Wardrobe system revolution

I like to surf through the game seeking for good improvements to do and wondering about what can be upgraded... I have played this game since 5 years know and some things getting worst compared to the beginning and some were improved. Anyways, after taking a long look on the game; I always return to the wardrobe system, he is omniscient during your journey due to the fact of getting new armors, skins and dyes.

->And so, I'm actually asking myself, why are we forced to use transmutation charge to change our armor look? I mean, a game with too many possibilities of style and appearances is restricting us with this amount of transmutation charges... Everyone should change their look however they want! And freely! If a player want to dress himself, he should have the possibility to do it, without any cost, when he want! :D But not only for that, Imagine role-players and cosplayers and thinks how hard it should be for they! A pain for your wallet whereas it's a fun idea at the beginning! I will take myself as an example: For Halloween I want to dress myself for the event: Lunatic guard armors pieces so 6 charges. After the event, I dress me back as full aetherblade so 6 more charges and then at Hivernel, I want another look: 6 more charges after that reset my armor. So a total of 24 charges (without weapons..) 24 charges, 5 for 150 gems so need 25 for 750 gems, around 170 gold coins currently! 170!!! Now, Imagine I want to dress up my 5 toons like this: 750x5 so 3750 gems: 850 gold!!!! What the kitten is this? :o I know that you want to make money over everything, skins, ls episodes, but you crossed the line! :disappointed: I can't endure this cost anymore whereas I can spend this gold on legendary materials gathering.... During all you personal story you get armors and unidentified dye as rewards, but in most case these armors pieces became weak after and so you need to buy new ones, and so what about your good old armors? Yeah need to transmute!->What about dyes? If we are able to dye our armor, why can't we dye our weapons huh? I wouldn't say that if we have only 5 armors and dye, but here the possibilities are infinite and so we must swap between looks without any money and faster. I don't find actually a rifle with a look that convince me and at the same time a color that I love. Think of a Legendary, no more uniform style between 10 players having Twilight! One have A red light tainted twilight, another one a black one! More diversity! In a world where everybody start to look the same! :D->The last thing is an saving option, a thing that should be done with build too, save your style in a corner and load it back when you want. And so during role-playing, in this game where I must quote it "Every actions you make and have made interact with your story, the environment and the world.." and so, It would be very cool if In one click, you can make your character swap between an Black Citadel themed armor, an rata sum one and a divinity reach one. To be clear, I do not consider outfits as armors/look because they aren't customizable, only dyable.->This permit me to start a new point, transform outfits armors pieces as real armor pieces. I mean, If I take for example, exocombinaison of Dynamics; transform her as distinct armor pieces and so I can wear the chest-plate+the leggings of exocombinaison combined with aetherblades shoulder-pads+Helmet+Boots+Gloves.->An option to mask trench-coats, like removing the aetherblade one... Because they are almost everywhere for medium armor.->About aesthetics, why only female humans have gear and beautiful steampunk things on their aetherblades armor? I want to have them too on my male human! Or an option to add them!! It literally change the look, and I was wandering everywhere to find the armor corresponding to these beautiful gears! All the things: the gear pack on both gloves, 2 pipes on each shoulder, Gears on chest and attached to the belt.

So to sum up, here is for what I am asking:-No more transmutation currency! Enough of transmutation crystals and now these charges! Let's dress up how we want!-The possibility to dye weapons, this will open an infinite choice when you don't find your perfect weapon with the perfect taint.-The power to save our look somewhere and swap between them: Look 1:Casual / Look 2:Halloween / Look 3:Hivernel / Look 4:Role playing-If you refuse to remove the system, increase the rate of looting transmutation charges in basic chests: WBoss chests, Dungeon chests, Prime Hunts chests or buyable somewhere for gold.-Turn outfit as individual armor pieces, keep the outfit but add individual armor parts appearances. And so we can mix them with others.-An Option to Hide trench-coats. Too many trench-coats kill the concept of trench-coats.-About Aetherblades medium skin: Make male medium the same of Female Medium, especially for ornaments: Gears numbers and places should be the same.

Dyeing weapons has been pretty much ruled out already. They weren't designed with channels and they have stated to go back and add them would be a highly time consuming task and result in (and I quote) a non-trivial patch"

I too am not a fan of the transmutation charges, but if Anet are seeing a lot of people buying them off the store, then I would be OK with them staying since funding the game outweighs the minor inconvenience.

A "look saver" would be welcomed I am sure and would likely form part of any build saver if one ever gets developed.

Outfit to armour pieces I think has been ruled out completely. I forget what they recently said about trench coats, but I believe it is something to do with the frame/mesh or something medium armour is designed on. I'm sure someone with more knowledge can elaborate.

Oki thank you for answering, and I understand their statements about dyeing weapons... The fact is they don't want to improve some little things like that to improve the game it's the same as sitting on chair option and remake instruments better whereas they can just improve fractals/Living story/Extensions

@Randulf.7614 said:Dyeing weapons has been pretty much ruled out already. They weren't designed with channels and they have stated to go back and add them would be a highly time consuming task and result in (and I quote) a non-trivial patch"

I too am not a fan of the transmutation charges, but if Anet are seeing a lot of people buying them off the store, then I would be OK with them staying since funding the game outweighs the minor inconvenience.

A "look saver" would be welcomed I am sure and would likely form part of any build saver if one ever gets developed.

Outfit to armour pieces I think has been ruled out completely. I forget what they recently said about trench coats, but I believe it is something to do with the frame/mesh or something medium armour is designed on. I'm sure someone with more knowledge can elaborate.

if they are speaking the truth about the trenchcoats, they made a bad bad decision back in the day. they will have to do something about it, since the longer this will continue (the trench coats) the more people will complain about them. the new trenchcoats are already getting similar to the old ones.there are a few normal medium non-trench chest pieces. so they do know a way, if it costs them more time to make such pieces, than so be it. they will have to if they don't want to disapoint a large part of the player base (based on the replies to the trenchcoat threads)

@CharterforGw.3149 said:if they are speaking the truth about the trenchcoats, they made a bad bad decision back in the day. they will have to do something about it, since the longer this will continue (the trench coats) the more people will complain about them. the new trenchcoats are already getting similar to the old ones.there are a few normal medium non-trench chest pieces. so they do know a way, if it costs them more time to make such pieces, than so be it. they will have to if they don't want to disapoint a large part of the player base (based on the replies to the trenchcoat threads)

People have been asking for more non-trenchcoat medium armors for 5 years...

Perhaps a compromise would be "charge per session". You could transmute up to 6 pieces on a single session of the transmute window with one charge. I don't know. I'm pretty stingy with my charges, although I do get a lot of them in WVW.

I would be far happier with an appearance equipment pane, where you simply drag wardrobe items into it and don't mess with base armor at all, as the majority of MMOs do, but as that would be a drop in microtrans income it won't ever happen.

@Ildrid Ildhjertet.2489 said:

@CharterforGw.3149 said:if they are speaking the truth about the trenchcoats, they made a bad bad decision back in the day. they will have to do something about it, since the longer this will continue (the trench coats) the more people will complain about them. the new trenchcoats are already getting similar to the old ones.there are a few normal medium non-trench chest pieces. so they do know a way, if it costs them more time to make such pieces, than so be it. they will have to if they don't want to disapoint a large part of the player base (based on the replies to the trenchcoat threads)

ye, that's what why i said i based it on the trenchcoat threads (old forums aswell as the new forums)my main is a thief I know the feeling of the trenchcoat abominations

I think the point was that 'disappointing a large part of the playerbase' by not changing the trenchcoat silhouette hasn't affected the population in a noticeable way over the 5 years.

I know I haven't read many 'I quit because of trenchcoats' threads/posts.

Regardless, I'm sure each of the three armor-weight user-communities wish there was more variety.

I'd love to find out how many Transmutation Charges are bought from the gem store. That's the obvious explanation for why they're still used - because it makes Anet money. But in 5 years I've never bought any and I don't think I know anyone who buys them regularly. But maybe there's some people who buy $10 of gems every month to get transmutation charges and I've just never met them (or talked to them) and if they change the system they'd lose that income.

But one of your suggestions - a way to buy them with gold - is already in the game. You can convert gold into gems and use it to buy transmutation charges from the store.

@hugo.4705 said:Oki thank you for answering, and I understand their statements about dyeing weapons... The fact is they don't want to improve some little things like that to improve the game it's the same as sitting on chair option and remake instruments better whereas they can just improve fractals/Living story/Extensions

It's not that they don't want to - it's that it's not a 'little thing' to do. We're not talking about flipping a switch or adding a line of code that says the colour can change. The way they've explained it before is that the way weapons are designed is completely and totally separate from the dye system, so they'd have to build a new system for designing weapons and then re-create every single weapon in the game from scratch.

It's like saying I don't want to go to Japan or I'd have gone already. That's ignoring the fact that the trip would cost me money I need to spend on other things (like food and heating and visiting my family). Likewise Anet could make weapons dyable, but it would take a lot of people a lot of time and then they can't do anything else - they'd have to stop releasing new content until they were finished remaking every single weapon. Even if they want to do it the benefit just isn't worth the cost.

Transmutation charges need to go the way of the Dodo bird. Many players have hundreds while many others are probably starving for them. Depends on the game mode you play, which doesn't seem right to me. I can't imagine many charges are purchased with gems. Me, I have lots of alts and don't PvP, so I am in the starving category. It's frustrating, limiting, but I'll never purchase them because I think it's ridiculous to charge players money to change their clothes. Other games manage to allow players to freely change their look- I have yet to come across one that doesn't.

I understood your point of view about dyeing weapons, and I not claim that it will be easy to do but, as you are saying, it isn't worth the cost. But these resend you back to the little thing question: many cost for not an awesome change. The fact that I pointed out is, if they want to redesign single weapons etc, remake instruments etc, they have to stop working about anything else and work only on these so it's a dead end. And don't know, you don't have to stop everyone actual works, why they can't make a team only for that? It's like the fabulous dungeon team which have been disolved. But as you said again, it's not a minor change, and so, why not only make don't know, 10 dyable new weapons? No need to make all of them!

@Danikat.8537 said:I'd love to find out how many Transmutation Charges are bought from the gem store. That's the obvious explanation for why they're still used - because it makes Anet money. But in 5 years I've never bought any and I don't think I know anyone who buys them regularly. But maybe there's some people who buy $10 of gems every month to get transmutation charges and I've just never met them (or talked to them) and if they change the system they'd lose that income.

But one of your suggestions - a way to buy them with gold - is already in the game. You can convert gold into gems and use it to buy transmutation charges from the store.

@hugo.4705 said:Oki thank you for answering, and I understand their statements about dyeing weapons... The fact is they don't want to improve some little things like that to improve the game it's the same as sitting on chair option and remake instruments better whereas they can just improve fractals/Living story/Extensions

I would be happy without the ability to dye old weapons. Just a system to make new weapons dyable going forward. Still, I have no idea how much it would cost to develop.

Most of these suggestions aren't likely to be implemented because they would require a massive overhaul of some aspect of the current game (or its monetization). Certainly, the wardrobe could stand an overhaul. But these go far beyond making changes to the wardrobe itself; they require redesigning some fundamental set of mechanics and retrofitting all the pieces that use them.

The only one that really is a change to the wardrobe alone is the ability to save looks, perhaps as an outfit. That would be a new mechanic and might (or might not) be possible without changes to the underlying architecture.

Specifically:

@hugo.4705 said:-No more transmutation currency! Enough of transmutation crystals and now these charges! Let's dress up how we want!How do you want ANet to recoup the income from lost transmutation charge sales?

Changing looks isn't required to succeed at the game, so it's a good target for microtransactions, especially since there are already all sorts of ways to gain charges.

-The possibility to dye weapons, this will open an infinite choice when you don't find your perfect weapon with the perfect taint.Won't happen. It's a huge amount of work and will slow down ANet's ability to create new skins. (There are numerous posts about this.)

-The power to save our look somewhere and swap between them: Look 1:Casual / Look 2:Halloween / Look 3:Hivernel / Look 4:Role playingThis is a great idea and one that has been suggested long before the wardrobe.

Among the suggestions: custom outfits, in which you spend a fixed number of gems for a custom outfit slot, arrange it as you like, and you can apply it as often as you like after (mid and match only when creating the 'outfit', not after)

-If you refuse to remove the system, increase the rate of looting transmutation charges in basic chests: WBoss chests, Dungeon chests, Prime Hunts chests or buyable somewhere for gold.See above: how would you recommend ANet address the lost income ?

-Turn outfit as individual armor pieces, keep the outfit but add individual armor parts appearances. And so we can mix them with others.Outfits can't be turned into individual armor pieces without putting in the same effort it takes to create pieces of armor in the first place. The value of outfits is that they don't mix and match, that they don't have to be tested against any other armor, that they have more limited dye capabilities. That's why they can release outfits more often than armor sets.

-An Option to Hide trench-coats. Too many trench-coats kill the concept of trench-coats.This is another situation that would require a massive overhaul to the current system; it's not trivial because of how the wire meshes were originally designed. Basically, ANet would have to create a new sort of medium weight armor and/or overhaul all the existing medium weight gear.

-About Aetherblades medium skin: Make male medium the same of Female Medium, especially for ornaments: Gears numbers and places should be the same.That seems easy enough, although I doubt very much if everyone who currently owns it would support the change.

People have mentioned that transmutation charges are a gem store item and thus a source of revenue for Anet. Another benefit is enticing players to try another game mode (pvp, wvw) to obtain them. It's also a map completion reward so people are encouraged to do this as well, thus extending their time spent in game. So they have more value to Anet than simply gem store revenue.

As for the trenchcoat problem - yeah, they've shown they can design without them on occasion, but they made a bad design/coding decision early on and now they are stuck with it and I've pretty much given up on the idea that they will spend resources to fix or work around this issue. Sad!

@Shaaba.5672 said:they made a ...design/coding decision early on and now they are stuck with itFixed that (sort of). It was a design decision and they (and we) are stuck with it. Whether it was bad or just awkward depends on the player and our perception. You can be sure if they had used a different mesh there would be people wondering why they can't have a Matrix-style assassin in the game.

And to be fair to the OP, that's the not the only design decision that ANet made early on that's affected what they can offer us today. Others include:

• No dyes on weapons. That one reason why it's been much easier for them to release new weapon designs than it has been to release new armors. On the other hand, it also means we'll probably never have dyeable weapons or backpacks.
• Three weights of armor. That was helpful early on in identifying foe professions (in WvW/PvP), but given that outfits have made that moot, they are stuck with that. It also makes it a lot of work to copy/paste designs from one weight to another, including grabbing head or shoulder designs from outfits and applying them to any weight at all.
• Effectively, its five weights. Outfits are their own weight and, for our purposes, Town Clothes are another. That's why some nice skins ended up as nearly-useless tonics instead of actual armor.
• Five races. That's great for altaholics, RPers, furries (don't look it up; really, don't — you don't want to know) and so on. It's terrible in terms of armor design, as it makes it much much harder to release new sets.
• One tiny race, one supersized. Also good for all sorts of reasons, but makes it tricky in terms of showing reasonable detail in weapons and armor. (And, turns out, it's the reason why we can't sit in chairs. They sort of kludged that problem away for mounts, so there might be hope for sitting. Soon™.)

@Randulf.7614 said:Dyeing weapons has been pretty much ruled out already. They weren't designed with channels and they have stated to go back and add them would be a highly time consuming task and result in (and I quote) a non-trivial patch"

I too am not a fan of the transmutation charges, but if Anet are seeing a lot of people buying them off the store, then I would be OK with them staying since funding the game outweighs the minor inconvenience.

A "look saver" would be welcomed I am sure and would likely form part of any build saver if one ever gets developed.

Outfit to armour pieces I think has been ruled out completely. I forget what they recently said about trench coats, but I believe it is something to do with the frame/mesh or something medium armour is designed on. I'm sure someone with more knowledge can elaborate.

That doesn't even make sense about the trenchcoats.While I wouldn't be caught dead in this outfit... tell me how in this situation the whole mesh work?It's like one of the very few coat/flaps mediums have but I'm going to call dolyak putrid essence on that.