Guild Wars 2

So it’s be said by Anet that it takes a long time to make armors and they are overall a hassle. Yet instead of making tops without a trench coat for medium armor (which I’m sure would make a lot of people happy) which is probably easier to make than trench coats, they keep making trench coats. Trench coats are more material and require physics. So wouldn’t the smart thing to do is not make trench coats and just make regual tops?

Maybe there’s a lot more warping and twisting visible around the waistband with pants? Or somewhere else on the legs, IDK. Skirts and long coats create a forgiving bell-shaped bubble from the waist down.

You know what, thinking about it some more, I bet it’s the butt. Because virtually every armor set that isn’t a trenchcoat has a buttcape. There must be some bad graphical problems happening in that area that they don’t want us to notice.

The main reason is because they already have trenchcoats base and raw material, so they get that raw material and just do some thing here and there and kaboom you have the skin

But not using that raw and base material will take them time, resources, money, work, etc to make new ones, then after probably might clip or not fit correctly and etc and new problems will happens

In the end is about ‘’too much work’’ so, trenchcoats for life, but the same pattern is applied to heavy and light armors but with less impact that you wont really notice it

I like trenchcoats. They fit the fantasy aesthetic much better than pants. (Men IRL always wore some kind of trench or cloak up until about 150 years ago. Pants are a modern thing)

Also unified armor aesthetic is a thing.

Copy pasted part of my post from the Leather Armor feedback thread:

Well, to be fair, I think leather armor has the most challenges to work with. Especially the chest pieces, which is the only real complaint I ever hear of.

Light armor is not armor, so it can literally look like anything; or nothing.

Heavy armor has the advantages of having a high substance ceiling, the biggest surface area(for details), and highest variety of real life bases to work on.

Crafted medium armor is based on Leather. And the only leather armor that ever existed was Cuir Boulli, which would look like plate armor. Then you’d have the problem of armors looking like boring Heavy Armor, largely because hardened leather can’t support the same level of ornamentation. Standard fantasy armor leather armor is usually limited to studded leather(which really has no variation to speak of, and a few exist already in game) hide-type armor(which I agree are underused), but the variation of those are limited by fur patterns, and also, honestly, would be the hardest to animate, and has limited ornamentation; since this kind of armor’s aesthetic isn’t “fitted”, its just kinda thrown onto your character. Leather jackets I suppose are underused, but they are literally just coats without the bottom half, meaning less room for ornamentation.

Another option, which isn’t consistent with leather material is chain or ring coats and shirts. The material really is a non-issue with non-crafted armor. This option would work fine with vendor, reward, collection or Mystic Forge skins. But variety is very limited inherently. I personally don’t see how you can make ornamentation on it aside from arm or neck flair.

I think that the reason that they use Coats so much is because they have the following advantages 1) They are consistent with the materials used to craft them, leather 2) they have a high surface area for more ornamentation 3) they animate most impressively

Crinn.7864:

. (Men IRL always wore some kind of trench or cloak up until about 150 years ago….

No they didnt.

And pants, or leggings, of various sorts go back thousands of years.

Shovel Face.4512:

Trench coats are more material and require physics.

No, they don’t require physics. They require the illusion of physics. Every character in the game uses a standardized skeleton for animation. There’s a human version, a Charr version, asura, etc. These skeletons have a special set of joints designed to animate all trench coats. All trench coats in the game are skinned to that standard skeleton. That skeleton does not use physics as you would think. It uses a baked set of animations tailored to look correct for all poses. The animation looks like physics but it is actually manually hand made by the animator.

You can tell the difference between the trench coat animation of GW2 and that of Dark Souls 3, Bloodborne, or the Witcher 3. Those other games do use physics (simplified physics designed for a game engine). You can see the difference in behavior as in GW2 the movement is very artificial and predictable. In DS3 the coats flop around much more wildly and freely as they react to hard surfaces dynamically.

You make a good point, one I’ve been quite disappointed in Anet on. Why is most of the leather armor almost always a trench or long coat? For one it doesn’t make sense in a historical aspect as long coats would be problematic for thieves, yes they aren’t cohesive to sneaking around. Second a few is good but a whole selection is bad. Where is the leather armor of more barbaric versions, sure there’s heavy armor versions that are light or cover very little but when it comes to medium none of that really exists in game outside of a very limited few some that are only purchasable. Heavy armor suffers from a lack of robes, which yes there is heavy armor with robes. Also I want light robes that fully cover the female character, I would love to make a few characters from stories but with a lack of full robes they are restricted from the shrouded sorceress.

JemL.3501:

The main reason is because they already have trenchcoats base and raw material, so they get that raw material and just do some thing here and there and kaboom you have the skin

But not using that raw and base material will take them time, resources, money, work, etc to make new ones, then after probably might clip or not fit correctly and etc and new problems will happens

In the end is about ‘’too much work’’ so, trenchcoats for life, but the same pattern is applied to heavy and light armors but with less impact that you wont really notice it

Basically what this guy said.
Sad but true.

It’s not that trenchcoats are “good”.

It’s that each armor class has an underlying “base model”, a mesh the textures are applied to. The textures can then in turn make parts of it see-through, but the “volume” and “shape” of the model is always that of a trenchcoat for medium armor (yes, probably even for the ones which look different! They just hide parts of the trenchcoat, the pieces are still there in see-through).

Hence, most armor is a trenchcoat, because given the base model it’s much easier to create.

As to why we only have one base model per armor class? Probably related to the now… 12-13 years old engine?

They’ve made non trenchcoat medium armor so we know it’s possible. At this point it feels more like they are not listening rather than it can’t be done.

All of you people talking about models and textures as if you know anything… sigh!

Once again, it’s the animation skeleton that is standardized here. The models are not just all copy/paste with “see-through” textures. There’s no hidden “volume”.

Some armors are re-textures. SOME. But not every single armor in the game has a magical underlying “base model”. That’s not how any of this works.

I admit I know pretty much nothing about how armour is created in GW2 except for the end results. But however they do it the fact that there is medium armour in the game which doesn’t look like trench coats tells me it is possible for them to make it.

I suspect a big part of the reason so many of them fit the same style is that they want a coherent theme for each armour class. It’s not just medium – heavy is basically all variations on plate mail with a handful of exceptions (which generally look like chain/scale mail or an incomplete set of plate mail). And light armour is basically all mages robes (or dresses/‘butt capes’ as people tend to call them).

It’s not just Anet either. Here’s a gallery of all the medium armour styles in Elder Scrolls Online (chosen mainly because I already had the page in my favourites list): http://eso.mmo-fashion.com/medium-armor-comparison-tier-10/ Scroll down a bit and you’ll see much the same thing – they all fit the same basic shape with slight variations in the pattern.

Personally I don’t understand this, if it was up to me I’d go the other way and aim for as much variety as possible. But I suppose it’s easier for artists to create lots of variations on a theme than to create lots of totally unique sets, and easier for the modellers to build it.

I vaugely remember hearing that it was also to make it easier to tell who you were fighting in PvP – if your enemy is wearing a trenchcoat you know immediately they’re a ranger, thief or engineer. But I think it’s possible to wear outfits in PvP so that’s gone out the window.

I do wish they’d change it though because it does severely limit the options if you have a specific style in mind for your character and it doesn’t fit the base model for the armour type they can wear.

Xenon.4537:

All of you people talking about models and textures as if you know anything… sigh!

Once again, it’s the animation skeleton that is standardized here. The models are not just all copy/paste with “see-through” textures. There’s no hidden “volume”.

Some armors are re-textures. SOME. But not every single armor in the game has a magical underlying “base model”. That’s not how any of this works.

It’s not the easiest option, we get it. But they couldn’t even bother to make something unique for legendary armor? Or when HoT came out with those few armor sets? We are getting armor sets so rarely (due to almost everything new being outfit now), they could at least put some real effort in it and listen to fans for once and use that pretty rare occasion when they decide to make armor to make something else rather than a freaking coat.

My problem with trenchcoats and long skirts is clipping. They clip with arms, legs, back weapons, side weapons, they even clip into the ground while in combat idle! I always dress up my characters to stay around 90-95% clipping free. Sure, some small clipping issues cannot be avoided but when half of my buttcape disappears in the ground, well, that looks disgusting. We’d have way less clipping issues if we had more tight stuff. And no, I don’t mean skimpy. I mean tiiiight. -pokes pic-

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

Maybe there’s a lot more warping and twisting visible around the waistband with pants? Or somewhere else on the legs, IDK. Skirts and long coats create a forgiving bell-shaped bubble from the waist down.

You know what, thinking about it some more, I bet it’s the butt. Because virtually every armor set that isn’t a trenchcoat has a buttcape. There must be some bad graphical problems happening in that area that they don’t want us to notice.

Definitely clipping issues. The few med tops that aren’t trenchoats clip pretty nastily if you match them with the wrong thing (or at best have a jagged cut-off line).

It’s anyone’s guess as to whether that’s the why though. More likely is its a “safe” decision, based on fear about rocking the boat and moving too far from the base theme. Thus, we get the extremely rare exception, but the theme is the standard.

It’s a pain if you like to be creative with making your own outfits. And for those of us who really enjoy that, it’s kind of annoying that the MMO market seems to be chock full of games that do really well in one aspect of outfit customization and then do poorly in another. Like GW2 does dyes really well, but then you need transmutation charges to actually change the armor and GW2 has little thematic variety in armor. Some games allow you to change the armor look for a cheap gold-like currency cost each time and/or have a lot of variations in armor styles, but fail supremely at having accessible use of dyes. And some don’t even have a wardrobe slot at all.

It’s frustrating, I tell you. Like being given half the ingredients in a sandwich.

if it’s because it’s easier to reuse existing armor and make changes to them, there is the glorious chest piece that is short and tight, why not base more on that one????

Danikat.8537:

snip

The reason a lot of armors look similar is because they have to be modelled to fit the standardized skeleton. If it doesn’t fit the skeleton, they have to build a new skeleton (which is called Rigging and it’s hella complicated…). In fact that’s one of the reasons this legendary armor took so long and was so hard to make. They probably had to rig a special skeleton just to animate this armor.

It’s also easy to take an existing armor and just replace the texture because texture files are separate from the geometry and can easily be swapped. That’s why old mmos have TONS of reskins. However this is not accomplished by “transparency maps”. Any transparency map would leave holes in the geometry that would look like swiss cheese. You would see through yourself because game engines don’t render backface polygons (the inside of your skin).

serialkicker.5274:

they could at least put some real effort in it

That’s a little unfair. Like I said they had to build whole new tech to make this armor even work. I daresay it took a lot of real effort.

serialkicker.5274:

… listen to fans… make something else rather than a freaking coat.

Now this I absolutely agree with. They should have thought about the trench coat problem from the very beginning in the paper/pencil design phase. They should have taken a poll or done some serious research before they even started rigging/modelling.

It seems to me like Anet must have decided trench coats are some kind of iconic thing that exemplifies medium armor classes in this franchise. It would be like designing Master Chiefs armor for the next Halo game. It has to look a certain way (in their minds). The trench coat thing must be like some kind of class identity design philosophy. Obviously the community thinks differently.

I wish Anet would go for more variety in medium armor. Like I said they have to build it for the skeleton, but there’s no reason they HAVE to build a coat. As you can see there’s plenty of other armor in the game without a coat for light and heavy. There’s nothing stopping them from making that kind of armor under the medium weight class.

coso.9173:

if it’s because it’s easier to reuse existing armor and make changes to them, there is the glorious chest piece that is short and tight, why not base more on that one????

You know whats funny about that chest piece? It’s the naked body geometry reskinned.

They took the geo for the naked body and replaced the texture on it. The reason it looks like it has “modelled” armor is because an artist took that geometry into a program called Zbrush and sculpted a very nice detailed model of it (millions of polygons). Then they transfer what is called a “normal map” from that high-poly mesh back onto the original naked body geometry (which only has a few thousand polygons). It creates the illusion of detail without actually having it modelled in the game engine.

A lot of gamers scoff at reskins, but it’s important to remember that nowadays a reskin actually does take effort to make because of that Zbrush process I mentioned. Look up “Zbrush speed sculpt” and you will see a lot of time-lapse of what I mean.

Maybe we could ask the makers of Guardians of the Galaxy why trench coats are so popular. I went to see Vol. 2 last night and I noticed about 1/2 the characters were wearing them.

In fact Gamora’s one looked like the noble coat, made me think about switching my ranger back to that one.

Xenon.4537:

coso.9173:

if it’s because it’s easier to reuse existing armor and make changes to them, there is the glorious chest piece that is short and tight, why not base more on that one????

You know whats funny about that chest piece? It’s the naked body geometry reskinned.

They took the geo for the naked body and replaced the texture on it. The reason it looks like it has “modelled” armor is because an artist took that geometry into a program called Zbrush and sculpted a very nice detailed model of it (millions of polygons). Then they transfer what is called a “normal map” from that high-poly mesh back onto the original naked body geometry (which only has a few thousand polygons). It creates the illusion of detail without actually having it modelled in the game engine.

A lot of gamers scoff at reskins, but it’s important to remember that nowadays a reskin actually does take effort to make because of that Zbrush process I mentioned. Look up “Zbrush speed sculpt” and you will see a lot of time-lapse of what I mean.

Why do people care about how they make something as long as it looks good?

These legendary armors are bad not because it’s impossible to fit everyones individual ideal and personal flair.

But because the don’t fit the ideal of the in game classes and races. For instance this topic is about the overabundance of coats on medium armor. Well what nongun wielding thief/assassin/Ninja wears a trench coat!? Thieves get the short end of the stick as one can simple look back at GW1 and see all the remarkable armor the assassin had at its disposal and the very few options they have in Gw2.

I’d say Necro’s and all Sylvari based characters since by lore they grow their own armor have room too complain about the armor. I mean Char get their tail plated but will Sylvari get their Biolum or Asura their ears shown?

Apocalypse Azza.5734:

Xenon.4537:

coso.9173:

if it’s because it’s easier to reuse existing armor and make changes to them, there is the glorious chest piece that is short and tight, why not base more on that one????

You know whats funny about that chest piece? It’s the naked body geometry reskinned.

They took the geo for the naked body and replaced the texture on it. The reason it looks like it has “modelled” armor is because an artist took that geometry into a program called Zbrush and sculpted a very nice detailed model of it (millions of polygons). Then they transfer what is called a “normal map” from that high-poly mesh back onto the original naked body geometry (which only has a few thousand polygons). It creates the illusion of detail without actually having it modelled in the game engine.

A lot of gamers scoff at reskins, but it’s important to remember that nowadays a reskin actually does take effort to make because of that Zbrush process I mentioned. Look up “Zbrush speed sculpt” and you will see a lot of time-lapse of what I mean.

Why do people care about how they make something as long as it looks good?

Because how it’s made affects what it’s possible for them to do?

That’s like saying you don’t see what gravity has to do with car manufacturers ‘refusing’ to build a flying car.

Shovel Face.4512:

What is so good about trenchcoats?

They’re easy.
Why do extra work when most most of your customer believe you are infallible, and are throwing money at you.

Sister Saxifrage.7361:

Maybe there’s a lot more warping and twisting visible around the waistband with pants? Or somewhere else on the legs

In that case, make tops like the ones my ranger is wearing (the Heritage Armor in particular!) instead of ugly full-length trenchcoats.

Ashen.2907:

Crinn.7864:

. (Men IRL always wore some kind of trench or cloak up until about 150 years ago….

No they didnt.

And pants, or leggings, of various sorts go back thousands of years.

With a cloak or long coat over it.

The pants and shirts only is a modern thing

Crinn.7864:

Ashen.2907:

Crinn.7864:

. (Men IRL always wore some kind of trench or cloak up until about 150 years ago….

No they didnt.

And pants, or leggings, of various sorts go back thousands of years.

With a cloak or long coat over it sometimes when climate appropriate, or culturally appropriate, and even then only if it could be afforded.

The pants and shirts only is a modern thing except in some cultures where leggings with some sort of tunic, if torso clothing was common at all, dates back thousands of years

Some corrections added in bold.

Apocalypse Azza.5734:

Why do people care about how they make something as long as it looks good?

Because how something is made has a lot to do with whether it looks good. A lot of people in this thread have been discussing the method of making armor, but few (if any) actually know what they are talking about, which is why I spoke up.

Do you drive a car? Does the car work? What happens when the car breaks down? You probably care enough about the car to get it fixed don’t you? So you either fix it yourself (requiring you to know how it works) or you get someone else to fix it (and you better care if they know how cars work, or you’re wasting your money).

Ranger
Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled survivalists with traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.

-‘’Wait, my freaking coat is caught in a trap’’

-‘’again???’’

I’m also baffled that of all the possible leather / hardened leather / padded leather / light mail armor types imaginable, they go for trenchcoats.

The one stupidly impractical armor-design out of all of them, if you wanted to actually use it in a fight. Unbelievable. I bet the problem was that the people who wrote the tool they have to use to make the armors made the very first one a trenchcoat to show off an early idea for an Engineer, and then never bothered to implement a second type into the tool before leaving.

And the tool is written in undocumented Haskell, ofc.

Carighan.6758:

And the tool is written in undocumented Haskell, ofc.

The tool is called Autodesk Maya. Also Zbrush and/or Mudbox. Maybe 3DS Max, although it’s confirmed they primarily use Maya for animation.

Yeah but someone must have written extensive plugins for specific use in GW2, right?

That’s why you have tooling programmers in game companies, they do that stuff for the rest of the team, custom plugins, entire software, etc.

Carighan.6758:

Yeah but someone must have written extensive plugins for specific use in GW2, right?

That’s why you have tooling programmers in game companies, they do that stuff for the rest of the team, custom plugins, entire software, etc.

Yes but they wouldn’t write a tool that… makes trench coats… that’s not how any of this works. Maybe I misunderstood you?

Edit: For clarity, your suggestion is akin to someone making a “tool” that builds a car. A whole car. One tool that makes a whole car. On top of that you are suggesting this magic tool is flawed and can only make one type of car (a trench coat) and Anet never bothered to update the tool to make entire other kinds of cars.

Hrm, I was more thinking like the custom coolant flow analysis plugins my dad used to have at work before retiring, to properly construct coolant pumps. The base software was off the shelf, but you realistically couldn’t use it for their purposes without their plugins.

For designing a game item, I would suppose that you have custom-built plugins which can automatically do some of the texturing and underlying structure for animations for you. I mean this is a MMO, you need a lot of items, so makes sense to automate as much as possible. Probably also got a “generator” which starts from a template and with some simple choices does some of the initial work for you.

Carighan.6758:

Hrm, I was more thinking like the custom coolant flow analysis plugins my dad used to have at work before retiring, to properly construct coolant pumps. The base software was off the shelf, but you realistically couldn’t use it for their purposes without their plugins.

For designing a game item, I would suppose that you have custom-built plugins which can automatically do some of the texturing and underlying structure for animations for you. I mean this is a MMO, you need a lot of items, so makes sense to automate as much as possible. Probably also got a “generator” which starts from a template and with some simple choices does some of the initial work for you.

It all depends on the task at hand. For textures they paint in photoshop by hand and apply it to the model. There aren’t any special tools that do it for you. They might use a special tool to make it easier to “UV” the model (unwrap it so it can be painted) or they might use a program to paint directly on a model. However the artist is always required to paint the texture.

As for animations… No. There is no special tool that has “basic” animations for you. Not unless you are just re-using someone else’s animations (which in itself requires matching skeletons). An Anet animator went on stream a few months back talking about his process which is a pretty standard process from the sound of it (I’ll find a link). He does storyboards on paper first to work out his key poses. Then he takes the character into Maya which comes in a T-pose and starts animating.

Now getting back to the topic of modelling a trench coat… The modeller generally plans the design on paper making “orthographic” drawings (front view, side view, etc). Then he goes into Maya or Zbrush and starts making polygons using the default naked body of the character as a base. They might even take an existing trench coat and modify it. That’s not a tool. That’s a piece of geometry. That’s like taking a finished car and modifying the bumper or adding a spoiler or something to the body of the car.

The problem with trench coats isn’t that Anet has some kind of automated tool pumping them out. It’s that Anet needs to get their paper and pencil and draw some designs that aren’t trench coats… And then model those.

animation:
https://youtu.be/qqbQgVOMEVw

I feel the need to reiterate that I agree with you guys that we have too many trench coats and I want Anet to make other things.

I’m just here to clarify some of the misconceptions because I see a lot of people speculating on what the cause of the problem is when they don’t really know the process of modelling, rigging, or animating to begin with.

I know next to nothing about rocket science so I’m sure if I tried to speculate on a mission to Mars I would get some of the details wrong.

In a game where fashion is emphasized so much by Anet, it would seem to be obvious that having a large variety of different looks would be preferable to the majority of looks being very similar. So the most logical answer that I can think of is that Anet only creates a few non-trenchcoat medium armor because it is somehow more difficult. Why is something that only they know.