Guild Wars 2

So my suggestion really relates to being able to transmute beyond the armor classes (light, medium, and heavy)

Specifically I’m personally interested in having heavy armor looks on my light armor characters, and I know that there are some medium armor skins I’d like on my heavies and so on.

Though I suppose that there is a behind the scenes reason that this isn’t already in the game, or probably due to outfits being a thing (but outfits don’t dye the same way, or appeal to mixing and matching my armors together). Though if anyone knows of a heavy armor look in the light armor category, lemme know.

And I’m specifically saying armor types. I don’t want to get into having a sword that is actually a staff or anything like that.

I think the main reason is so we know what we are fighting from a distance in wvw and pvp. A person could be a guardian and put on all light. People would mistake him for the wrong type of class and fight him the wrong way. Or worse an entire zerg wearing the same type of armor. Yes I know you can click on their name to see the class but you can’t see what every bodies class is around you. Yeah we have outfits but they are not as popular in wvw and pvp because of the price of them and you can’t really do much with the outfit destine to personalize it. But I think that may be the reason though.

While the forum search doesn’t work it is possible to google one of the many previous threads on this subject. In short: Meshes, seams and Dye channel incompatibility between the armor weights

Just a flesh wound.3589:

While the forum search doesn’t work it is possible to google one of the many previous threads on this subject. In short: Meshes, seams and Dye channel incompatibility between the armor weights

That’s…. strange. But pretty disappointing, as many of the light armors are boring to look at, but the heavies get some of the more interesting designs imo.

I can just hope that if they get back to doing actual skins (which is doubtful) then maybe I can get a armor skin that looks like some armor. or combine elements of both light and heavy.

This has been posted several times and the implementation that I’m most in favor of is to allow armor to be transmuted into any weight, but only if the rest of the armor is of that weight type. Essentially, any class can use any armor appearance, but you cannot mix and match heavy, light and medium together. I’d certainly like to see more diversity in each armor type, but I’m not sure this would be the best way to do so.

I would think a good implementation would be to require all pieces to be transmuted to the same weight type before being able to apply changes. That or having to remove all other pieces of armor before transmuting, which would make it significantly more difficult to match pieces without wasting transmutation charges.

As for the concern of not recognizing your opponent, I think that’s mostly irrelevant with outfits. Plus with many weapons being shared between classes, even if you recognize the armor you’d often still need to see something profession-specific.

Being able to wear different weights while not mixing and matching between sets might be as good as it gets.

Perhaps the sets not belonging to that chars armor weight could be treated somewhat like an outfit where you can fill in the “armor outfit slots” and then choose which shows, that “armor outfit” or your real armor. And then of course if you choose an outfit it overrides both.

It would need an ability to toggle between the different wardrobes while on one char and probably two “armor outfit” slots. Or maybe if you toggle between wardrobes it clears out anything you’ve set up in the “armor outfit” slots or maybe they rotate and hide the slots that don’t match that wardrobe.

the way i see it, transmuting your armor should work for the entirety of your armor: meaning, if you transmute one piece of armor to a different type, then you have to transmute all of it to that type.

Ishmael.3642:

the way i see it, transmuting your armor should work for the entirety of your armor: meaning, if you transmute one piece of armor to a different type, then you have to transmute all of it to that type.

Would all other armour go to a basic skin of the new weight for free or would you need 6 transmutation charges each time you change weight and transmute all pieces to you choice at once? Problem would be what happens when you get a new piece? You need to equip to transmute, would you need to take everything else off then transmute?

The thing about being able to recognise in WvW. Outfits and Tonics exist. I remember once seeing a zerg of Kodas just after A Crack in the Ice was released. There is also the Royal Guard outfit that everyone was given for free late 2015, can make anyone look like they are wearing heavy armour.

If only the outfits looked/dyed better. It’s why I like the idea of using skins of a different weight class ideally, because I just find they are more detailed and I get some semblance of control over the design. I’m mostly disappointed with the fact that light armor is essentially “normal clothing” with a few exceptions.

I would be fine that if I had to transmute into heavy armor then all of my armor has to be heavy or it’s not doable, as it would make sense that light/heavy armors wouldn’t match up. There is even some medium armors that I would love to be able to use.

I kinda also wish they made complete armor skins for each elite spec of each class, just one piece leaves much to be desired. I would love to see what a full tempest set or the chronomancers set would look like for example (as the Chronomancers Epaults kind of have some of the look I want for light armor characters, but it literally matches 0 armors I’ve come across from a material/dye standpoint)

Also, completely agree on the wvw/pvp points where outfits are used (though not as commonly)

Ishmael.3642:

the way i see it, transmuting your armor should work for the entirety of your armor: meaning, if you transmute one piece of armor to a different type, then you have to transmute all of it to that type.

What would the game display if you have one heavy armour skin and 5 light armour skins equipped?

Pifil.5193:

What would the game display if you have one heavy armour skin and 5 light armour skins equipped?

Probably seams where the armors don’t line up would be my best guess. That’s probably why they don’t want to do it (this is probably another reason they have trouble with skins for all the races and why it takes so long to complete them)

Pifil.5193:

What would the game display if you have one heavy armour skin and 5 light armour skins equipped?

As I understand it – you have a wireframe for each weight class, and the armor skins are designed around that wireframe. When you put on an outfit, it (presumably) changes your character model to the weight class that was used when designing the outfit, and applies the outfit skin.

So, if you wore a heavy armour skin and 5 light armour skins, it would look like one of the 3 following:

• the heavy armor skin looks right and the 5 light armor skins look distorted (heavy mesh)
• the heavy armor skin looks wrong and the 5 light armor skins look right (light mesh)
• everything looks wrong and distorted (medium mesh)

Obviously, it wouldn’t make any sense to load the medium mesh in the above example – but there also isn’t a “right” way to do any of the others – something is always going to be distorted/clipped/misaligned/ugly. It’s not simply a case of clipping issues, you literally could have a warriors platemail chest piece stretched all the way to the ground because it’s applied against a medium armor mesh which has an implicit ‘cape’ (I don’t know how textures are mapped or how misalignment would behave in the engine, it’s more likely it would just be mis-sized and look “wrong” but still be vaguely recognizable as a platemail chest)

Short of being able to select your mesh, and only being able to apply skins of that weight class, there really truly isn’t a good solution to this – that’s basically what they’re giving you with outfits. Now, that said – unless outfits have their own meshes (and I do not know) – they should certainly be available as individual skins for the weight class that they were designed around – however, that would invariably kitten off people who own the outfit and don’t play a character of that weight class, and the only way to fix it would be to make the other 2/3rds of the mesh skins, and then address any potential clipping issues (which they handily avoid with outfits as well)

I find it interesting that they chose to do skins in the game based of what class you are, as opposed to just making the skins functional globally. Or maybe that’s how all mmo’s handle their skins.

Karnasis.6892:

I find it interesting that they chose to do skins in the game based of what class you are, as opposed to just making the skins functional globally. Or maybe that’s how all mmo’s handle their skins.

Pretty much, at least in any game with armor classes (light, medium and heavy).

I think the big problem they would have to solve is redoing how armor operates from the ground up, and some features and detail would probably be lost in the process. I remember back at launch when you could preview different armor types at the same time, it made for some pretty hilarious and freaky results.

I would rather they keep the system they have now and make an effort to mix up the themes and silhouettes outside the typical formats. (as a light main, I’m jelly that mediums get all the cool coats)

Coffietire.2783:

I would rather they keep the system they have now and make an effort to mix up the themes and silhouettes outside the typical formats. (as a light main, I’m jelly that mediums get all the cool coats)

I mean, I’m not opposed to that, if that’s all they can do for us. I’m just sick of playing light armor characters and constantly looking like some noble guy wearing his normal clothes out to a dangerous area.