Guild Wars 2

This is not as simple as you think. Yes, primarily, a skin wardrobe is a quality of life thing. But it can influence PvE a great deal in a way, you might not realize.

The following is how I see it implemented (this is just my vision, which can obviously be improved by smarter people than me)

Why it’s needed: Keeping armor/weapon skins in the bank is messy and very inconvenient. It’s also impossible, due to space limitations, and a high price of buying new tabs. That’s why we don’t see anybody collecting armor skins extensively. Also, GW2 has an appearence-based progression. As in skins. As in the end-game boils down to getting more skins. /nuff said

UI: A new window, with 5 tabs: Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor, Weapons and Costumes. In each tab should be a list of all of the available skins in game, corresponding to that tab. They should be organizable alphabetically by name, by type (chest, hands, axes, bows, etc.) and by set name (applicable only to armor and costumes tabs), and should be greyed out at first.

As a skin is added (unlocked) to your collection, it should be available to use by any character on your account. There should still be limitation on light classes not being able to wear heavy skins for example, but any class should be able to add any skin to their collection, so that their alt can use it.

The process of unlocking skins can be done in different ways. My proposition – use transmutation stones, as they are already in the game, and are currently not used at all. Make it cost a different amount of transmutation stones, depending on the rarity of the skin. And make the original item be destroyed as you add the skin, to prevent people buying items on TP to just get the skin and re-sell the item. Using the skin that you’ve already unlocked however should be free and infinitely available for any character on your account, as it’s done with the HoM rewards.

Good things this will do for A-NET bank account: People will start buying transmutation stones, and using them up. Plus, all of the following directly profits Arena.

Good things this will do for players: Provides a new type of goal, to collect all (or as many as possible) skins. You’ll be amazed how many ppl are obsessive completionists, just eager for a new check-list to fill. It will also allow for people to change their appearance more easily and frequently, meaning a more visually pleasant and varied mass of players, instead of everybody wearing CoF armor.

Good things this will do for PvE: Throw more people in different dungeons. Right now, everybody is running 1-2 most profitable/quick dungeons. This will urge people to collect tokens from different places, to get different and eventually all dungeon armor sets. This is especially important now, since with the introduction of Fractals, the normal dungeons are turning into ghost-towns (not that Ascalon).

Also, it will create a new use for karma, as currently, people are just banking it in hopes to get legendary weapons one day. Now they can use it to buy skins for karma

You can even go a step further, and add zone-specific skins that can drop only from mobs in a certain zone (make it zone-specific instead of mob type-specific, so to prevent farming hot-spots). Those drops should be soulbound, so that people can’t buy them on auction house, and should have a small (but not frustratingly so) drop rate. This will throw a huge wave of players to all of the zones of the game, if each of the zones has a unique-looking set that drops only in that zone. No more complains of the world being deserted.

Show your support for this topic, so that we can get some attention to it from the devs. I honestly believe it can be a great benefit to the game.

TL;DR
Skin wardrobe is good. Convenient way of keeping and organizing unlocked skins. A new goal at endgame – collect all skins. More people will do unpopular dungeons, and other areas of the game, if they can unlock a new skin out of it. Unlocking the skin should destroy the item, but make the skin permanently available and free to any character on account.

NEWS
Well, I have some good news for you, guys. It looks like ANet are aware of this issue, and are thinking about doing something very similar to what I suggested with this thread. In the recent interview Colin Johanson even mentions a wardrobe and how collecting skins should be supported. Here’s the link to the video with the timestamp on that question:
http://youtu.be/Jy7CcwnfUdU?t=19m40s
So cheer up, hopefully it won’t be long till we can close this thread.