Transmogrification is a bandaid!

zipkus

Am I the only one who realizes all of this?

1) "Earning gear" becomes "farming gear" the minute the gear isn't top tier. In essence, the "I 'earned' this gear but it's useless" argument is 100% invalid. Raise your hand if you like farming!

2) The transmog system was a bandaid for a growing problem in WoW, which has no dyes and such. IMO, they were running out ideas for artwork. Keep in mind, it was implemented halfway through Cataclysm as it was, but many of the favorite looks come from TBC. The solution worked for them at the time, but that doesn't make it perfect; it's just a patch for yesterday's MMOs.

I've proposed an elegant solution that could leverage environmental and combat effects to create easy, consistent, and diverse customization options on top of simple core models, allowing dramatic customization while retaining recognizability, and most of all keeping it immersive. Read the original thread here (warning - long):

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/393277/An-Elegant-Solution-to-Armor-Customization.html

The EQN team has a chance to reinvent what's possible in MMOs (in fact they've promised to), so why would they borrow yesterday's hack technology for their core concept? That bothers me. A lot.

I'm convinced that the reason people scream for the transmog system is because they just don't know what else is possible, but I think they'd love this system if they gave it any thought. Please, PLEASE, if you care at all, show some support and get this transmog hack removed from our beloved game!

[Deleted User]

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zipkus

Yeah, figured no one was reading the OP since it was miles long. This is more concise and compelling. Might do the trick.

zipkus

Plus, the full version is like a week old, and reviving it in place wouldn't fix its problems.

Aelious

There's nothing wrong with players being able to keep the look of gear they already earned.  It wasn't a band-aid for WoW and it won't be for EQN.  It's a way of giving players more options to how they look regardless of what those around them think.

Allein

Great idea, but I think it is a bit too forward thinking. No idea if anything similar has been done before in any game, but it sounds taxing on server/clients.
For some reason, I remember one of the devs saying armor could be damaged looking from an early interview, but can't remember where I saw it (was just thrown out there as a what if statement).
They've said EQN will be big on collecting. Gear is less about getting the next best thing but rather improving what you have, from what I've seen.
Without traditional stats, I think gear will play a different role then what we are used to.
Maybe down the road they could implement something like you suggest, but they have plenty of more important things to get done first.

zipkus

The server/client load was actually my only real concern with the idea. But I have a couple implementation notes in the other post: some effects could be handled with varying degrees of textures, which is standard and trivial; misshaping effects could be handled by rendering all armor out of incredible (in)edible Voxels in the first place.

I guess it might cost a little more in terms of memory and bandwidth, on both sides, but I bet there are ways it could be optimized. Texture cacheing, sparse character transmission, etc. Also, EQ was a pretty huge network drain back in the days of dial-up. Why shouldn't the next generation of MMOs be a little heavier than their predecessors? Bandwidth, memory, and processing power is all only going to go up during the life of the game, anyway.

Sengi

I read all thought your long post in the other tread. While this is all interesting it does not serve the same purpose as transmogrification. The problem is that if you don't like the overall look of an armour set, you don't want just a worn down or otherwise altered version of that armour but a whole different look.

zipkus

Originally posted by Sengi

I read all thought your long post in the other tread. While this is all interesting it does not serve the same purpose as transmogrification. The problem is that if you don't like the overall look of an armour set, you don't want just a worn down or otherwise altered version of that armour but a whole different look.

That's true. In part, I guess I'm a bit of a purist, and I believe the base armor should be distinguishable in its original form, and that anyone who loathes the original look should at least be able to find some variation of it that they're satisfied with until they find a replacement. But that's pretty biased of me.

Another part is that in this kind of system, the base armor could be made to look much simpler initially, thus being less offensive to the general public. Part of the problem with WoW is that every piece of armor has its colors, textures, and model all rolled together. There's no option to mix and match, so if you think it would only look good in green, you're SOL and you have to mog.

Finally, if you simply prefer a different base model over yours, I guess I'm not *that* against having a selection of base armor models to choose from when you roll your toon or something... but if what Allein said is true, and you really do just upgrade your gear rather than replacing it, I think this system fits in much better with that anyway.

One thing I'm really tired of is seeing 90% of the priests/DKs in WoW wearing the same goddamned hood because it's the coolest looking thing around. If transmogs are supposed to let us express our individuality and create a unique character, why does everyone always choose to wear the same thing? It's moronic, imho. I mean, I still do it to look cool, so that makes me a hypocrite, right? But I'd rather play a game where that just wasn't an option from the get-go. That's why in this system, there are still ways of looking cool, they're just more natural and unique. And I think even if you're in a big raid group in the heart of some volcano, and you all group-teleport to the Tunnel in EC (or the like), and everyone's armor is still smoldering/glowing from the heat, I think you'll feel that you and your raid all look pretty freakin' cool amongst the traders there.

Sengi

Originally posted by zipkus

Originally posted by Sengi

I read all thought your long post in the other tread. While this is all interesting it does not serve the same purpose as transmogrification. The problem is that if you don't like the overall look of an armour set, you don't want just a worn down or otherwise altered version of that armour but a whole different look.

That's true. In part, I guess I'm a bit of a purist, and I believe the base armor should be distinguishable in its original form, and that anyone who loathes the original look should at least be able to find some variation of it that they're satisfied with until they find a replacement. But that's pretty biased of me.

Another part is that in this kind of system, the base armor could be made to look much simpler initially, thus being less offensive to the general public. Part of the problem with WoW is that every piece of armor has its colors, textures, and model all rolled together. There's no option to mix and match, so if you think it would only look good in green, you're SOL and you have to mog.

Finally, if you simply prefer a different base model over yours, I guess I'm not *that* against having a selection of base armor models to choose from when you roll your toon or something... but if what Allein said is true, and you really do just upgrade your gear rather than replacing it, I think this system fits in much better with that anyway.

One thing I'm really tired of is seeing 90% of the priests/DKs in WoW wearing the same goddamned hood because it's the coolest looking thing around. If transmogs are supposed to let us express our individuality and create a unique character, why does everyone always choose to wear the same thing? It's moronic, imho. I mean, I still do it to look cool, so that makes me a hypocrite, right? But I'd rather play a game where that just wasn't an option from the get-go. That's why in this system, there are still ways of looking cool, they're just more natural and unique. And I think even if you're in a big raid group in the heart of some volcano, and you all group-teleport to the Tunnel in EC (or the like), and everyone's armor is still smoldering/glowing from the heat, I think you'll feel that you and your raid all look pretty freakin' cool amongst the traders there.

I think that the armour values and the look of the armour are only very loosely tied together. Most games offer 20 differed looking plate mails and then randomly apply differed armour properties to them, but you can't tell that armour x looks like it offered better protection then armour y. So why don't let the player choose what look he likes best.

I does only makes sense to tie a certain property to a certain look if you can clearly see why only this armour has it. For example a armour out of dragon skin that is fireproof.

Of course I not advocating to put the skin of a plate mail on a tunic, ore something like that. I also don't like those super revealing female armours many games can't do without. If you need to have a iron bra in the game, at least don't give it the best armour value.

I also like the system from Skyrim and ESO very much, where heavy armour also makes you slow, and therefore it makes sense to mix different armour types. I hope EQN will have this too.

I think I heard somewhere that EQN will have a armour dye system, but I cant find the source now.

Yyrkoon_PoM

I think another aspect that would be difficult to overcome when applying wear and tear on armor would be that it would need to be animated on all the different races in a game.  Granted that things like rust or other surface level degradation of armor would not be a problem, but things like dents, holes, and other major breaks in armor would be very hard to compensate for.

 

An example would be a player in chainmail wearing a cloak. Now lets say this player goes to lavastorm and gets a few holes burned into his cloak. When that player is viewed from the back one would expect to see the chainmail through the hole in the cloak. Now move the cloak in 3 dimentions.  Not only will the hole now need to show different parts of the chainmail but the hole itself will also need to change its shape as it is moving around. Now it is not as simple as it once was. The same  kind of problem would also happen with Platemail with dents or holes in it. Nothing looks worse than seeing some armor go through a player's body, and that happens even with unmodified armors now a days.

 

It's not that I don't agree with your sentiment towards showing use and decay on armor/clothing, but that you also have to always think about what is the value generated for the cost, because that is how a game designer/producer looks at things.

Sephastus

With your solution, you would also see many G.I.R.L. players purposefully destroying their avatar's sets in order to expose the non-existent digital naughty bits. Trust me, if it can be done, they will find a way.

 

Personally, still like original armor, and would rather not have any ability to change things. In EQOA there was this one robe you could get at around level 17, that was the ONLY equipable robe for Monks, and it was very popular, even though it had very little stats. It was expensive and popular because it was hard to get, and it made your monk stand out among all the others, who wore pants and a vest. Having the ability to wear anything over what you have, or the items degrade, would really take away from things like this.

Nadia

i like SOEs "appearance slots" feature more  (EQ2, DCUO, and others)

 

if EQN lacks appearance slots, I'll adapt

Nadia

Originally posted by Sephastus

Personally, still like original armor, and would rather not have any ability to change things. In EQOA there was this one robe you could get at around level 17, that was the ONLY equipable robe for Monks, and it was very popular, even though it had very little stats. It was expensive and popular because it was hard to get, and it made your monk stand out among all the others, who wore pants and a vest. Having the ability to wear anything over what you have, or the items degrade, would really take away from things like this.

you can have both

if the gear is difficult to get

it does not detract from the gear to still "show it" despite having better gear

zipkus

Originally posted by Yyrkoon_PoM

I think another aspect that would be difficult to overcome when applying wear and tear on armor would be that it would need to be animated on all the different races in a game.  Granted that things like rust or other surface level degradation of armor would not be a problem, but things like dents, holes, and other major breaks in armor would be very hard to compensate for.

I'm not a graphics expert, but I think that for years games have been rendering lots of objects that just get rendered over anyway. It's not the most efficient, but it's the most realistic and it makes it easy to make effects exactly like you're talking about with a hole in someone's cloak. Modern games already deal with that kind of thing, and I think compared to all the lighting effects and antialiasing that go into every frame, it'd still be a relatively small cost to add. Plus, armor already has to be rendered for many races anyway, doesn't it? What's the difference if you draw it out of voxels instead and then take a few away?

Originally posted by Sephastus

 

With your solution, you would also see many G.I.R.L. players purposefully destroying their avatar's sets in order to expose the non-existent digital naughty bits. Trust me, if it can be done, they will find a way.

 I have no problem with that... but I'm sure SOE would add some base underwear layer as part of the character's skin like they did in EQ to keep it from going too far.

Personally, still like original armor, and would rather not have any ability to change things. In EQOA there was this one robe you could get at around level 17, that was the ONLY equipable robe for Monks, and it was very popular, even though it had very little stats. It was expensive and popular because it was hard to get, and it made your monk stand out among all the others, who wore pants and a vest. Having the ability to wear anything over what you have, or the items degrade, would really take away from things like this.

In EQN it's my understanding that you'll be able to wear whatever armor you choose anyway, regardless of your class. If that's true, then cases like this, i.e. *one* item that everyone must have, would be pretty rare. It seems to me like the EQN team are hinting at that anyway though; Georgeson has said things a few times that make me think they want you to make the most of the armor/weapons you do find rather than farming/camping for BIS gear -- since farming/camping won't exactly be a legitimate strategy anyway since there aren't fixed spawn points. And I'm not saying we should be able to wear tons of layered armors, although I don't think it's unrealistic (plate on bare skin? IRL, more like plate on mail on leather/cloth on bare skin).

Finally, as I mention in the other thread, the armor degradation wouldn't be permanent; you could go to a tradeskiller in town or learn the trade yourself and get your gear fixed. So I'm not sure I understand what you mean there.

Responses in blue.

Wizardry

I believe armor you craft is the only to be altered,that gives crafting meaning in a game,that also is how you differentiate yourself.

Armor dropped should be exactly what the mob is using,i find it nonsense when mobs drop a mount,how on earth were they carrying a mount,in their pocket?Now if they are say a mob on a horse,then i could see gaining the horse mount as a drop.

If  the game is more sci fi TECH oriented,then i don't mind attachments but in a RPG,i think magical properties should be all that is added to gear.Those properties should again be tied to a certain craft,again giving crafting the needed support it should have in a game.

I do not want to see another Wow where we are inserting gems or sockets or some unrealistic idea.Since when does a weapon come with sockets?This is not a toolbox,with a 5/8 socket wrench.

I also do not like these new POTENCY ideas,let's keep stats simple to understand,i don't like vagueness or misleading ways to add +1500 potency to a piece of armor but in reality it only acts like a +3 dmg reduction.I would also like to lose the attack and damage ideas,simply call it one or the other.

As to farming,you can call it whatever you want,you don't deserve to simply have whatever you want fall out of the game's sky,you have to do some form of farming or effort to earn that item be it super rare or not.

 

jerlot65

I dont care what they do about customizing gear as long as they try and keep within the limits of the world of Norrath.  I dont want to see some tank type warrior in a cloth string bikini and still have the protection of a plate wearer. 

I mean dont get me wrong.  If you want your warrior to have semi revealing "sexy" plate armor, ok put that in.  But there should be limits.  However, in a lot of F2P games especially ones that have cash shops, have no limits.