Skin Customisation - Further Thoughts.

[AestorTheKnight]

This thread is a further expansion of the concept originally proposed by Samadhi in this thread:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=219389

Also containing my own thoughts and ideas on the subject of Skin Customization for Player Characters Armour, Helmets, and Weapons in DDO: Unlimited.
1: Introduction
2: Samhadis Idea Detailed.
3: Further Details of Armour, Helmet, Weapon, Customisation.
4: An alternative way to customise skins.
5: Individuality.
6: My thoughts and complaints.

Part 1: Introduction.
The fact is it does matter to us the players how our characters look. Of all the people I have spoken to and read on the Forums, the overwhelming majority state that the appearance of their characters matters to them.
It is a fact that people have different tastes, and what looks good for one person may not look good for another.
Yet I think we can all remember a time when we have put on an armour with Enchantments/Abilities that we really wanted for a character, but being upset and frustrated to see that that Armour/Helmet skin did not suit our character or our taste, or simply just looked like junk.

The other fact is, appearance DOES NOT effect gameplay in anyway. It is purely aesthetic. Armour, Helmet and Weapon Skin customisation can be added to the game without any effect on gameplay mechanics.

Part 2: Samhadis Idea Detailed. (Kudos to Samhadi for proposing this idea.)
In his post "Easy Armour Skin Customisation" Samhadi proposed a simple crafting process that allowed any Armour Skin to be changed to the players likeing. I shall now summarise the steps of Samhadis idea.

Step a) Find an Armour Skin you like or want. From a Chest loot or perhaps from a static armour.
Step b) Get a "Blank Design Orb"
Step c) Place the Blank Design Orb along with the suit of Armour with the Skin you like and place them
both into the Stone of Change and press "Forge". The Skin of the armour is copied into the Blank Design Orb.
Step d) Result, Charged Design Orb containing the Skin you wish you apply to your new set of armour.
Step e) Get the suit of Armour with the Enchantments / Abilities you need for you character.
Step f) Place the Charged Design Orb along with the required suit of Armour into the Stnoe of Change and press Forge.
Step g) Your required suit of Armour acquires the desired Skin.

Result = A Suit of Armour, Robe, Outfit that looks how you like it to look and has the enchantments / abilities you want for your character.

Thanks again to Samhadi for originally proposing this simple, but ultimately effective Armour customisation process.

Part 3: Further Details of Armour, Helmet, Weapon, Customisation.
This same process of Skin Customisation can theoretically be easily applied also to helmets and weapons.
All that would be required are "Helmet Blank Design Orbs" and "Weapon Blank Design Orbs" that would be charged in the xact same way, and applied in the exact same way via the Stone of Change.

Further Design Orbs called "Chromatic Design Orbs" of any available colour could be looted or brought to add the desired colour to the required Armour or Helmet.

Now some details about Armour Skins and Meshes. As far as I know all armours in DDO consist of 3 factors in the make up of their visual appearance.

1: The Under Skin. - This is the under part of the Armour that is simply a UV Mapped Image / Skin applied to the body of your character. It contains no extra geometry or 3D Models, but is just an image covering the appropriate parts of the torso, legs, hands etc. (Robes and Outfits actually use additional 3D models to compose their underskin.)

2: The Over Mesh - This is the over part of the Armour, Robe, or Outfit that gives it additional shape. For example the "Plates" of the Plate Mail, or "The Colar" of a Robe, or the "Wraps" of an outfit" This an actual 3D Model applied to over the characters body. And this 3D model is in turn Textured with a UV Map.

3: The Colour / Texture. - Most underskins for Armours do not come in variant colours. Underskins for Robe and outfits do. The Over Mesh's all both Armour, Robes and Outfits come in varying volours.

As far as my knowledge of DDO Armour, Robes and Skins go, Each individual, Under Skin, Over Mesh and Colour/Texture are interactive, that is any Underskin can be applied to any Over Mesh to create a large number of unique set of armour. And every Over Mesh can be textured with any colour.

If you examine any set of Armour, Robe or Outfit in DDO today you will see that they are all composed of these 3 components, Under Skin, Over Mesh and Colour/Texture. By combining variants of these 3 components all the armour skins currently available in DDO today are made.

This being so. It should be easily possible to get an "Underskin Blank Design Orb", an "Overmesh Blank Design Orb" and a "Chromatic Design Orb" Thereby allowing the player to re-create any possible available Armour, Robe or Outfit Skin. Thus allowing the player to fully design and generate their own unique looking armour, to their taste and appearance.

Part 4: An alternative way to customise skins.
The same ideas as above, but instead of utilising the Stone of Change to change armour skins, The House Deneith, and Kunderak basic Armour and Weapon Vendors could be given an additional interactive window, allowing a preview of all available armour skins, and a fee could be payed to the Vendors to change your Armour, Helmet or Weapon to your desired Skin.

Part 5: Individuality.

Lets face it, we all enjoy customising our characters, and to some degree we all take pride in being individuals. You may say "Cloths dont make the man" But how often to you turn up to a party where everyone is wearing the same cloths? And if you did turn up to a party where everyone was wearing the same cloths, wouldnt you feel slightly out of place? I am thinking specifically of the numerous times myself and 11 other DDO characters have lined up at the edge of the Blue Bridge in the Halls of Ascension (Black Abbot Raid) only to notice that we are all wearing the same armour skin. Yes you guessed it Dragon Touched Armour. Every high level character wears it and we all look exactly the same!!!

Not to mention all the Clerics with Lorriks Defender. All the Tanks with Madstone Shield and Leviks Defender.

All the Dwarfs with Greensteel Greataxes, to top it off they are all Dwarves with Greensteel Greataxes, wearing Dragontouched Armour...

And we all know why almost all the high level characters have /showhelmet off. Cos they are all wearing Spikey Greensteel Helmets or Minos Legens, which quite frankly dont suit their character.

Its fair enough that we are all seeking the same high end gear, cos you know soon all the level 20 Paladins and Clerics are gonna be wearing Epic Vambrances of Inner Light, with the exact same skin... but do we all have to look the same while doing it?

This is abhorent to me. It killls the immersion in the game, and seriously limits the representation of our characters individuality in the game world.

There is a simple solution. Armour, Helmet and Weapon skin Customisation! The mechanics of which almost already exist within the DDO Client, as shown by the formulation of armours useing the 3 components described above.

Part 6: My Thoughts and Complaints.
Just my personal experience with this issue, is that to avoid looking like a clone of every other high level character,
3 or more of my high level characters suffered serious disadvantages to their abilities and end game stats because i refused to Wear Dragontouched Armour. My level 20 paladin wore +5 Mithril Full Plate with a beautiful skin, but suffered an overall -4 AC penalty because of it. My level 20 Favoured Soul of the Silver Flame could not find space for a Shroud Crafted Spell Point item, because I refused to wear a Dragontouched Robe, and wore the Cloth of the Faithful (Silver Flame Robe) instead. My level 20 evasion tank settled with a simple +5 Mithril Breastplate cos well.... Breastplate of Destruction... enuff said...

Call me a fashion victim, but the appearance of my character matters to me. And im not the only person who feels this way.

Soulaeon wrote: in this thread: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=219389

"A lot of the armor models are really ugly, and the artists seems to have this huge fixation with pockets, and these ugly back-back things which make no sense if we can see bag space but not everything else we're wearing. I would love to be able to change my appearance to be more to my own liking."

Lleren Wrote: In this thread: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=220180&page=2

"Appearance slots for armor, helmets, and possibly weapons would solve many of the issues, or at least put a bandaid on them."

Lirial Wrote: In This thread: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=220180&page=2

"So according to you i cant wear my Dragoncrafted robes that i farmed to get with such nice stats because they look like **** on my character. i should just run along and find some cheap set of robes to wear is that it? Or as a paying subscriber, maybe they should listen to this complaint/bug report and maybe do something about it in time?"

So to conclude finally.

Please, please Turbine add Armour, Helmet and Weapon Skin customisation soon. its easy to implrement and would make a LOT of people a whole lot happier. Thank you :-)

[AestorTheKnight]

Hi everyone!

If you think that Armour, Helmet and Weapon Skin/Model Customisation Should be added to DDO. Please Vote to show your agreement or disagreement with the idea.

/signed - If you have think its a good idea and would like to see it in game.

/unsigned - If you dont think its a good idea.

And welcome to post your thoughts idea of a Skin Customisation system. Thanks for you help in showing Turbine that this is a feature we would all really like, I hope... :-)

[AestorTheKnight]

/signed

[Tiggyr]

/signed
Yeppers!

[Maxelcat]

/Signed...

[AestorTheKnight]

Hi again everyone. I just noticed this Thread on the DDO EU Forums which makes the exact same point i make here,
about everyone looking the same wearing Dragontouched Armour, and that basically this is rather uncool...

You can read this post on the EU Forum here:

http://community.codemasters.com/for...ppy-about.html

This Screenshot kindly posted by Sarezar which shows exactly what I mean about 12 Characters lined up in the Halls of Ascension all looking sadly the same...



Happy Xmas people!

[Calebro]

/signed

[taurean430]

/signed


On a related note:

What is going on with the Mithral Armor? The low versions of it look really intimidating/form fitting/cool. While every +5 Version I have wasted in game plat on make my character look like a reject from court jester school?

Please, for the love of all that is good in the world, fix this.

[AestorTheKnight]

Yep Taurean, i have found exactly the same thing! I looted a a lvl 8 +5 Mithril FP about 3 weeks ago. It had dark brown overplates, with an underskin that looked like a set of unfinished rags lol. Yeah anyways! hehe

[Nathrok]

Yep! /signed !

[Ghoste]

/signed

[ShadowsOfHope]

Please dear god.

/signed.

[cdbd3rd]

Credit to a previous thread, knowledgable and organized presentation....

What are you doing here, what drugs are you on, and why ain't you sharing?!?


j/k


Well done OP that I'd missed til now.

/I'm all sorts of onboard for this idea. And have some +.

[Banatine]

/signed. If only because it depresses me to see characters of all races and classes standing together, all managing to look almost exactly the same as each other...

I'm all for those little tweaks that let people know you gave it just that little bit more thought and effort. Not to mention that i really can't stand that awful turqoise colour.

I want to be able to darken the plates, change the turqoise to white maybe, add some gold trim and tribal patterning...

[AestorTheKnight]

Hi everyone!

Steampunkie kindly posted a thread suggesting a very similar idea to that mentioned in Section 4 of the original post in this Thread: "An alternative way to customise armour skins."

You can read Steampunkies good post here:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=224134

I will post again soon to discuss some of the issue raised in her thread.

Happy New Year all!
Aestor The Knight

[Danarki]

/signed

I found a very nice armor a few days back with great stats for a mid lvl char, but ended up selling it because it made my character look like bull dung. Its also VERY annoying to see -everyone- running around in the same Icy Raiment

[Atenhotep]

/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.

I have an old lowbie robe in my bank which looks awesome that I would so love to swap out with the horrible "Catholic School Girl Book-Bag" Dragontouched Robe.

Please oh pleaze oh pleaze!!

[Cetus]

/signed

[Faelyndel]

/signed

One of the advantages of DDO over other MMO's is customization. So why is it that we are currently unable to customize armour?

[Dieseltrain]

/signed

Love the idea and the skins are way overdue for a new look