This is a suggestion for an option that is turned on in the game options screen. Players would start and always be able to have the current set-up, while advanced players can toggle these options on for more customisation.
The idea is that Armour and Weapons gets divided into two new columns:
Enhancements & Upgrades (Stats)
Appearance
Enhancements & Upgrades:
Each Armour and Weapon slot shows two slots that work exactly like the upgrade slot does now. The first slot is the “Enhancement” slot, which can never be empty. It is filled by a level dependent enhancement named and statted exactly like the current Prefixes used already (see Item Nomenclature at the wiki: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Prefix)
The second slot is the Upgrade slot and works as normal.
So for example, your chest piece may have the Berserker’s Enhancement with the Rune of the Necromancer, and your head piece may have the Knight’s Enhancement with the Seal of the Magi, etc etc.
Enhancements can be removed from gear and obtained or handled completely on their own as a separate item. These behave just like upgrade components, but act as the base stats of the gear. You can still drop a piece of equipment into the slot, and the enhancement and upgrade will get swapped out, but the appearance of the armour is ignored.
When advanced gear is toggled on, merchants now sell armour appearances and the enhancements separately for their respective price values. You can choose to buy the enhancement and slot it into your armour, or buy the appearance and slot it into your appearance slot, or buy both. The reason for splitting this out becomes a bit clearer in the next section.
Appearance
Every character starts with two Appearance tabs. These replace the “Toggle Town Clothes” option in the Hero screen.
These Appearance tabs take gear and only show the appearance of them. All stats are derived from the Enhancements tabs. If the item has enhancements or upgrades, these are disregarded. Your entire appearance is derived from your active appearance tab.
You can bind keys to the Appearance tabs for one click changing (out of combat). Your appearance doesn’t change when you enter combat (although that could be an option later). Players can buy more through the Gem Store in the same way you can buy bank and bag slots.
Additionally (and quite integral to this system) for every visited zone and dungeon on the world map you can set which appearance tab is automatically loaded when you enter that zone (drop-down menu on the zone map).
Now you can have an appearance tab dedicated solely to what you want wear in town.
You can have an appearance tab that you automatically switch into when you visit the blistery cold northern regions and you want to appear rugged up.
You can have an appearance tab reserved for tropical areas where you want to dress lighter and more comfortably.
You can have a tab for parties and holiday events, and a tab for all the places in between.
And transmuting still matters. With a Transmutation Stone you can choose whether you move the enhancements or upgrades or both into your gear. You can also, if you want, move the appearance into one, a few, none, or all of the respective appearance tabs for that slot.
Now you can take out the parts you want and reserve or discard the rest as you see fit. Now players who love customising their character can plan out their costumes and journey to the ends of the earth getting all the pieces they want and love. Now people can feel a wonderful sense of ownership over their avatars, and feel a strong bond with their character.
Now players can have plenty of appearance options and even more ways to spend gems, gold, karma, and currency.
And, very importantly, they also get the choice not to.
People vary.
