Goblin Squad Member
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One of the staples of the fantasy world is that the gear you own should change how your character looks. The person in robes and a pointy hat is probably a wizard. The person in full plate armor with a shield and a big sword is probably a fighter. So there is a basic expectation that what you equip on your character affects your appearance.
Just as each character is unique in their players mind, their wardrobe choices can also be unique. A rogue might want to dress all in black leather. A Bard in crimson and gold. An evil wizard in paisley (because paisley is evil.) Also... a well off wizard might dress in silks and satins while a poor wizard might dress in a robe made of burlap. All these are a combination of character personality and in game wealth.
How cool would it be if, when you went into a shop to buy something you wear, you could pay extra at the time of purchase to get it in a particular color or material? "Here sir, you can have this rather bland brown cloak for 10gp, or for a mere 1000gp you could own this fine blue waterproof leather cloak with a wolverine ruff to keep the ice from forming near your face.."
And before anyone says it, yes.. I want to play dress up dolls with my characters. It's really not that unusual in RPG games for people to have a custom portrait drawn of their character, or to paint a custom mini (which reminds me that I was part of the Reaper Mini kickstarter and have a ton of minies I really should be painting in my spare time.)
So it would be nice if we could purchase or craft clothes of particular colors or materials so that our characters can express their own, unique fashion.
Boojum the brown bunny
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Goblin Squad Member
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Tracking down a tailor to make a custom robe is fine with me. I even think it would be cool if different places had different things available to them. To get that really fine armor you have to visit the dwarves of X-mountain. But I love the idea that our characters can spend in game money to look the way they want to. It gives them a reason to go out and EARN the money.
Boojum
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm at work, so can't dig around to find it, but re: color choices, that's being coded in as I understand it. There will be the standard, "main" item color and two accent colors you can choose. So a Company can be color-coordinated, or an individual can be known for the colors she always wears.
Also, did you get the Hellknights Most Wanted add-on? That includes a character portrait to eventually be used as a forum avatar.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No, I didn't see that.. but I agree that being able to use my character portrait as an avatar would be completely awesome! Have you seen the Eve Online version of a character portrait? It lets you rotate and pose your character for the picture, and change his expressions. It's amazing how much less like a DMV photo your picture looks like when you can smile or frown or do any of the other things real people do.
Boojum the brown bunny
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that all of that would be great, could be done, and hopefully will be available.
Do WE have the patience and stamina (got your stam buff food ready?) to wait until this small team gets their head above water (with the essentials) so they can get to those things?
No! It must be done now, now now! Before the game even comes out! *giggle* Ok, yes.. I'm aware that right now we are just chatting about the game we want to see, about what it might grow into. However, as an engineer I know that sometimes having an idea on where to go will make your life easier later on.
For example, you know that someday you may want to allow clothing colors to be set. So when you originally design the clothes you give them a color layer, detail layer, and shadow layer, rather than just a color and shadow layer. That way it's easy to change the color without changing the detail. You don't have to add the functionality until much later.
That is where forum comments and discussion really come into their own. In general, nothing that comes up in a forum discussion that hasn't already been an idea from the developers is going to be developed well off in the future if someone decides to add it.
Boojum the brown bunny
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that all of that would be great, could be done, and hopefully will be available.
Do WE have the patience and stamina (got your stam buff food ready?) to wait until this small team gets their head above water (with the essentials) so they can get to those things?
No! It must be done now, now now! Before the game even comes out! *giggle* Ok, yes.. I'm aware that right now we are just chatting about the game we want to see, about what it might grow into. However, as an engineer I know that sometimes having an idea on where to go will make your life easier later on.
For example, you know that someday you may want to allow clothing colors to be set. So when you originally design the clothes you give them a color layer, detail layer, and shadow layer, rather than just a color and shadow layer. That way it's easy to change the color without changing the detail. You don't have to add the functionality until much later.
That is where forum comments and discussion really come into their own. In general, nothing that comes up in a forum discussion that hasn't already been an idea from the developers is going to be developed well off in the future if someone decides to add it.
Boojum the brown bunny
Excellent! Best answer that I could hope for. I too can wait. I too like hearing about including the eye candy if it is understood that it is not MVP.
We have been so interested in some of this stuff that we have encouraged it's earliest inclusion by suggesting that we would buy it via the cash shop. All well and good, but I would like some real variety available just through non RMT too. Save the cash shop stuff for the really unique looks. :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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I wonder if they will eventually make it so that fancier clothes will take higher and higher skill levels to craft? For example.. At a skill level of x you can make basic clothes. At skill level y you get to do custom dye jobs and some different styles. At skill level z you get to add embroidery or patterns to the clothes. Or maybe the more things you add the more of a knock you take to the skill check, risking ruining your materials. So to add silk material adds a -10, a dye job adds a -5, that sort of thing. So the higher your skill the less of a chance you have of failing to make fancier outfits.
Boojum the brown bunny
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here is a very recent quote from Lee Hammock:
With the system as it is written up currently, crafters will have some limited ability to customize products by choosing from a number of pre-created options. For example, when making a longsword if I put higher quality resources into the process I could make it Durable or Serrated, both of which are have keywords that have specific effects. They're standardized and you could look in the auction house for Longsword +3 (Durable) or some such, but there is some choice involved.
We are going to have to track some individual aspects of weapons, such as lost durability due to threaded recovery on resurrection. How those damaged weapons interact with the economy from there is not settled, but the leading idea is disallowing them from being sold on the auction house until they are repaired. So if you are buying in the auction house, you never buy damaged goods.
I'd like to include some color customization, dye creation, etc, into the crafting system but where it falls is yet to be determined. We were talking today about changing outfit colors to those of your settlement during war time so everyone can see what team people are on (don't like it, go stealth), so we've got a number of ideas afloat on the customization side of things. Also I'd like to track who makes items if we can manage it from the database side of thing, but that remains to be seen. I don't think it's something that has to displayed in the name of the item or some such, only on item inspection, but it is something that requires time/effort that can probably be spent more efficiently somewhere else in the short term.
I got the impression from Ryans earlier quotes that they were iffy about too much customization but apparently they have some plans in that direction. Also good to see Lee posting, I think his last post was from June 2013!
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Goblin Squad Member
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For example, you know that someday you may want to allow clothing colors to be set. So when you originally design the clothes you give them a color layer, detail layer, and shadow layer, rather than just a color and shadow layer. That way it's easy to change the color without changing the detail. You don't have to add the functionality until much later.
I believe that GW is designing in quite a bit of ability to tinker with their systems. I confess cluelessness as to whether this is common for MMO design or whether GW is doing it more than it normally is done.
It has always been a little intriguing to me. The idea that such could be done to add much more flexibility for the GMs to do things that are not normally part of the game. Special monster spawns, easily adjustable mechanics, on the fly designed instances, etc...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that all of that would be great, could be done, and hopefully will be available.
Do WE have the patience and stamina (got your stam buff food ready?) to wait until this small team gets their head above water (with the essentials) so they can get to those things?
Indeed, fashion choices are something which would fall into the "start small and expand over time" category, in my opinion. There is of course a practically unlimited amount of space in the concepts of character outfit customization. For a minimum, I don't think any "cosmetic" outfits need be added; we can all run around in our regular armor or clothes. I don't know what to say on customizing colors until we know what their plans are in that area (I think the idea was tossed out before that during a war or other large-scale combat people's outfits would change colors to more easily distinguish friends from foes).
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Goblin Squad Member
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(...) their wardrobe choices can also be unique. A rogue might want to dress all in black leather(...)
A rogue wants to look unique, so he chooses... black leather?!
Dressing up should not be a problem. Dyes and dyeing (presumably Fallen Earth style) has been mentioned a long time ago and should be very easy to implement. Different necklines/sleeves etc will require new art, so expect that to start small but expand regularly.
Since clothing most likely will be destroyed on death, there will be a regular consumption of clothing and thus a real clothing market. Also, as mentioned, many groups will want to colour-coordinate outfits for pvp or social purposes.
Now just make some specific dyes (purple?) require ingredients from specific escalation boss monsters, and we may have an interesting dye market.
