Why the Ugly looking Gear

[Pnumbra]

Devs:

Why is the armor/weapons/items in DDO so ugly? The armor contours make no sense. Fins and the wings are just non-sense. While the new loot detailing is very nice, the overall concept of the armor is Xoriat-minded to me. Wait, the Lord of Stone's outfit looks better than our so-called normal armor. Please, please, smooth out the shoulders/pauldrons. If I wasn't on a MAC, I would post a pic of the most horrific butt-crack medium armor in game. It is embarrassing to show, thus I remain grateful for cosmetic overlays.

[bracelet]

Devs:

Why is the armor/weapons/items in DDO so ugly? The armor contours make no sense. Fins and the wings are just non-sense. While the new loot detailing is very nice, the overall concept of the armor is Xoriat-minded to me. Wait, the Lord of Stone's outfit looks better than our so-called normal armor. Please, please, smooth out the shoulders/pauldrons. If I wasn't on a MAC, I would post a pic of the most horrific butt-crack medium armor in game. It is embarrassing to show, thus I remain grateful for cosmetic overlays.

ctrl-p will create a picture in the DDO folder in your Documents folder -yes, on a Mac.

Oh, and don't forget skulls. Even the cosmetics were littered with skulls at one point.

[Pnumbra]

ctrl-p will create a picture in the DDO folder in your Documents folder -yes, on a Mac.

Oh, and don't forget skulls. Even the cosmetics were littered with skulls at one point.

Yep, know how to capture a screen shot. The issue is MAC posting to forum. I have never been able to add a pic. Lots of things in DDO don't work for MACs. I guess they haven't hired a MAC certified coder.

Skulls would be nice also. Not all of us pretend to be good adventurers...I bet most are evil lol.

[Isolani]

Cosmetic items sell a lot better when the standard look of gear is ugly.

[sithhound]

Cosmetic items sell a lot better when the standard look of gear is ugly.

This. Sad but true.

[RistoffDervish]

Cosmetic items sell a lot better when the standard look of gear is ugly.

This

[Hobgoblin]

It is embarrassing to show, thus I remain grateful for cosmetic overlays.

^this is why they did it. you answered your own question

[FranOhmsford]

Yep, know how to capture a screen shot. The issue is MAC posting to forum. I have never been able to add a pic. Lots of things in DDO don't work for MACs. I guess they haven't hired a MAC certified coder.

http://photobucket.com/

[Memnir]

Sadly, rump-ugly gear has been a problem in this game far longer then the existence of cosmetic options. Hell, one Dev even admitted to making a very nice set of armor as ugly as possible due to the complaints about armor being ugly.

I blame some of the issue on the 3.5 armor ascetic WotC had at the time, there was a lot of asymmetry on armor. The rest of it really confuses me. DDO has a stellar art department... but their armor design is often very hard to look at. Some armor in the game is fantastic. But by in large it sadly looks jarringly unappealing.


I'm just really glad Mirrors now exist.

[FranOhmsford]

Hell, one Dev even admitted to making a very nice set of armor as ugly as possible due to the complaints about armor being ugly.

That Armour needs serious upgrading for today's game:

+5 Enhancement - +6
Displacement x5 Charges - Reduce the number of Charges to 3 and up the duration to 90 seconds.
Attck Bonus 2 - Accuracy VII
Jump 10 - +13
Tumble 10 - +13
Feat: Mobility can stay the same.
Resistance 5 - +7

Suppressed Power: Greater Nimbleness actually hasn't been outdated yet but maybe also add Feat: Spring Attack as anyone who's taken Mobility as a Feat will have taken it only to get to this.

I actually like the look btw but it's too badly outdated now.

[Sunnie]

Sadly, rump-ugly gear has been a problem in this game far longer then the existence of cosmetic options. Hell, one Dev even admitted to making a very nice set of armor as ugly as possible due to the complaints about armor being ugly.

I actually like the look of that armor.

[Gremmlynn]

Suppressed Power: Greater Nimbleness actually hasn't been outdated yet but maybe also add Feat: Spring Attack as anyone who's taken Mobility as a Feat will have taken it only to get to this.

Off topic, but why? I generally use a Mobility item for the +2 to dodge cap and maybe the +2 to dodge to fill it. Spring Attack just adds dodge and the ability to avoid what is a very minor attack penalty in today's game.

[Saekee]

not ugly, but an unfortunate coincidence that her skin color is the same as her armor hue. Looks like she is running in breeches with her posterior exposed...kind of funny, actually.

[Grandern_Marn]

Hell, one Dev even admitted to making a very nice set of armor as ugly as possible due to the complaints about armor being ugly.

That armor is so gloriously ugly! I get a thrill whenever I see it in game.

There is some nice looking armor in game but a lot of it is undeniably blah.

[FuzzyDuck81]

I actually like the look of that armor.

Agreed... I've got it combined with the lucky green hat & it looks great when the limbo confetti is going off too Now if only Celestia was still bugged to have the rainbow skin, then it'd be at maximum fabulosity

[Annex]

The art director for this game seems fixated on a gaudy, baroque style and refuses to deviate from it. Either that, or perhaps the game license requires it.

Lord of the Rings Online features much more realistic and much better looking armour and equipment. I am sure the same artists work on both games, so it is not a matter of skill, but rather a matter of will. (In fairness, LOTRO features some super ugly armour sets as well, especially anything before L50 or so.)

Sometime last year, one of the developers asked for feedback concerning armour. Player feedback was extremely mixed. A significant portion of the player base here has absolutely no taste. They like the gaudy, ornamental, asymmetric, non-functional rubbish on offer. Most of the cosmetic armour in the store is also super ugly. As best I can tell, given the lack of new and better looking armour since then, the artists mostly threw up their hands. The new Mabar items are the only exceptions I can think of. There may be others, but if so, I have never seen them.

I purchased 4 cosmetic armours from the store and would purchase more if the offerings were not so hideous.

[Pnumbra]

[1Soulless1]

not ugly, but an unfortunate coincidence that her skin color is the same as her armor hue. Looks like she is running in breeches with her posterior exposed...kind of funny, actually.

A girls got to make a living right?

[IronClan]

taking that as a case study of DDO (well it needs massive asymmetrical pauldrons to be perfect but whatever). There's just too much drawn on it, the artist(s) for DDO are obsessed with filling every inch of space. Part of the reason for this is DDO doesn't do material gloss/highlighting well (or at least they don't often try)

example a shiny glossy metal breast plate there doesn't need all the little details and frills and dodads, but the engine can't handle that on players it can do reflective metal (gloss and spectral highlights) they even tried to do some of this with bloom effects (making "shiny" metal shouler pads that have a diffuse glow attribute on some of the random and named armors (Templars heavy plate has glow mapped shoulders, if you want to see an example of what I mean).

So they seem to feel compelled to fill the empty spaces with as one person put it baroque stylings.

The other main problem is that Turbine clearly does not have a staffed vertex puller, a 3d modeler/animator, these armors all suffer from having very clunky 3d overmeshes OR none at all.

Paper Halloween costum look = no overmesh
Clunky but more realisitic looking armor = has overmesh

That picture clearly shows overmesh on the shoulders and around the waist but the rest of the texture looks like paper halloween costume, because it's so 1 dimensional, it has the aspect of drawings on paper or fabric and NOT metal layers. This illusion is also reinforced by the lack of specularity or variances in reflective surfaces. Our minds see something that has the same shading/gloss/specularity all over and we we see it as a unitard or one piece material with printed images on it: not realistic or convincing.

They can make the overmesh look better (I could) by making it more elaborate (more poly count) and also more subtle in some cases (realistic sized shoulders) and they can add SOME material composition aspects... For an example put the Orchard armor "Death rampart" on and walk around in variously well lit sun shiny areas. Notice anything? The newly added blu areas are reflection mapped, it's a subtle affect but the blue will "pop" when you get into bright light. Now this is an OLD texture the old dark purple Drow deathnight armor, but one of the Dev's tweaked it for deaths rampart and gave those areas a reflection map or tagged the area with a specially flagged bit of mesh that does the trick.

Another example: the Auctioneer in GH is holding the shiniest sword in the history of DDO... it's actually got environmental reflections on it, an effect that is sometimes called "environment chrome" depending on what 3d animation suite you grew up learning (3dsmax here). So the engine CAN do surface composition, it may be that it simply can't do it en mass such as on lots of players running around at the same time.

[1Soulless1]

og burn it!!! Cleanse it with fire!!!!!