For a game that has excellent artists and is meant to be driven by horizontal progression and cosmetic upgrades, I find it fascinating how mediocre GW2’s gear looks.
- Lack of diversity (medium armor users know the pain well, as do any non-human players).
- Overdesigned armor (sometimes simpler is better, but anet’s artists don’t know when to stop, and their definition of making cool looking armor is to add as many unnecessary details as possible, so the point that it becomes hard to distinguish between a GW2 gear set and a christmas tree).
- Absurd or goofy-looking components that they aren’t meant to be that way (oversized shoulders, giant and cartoon-ish boots, fat body armor, even a bladed dic – seriously, look at bladed armor. Many stupid elements are also a direct result from overdesign.)
- Inability to make good-looking male scholar armor (in contrast, the female variant is usually quite good) since the days of GW1.
- Inability to make stylish edges and curves (even when the artwork is stylish, the in-game models translate them really poorly).
- Inability to add epic-looking armor into the game (anyone remember the days of ascended gear and the glorious community reaction to the skins? Or what about carapace -> luminiscent upgrade, where an overly-designed, goofy-looking armor set was given a blue tint to make it unique and special: pity that the base model looks terrible).
- Inability to stick to a theme coherently and fulfill it as well as possible (do you enjoy the concept of bladed armor? It seems a fine idea, right? Well, here’s as many blades as we can add, to every single piece, at every single angle! Enjoy!)
- A flawed system/ foundation that, apparently, has given a lot of headaches to anet and makes it hard to implement armor in the game (about 10x harder than outfits?) to the point that cosmetic gear progression, in this game, mostly translates to “here’s a new backpiece for you” or “here’s a chance to get boots, gloves and shoulders for defeating a boss!”.
So, yeah. This is what a vertical progression mmorpg can offer:
http://www.sggaminginfo.com/wp-content/gallery/final-fantasy-xiv-a-realm-reborn_26-7/88938848Battle%20Sequence_Dragoon%201.png
http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/images/thumb/9/94/Alexander_gear1.png/350px-Alexander_gear1.png
http://storage.ff14.co.kr/article/2015/06/19/20150619135000200298.png
And this is what our entirely-dedicated-to-horizontal-and-cosmetic-progression game offers:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/4/4d/Bladed_armor_%28heavy%29_human_male_front.jpg/143px-Bladed_armor_%28heavy%29_human_male_front.jpg
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/gw2-carapace-heavy-armor-set-male.jpg
And for some laughs:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/7/7f/Light_armor_03_concept_art.jpg
The concept art for our fellow male scholar looks quite stylish, epic and mystical, right? Here’s the in-game model (ps. you can’t even dye it properly):
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/c/c2/Winged_armor_human_male_front.jpg
(As expected, female scholars look gorgeous: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Winged_armor_human_female_front.jpg) The difference of quality and detail between both female and male is so drastic, that I feel compelled to create conspiracy theories about it.
(edited by DiogoSilva.7089)