brought up b4 and it will be again. Outfits
So the cost would have to go up… Remember outfits =/= armor skins in terms of overall compatability.
So in order for this to work, A-net would have to make the outfit, AND the armor weight version. So this would be like making an outfit and armor skins :P
So the cost would have to go up… Remember outfits =/= armor skins in terms of overall compatability.
So in order for this to work, A-net would have to make the outfit, AND the armor weight version. So this would be like making an outfit and armor skins :P
I addressed the cost in the 2nd to last paragraph. Yes there would have to be an additional cost, but I think making outfits into armor sets and vice versa would do nothing but increase profits for a-net. Of course a-net would have to do a little more work but I would argue that most of the work is already done (didn’t they say most of the work is fitting the armor to each of the races? well they’ve done that for all the outfits already). I don’t imagine separating an already finished outfit would take all that much time or energy.
The cost would certainly have to be more then 400 gems… Look at the cost of armor skins (what few ones there are) in the gem store, then ADD an outfit cost ontop of it. I’m saying ontop of, because if you let people choose to buy the outfit OR skin you may as well be suggesting making outfits and armor skins xD
Fitting the armor to each race is an issue but it’s not the main reasoning. What you are suggesting is basically making outfits, that are armor skins for only certain weight classes. The problem is making the extra armor skin rigging, mesh, animations, channels etc to the weight class is alot of work (that’s not done) to sell to only that one weight of armor users. Yes of course the outfit will sell to all types, but the out fit would sell to all types with or without this.
(edited by Miku.6297)
This isn’t point|counterpoint style of debate in which we are trying to convince each other about which method is superior — everyone agrees (even ANet) that more armor sets more quickly would be great. The problem is that ANet tied themselves in knots years before by establishing some then-time-saving adjustments to armor design, race design, animations, and so on. The end result, which critics of the status quo need to accept is that armor takes a lot longer to design, render, QA, implement and maintain than any of us think is reasonable (9 months, according to Mike O’Brien).
Despite the fact that some outfits appear like armor that has been stitched together doesn’t make them armor. Outfits use a unique ‘rig’ compared to light, medium, and heavy — a simple copy|paste isn’t possible. There are all sorts of intermediate steps (some of which are outlined by Miku above). Starting with outfits doesn’t save all that much time.
There’s no “classification” of outfits that saves time, because outfits are a fourth armor class (well, fifth, since town clothes is probably still coded in the game as the original fourth).
Thus there’s no shortcut to the process that saves time — if there was, ANet would have discovered it long ago (because this situation probably annoys them more than it does us, since it’s their responsibility to get it right the first time) and even if they hadn’t, players have had years to offer advice like the above.
tl;dr yes, we’re all (even ANet) frustrated. That doesn’t mean that there’s a quick fix hiding out there — we either wait (as we have done) or ANet has to put other stuff aside to redesign the armor skin system (which, for all we know, they might be doing — they wouldn’t tell us until it was near-ready to ship).
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Even if I have to agree with Illconceived Was Na’s post as usual, I still really hate that I can’t turn of shoulders on outfits!
Elrik Noj (Norn Guardian, Kaineng [SIN][Owls])
“Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.”
“The objective is to win. The goal is to have fun.”
“Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.”
“The objective is to win. The goal is to have fun.”
Even if I have to agree with Illconceived Was Na’s post as usual, I still really hate that I can’t turn of shoulders on outfits!
Being able to turn off shoulders would be a good option along with possibly using a different “helmet” too.
Even if I have to agree with Illconceived Was Na’s post as usual, I still really hate that I can’t turn of shoulders on outfits!
Yeah, it’s a shame, but the very thing that makes outfits cheaper works against having any options.
Given that, I wish they were more consistent about the dye channels. There are so many outfits I won’t buy because contrasting colors stand out too much. I’d like to see one color as the main, one for trim, one for decorations, and one for things that reflect… or something along those lines. As it stands now, if you want red buttons on the ‘blouse’ or ‘shirt’, you sometimes end up with red trousers, too.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Even if I have to agree with Illconceived Was Na’s post as usual, I still really hate that I can’t turn of shoulders on outfits!
There are quite a few outfits I would love to buy if shoulders could be turned off!
I don’t understand the allure of outfits, from a player’s point of view. Apart from the issues of dye channels and shoulders, everyone who wears them looks alike – which seems the very antithesis of what this game is about (Fashion Wars 2). You pay for them, and yet you look like other people wearing them. /shrug Each to his own, I guess.
I don’t understand the allure of outfits, from a player’s point of view. Apart from the issues of dye channels and shoulders, everyone who wears them looks alike – which seems the very antithesis of what this game is about (Fashion Wars 2). You pay for them, and yet you look like other people wearing them. /shrug Each to his own, I guess.
My perspective
I get bored with my chars armor and want to switch it up. But problems….
1) it cost a T charge per switch. With multiple level 80s, casual switching eats up T charges fast which means if I switch around whenever I get bored I will run out of T charges. Which means doing content expressly to get T charges. Doing content to get T charges is booorriing. I will if I must but I’d rather not. And no, I’m not going to spend $/gold on a few T charges, which will get used up fast if used for casual switching.
2) if I’m wearing an armor set it’s because that’s the one I like the best. Switching to different armor pieces means I’m choosing a look that I don’t like as much. Switching to a look that I don’t like as much isn’t something I like to do.
Which leads to
3) I like the looks of most outfits. With a proper dye job to go with the weapons, auras, and backpack it’s quite possible to get an interesting look going.
4) with outfits I can switch every day to something completely different for no cost but a couple minutes of re-dying. I can also cross profession dress. For example, my heavy armors can wear light or medium outfits. My Necro can wear a heavy outfit. That’s something you can not do with armor.
5) it may be fashion wars but as long as I’m happy with how my chars look that’s all the “winning” I need.
Be careful what you ask for
ANet may give it to you.
ANet may give it to you.
One of my biggest disappointments in the PoF announcement is that they didn’t announce that they were making a major infrastructure change that should have been made years ago, rebuilding the armor system to allow for cross-class armoring.
I understand the challenges involved here, but the longer they let it ride, the worse it’s going to be to fix it, and fixing it would be a MASSIVE improvement to the game.
I get the difficulty, the way it’s set up now, light, medium, and heavy armors use different animation rigs, and have different separation lines and design trends. But what they need to do is build a single unified skeleton that can work for all three types reasonably well, rebuild as many of the armor pieces as possible to fit on this new skeleton, lengthening and shortening hem lines as best they can. In the most extreme cases they can fuse the top and bottom together, like you already see in things like Citadel of Flame armors, where if you wear the torso, then it automatically shows the legs as well, even if you have different legs on.
This may require going in manually and retooling dozens of armor pieces to fit properly, and that’s not inconsequential, but it is worth doing. Doing this would not only allow them to take Outfits and release them as mix-and-match components, but would also just instantly triple the costume design variety for every class. Suddenly Heavy and Light armors could wear Thieves hoods. Heavy armor classes could wear the skimpy light armors, or Light armor classes could wear beefy heavy jackets.
And as for the original consideration that “the class should have a single armor type because it allows PvPers to visually tell them apart,” well with all the auras, Outfits, and added intra-class variety added since launch, that’s a completely pointless argument already, and besides which they’ve added “show generic opponents” options to both PvP modes so that the skins an opponent is wearing are moot.
They need to do it, and they need to do it as soon as possible. Put whatever people are needed on the project to make it happen.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
One of my biggest disappointments in the PoF announcement is that they didn’t announce that they were making a major infrastructure change that should have been made years ago, rebuilding the armor system to allow for cross-class armoring.
I understand the challenges involved here, but the longer they let it ride, the worse it’s going to be to fix it, and fixing it would be a MASSIVE improvement to the game.
I get the difficulty, the way it’s set up now, light, medium, and heavy armors use different animation rigs, and have different separation lines and design trends. But what they need to do is build a single unified skeleton that can work for all three types reasonably well, rebuild as many of the armor pieces as possible to fit on this new skeleton, lengthening and shortening hem lines as best they can. In the most extreme cases they can fuse the top and bottom together, like you already see in things like Citadel of Flame armors, where if you wear the torso, then it automatically shows the legs as well, even if you have different legs on.
This may require going in manually and retooling dozens of armor pieces to fit properly, and that’s not inconsequential, but it is worth doing. Doing this would not only allow them to take Outfits and release them as mix-and-match components, but would also just instantly triple the costume design variety for every class. Suddenly Heavy and Light armors could wear Thieves hoods. Heavy armor classes could wear the skimpy light armors, or Light armor classes could wear beefy heavy jackets.
And as for the original consideration that “the class should have a single armor type because it allows PvPers to visually tell them apart,” well with all the auras, Outfits, and added intra-class variety added since launch, that’s a completely pointless argument already, and besides which they’ve added “show generic opponents” options to both PvP modes so that the skins an opponent is wearing are moot.
They need to do it, and they need to do it as soon as possible. Put whatever people are needed on the project to make it happen.
I’m all for cross-class armour (or is it cross-weight?) but I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t have to be as hard as you describe. We don’t need a new kind of skeleton or any re-tooling. Just let us use any armour on any toon and let us decide what looks good. We can figure out how to combine things to reduce clipping. We have that power. (#adulting)
While I think some outfits could have parts split off and sold separately as armor pieces (this is already done! Braham’s shoulders, for example), I’m in the camp that thinks doing that for an entire outfit (i.e. splitting the helm, the body, the pants, etc) is a waste of time and resources. It’s just better aesthetically to take a good part of an outfit that can mesh well and stand out rather than trying to pull the pants that look like any other set of buttcape or boot but with a slightly different texture just so people have the illusion of variety.
So, it would be more likely, less work intensive and more profitable if we focus on outfits with nice parts and request those specific parts rather than taking the mile of having them recreate the entire outfit as an armor set.
That all being said, I think the devs should get a bit more experimental with their outfits. Since they use a different rig and are a whole package look, they should start stepping away from making them look like armor sets and more like distinct looks. For example, Imperial, Exemplar, Lyssa, Ice-encased and Ancestral outfits don’t look like pieced together light/medium/heavy which is great, but stuff like Sentinel, Dynamic-exo and Slayer’s outfit look exactly like what you’d expect from a heavy armor set which isn’t particularly bad (so long as it looks good) but you can do something unique with the freedom of a full-package look!
This may require going in manually and retooling dozens of armor pieces to fit properly, and that’s not inconsequential, but it is worth doing. Doing this would not only allow them to take Outfits and release them as mix-and-match components, but would also just instantly triple the costume design variety for every class. Suddenly Heavy and Light armors could wear Thieves hoods. Heavy armor classes could wear the skimpy light armors, or Light armor classes could wear beefy heavy jackets.
Not sure where you got “dozens” from, but a quick look-up on the wiki gave 1,676 pieces.
G R E E N E R
I don’t understand the allure of outfits, from a player’s point of view. Apart from the issues of dye channels and shoulders, everyone who wears them looks alike – which seems the very antithesis of what this game is about (Fashion Wars 2). You pay for them, and yet you look like other people wearing them. /shrug Each to his own, I guess.
The same can be said about undyable backpieces, but people still wear them and ultimately look similar (primarily because a portion of your attention is drawn away to said wings/backpieces).
But the problem I have with people who try to use this mentality as a vice against outfits is that, you can only wear one outfit at a time. How can you look alike if you’re not wearing the same outfit? Oh, you’re wearing the same outfit? ~click~ Now you’re not wearing the same outfit.
You could say “I’m talking about someone wearing the same outfit”, to which read my 1st paragraph. You’ll look the same as someone else who wears the most attention drawing pieces as you (usually, helm, shoulders, body and back…and I guess weapons in some cases).
As for why I like outfits: They look good. They not only look good, but in some cases, they look like something you could never wear before, which is a troubling issue when I go to make an armorset look. Most pieces look the same as the other lists of options with some changes (swap a spike or two for a jagged spike, or maybe an added cloth texture under those spikes). Outfits are a great thing. You’ll look even less like everyone else when more outfits are released.
As an aside, there’s nothing wrong with looking alike sometimes too. Having everyone wearing a “team uniform” like those old comic book supergroups can be a neat option too.
I don’t understand the allure of outfits, from a player’s point of view. Apart from the issues of dye channels and shoulders, everyone who wears them looks alike – which seems the very antithesis of what this game is about (Fashion Wars 2). You pay for them, and yet you look like other people wearing them. /shrug Each to his own, I guess.
The same can be said about undyable backpieces, but people still wear them and ultimately look similar (primarily because a portion of your attention is drawn away to said wings/backpieces).
But the problem I have with people who try to use this mentality as a vice against outfits is that, you can only wear one outfit at a time. How can you look alike if you’re not wearing the same outfit? Oh, you’re wearing the same outfit? ~click~ Now you’re not wearing the same outfit.
You could say “I’m talking about someone wearing the same outfit”, to which read my 1st paragraph. You’ll look the same as someone else who wears the most attention drawing pieces as you (usually, helm, shoulders, body and back…and I guess weapons in some cases).
As for why I like outfits: They look good. They not only look good, but in some cases, they look like something you could never wear before, which is a troubling issue when I go to make an armorset look. Most pieces look the same as the other lists of options with some changes (swap a spike or two for a jagged spike, or maybe an added cloth texture under those spikes). Outfits are a great thing. You’ll look even less like everyone else when more outfits are released.
As an aside, there’s nothing wrong with looking alike sometimes too. Having everyone wearing a “team uniform” like those old comic book supergroups can be a neat option too.
Relax. I wasn’t ..uh.. trying to “use this mentality as a vice against outfits”. They’re not my cup of tea but you’re welcome to them. Each to his own.
I don’t understand the allure of outfits, from a player’s point of view. Apart from the issues of dye channels and shoulders, everyone who wears them looks alike – which seems the very antithesis of what this game is about (Fashion Wars 2). You pay for them, and yet you look like other people wearing them. /shrug Each to his own, I guess.
The same can be said about undyable backpieces, but people still wear them and ultimately look similar (primarily because a portion of your attention is drawn away to said wings/backpieces).
But the problem I have with people who try to use this mentality as a vice against outfits is that, you can only wear one outfit at a time. How can you look alike if you’re not wearing the same outfit? Oh, you’re wearing the same outfit? ~click~ Now you’re not wearing the same outfit.
You could say “I’m talking about someone wearing the same outfit”, to which read my 1st paragraph. You’ll look the same as someone else who wears the most attention drawing pieces as you (usually, helm, shoulders, body and back…and I guess weapons in some cases).
As for why I like outfits: They look good. They not only look good, but in some cases, they look like something you could never wear before, which is a troubling issue when I go to make an armorset look. Most pieces look the same as the other lists of options with some changes (swap a spike or two for a jagged spike, or maybe an added cloth texture under those spikes). Outfits are a great thing. You’ll look even less like everyone else when more outfits are released.
As an aside, there’s nothing wrong with looking alike sometimes too. Having everyone wearing a “team uniform” like those old comic book supergroups can be a neat option too.
Relax. I wasn’t ..uh.. trying to “use this mentality as a vice against outfits”. They’re not my cup of tea but you’re welcome to them. Each to his own.
That wasn’t a heated response. It’s more likely restating things I’ve said before in similar debates. But i also have some other things to say about fashion wars mentality but that’s not really aimed at an individual.
I’m all for cross-class armour (or is it cross-weight?) but I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t have to be as hard as you describe. We don’t need a new kind of skeleton or any re-tooling.
Unfortunately the skeleton thing is necessary. Each armor weight uses a different animation rig, mainly to control skirts and such. By default they can’t be mixed and matched at all, so to make it work, they would have to go through and fix that. My assertion is that they should.
Not sure where you got “dozens” from, but a quick look-up on the wiki gave 1,676 pieces.
Not all of those would require significant work though. Based on what we’ve seen so far, helmets are already almost entirely mix-and-match, and for the most part so are shoulders. Gloves and Boots may be as well, although perhaps some would have to be adapted to work as shoes and hand-gloves that don’t already (I think all do?). So it’s mainly just the torsos and legs that would require significant reworks, and maybe not even all of those.
If the rig they go with is one of the existing ones, or close enough to it, then that would cut out a third of the potential reworks. As for the rest, it’s not like they would need to build them from scratch, they would just need to pull up the pants or pull down the shirt waist or whatever, relative inches of difference that might not look absolutely perfect, but shouldn’t be a major issue.
As for why I like outfits: They look good. They not only look good, but in some cases, they look like something you could never wear before, which is a troubling issue when I go to make an armorset look. Most pieces look the same as the other lists of options with some changes (swap a spike or two for a jagged spike, or maybe an added cloth texture under those spikes). Outfits are a great thing. You’ll look even less like everyone else when more outfits are released.
There is not an Outfit in the game that could not exist as armor pieces. All the Outfit does is prevent you from swapping out portions that you don’t like for other portions you prefer.
As an aside, there’s nothing wrong with looking alike sometimes too. Having everyone wearing a “team uniform” like those old comic book supergroups can be a neat option too.
And again, if you want to look example like someone else, nothing is preventing you from wearing the same armor skins. This is not a “feature” of Outfits.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
It’s a real shame. For a while they were able to put out armors for 800gems, but they must’ve realized it was more profit-per-investment to just make outfits instead. Hence we barely get any more armor sets since they introduced the Outfit.
Which goes against what they stated was the main driving force of the “end game”, to get the cosmetics you wanted. The whole fashion side has been kneecapped with how scarcely anything new gets added.
Most of my characters have been in the same get-up for 3+ years, in a game where selling cosmetics is a significant part of the business model.
I’m all for cross-class armour (or is it cross-weight?) but I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t have to be as hard as you describe. We don’t need a new kind of skeleton or any re-tooling.
Unfortunately the skeleton thing is necessary. Each armor weight uses a different animation rig, mainly to control skirts and such. By default they can’t be mixed and matched at all
Hang on. A lot depends on what you mean by rigs and skeletons. We don’t really know how anet have done it (unless you have insider info?) so we’re going to have to do a little guesswork. My guess is that a single animation rig wouldn’t be sufficient for an entire weight class. Trenchcoats and pants, for example, would suggest different rigs.
But I would also guess that there would be a separate rig for chest pieces vs leg pieces, for example. Heck, there may even be multiple rigs for each weight’s chest pieces, since not all of them might move in the same way.
So… in my estimation there could be far more skeletons/rigs than you said, which would seem to make the problem worse, wouldn’t it?
Except, if there are indeed multiple rigs, then there isn’t a problem because those multiple rigs are already working together. The chest piece rigs are already working alongside the leg rigs and the helmet rigs, etc.
So it should be possible for multiple rigs from different weights to work together – sure, there would be clipping, but players can sort that out.
If there’s only one rig per weight class and somehow all pieces of that weight class hang off it… well, I guess that’s a problem for mixed-weight matchups. But players have suggested a solution for that too: only allow armour pieces from the same class. So, an ele could use light, med or heavy armour, as long as all pieces are from the same weight.
That’s all just theory, of course. No way of knowing what’s really going on underneath.
There is not an Outfit in the game that could not exist as armor pieces. All the Outfit does is prevent you from swapping out portions that you don’t like for other portions you prefer.
Only if you ignore how some peices seamlessly fit together. For example, Ice encased.
An update to the Wardrobe that lets us mix+match (And hide) Helms, Shoulders, and gloves with outfits would be great.
Hang on. A lot depends on what you mean by rigs and skeletons. We don’t really know how anet have done it (unless you have insider info?) so we’re going to have to do a little guesswork. My guess is that a single animation rig wouldn’t be sufficient for an entire weight class. Trenchcoats and pants, for example, would suggest different rigs.
Well, I’m pretty sure I remember an ANet person specifically saying that each weight class had a different animation rig, and that this was part of the problem. On the other hand, an outfit can work on any character of any class, so presumably the armor’s rig just piggybacks the character’s rig, or an Outfit built on the Light rig would not know how to animate Warrior movements.
This is all a bit speculative, but I really can’t imagine this is a completely insurmountable problem, I just think that either they’re working on it in secret, or they decided that it wasn’t worth the effort, in which case I would wholeheartedly disagree.
But I would also guess that there would be a separate rig for chest pieces vs leg pieces, for example. Heck, there may even be multiple rigs for each weight’s chest pieces, since not all of them might move in the same way.
Now that you mention it, aren’t buttcapes attached to light and Heavy Leggings, while all Medium armors have coat tails attached to the Chest?
That could be more of an issue than I was thinking.
I think the best way to square that circle would be to make it so that ALL pants were just pants, and ALL capes/buttcapes/etc. are rigged to the chest. This would mean snapping the existing Light/Heavy leggings in half and grafting those halves onto the equivalent chest piece, but I don’t think that would turn out too bad.
If they wanted to make it a bit more complex, then they could just use an A>B system, in which both the Chest and Leggings are rigged to run “capes,” and every set of Leggings would have a “caped” and “non-caped” model for it, and the basic implementation is that if you combined a Heavy, Light, or non-trench Medium Chest, with a “butt caped” heavy or light, then it would render exactly as it does now, while if you were wearing a “trench coat” Chest, then it would cause the Buttcape to vanish.
This seems complicated, but they already employ a similar method when displaying gloves/boots with certain types of long sleeves/pants.
This would be more work than I’d originally considered, but even so, totally worth it.
Only if you ignore how some peices seamlessly fit together. For example, Ice encased.
There’s nothing about the Ice Encased armor pieces that couldn’t be mixed and matched with other pieces. It is not any more “seamlessly fit” than any other armor. Would every possible combination look as good as any other? No, but that’s for players to decide.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
There’s nothing about the Ice Encased armor pieces that couldn’t be mixed and matched with other pieces. It is not any more “seamlessly fit” than any other armor. Would every possible combination look as good as any other? No, but that’s for players to decide.
Well obviously it isn’t.
And you state not every piece combo would work but apparently our mentality should be just give it to us anyway even if no one would bother using it. That is the illusion of choice.
This may require going in manually and retooling dozens of armor pieces to fit properly, and that’s not inconsequential, but it is worth doing. Doing this would not only allow them to take Outfits and release them as mix-and-match components, but would also just instantly triple the costume design variety for every class. Suddenly Heavy and Light armors could wear Thieves hoods. Heavy armor classes could wear the skimpy light armors, or Light armor classes could wear beefy heavy jackets.
Not sure where you got “dozens” from, but a quick look-up on the wiki gave 1,676 pieces.
Aaaaand then multiply that by 5 for the different races… 8000+ armor pieces to modify… Yeah, this is never going to happen. Not worth the time involved.
And you state not every piece combo would work but apparently our mentality should be just give it to us anyway even if no one would bother using it. That is the illusion of choice.
My point was, let’s say that there were an armor set for every letter of the alphabet (obviously there are hundreds more, but let’s keep the example simple). It’s possible that the gloves from “Armor J” or the shoulders from “Armor N” would not look right with the Chest of the Ice Encased armor. Fair enough. An individual player would have to decide whether he liked that combination or not. But of the alphabet available, MOST of the combinations would look perfectly fine alongside Ice Encased armor, and by opening up ALL the possibilities, it gives players those options.
Just as some examples, the Ice Encasement armor might look good with Crystal Nomad shoulders, or perhaps a Hexbringer helm, or Slayer’s Helm or gloves, etc.
Having millions of total possibilities, of which only hundreds of thousands look good, is hundreds of thousands times better than only having the one option of all or nothing.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Aaaaand then multiply that by 5 for the different races… 8000+ armor pieces to modify… Yeah, this is never going to happen. Not worth the time involved.
Again, it’s not that many. As near as I can tell, there are 487 Chest pieces, and 457 Leggings, which would be the only pieces in need of serious work, and like I noted, they could likely leave a lot of them alone. So at most we would be talking 4720 pieces to change, and we don’t know how much time-saving design they have in porting an armor from one race to another.
Either way it would be worth doing.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
I’m all for cross-class armour (or is it cross-weight?) but I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t have to be as hard as you describe. We don’t need a new kind of skeleton or any re-tooling.
Unfortunately the skeleton thing is necessary. Each armor weight uses a different animation rig, mainly to control skirts and such. By default they can’t be mixed and matched at all
Hang on. A lot depends on what you mean by rigs and skeletons. We don’t really know how anet have done it (unless you have insider info?) so we’re going to have to do a little guesswork. My guess is that a single animation rig wouldn’t be sufficient for an entire weight class. Trenchcoats and pants, for example, would suggest different rigs.
But I would also guess that there would be a separate rig for chest pieces vs leg pieces, for example. Heck, there may even be multiple rigs for each weight’s chest pieces, since not all of them might move in the same way.
So… in my estimation there could be far more skeletons/rigs than you said, which would seem to make the problem worse, wouldn’t it?Except, if there are indeed multiple rigs, then there isn’t a problem because those multiple rigs are already working together. The chest piece rigs are already working alongside the leg rigs and the helmet rigs, etc.
So it should be possible for multiple rigs from different weights to work together – sure, there would be clipping, but players can sort that out.If there’s only one rig per weight class and somehow all pieces of that weight class hang off it… well, I guess that’s a problem for mixed-weight matchups. But players have suggested a solution for that too: only allow armour pieces from the same class. So, an ele could use light, med or heavy armour, as long as all pieces are from the same weight.
That’s all just theory, of course. No way of knowing what’s really going on underneath.
Well, we can only take some guesses based on what other games do. Most games I’ve modded have only 1 skeleton per race and gender. If 2 or more races share a similar body, then they usually also share the same skeleton.
There is no need to make different rigs for skirts and trousers. Your mesh doesn’t include a skirt? Well, the skirt_bone doesn’t need to be used. It’s still there, but every part of the mesh has a weight of 0 in respect to that bone.
For GW2 I would guess that there are exactly 4 skeletons:
- Male Human, Male Norn, Male Sylvary
- Female Human, Female Norn, Female Sylvary
- Male Charr, Female Charr
- Male Asura, Female Asura
Anything else would be redundant and unnecessarily increase workload. It would be especially ridiculous to make different skeletons for different armor weights and another one for outfits. What would be the big difference between those skeletons? What utility is there in having different skeletons that you don’t have in using one general skeleton?
Converting an outfit to armor should be easy. The mesh is already there, it has a texture and dye-channels (that might need to be renamed to fit the armor dye channels), it has a material, specular maps, etc. and it is already weighted to a skeleton. The only thing left to do is to literally copy-paste the part of the mesh that will become a new armor piece and save it as a new mesh.
Since the cost/work argument has been debunked, the only reason why ANet doesn’t release outfits as outfit + armor set can only be design-related. In other words: ANet doesn’t want us to mix their outfits. Probably out of fear, that new pieces don’t follow the trench-coat / butt-cape standard.
I don’t understand the allure of outfits, from a player’s point of view. Apart from the issues of dye channels and shoulders, everyone who wears them looks alike – which seems the very antithesis of what this game is about (Fashion Wars 2). You pay for them, and yet you look like other people wearing them. /shrug Each to his own, I guess.
People manage to look alike even without outfits.