What we *really* want...simply put

[Garrum]

i also want my khopeshes to look like hammers, my dwarf to look like a wf, and my uncle look like my aunt. its what we all want plz make this happn, plz.


/not signed.

If I could wear my +5 Mithril full plate and my +5 heavy mithril shield and have them actually protect me on more than a roll of a 2 past lvl 12, then I might agree with you. But since AC is FUBAR, and heavy armors do more to hurt you than help you, I feel we deserve a way to make whatever we **** well please look like whatever we **** well please, in regards to armor anyway. I'm a fighter, I don't want to look like a monk even though I have to wear monk outfits or leather to keep the full plate from molesting my skill checks AND not protect me any better than the monk outfits or the leather.

[IronClan]

If I could wear my +5 Mithril full plate and my +5 heavy mithril shield and have them actually protect me on more than a roll of a 2 past lvl 12, then I might agree with you. But since AC is FUBAR, and heavy armors do more to hurt you than help you, I feel we deserve a way to make whatever we **** well please look like whatever we **** well please, in regards to armor anyway. I'm a fighter, I don't want to look like a monk even though I have to wear monk outfits or leather to keep the full plate from molesting my skill checks AND not protect me any better than the monk outfits or the leather.

^^^^^ this until they fix the joke of an AC implementation where pajamas are the best thing to wear past GH then all arguments about needing to make all armor/clothes appear as they really are is silly.

Especially in a high magic campaign setting that ALREADY has things like "glamored" and various "weaves" that give magical and appearance properties.

In any Eberron D&D campaign your character at just about any level can wear just about anything it wants and have it appear to be something else...

So on both a lore and a game function basis there's absolutely no validity to the argument that we shouldn't be able to look like a knight in shining armor even if we're wearing a thong. Or be protected like a knight in armor, while appearing to be wearing a thong.

[chielectric]

/signed

Not too crazy about this new cosmetic gear they came up with... IMHO they're... well... fugly.

[Kominalito]

If I could wear my +5 Mithril full plate and my +5 heavy mithril shield and have them actually protect me on more than a roll of a 2 past lvl 12, then I might agree with you. But since AC is FUBAR, and heavy armors do more to hurt you than help you, I feel we deserve a way to make whatever we **** well please look like whatever we **** well please, in regards to armor anyway. I'm a fighter, I don't want to look like a monk even though I have to wear monk outfits or leather to keep the full plate from molesting my skill checks AND not protect me any better than the monk outfits or the leather.

but what if wearing jammies is a sign of uberness? my point is if you wear cloth, and you are a fighter, IMO you should be able to customize your CLOTH. if you have a shield, you should be able to customize your shield. but wearing something that you arent because of looks sounds ******** to me, and as much as people think i'm the one thats bent about it, i have no concept of their reasoning, no matter how detailed their posts are. i'm trying but i dont.

is it really that important to look completely different than what you are assumably wearing? i'm ALL for customizing. i'm 100% pro-customization. but saying "mithril looks rad, but i'm wearing jammies now" is precisely my argument that i will re-quote:

i also want my khopeshes to look like hammers, my dwarf to look like a wf, and my uncle look like my aunt.

*this was supposed to lighten the mood. its not a dig at anyone. even if your uncle wears yoga pants.

what you are suggesting is exactly the same as asking for weps to have customizable looks outside of their class. maybe you want to be a dagger weilding thief? no dps? just make the rapier and scimitar look like daggers with a custom kit.

in the end if you think my analogy is off then you arent really getting it. its exactly the same thing.

[Natashaelle]

If I could wear my +5 Mithril full plate and my +5 heavy mithril shield and have them actually protect me on more than a roll of a 2 past lvl 12, then I might agree with you. But since AC is FUBAR...

hmmmmm ... simply wearing +5 armour and shield has never been sufficient to get high AC, neither in D&D 3E, nor in AD&D (which had no maximum DEX bonuses associated with armour types).

It's also worth remembering that where AC is balanced, most players with AC will be hit in mêlée pretty frequently.

Getting high AC in AD&D/D&D has always required some effort, this effort is basically just exacerbated in DDO.

High AC is feasible nonetheless, just most people prefer to get high DPS instead, and for significantly less effort.

OTOH, and to keep on topic --

... I feel we deserve a way to make whatever we **** well please look like whatever we **** well please, in regards to armor anyway. I'm a fighter, I don't want to look like a monk even though I have to wear monk outfits or leather to keep the full plate from molesting my skill checks AND not protect me any better than the monk outfits or the leather.

--

^^^^^ this until they fix the joke of an AC implementation where pajamas are the best thing to wear past GH then all arguments about needing to make all armor/clothes appear as they really are is silly.

Especially in a high magic campaign setting that ALREADY has things like "glamored" and various "weaves" that give magical and appearance properties.

In any Eberron D&D campaign your character at just about any level can wear just about anything it wants and have it appear to be something else...

So on both a lore and a game function basis there's absolutely no validity to the argument that we shouldn't be able to look like a knight in shining armor even if we're wearing a thong. Or be protected like a knight in armor, while appearing to be wearing a thong.

I really do have to agree with the thrust of what you guys are saying here, what your character looks like is clearly far more important than what he or she is actually wearing from the technical point of view.

Still, at least we now have some option to make one's heavy armour look like a chainmail bikini or whatever -- but it's true that options are still lacking to have a suit of unbelievably light-as-air full plate mail providing exactly as much movement restriction as t-shirt and jeans

------

Still, it's a good start anyway, and THANX DEVS for the work provided so far !!!

We do *still* need the ability to use any randomly generated armour appearance to craft our own appearance kits though (but I do understand that some specific named & unique armour appearances may be off-limits for these purposes)

[Garrum]

but what if wearing jammies is a sign of uberness? my point is if you wear cloth, and you are a fighter, IMO you should be able to customize your CLOTH. if you have a shield, you should be able to customize your shield. but wearing something that you arent because of looks sounds ******** to me, and as much as people think i'm the one thats bent about it, i have no concept of their reasoning, no matter how detailed their posts are. i'm trying but i dont.

is it really that important to look completely different than what you are assumably wearing? i'm ALL for customizing. i'm 100% pro-customization. but saying "mithril looks rad, but i'm wearing jammies now" is precisely my argument that i will re-quote:


*this was supposed to lighten the mood. its not a dig at anyone. even if your uncle wears yoga pants.

what you are suggesting is exactly the same as asking for weps to have customizable looks outside of their class. maybe you want to be a dagger weilding thief? no dps? just make the rapier and scimitar look like daggers with a custom kit.

in the end if you think my analogy is off then you arent really getting it. its exactly the same thing.

We don't want to wear monk clothes. We don't want to customize monk clothes. We are only wearing them because the d20 system starts to fall apart at high power levels, and meaningful AC, even an AC that will ward off 25% of attacks, gets overly cumbersome to acquire for fighters. Getting hit at the same rate whether you have 10 AC or 50 AC is nonsense, but that's how this game is.

As for why we are so against wearing monk outfits/robes, and whatnot, the reason is simple: They look STUPID. They are more out of place than a turd in the punchbowl. Fighters don't wear blindingly white puffy pants and 37 feet of flimsy scarf trailing behind them (well, maybe a samurai would, but we aren't samurai). Nor do we wear calming blue puffy pants, or any other color of puffy pants, we wear chainmail, with hardened steel plates over the important, don't-stab-me-here parts. Some of the more agile types might wear leather, but it's not plain leather, it's badass, stud reinforced, sections of chainmail where needed, killing people from the shadows with no remorse leather!

So, if game mechanics are forcing our hand FAR away from how we want our characters to look equipment wise, the least they could do is let us fix the LOOK part, even if they wont fix the MECHANIC part.

[Alabore]

but what if wearing jammies is a sign of uberness? my point is if you wear cloth, and you are a fighter, IMO you should be able to customize your CLOTH.

Your point would make sense in a different game.
In DDO armour model has little bearing on in-game appearance.

The same model and texture get routinely reused for different armour types.
The body for full plate is the same body they used for padded.
The gear for some robes is the same they reused for some hides.
The same texture they used for Drow Hunter armour gets recycled on many full plates.

Trying to separate gear, models and textures seems very complicated: devs could save time and effort by allowing free use of all - unlocked/bought - gear, models, textures and hues, and let players sort it out for themselves.
Personally, I would not make my exploiter's robes look like full plate.

I want to be clear here: the whole "cloth like full plate" thing was, for some - many? - players just a hyperbole.
I would likely pick a full-body leather-like texture, choose a dark hue, matching my char's colours, and go for that backpack and daggers gear from Drow Hunter armour.
It would look different from existing armour, maybe not quite unique, but it wouldn't be too far fetched as cloth armour goes, and it would make me happy.

Of course, if I had a monk/paladin, maybe I'd look for something more martial.
Something with a bit more metal in it, that could still conceivably be called "cloth" so as not to strain my own credibility too much.
But THAT is the whole point: it is MY fun, and MY suspension of disbelief.
The same way I can't force people with outlandish names to rename their chars, nobody should get a say in how I choose to dress mine, unless I deliberately gimp my chars and effectively sabotage their runs.

Sure, somebody WILL make cloth look like full plate.
You can't really stop them.
But since it is really harmless to most of us, we can't curtail everybody's options just because some people just have a dubious taste in dressing their chars.
Besides, who cares what they look like?
As long as I can customise my chars' appearance, and we have fun while completing the quest with minimal losses, who cares.

[Therilith]

I support this because it means that you'd actually have to earn a certain look before you can use it.

But I hope they'd prevent people from making cloth look like full plate or vice versa.

[protokon]

Its pretty obvious that we are NOT getting the LoTro System folks. WHat we have here is pretty cool though. Why not make a Suggestion that would actually work within the system we have?

Like this:

Eldritch Ritual: Potion of Cosmetic absorption

Place a piece of armor in the Edritch device alone with a Glass vial, XXX and XXX.

Out spits a potion that can be used to change the looks of whatever you are wearing to whatever you put in the device.



The armor used for the ritual is NOT consumed. but other ingredients are of course.

Personally, I'd love to see my DT Robes look like the Nullcloth.

impact is on to something here. I like the idea of paying for ingredients in the store(blank cosmetic potion for example), combining them with the crappy stat but awesome-looking full plate i found in gianthold, and getting my own personalized armor-cosmetic potion.

I think that may be win-win for all parties.

[wolflordnexus]

/signed

Then I could put this skin on my ugly Epic Big Top and look like a Paladin instead of a clown.

*** happened to your shoulder dude

[greybucket]

/signed

I recently started playing a monk but hate the way 99% of the robes/outfits look and would definitely like a way to change it, whether it be by TP or plat

[Ghoste]

/signed

From all the suggestions that were given, compared to what's actually been developed...Turbine, you're way over complicating and trying to come up with a genius idea but you're actually making yourselves look dumb.

[IronClan]

what you are suggesting is exactly the same as asking for weps to have customizable looks outside of their class. maybe you want to be a dagger weilding thief? no dps? just make the rapier and scimitar look like daggers with a custom kit.

in the end if you think my analogy is off then you arent really getting it. its exactly the same thing.

Exactly the same? Well I guess I can agree they're the same in that weapons looking like other weapons wouldn't have any significant impact on the game except I guess we wouldn't be able to assume that guy using Khopeshes is actually using Khopeshes... Like: "oh these? they are bastard swords but I got tired of people calling me gimp" or "no actually they're khopeshes I like the look of Bastard swords but they suck in DDO so i just use the looks"... Yeah the world would end if that happened. Fortunately no one wants to do that...

No seriously not exactly, first of all weapons aren't broken to the point where every DPS has to use handwraps instead of metal weapons. Second of all no one wants to change the appearance of weapons, no one is asking for it, and no one will. Third there are lore appropriate rationals for letting us look however we want regardless of what we're actually wearing. It's actually a part of the campaign setting already so if only from this standpoint, your objection is invalid.

So it's a bit like if I were objecting to anyone being "allowed" to put anything but mustard or ketchup on their burger.... Horseradish? Are you kidding? You shouldn't be allowed to do that, I don't like horseradish.

[Alabore]

impact is on to something here.

To be fair, we'll never *need* a LoTRO-like appearance system on DDO because DDO is much simpler, as it only features two layers of equipment, vs LoTRO's individual item slots.

Porting/creating an appearance customisation feature to DDO would actually be easier than what they did on LoTRO.
We don't have individual bits, we only get a handful of body models - vest, robe, outfit and generic snug - over which they attached a fixed-appearance gear layer - backpacks, plates, pouches and so on.
Both layers have one texture each, and maybe a hue.
That's about the gist of it, for most pieces of equipment.
They could add new gear layer models by making asymmetrical ones symmetric, but overall it's nowhere as complex as LoTRO's equipment mechanism.

That is why many players don't quite get why it is so tough, lag-prone or logic-defying.
Unless we accept this it is first and chiefly a marketing issue, not a technical one.

[hityawithastick]

That is why many players don't quite get why it is so tough, lag-prone or logic-defying.
Unless we accept this it is first and chiefly a marketing issue, not a technical one.

Well, of course, this would all be a bit easier if Turbine told us what the issue was preventing them from doing this, or if there even IS an issue because they're releasing the slot system later.

Trying to toss that idea out in this thread too:

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=288468

[mediocresurgeon]

/signed

[Entelech]

One of the things I heard on DDOcast as a side note was that the existing random armor colors are not just the result of "paint-by-numbers" done by the game engine.

Apparently each possible color combo for each armor skin was hand-retouched and blended to give a visually appealing appearance.

If so, that's cool. But it's still no reason we shouldn't be able to re-skin armor to textures that already exist.

For example...each suit of Heavy Plate has say 6 different 3d meshes possible...and each one of those meshes has, for argument's sake, 12 different color overlays. There's no reason you couldn't create a system that allowed you to put a suit of Heavy Plate in a crafting station and PICK from the 72 existing appearance meshes through a series of drop-down menus.

And no, I'm not suggesting you also get to choose to make your Heavy Plate look like a set of robes. That's a strawman of another color. I'm just pointing out that there are already armor meshes out there that are more appealing than the ones we're seeing on Lamannia. If you've already done the work to create them, why not make a buck letting us pick from among them?

[Alabore]

For example...each suit of Heavy Plate has say 6 different 3d meshes possible...and each one of those meshes has, for argument's sake, 12 different color overlays. There's no reason you couldn't create a system that allowed you to put a suit of Heavy Plate in a crafting station and PICK from the 72 existing appearance meshes through a series of drop-down menus.
And no, I'm not suggesting you also get to choose to make your Heavy Plate look like a set of robes.

I am not sure where I mentioned it before.
Please bear with me, I end up repeating the same stuff a lot.
I'm just trying to be sure we're on the same page.

From what I could see and gather, armour in DDO is made of two parts: body and gear.

Body provides the foundation, the under-mesh, and it's divided into: vest, robes, outfits and "natural".
The starter rags, brigandine and some rare gear use the vest model.
Robes - and some plate armours - default to robes.
Outfits use outfit models; but you'll see outfit textures being used by NPCs on natural bodies.
Natural bodies go from padded to full plate, and comprise the vast majority of non-cloth armour.

Gear provides the over-mesh, the physical details such as backpacks, daggers, pouches, epauliers, plates and so on.

Both body and gear get textures; some textures are further "dyed" - and you can see the natural colour of some items on Lamannia, toggling the kit icon on non-kitted gear.

Unless I'm terribly wrong here - but the way the new preview kits work makes me think I might have a clue after all - armours are a fairly simple 6 part affair.
One value for body model type, one for texture number and maybe one for hue.
And again, same thing for gear layer.

Appearance kits end up being even MORE complex than originally hoped for.
They show they can DYNAMICALLY change armour appearance, and even add EXTRA appearance information to the same item.
Which means items can potentially store MORE information - which opens up a lot of possibilities, at least as a proof of concept.

There is ONE issue in this system: appearance should not be tied to armour type.
Why?
Because the same meshes/textures get reused throughout different items.
My favourite example: Drow Hunter Armour.
The very same body texture gets recycled as a plate armour skin.
If we tied skins to specific body types we'd have to beg devs to unlock a given skin, because we think it'd look lovely as X or Y.
Just let anybody use any mesh/texture freely and only start locking skins if gross violations ruin the fun for other players.
The cloth-under-the-guise-of-plate was just a far fetched example; few of us would actually do that, because it would strain our own credibility to begin with.
But outfits/robes end up being a very viable end-game gear choice for many characters.
The issue here is, without any kind of customisation, robes just look out of place.
A monk/paladin could wear cloth and still look martial; DDO robes/outfits just don't.

[Lifeblood]

Who is this "we" you speak of? I've never heard of it and that sounds like a horrible idea.

I think the we refers to the op and the mouse in his pocket

this is the first time i have heard it mentioned in these forums (I could have missed it)
I have seen it in some of the Korean mmo's so its not a new idea per-say

Personally I would like to choose my armor design/look in a more detailed way like a silkscreen the more colors the more it costs only limited by your pocketbook and imagination

[Frostwhisperer]

/signed