adds something to each race to give them a very signature and unique look that you should only be able to get by being that race.

Cultural aesthetics are not actually exclusive to their respective races. See: dungeon armors.

A look is not unique if you have a half-dozen people standing around wearing essentially the same thing. I’ve already seen this in the Grove.

If we want an environment wherein everyone can look distinct, then there has to be at least a considerable expansion of available options.

This can be achieved by removing existing restrictions, adding many more pieces, or hitting upon some combination of the two approaches.

Hydrophidian.4319:

If we want an environment wherein everyone can look distinct, then there has to be at least a considerable expansion of available options.

.

and I would imagine we will get expansion…as they release expansions.

BFNK.6748:

Yes, it’s true that opening all of these armors to every race will result in uniformity, but currently most T1 and T2 cultural sets are just… well… crappy. Actually, most of the armor sets doesn’t strike me with anything too amazing. I am not trying to sound like an kitten, just look at the sets from Guild Wars 1 – they are gorgeous. Either they fired some very talented people, or the designers just got swept in a tasteless direction. In order to back up my argument – here are some examples:

Necro – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/b/b9/Necromancer_Elite_Profane_armor_m.jpg
Warrior – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/9/97/Warrior_Elite_Gladiator_armor_f.jpg
Monk – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/c/cd/Monk_Labyrinthine_armor_f.jpg
Another necro – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/04/Necromancer_Elite_Necrotic_armor_m.jpg
One of my top favorites, Water ele – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/8/8c/Elementalist_Elite_Iceforged_armor_f.jpg

And then, the FoW armor sets (later ranamed to the less tasteful ‘Obsidian’ Armor)
Ele – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/5/5a/Elementalist_Obsidian_armor_f.jpg
The rest – http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Obsidian_armor

The armors I’ve listed are from the very beginning of GW, so they are very outdated. Imagine how they could look right now, in GW2. But we still don’t have them…

The current choice is just poor, not because we don’t have as many options, but rather because most of these options suck.

A handful of those armors are decent and I see one or two that are really good, the rest are pretty much hideous. I mean seriously, a leather skirt and halter top for almost every single female armor? Great variance, halter top and skirt that’s blue, halter top and skirt with tattoos… ooh a corset and skirt, now we’re getting somewhere.

Conncept.7638:

BFNK.6748:

Yes, it’s true that opening all of these armors to every race will result in uniformity, but currently most T1 and T2 cultural sets are just… well… crappy. Actually, most of the armor sets doesn’t strike me with anything too amazing. I am not trying to sound like an kitten, just look at the sets from Guild Wars 1 – they are gorgeous. Either they fired some very talented people, or the designers just got swept in a tasteless direction. In order to back up my argument – here are some examples:

Necro – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/b/b9/Necromancer_Elite_Profane_armor_m.jpg
Warrior – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/9/97/Warrior_Elite_Gladiator_armor_f.jpg
Monk – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/c/cd/Monk_Labyrinthine_armor_f.jpg
Another necro – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/0/04/Necromancer_Elite_Necrotic_armor_m.jpg
One of my top favorites, Water ele – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/8/8c/Elementalist_Elite_Iceforged_armor_f.jpg

And then, the FoW armor sets (later ranamed to the less tasteful ‘Obsidian’ Armor)
Ele – http://wiki.guildwars.com/images/5/5a/Elementalist_Obsidian_armor_f.jpg
The rest – http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Obsidian_armor

The armors I’ve listed are from the very beginning of GW, so they are very outdated. Imagine how they could look right now, in GW2. But we still don’t have them…

The current choice is just poor, not because we don’t have as many options, but rather because most of these options suck.

A handful of those armors are decent and I see one or two that are really good, the rest are pretty much hideous. I mean seriously, a leather skirt and halter top for almost every single female armor? Great variance, halter top and skirt that’s blue, halter top and skirt with tattoos… ooh a corset and skirt, now we’re getting somewhere.

Well, it’s true that some of those were among the worst that GW1 had to offer. There were a lot of way better-looking armor though – some were trully stunning, way better than what i have seen in GW2 so far.