Guild Wars 2

In Modern day MMOs, why do more and more of these MMOs skipping out on Back armor Models like capes and cloaks, or other items?

The number 1 argument I heard against modern day back armor, is the engine and how it handles the extra graphics to process.

Yet if thats the case, why do older MMO game handle back armor models just fine?

World of Warcraft had it in 2004. this is the year 2013 going into 2014 and this is an issue.

Can somebody experience in the industry such as Anet staff, explain this limitation?

Because I notice a lot, very lot, of Back pieces in the game have no model.

I am using a low level item on my warrior just to get a model for him due to the lack of back armor models besides the heavy grind rewards.

I don’t think it’s about the engine.

I think it’s about uniqueness – capes and cloaks are too – predictable.

Knighthonor.4061:

In Modern day MMOs, why do more and more of these MMOs skipping out on Back armor Models like capes and cloaks, or other items?

They don’t the number of back items is huge. Check the wiki.

Yet if thats the case, why do older MMO game handle back armor models just fine?

World of Warcraft had it in 2004. this is the year 2013 going into 2014 and this is an issue.

It’s not an issue because they really use just 1 model, and reskin it hundreds of times. WoW essentially has just 1 back item.

Wow cloak had like 2 animations, designed for humans. That,s why it was clipping some times with some armor sets and mostpy with other races.
Now I believe they want to make full animated cloaks which would be kin of hard to do, agree. But nothing really stops them from making little to no animated cloaks/tabards IMO. Personal company preference

The answer is simple: Clipping.

The games engine is bad enough in regards of clipping. Just imagine having a GS on your back and a cloak. Or two swords on your side and a cloak. Puffy shoulders, hudge gloves and all that stuff would cause clipping too. It is a nightmare to program around that stuff.

ANet takes the easy way out, saving time and money. Simply no cloaks.

The issue is that GW2’s races are too different from each other, so all the clipping problems are magnified. The most anti-cloak race is the Charr, who run on all fours. Cloaks would look silly on them and have mad clipping issues. I bet Sylvari running animations would be incredibly buggy, too. People already complain about Charr armor clipping with tails and that’s very minor compared to a cloak going right through your back and twitching madly.

They could probably introduce cloaks as racial armor for humans and Norn. GW2’s engine can handle cloth just fine. However, there’s no racial back armor for most races, so they probably want to keep it balanced.

Old games had stiff cloaks, usually without physics. They’d look awful in a modern game. People are used to cloth physics, but right now those cloth physics suck in video games.

Rift have fully animated cloaks nowdays there are some clipping issues but not too much

Kaiyanwan.8521:

The answer is simple: Clipping.

If this was the simple answer the characters in this game would be naked.

Clipping Wars 2.

Capes and cloaks would be awesome in this game. I honestly don’t know why they don’t do it. Probably too lazy? Underpaid? Who knows, but they SHOULD do it.

I’m going to guess that it’s a clipping issue. Having back items limits what you can do with weapons and hairstyles.

There’s tons of back items.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gallery_of_back_items

(I’m especially fond of the wings and Fractal Capacitor infused)

Zoltreez.6435:

Rift have fully animated cloaks nowdays there are some clipping issues but not too much

Rift races are all mostly human, there’s no fully hunched race that regularly runs on all 4.

Gotta remember as well, with WoW, armor is painted on your body. You don’t have different sized armors, it is all just body paint. And the cloaks are stuck to your back and only move on the bottom. They arc them over tails (Draenei and Taurens), which looks rather ridiculous to have a floating cloak over your tail. They just don’t look appealing at all in WoW.

In Rift, everyone was human shaped. There was no odd shaped races, so cloaks fit everyone easily. They just had to design them for one stature, not multiples.

GW2 is very different compared to the two. For one, armor is not painted on you. It all has different sizes and parts. Armor is it’s own 3D model, thus clipping comes into affect. And we have different races of different sizes and body types. Animations come into account too. We don’t all have the same movement styles. A cloak on a Human would be decent, but on a Charr, it would be a disaster.

Making one cloak, just one, would be a ton of work. They would have to fit it to every single armor set, every race, every animation, etc. It wouldn’t be as simple as WoW or Rift with their mostly human models and body paint armor. There is so many things to take into consideration with GW2 when it comes to cloaks that the other games don’t have to deal with, thus making it easier for them yet harder for GW2.

dekou.6012:

The issue is that GW2’s races are too different from each other, so all the clipping problems are magnified. The most anti-cloak race is the Charr, who run on all fours. Cloaks would look silly on them and have mad clipping issues. I bet Sylvari running animations would be incredibly buggy, too. People already complain about Charr armor clipping with tails and that’s very minor compared to a cloak going right through your back and twitching madly.

They could probably introduce cloaks as racial armor for humans and Norn. GW2’s engine can handle cloth just fine. However, there’s no racial back armor for most races, so they probably want to keep it balanced.

Old games had stiff cloaks, usually without physics. They’d look awful in a modern game. People are used to cloth physics, but right now those cloth physics suck in video games.

… and they would still be barely visible on an asura.
Also client side performance. People already complain about bad performance in larger fights. Now imagine current performance with the need to do all the cloth animation on top of that. Although you could probably cheat and do something like “if the screen is already covered in particle effects then skip the cloth physics”.

I wonder… most MMOs (Rift, WoW, EQ, PW, the list goes on and on…) animate their characters like stiff flat-footed action figures. The animation in GW2 on the other hand is way more complicated than that, than almost any other MMO to date in fact. The cloth physics engine they use may not be sufficient, and any which would be sufficient might not be usable on such a large scale.

Charr should get a sash while everyone else get capes. Make it so.

Edit: hoopla about backpieces and a sufficient engine to run the cloth mimic appearances kind of seems like a empty argument, especially when there are many pieces in game that ofc have that feel.

I’m not saying that they wouldn’t clip because we get that anyway. I’m just saying that if something like Norn heavy T3 can be combined …it would be a kitten cape. They should take a poll to see if Charr players would mind not having a cape and something else while the other races get capes.

It’s my understanding that capes were in at one point before launch and just couldn’t be made to work with Charr specifically during the “on all fours” animation while weapons were unequipped. If so, I think it’s about time this issue get’s resolved with the racial idea.

I don’t buy their excuses at all.

We have plenty of trench coats and robes with pseudo-flexibility animations.

They can do the same with cloaks giving them set animations for running/turning/dodging.

Having full cloth physics for cloaks is always a bad idea anyway, it doesn’t look right at all, even if it is more “realistic”.

Just look at any superhero MMO with cloak physics, s*** be flying all over the place to the point of silliness.

You always get clipping problems with stuff like that :/

I remember Bioware spending ages and many patches during the beta for SWTOR (which has very good animations etc, to the point where melee weapons actually make contact with each other) trying to fix clipping issues with certain races and gear combos. They eventually gave up and started using work arounds, because it was taking up so much time when more important stuff needed doing.

Also proper cloth simulations are not a good idea, because of the amount of players on screen in MMOs. The poly count and number of advanced graphical features needed to be kept down.

Remembering Guild Wars 1 – a lot, and I mean a LOT of players switched the guild capes off as soon as ANet made their display optional. Back items have their fans, sure, but they are nowhere near omnipopular. Probably the devs consider it not worth it, given the loads of clipping problems they cause.

Personally I’d never display a cape or other back item. I switch off helmets and shoulder pieces in all games I play, too. I am really minimalistic with costumes.

So am I the only one who doesn’t miss capes at all?

They were ok in GW1 because they were relatively small and unobtrusive, but definitely not something I felt particularly strongly about. Functionally it was just a way of showing off your guild emblem, the guild back packs serve the same purpose in this game.

But personally I much prefer the variety of back items on offer in this game.

Danikat.8537:

So am I the only one who doesn’t miss capes at all?

They were ok in GW1 because they were relatively small and unobtrusive, but definitely not something I felt particularly strongly about. Functionally it was just a way of showing off your guild emblem, the guild back packs serve the same purpose in this game.

But personally I much prefer the variety of back items on offer in this game.

You are not the only one.
The animation always looked a bit weird but apparently some of the devs miss it enough that they are working on it on their free time.

GW1 I hardly would sport the cape. In WoW/DCUO/SWTOR/RIFT/EQ/COH so on and so forth I would almost always wear a cape on many characters. I think it mostly was due to the fact that in GW1 the cape was kind of too short or looked out of place. It moved weird also in comparison to the armor we had.

also keep in mind in GW1 the cape design was built by the Guild Leader. and you had no control over what your big cape look like unless you left your guild and made your own.

So you could have a very ugly silly color design to the cape, out of your control, and simply had to deal with it or leave.

Kimyrielle.3826:

Remembering Guild Wars 1 – a lot, and I mean a LOT of players switched the guild capes off as soon as ANet made their display optional.

GW1 capes were, in truth, not very good, and looked really out of place. I switched off mine as soon as i could. I certainly don’t miss them – most of my current characters are doing well without any.

Knighthonor.4061:

also keep in mind in GW1 the cape design was built by the Guild Leader. and you had no control over what your big cape look like unless you left your guild and made your own.

So you could have a very ugly silly color design to the cape, out of your control, and simply had to deal with it or leave.

Uh, i was the guild leader. I still couldn’t make the cape look any good.