Guild Wars 2

It’s now impossible to preview armor that your currently logged-in character can’t wear. Why? What kind of benefit does that bring to the game? And why wasn’t this mentioned in the patch notes?

When someone links an item in chat, or when I come across a karma vendor somewhere, I want to be able to preview those items (even if they can’t be worn by my current character) to see if I would be interested in getting them for my other characters.

Now the game basically forces me to log off, log on with the other character, and walk all the way to the vendor (or, if it’s an item I actually got, I have to walk both characters to the bank, because there’s no way to mail items to alts), and then log off again and back on with my first character to resume whatever I was doing. Result: Over 40 seconds of loading screens and a lot of unnecessary server load, to do something that used to be possible instantly.

It’s bad enough that (4 months after release and 8 months after public access), there is still no way to preview items at the trading post, but now it seems that item preview is moving backwards.

Not sure why this is in the Wintersday forum, but…

Maybe its to eliminate possible issues with people previewing armor, not realizing its not their class, then being disappointed when they find out they can’t wear it.

Or maybe the devs got tired of all the people asking for cross-class armor transmutation citing “You can already preview other types of armor on your character”. Though I really doubt thats the reason.

Its an odd change either way, though. Weapons aren’t limited in such a way, that much I know for sure. Maybe its unintentional, maybe the devs were tweaking some preview mechanics and messed something up.

Electro.4173:

Not sure why this is in the Wintersday forum, but…

Because it’s a “feature” added in this patch.

Maybe its to eliminate possible issues with people previewing armor, not realizing its not their class, then being disappointed when they find out they can’t wear it.

Maybe the next update checks the cost of the armour and refuses to preview stuff we can’t afford, so we’re not disappointed when we find out the price…

Actually I suspect I know the reason for this change (it’s yet another knee-jerk reaction to something that wasn’t a problem in the first place), but I’d like to hear the Official Justification™.

Was unnecessary at all. This fix is stupid, why for the hell i have to log in another character to preview an armor?

Just re-patch this.

I hope it’s a bug. I always like to preview armors first before selling them. If I play my warrior and a leather armor that dropped looks nice, I would keep it for my thief.

I still can preview weapons for other classes so I hope not being able to preview armor that your class cannot wear is just a bug.

noticed this yesterday when I wanted to preview a light armor I found with my warrior to decide whether to keep the skin for my ele.

I didn’t want to relog, so I just salvaged the yellow item and got lucky with 3 ectos ;-)
but still, I really want to be able to preview ANY kind of armor. the big red text stating I can’t wear it is enough of a hint – I get it and still want to see what it looks like.
the clipping with other armor types (those you currently wear) might be a problem, I sometimes had to strip naked before previewing certain stuff, but I still see no reason to disable the preview.

Hope this is a bug as well. I got a light armor that I wanted to preview to see if I wanted to put it in my bank for my other character or just sell it. Couldn’t check.

Please fix Anet.

I agree, please revert this back to the way it was, it was a handy feature.

I’m also a bit annoyed with the fact that I can’t try on different armor types anymore… :/
I usually go to the mists to try on different armor on different races to see what race I want to be. Now it means that if I want to have a character wearing x armor, I have to make several characters, go through the first quest of each race before I can even decide what I want my character to be…
It just takes up a lot of time… making the character, going through the quest, loading screens… deleting, and eventually doing the same quest again. No fun imo.

Thanks for the response Regina, the lack of knowing why we were unable to was driving me and my guildies mad.

well good to know that there is a reason behind this.. Thanks for letting us know Regina..

Thanks for the clarification.

Why did you remove the previous preview function in order to fix problems with it? Seriously annoying.

Thanks for the info! I hope this is a step toward allowing us to filter out items that are not usable for our profession?

Please please please?

Because when 2/3 of the armor is, by definition, NOT of interest to me… I don’t want it taking up 2/3 of the list.

climhazzard – probably because they didn’t finish the finalized system in time for the patch, but it would have taken even more work to revert it due to interdependencies, so it got dummied out, at least thats what I imagine.

Thank you for the response!
I’m relieved now and looking forward to the improvements in the preview function. Could we perhaps expect something along these lines:

- full glow effects on weapons that currently don’t show them
- the ability to try dyes you have unlocked on the armor previewed
- preview function on the trading post

Thank you for this! Please remember to communicate changes like this better in the patch notes when you make them. For example

-Previewing of armor classes other than your own is temporarily disabled as we work on improvements and bugfixes for the preview system.

That wouldnt be so hard would it?

It’s good to know it wont be there forever, so, are you implementing armor preview for TP maybe?

CharrGirl.7896:

It’s good to know it wont be there forever, so, are you implementing armor preview for TP maybe?

I’m really hoping this is the case.

TP-based previews is on their “mentioned” list in the wiki (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Upcoming_changes_and_features). Like the above posters, hopefully this is step 1 towards that goal.

Couple of things:
Why disable it on live when you can work on it internally and put the whole new preview thing live? IANAProgrammer tho, so maybe its a legit reason
Second, you guys really need to work on your communication with players. Two days ignoring it, another day or so giving conflicting answers, having the change in the wiki but not the patch notes.
Anyways, at least we now know, so thank you.

Thank you. This was a feature I used quite often, and didn’t realize how much I used it until I couldn’t do it anymore.

Hoping for a speedy return!

/em shakes head

There you go again. Don’t break the game and say nothing.

In a game where basically all the progression is about cosmetics… This all should have been done and tested before BWEs.

Sweet! It is a really nice feature. Sending it get well soon cards!

Dradiin.8935:

Seems like it was decided to stealth remove this, then when the outrage started foaming, they back peddled.

I was entirely with you until I read the above. Why on earth would Anet “stealth remove” such a completely innocuous feature? It doesn’t impact game-play or balance AT ALL. It’s not as though they were secretly nerfing a class, or reducing loot… I can understand why an MMO company would be less than forthcoming about such changes. However, removing something that was solely a convenience ?!?

That, I simply do not buy.

Anyway Anet, glad to hear this is just a temporary change… just.. next time, could you please include this kind of information in the patch notes?

Someone could just put that in the patch note instead of leaving it for days to kitten off people.

‘Why is there no ice in my coke?’

silence.

‘Oh mine too! THere’s no ice in our coke!’

silence.

Then on the third day, a waiter just came by and wrote on the menu ‘We ran out of ice, this is a temporary problem.’

How silly is that?
Water under the bridge, but keep this in mind – small little things that annoy your customers adds up.

If someone just brought this issue up to a non-owner of GW2, do you know what the non-owner would say?

“Sounds like a bad game, why do you even play it?”

And the domino effect starts from there.

To be honest, I would have found no issue because from a logical standpoint, it doesn’t make sense that we are able to preview armors our characters cannot wear-much as when we can’t preview cultural armor from other races. If this would have been established since the beginning, the complaints about it would probably have been minimal, but we did get used to the convenience of being able to preview non wearable armor for our characters. I am not saying it’s “right” that we can’t (temporarily) preview them anymore-I am just saying that it’s not that big of a deal even if that would have been the new norm (inconvenient, yes, but nothing that will stop me from playing-I also find extrememly inconvenient that we can’t preview armors WE CAN WEAR from the TP, which IMHO, is a much worse issue.)

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Let me clarify a few things, as there is some confusion arising from these threads:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Armor-preview-change-is-NOT-permanent
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/No-more-preview-for-all-armor-types/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Option-to-Preview-Armors-Outside-Our-Profession/

As part of an overall improvement to armor previewing we have had to *temporarily* disable the ability to see armors outside your class. We are working towards updating the system as whole.

We did intend to remove the armor preview *temporarily* in order to fix issues and improve functionality. So currently, yes, you cannot preview armors outside your own profession--this is only a temporary situation while we work on updates to this system.

We’re sorry about all the confusion in the previous threads.

We sincerely appreciate and thank you for your patience while the team works on this feature.

Given that, why wasn’t a note about it included in the patch notes? That would have been quite useful in deterring the creation of multiple threads and been a handy reference to point to if players asked the question anyway.

I do truly thank you for the heads up, as that is fantastic news, but if it was intended as a temporary change to accommodate superior implementation and fixing, I am at a loss as to why a significant UI change wasn’t mentioned.

I mean this as an honest question, though I understand that text on a forum may imply an emotional motive that is not present.

edited to remove a sentence clause that may have been seen as inflammatory

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Let me clarify a few things, as there is some confusion arising from these threads:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Armor-preview-change-is-NOT-permanent
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/No-more-preview-for-all-armor-types/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Option-to-Preview-Armors-Outside-Our-Profession/

As part of an overall improvement to armor previewing we have had to temporarily disable the ability to see armors outside your class. We are working towards updating the system as whole.

We did intend to remove the armor preview temporarily in order to fix issues and improve functionality. So currently, yes, you cannot preview armors outside your own profession—this is only a temporary situation while we work on updates to this system.

We’re sorry about all the confusion in the previous threads.

We sincerely appreciate and thank you for your patience while the team works on this feature.

Thank you for the reply. Since previewing weapons you can’t use just to have a look at them is still possible, it made little sense that it would be intentional to not allow previewing of various armour types.

Personally I never had a problem with the armour previews prior but I’ll take your word for it that it needed improvement.

As others have pointed out, we do have alts and it’s tedious to resort to using websites that screenshot every single type of armour and trying to match names to appearances, etc.

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

As part of an overall improvement to armor previewing we have had to temporarily disable the ability to see armors outside your class.

So the disabling was deliberate, and not just a mistake? If so, can you be a bit more specific about this? Namely:

• What kind of improvements are you planning to add?

• Why was it necessary to disable previewing of other armor types?

Naturally, I’m not asking for you to give us an ETA, I assume the improvements will be released “when they’re ready” ™ or “soon” ™, but I’m sure I’m not the only one who can’t really understand what kind of future improvements would require disabling this.

I can log into my asura guardian and preview heavy armour. I can log into my asura elementalist and preview light armour. Neither of those had to be disabled. But for some reason, I can’t preview heavy armour while I’m logged into my elementalist (although the model is the same).

Can you give us one example of a situation in which the preview was causing problems, and which led to it being disabled?

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

Let me clarify a few things, as there is some confusion arising from these threads:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Armor-preview-change-is-NOT-permanent
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/No-more-preview-for-all-armor-types/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Option-to-Preview-Armors-Outside-Our-Profession/

As part of an overall improvement to armor previewing we have had to temporarily disable the ability to see armors outside your class. We are working towards updating the system as whole.

We did intend to remove the armor preview temporarily in order to fix issues and improve functionality. So currently, yes, you cannot preview armors outside your own profession—this is only a temporary situation while we work on updates to this system.

We’re sorry about all the confusion in the previous threads.

We sincerely appreciate and thank you for your patience while the team works on this feature.

You should promote this in a huge way since people are pretty mad, including me. Now i’m not tho. Thank you for the explanation.

Now change the warning circles so our guildmate can see them since he is colorblind.

mulch.2586:

This game just keeps walking backwards.

maybe they are fixing the meshes problems while previewing other class armors.

Why was this not communicated in the patch notes?
Why do you do this type of thing that then causes frustration to the player base?
Was the AMA response about better communication a lie?