Skin Customisation - Further Thoughts.

[GoLd-LouV]

/signed

[Arisellon]

/signed

[AestorTheKnight]

Hi everyone! I just wanted to raise and clarify a couple of issues i didnt fully discuss
in the original post. They are:

1. Unqiue Armour Skins.
2. Weapon Models and Skins.
3. Shield Models and Skins.

So here goes.

1. Unique Armour Skins.

In DDO there are two kinds of Armour Skins, Generic Armour Skins and Unique Armour Skins.
That is, Generic Armour skins are the ones you loot from chests, their Skins are randomly generated
from a range of Underskins, Over Meshes, and come in various Colours.

Then there are Unique Armour Skins, and by that I mean the Armour Skins that are unique to
certain Named Armours such as Blue Dragonscale Plate Armour, Argentis Armour, Centurion
Armour, Stonemeld Plate, Regala of the Phoenix, Titanic Docent, Emerald Guard etc etc.
These of course cannot be found in chests and are not randomly generated, but are
only obtained as Raid Loot or as Static Rewards.

So the question is, should it be possible to customise the skins of Unique Named Armours
or customise Generic Armours with Unique Skins. A hypothetical example i want the abilities
of the Blue Dragonscale Robe for my Sorceror, but I personally do not like the Blue Dragonscale
Robe or it does not suit my Sorcerors look. So should I be able to get the Blue Dragonscale
Robe and change its skin to something else that i like, while keeping the abilities of the Blue
Dragonscale Robe? Or... vice versa, If I wanted to wear say a Dragontouched Robe on my
sorceror, but specifically like the Blue Dragonscale Robe Skin, should i be able to customise
my Dragontiuched robe to look like a Blue Dragonscale Robe, but keep the abilities
of the Dragontouched Robe.

This above example of course applies to all other Unique Armours. For example I
want to wear Breastplate of Destruction on my Rogue, but dont like the Skin, so
can i change its Skin to that of the Kunderak Delving Suit, cos I really like that
skin.

Or if I have a suit of +5 Mithril Full Plate should I be able to customise it to look
like Centurion Armour.

My overwhelming answer to these questions is Yes. As far as i am concerned
the way an armour looks does not matter with regards Gameplay, it has no
effect on gameplay mechanics whatsoever It is only concerned with how
a player wants to look in the gameworld, and i think that the more freedom
and choice we have in this area the better. Variety afterall is the spice of life,
and that is why I think Unique armours should be available for customisation
and not arbitrarily limited to remain unique.

However there must be a way to limit, the customisation of Unique Armours.
And the simple solution is that all Armous,you wish to customise or use to customise
another armour must be Bound to Character.

2. Weapon Models and Skins.
Its great that every single melee weapon in the game has a number of different models!
Bows also have about 10 different models, and they can either be Darkwood or Normal.
Every single Melee Weapon Model in the game can be skinned with with a different
material, Steel, Adamantine, Silver, Byeshk, Flametouched Iron. Some Greensteel
weapons actually use generic models, just skinned with a Green Steel Skin. For example
Greensteel Longswords, Shortsswords and Rapiers. Such variety, its awsome!

And yet.... sadly.... at high level. everyone has Green Steel Weapons. Every Dwarf
with a Greensteel greataxe has exactly the same shaped Greataxe. And have you
noticed, that not many people make Greensteel Greatswords? Maybe this is because
Greensteel Greatswords are not as good as Falcions and Greataxes, but maybe
its cos people dont like the Greensteel Greatsword Model? Well thats my reason anyways.

So all Im saying is, that it would be awsome to be able to customise the models of our
weapons. I personally would really like a Green Steel Greatsword, but i wont make
one, because I really dont like the Model. And there are loads of other awsome
Great axe models, that become obsolete for end game characters, cos they have
to use a Greensteel Greataxe to viable in end game raids and quests.

And it is apparent that this is easily possible, because if its possible to Skin
a Generic Greataxe model with Adamantine, Silver or Byeshk, then its possible
to Skin it with Greensteel too. It would be really awsome for us to able to customise
our weapon models, so that not every greensteel weapon looks the same.

3. Shields Models and Skins.
In my original post I forgot to write that I would also very much like to see
the ability to customise Shield Models and skins and colours.

Its no coincidence that at high level, almost all the Clerics and all the Tanks
have Loriks Champion, Leviks Defender and Madstone Shield. there is
one simple reason. They are the best shields in the game by far. So why use
anything else? And Omg... Light and Dark...

Anyways all im saying is, there are some really awsome looking Shields in
the game, that have become obsolete because their stats are just not
as good as others. So why not allow the players to customise their
Loriks Champion with whatever skin they like? That Dwarf Cleric could make it look
like a Kunderak Warding shield, that Drow FvS might like a Drow Ceremonial
shield as in Bijio

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s...elds/Bijio.jpg

So you could have the coool look without having to Gimp your character

Or if that Sorceror wants his simple +5 Light Mithril Shield to look like the Shield
of the Azure Valkyrie

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s...reValkyrie.jpg

and you know why no-one uses the Ward of Undeath? Cos it looks like junk... Sry
But its true

The same restriction should apply to Armour, Shields, Helmets and Weapons, that all customisable equipment must be bound to character, as in Bound and Attuned via the Stone of Change.

If you agree or disagree pls feel free to Discuss.

So please please Devs, allow us to fully customise, our Armour, Shield, Helmets and Weapon Models
and Skins. Thanks so much! :-)

[Calebro]

Non-unique items should be customizable to look like any *non-unique* item.
Unique items should be customizable the same way.
There should be no way to make any item look like an unique item that it is not.

Customization would be good.
The ability to make your gear look like unique gear would be bad. Ungeared toons would *look* geared. That would be bad.

[AestorTheKnight]

Yeah Calebro, i see what your saying. :|

Basically what im saying is, is that in order to change your +5 Mithril Full Plate to look like Centurion Armour, you would actually have to own a suit of Centurion Armour in the first place, and since Centurion Armour is automatically Bound to Character, it wouldnt be possible to obtain the Centurion Armour skin for a character that doesnt already have it. So really your not making an ungeared character "look" geared. its just allowing a Geared character to look how he or she, wants to look, while wearing the gear with the abilities he or she wants. Rather than them being stuck wearing some pretty low par level 12 Raid Armour, in order to wear that cool skin.

Hope that makes sense?

[Calebro]

And what I'm saying is that the only thing that should be allowed to look like Centurian Armor is Centurian Armor.
If you wanted to make that Centurian Armor look like a suit of +5 Full, however, you should be allowed to.

[AestorTheKnight]

Does it really matter if someone changed for example a Leviks Defender to look like a Kunderak Warding Shileld?
I mean why does that really matter? Sure you might be confused about what shield they are "Actually" useing but they wont be. Maybe a bit of mystery and ambiguity woould be a good thing, instead of instantly meeting someone and knowing automatically what abilities they have on their gear are. Just my oppinion

But yeah i hear what your saying totally

I suppose also what im saying is this, is that if you cant take Unique Skins and place them on another Armour or Shield etc.... then it limits that Unique Skin to that Unique set of abilities. So in practice what that means is, if for example I really really love the skin of The Kunderak Warding Shield, and it would perfectly suit my armour, according to your suggestion that Unique skins should only be on Unique items, I would never be able to wear a Kunderak Warding Shield skin, unless i wear that actual Kunderak Warding Shield. The problem with this is, that it sacrifices ability for looks, and thats the problem im trying to solve.

I just basically think that the players should be able to "look" however they want to look and to take the best things in the game to customise their characters look, without sacrificing their abilities. Thats what im aiming for.

[MarcusCole]

/signed

100% in agreement and hoping for the day we are able to have even more customization to clothing especially DT.

[kamimitsu]

/signed (and hanko'd) in triplicate and duly notarized

[Uska]

/Dont care either way.

[shaolaolint]

/signed

[studentx]

Agreed, though I'd added hair as another option for customization.

[Psyk0sisS]

/signed for sure

My thought on Named armor skins...I think the graphic should probably not be able to be changed, or maybe give one or two alternate options for each type. Think of it as a finly crafted item that cannot be re-molded after being forged, maybe? However, I do think that the color of those named items should be allowed to be changed. I like to think my sneaky assassin wouldn't be wearing a glaring-white robe (dragontouched) for any reason...just seems silly (which brings an issue with sneaking while holding a flaming wpn lol but that's another topic)

[pypse_cz]

/definitely signed

I want every one of my robes to look like the Abbot robe ^^

[Myrdinn]

/double signed

[hunter666]

/signed

[Rykin]

/signed

I think non-unique items should definitely be customisable, but I think unique items should remain as they are - "unique", with the exception of dragontouched armour as the abilities differ so they should not all look the same.

[Fenrisulven6]

/signed

Turbine is missing out on a giant revenue stream by not allowing us to change the look of our armor.

I will pay dearly through the wazzo, as would most others, to change the look of my/our armor.

Echo and

/signed

[yoyo1]

/signed

[AestorTheKnight]

I think we all agree that Armour, Shield, Helmet and Weapon Skins in DDO should be customisable to some degree. However there seems to be some disagreement about whether or not "Unique" Skins should be customisable. I shall now try to make clear the reasons for the customisation of Unique Named items in DDO. Later in the post I shall propose a system for customising Unique Named items while retaining some their "uniqueness".

1. A Roleplaying Proverb.
2. Unique Items, are they really Unique?
3. Why Customisation Now?
4. Static Item Skins made obsolete because of their Enchantments.
5. A Way to Customise Unique Items while retaining their Unique Status.
6. Conclusion

- -1. A Roleplaying Proverb.
I am not sure where this statement first originated, although if memory serves me correctly, I first read it in
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Dungeon Masters Guide 1st Edition, by Gary Gygax (God bless him). In a section
detailing the question, "What is a roleplaying game?" it read.

"The only thing that limits the game is your imagination."

Or words to that effect. If someone knows the exact origin of this well known RPG Proverb, please let me know. Please keep that proverb in mind with regards the concepts discussed herein.

- -2. Unique Items, are they really Unique?
In DDO today there are a set of items, termed as Unique or Named items. That is they are not generic and have a Name, such as "Sword of Shadows" that differentiates them from other items. Also they are static, in that their enchantments do not change (with the exception of Epic Upgrades.) and niether do their Models and Skin appearance.

As far as I know the concept of a "Named Item" originates from Pen and Paper Roleplaying where certain unique and powerful magically enchanted items, earned a name due to both their uniqueness and power. And this idea in turn originates from human Myth and Legend. For example , the legendary sword of King Arthur, Excalibur or The Golden Fleece of Greek Mythology. Examples from fantasy fiction include the sword Stormbringer wielded by Elric, in Micheal Moorcock's Stormbringer books, or The One Ring of Tolkiens, Lord of The Rings.
However, their outstanding quality, is the fact of their uniqueness, by that i mean, there is reputed to be ONLY ONE of them.

Now let us contrast this with the concept of the "Named Item" in DDO. Presumably at its heart the concept is identical, that is, the Named Items in DDO are supposed to be unique, IE, there is supposed to be ONLY ONE of them. Surely there is supposed to be only ONE, Sword of Shadows that is an epic sword found in the Vault of Night of the Red Dragon, Velah. Or for example the shield Lorikks Champion which states in its description
"This relic of the Silver Flame was once worn by the powerful Cleric Lorikk." Now I assume there was only one powerful cleric of the Silver Flame called Lorikk, and I presume he only had one Shield! Unless of course I am mistaken and actually Lorikk was the owner of a Silver Flame Shield Factory, who happened to lose a Shipment of over 100 Lorriks Champions that got dropped off the back of a lorry beneath Stormreach. So how is it that their are actually more than 100 Lorikks Champions scattered around Stormreach, on the arms of every 20th level cleric out there?

The answer is simple, this is an MMORPG, and ofcourse it would be silly and unfair to only have one Lorriks Champion considering the huge number of players, and that is totally fair enough. But what I am really pointing out is that this conceptual "Sacred Cow" of unique Named Item, is really a fallacy in the modern MMORPG.

And it is ironic that actually many of the Generic Items are actually more rare and more unique than many of the named items. For example in DDO I looted a +2 Vorpal Longsword of Pure Good, of the classic longsword shape, a long thin tapered blade, with a small curved golden cross guard and a half circle pommel. I have never seen the exact same sword again (although it undoubtedly exists in someones bank or a loot table somewhere)... But I have seen literally hundreds of Swords of Shadows.

So next time you don your Unique Named Item, remember its not actually unique at all, every other guy and his squire has got one too! And thats fine, we dont have to all have legendary unique items to feel like an individual, however... it really does suck that Characters do not "look" like individuals when they all have the same Unique Named end game gear. And that is the problem, and the cause of this thread!

- - 3. Why Customisation Now?
Lets get one thing straight, why do we as Player Characters in DDO wear certain equipment? One reason and one reason only, for the Enchantments and Abilities those items bestow on our character in the game world. thats the only reason we wear them. Because we want out characters to be the best they can be, and so we try to wear the best equipment with the most powerful abilities to enhance our character and our gameplay.

The Problem is is that at the moment, many of the very best Enchantments and Abilities are bound up inside Named Unique (Unique yeah right...) equipment such as, Lorikks Champion, Leviks Defender, Full Plate of the Defender, Breatplate of Destruction, Fanion (A Shield for Casters and Bards) Light and Dark, Minos Legens and Dragontouched Armour. And all these awsome Named items have Static Skins. The result equals, not only do all the high level characters end up wearing very similar gear, they all end up looking exactly the same! Ive made this point before, in the OP, but I thought id make it again, to remind you that its the Named Unique items that are the main cause of this problem.

And why does a set of Enchantments and Abilities, that afterall are an abstract set of Game Statistics, have to be bound up only in a certain item? Is it not within the scope of the imagination that these same abilities and statistics could belong to another item? To say that - Lorikks Champion is the only +5 Large Steel Shield with Panacea 2/day, Lorriks Champion (an ability which has already been exported as a Generic Enchantement to DT Armour and consequently has nothing to do with Lorikk anyways) and Eternal Faith (Which is also non specific to Lorikks Champion and appears on several other named items), in the game is to do nothing more than limit the imagination of the players and the game world. Could their not have been another Cleric somewhere in Eberron who made a similar shield with similar abilities, but just made it with a different shield design? Is that so impossible? Why not allow us the players to use our imagination to customise our characters looks, and imagine new and unique looking items and histories for our characters, instead of us all having to be "The Reknowned 20th level cleric who reclaimed Lorriks Champion from the dreaded Hound of Xoriat."

I want to make this clear a) The way an item looks, b) The Enchantments / Abilities it contains and c) wether it is Named or Generic, do not have to be bound together. These are dogma's associated with the tradition of "Named Items" in an RPG or Mythological setting, that I believe are outdated in a modern MMORPG, serving only to limit the players imaginations and restrict their ability to customise their characters.

- - 4. Static Item Skins made obsolete because of their Enchantments.
I want to give an example of a Named Item that has become obsolete simply because its Enchantments and Abilities are no longer good enough to be useable in end game, and that as a consequence the Art Design that went into its creation is wasted.

Lets take The Kunderak Warding Shield (One of my favourite Shields.)



It is a Named Shield that drops in the warded chest of The Vault of Night Raid. It is a +5 Large Steel Shield with +2 Resistance. Thats it!! Thats all it does... just a +5 Large Steel Shield with +2 Resistance bonus. You can now loot better Generic Shields from random chests in high level dungeons.

The only possible reason any level 20th character would use a Kunderak Warding Shield today is because he or she likes the Model/Skin of it.

There is another Shield in DDO called Sorrel



A +5 Large Steel Shield with +4 Protection AC and +4 Resistance Bonus.
Sorrell is better than a Kunderak Warding Shield in every way. No-one in their right mind would use the Kunderak Warding Shield, if they had the option to use a Sorrel instead. Except for one thing, the Kunderak Warding Shield, loooks really cool!

So a hypothetical example, Ive got this Dwarf Warrior whose name is Aldagar D'Kunderak a son of a Kunderak Banker who decided to seek his fortune defending Stormreach from evil. He loots a Kunderak Warding shield from VON 6 at lvl 12. Six levels later at level 18, he throws away his Kunderak Warding Shield after a lengthy adventure in The Necropolis searching for the lost fragments of a Legendary Shield and trading those for a Sorrel.
Such a shame, that the Kunderak Warding Shield that so suited this Dwarfs history and character, must now be discarded cos it just doesnt cut it anymore...

Alternatively, we could use our imagination and say lets switch the Skin of the Kunderak Warding Shield and Put it on the Sorrel. Now we have a Kunderak Warding Shield that is a +5 heavy steel shield with +4 Protection AC and +4 Resistance.

My Dwarf Warrior stays true to his character, not sacrificing his Heraldic Coat of Arms for the enchantments and abilities of another Shield. No, but i guess thats just too imaginative... my poor dwarf will throw away his Kunderak Warding Shield and use a Leviks Defender instead and look just like every other Dwarf Tank in Stormreach...

I am aware that Update 3 will bring in Epic Kunderak Warding Shield, but the point I am making still stands.

- - 5. A Way to Customise Unique Items while retaining their Unique Status.

Step 1. Get said Named Unique item that you like the Skin / Look of. For example Blue Dragon Scale Robe
Step 2. Get a "Named Item Augmentation Orb"
Step 3. Place Blue Dragon Scale Robe and Named Item Augmentation Orb into the Stone of Change and Press Forge. Result - "Charged Named item Augmentation Orb"
Step 4. Get the Dragontouched Robe with the Enchantments and Abilities you need for you character.
Step 5. Place the Dragontouched Robe and the Charged Named Item Augmentation Orb into the Stone of Change and Press Forge.
Step 6. Dragontouched Robe becomes Blue Dragon Scale Robe, acquiring its name and its skin but retains the Abilities and enchantments of the Dragontouched Robe.

Result, a truly Unique Blue Dragon Scale Robe with different enchantments and abilities than every other Blue Dragon Scale Robe, but is still in actual fact a Blue Dragon Scale Robe.

The same process would be applied to a Kunderak Warding Shield. Combine a Sorrel and Kunderak Warding Shield.
Kunderak Warding Shield becomes a +5 Large Steel Shield with +4 Protection AC and +4 Resistance, but is still called a Kunderak Warding Shield, and retains its Model and Skin.

This is actually a method to customise named items, to allow the player to make a named item truly unique, possessing the Enchantments and Abilities they need for their character while retaining its named item look and status.

Its not such a leap of the imagination to concieve that their could be Variants of The Sword of Shadows for example, in exactly the same way there are variants of The Dream Edge and variants of Rahls Might.

You could have a Sword of Shadows with Mineral II Enchantments! Of course it would lose its Sword of Shadows specific abilities, but it would nonethless allow more variation than having all Sword of Shadows do exactly the same thing. Or allow you to change your Sword of Shadows to look like something else. Does it really matter, if your imagination is the only limit?

- - 6. Conclusion
I can think of no good reason why not to allow the customisation of Named Unique item Models and Skins. But I would nonetheless very much like to hear any actual explanations of why this should NOT be allowed. and by explanation, I mean not just "I think it shouldnt cos its Unique and Named" but an actual good reason why it shouldnt be allowed. Of course, Id like to hear if anyone, like me, thinks it should be allowed. Your comments and suggestions are greatfully recieved.

Thanks for reading, and my apologies for the Wall of Text, but I wanted to properly flesh out my reasons for this Suggestion.

Best wishes,
Aestor The Knight