It’s 2022, isn’t it time we made armor styles interchangeable?

[Depths.4051]

It’s been 84 years… and still no interchangeable armor skins. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some outfits, because the games does have many well made outfits. However I do sometimes like to feel a little unique with my look, and that’s when I’ll drop the outfit for my armor skins. The only thing about this is that I am quite limited in choices when considering medium armor thats attractive. I would absolutely love to throw on some light and heavy armor pieces in conjunction with possibly some medium. Idk if it’s a coding problem, or if the meshes need to altered, but I feel this is something that would be a really huge step in the games end game fashion. 

Edited March 21, 2022 by Depths.4051

[kharmin.7683]

This is a design decision from Anet from the start.  You can use the forums search feature to find the many other threads that have already discussed this issue.

[Rasimir.6239]

39 minutes ago, Depths.4051 said:

Idk if it’s a coding problem, or if the meshes need to altered

Short answer: The meshes are different for different armor weights in a way that they are incompatible (different cut-off points). To make this possible every individual armor piece in game would have to be redone.

[RabbitUp.8294]

Only shoulders/gloves/helms could realisitically get that change, and I really hope that's something they'd implement, at least for pieces that are not part of full armour set, but it's probably too much work to retroactively enable all those skins.

[DanAlcedo.3281]

I'm always sad when Anet adds some nice skins like the fisher west in EoD, Only for me to remember that Heavy Armor has no good pants. 😭

[Jin.8501]

Wish it was possible. I would play my heavy classes more if the armour wasn't so boring looking. I'm locked to wear certain pieces just to look good 

[Fueki.4753]

Without massive reworks on the individual armour pieces, it's mechanically impossible to mix and match them.

All three armour weight and the Outfits have different body types with different attach points for the gear. It's not like WoW or FF14 where they only work with only one body type. Allegedly that's also why almost all medium chest pieces are so long.

We will never know why Arenanet thought that's a good idea.

[Crackmonster.2790]

I just can't believe it cant be done, no matter what base race you can put either heavy or medium or light on there, so it surely must be possible, if it doesn't look good to match them, the then that be our problem. I've been wanting this change forever.

[Roda.7468]

43 minutes ago, Crackmonster.2790 said:

I just can't believe it cant be done, no matter what base race you can put either heavy or medium or light on there, so it surely must be possible, if it doesn't look good to match them, the then that be our problem. I've been wanting this change forever.

Here's the reason they won't (not can't, mind you) do it, and it's not about your character's race:

Compare all the light/heavy armor pieces, well, more specifically the chest pieces and leg pieces.  You'll see that all of the chest pieces cut off at the waist, and any coat tails or skirts are assigned to the legs slot.

Now look at the medium armor, which has a reputation of being "all trench coats, all the time"  All of the dangly bits are assigned to the chest pieces, while the leg slot items are mostly just pants.

So, if you were to combine a standard medium chest piece with a standard light/heavy pants, you're going to have a degree of clipping that is past the point of acceptability.

Now, they could, in theory, go back and edit either the chest or the legs of either armor so that one has priority of being shown, while the other's problematic bits would be hidden if clipping were to occur (like how gloves work), and I personally would appreciate that, but it's probably not that high up on their priority list. :T

Spoiler

(Tho, I would prefer, if they were going to go back and revisit old skins, for them first to try to add genderswap variants of some of the more radically different male/female designs of the same supposed skin. Too often am I seeing a piece I REALLY like, wondering where to get it, and then realizing, "oh, I already have it, my version just isn't as cool/perfect as the "masculine" coded piece. ☹️"  I know it's a lot of work, so I'm not holding my breath, but kitten would it be nice...)

 

Edited March 21, 2022 by Roda.7468

[Khisanth.2948]

5 hours ago, RabbitUp.8294 said:

Only shoulders/gloves/helms could realisitically get that change, and I really hope that's something they'd implement, at least for pieces that are not part of full armour set, but it's probably too much work to retroactively enable all those skins.

helms probably

shoulders maybe

gloves probably not, gloves on light armor interact with sleeves differently from medium and heavy

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Without massive reworks on the individual armour pieces, it's mechanically impossible to mix and match them.

All three armour weight and the Outfits have different body types with different attach points for the gear. It's not like WoW or FF14 where they only work with only one body type. Allegedly that's also why almost all medium chest pieces are so long.

We will never know why Arenanet thought that's a good idea.

Once upon a time GW2 developers had aspirations of making a great PvP game. 🤣

So they thought it might be a good idea to give different classes more easily identifiable silhouettes so it would be quicker to identify what kind of opponents you are fighting but it seems that was  thrown away even before the betas since you only have 33% chance of being correct when looking at a staff or scepter/focus light armor class

11 minutes ago, Roda.7468 said:

Here's the reason they won't (not can't, mind you) do it, and it's not about your character's race:

Compare all the light/heavy armor pieces, well, more specifically the chest pieces and leg pieces.  You'll see that all of the chest pieces cut off at the waist, and any coat tails or skirts are assigned to the legs slot.

Now look at the medium armor, which has a reputation of being "all trench coats, all the time"  All of the dangly bits are assigned to the chest pieces, while the leg slot items are mostly just pants.

So, if you were to combine a standard medium chest piece with a standard light/heavy pants, you're going to have a degree of clipping that is past the point of acceptability.

Now, they could, in theory, go back and edit either the chest or the legs of either armor so that one has priority of being shown, while the other's problematic bits would be hidden if clipping were to occur (like how gloves work), and I personally would appreciate that, but it's probably not that high up on their priority list. :T

  Reveal hidden contents

(Tho, I would prefer, if they were going to go back and revisit old skins, for them first to try to add genderswap variants of some of the more radically different male/female designs of the same supposed skin. Too often am I seeing a piece I REALLY like, wondering where to get it, and then realizing, "oh, I already have it, my version just isn't as cool/perfect as the "masculine" coded piece. ☹️"  I know it's a lot of work, so I'm not holding my breath, but kitten would it be nice...)

 

The raven shaman garb and leggings does a nice job of demonstrating those differences

Also while checking the light and heavy garb on a medium character it revealed that while the light and heavy look very similar they are actually not identical

[Batel.9206]

Interchangeable armor pieces...ehh, maybe not, due to how this game's armor is coded. Interchangeable armor classes, on the other hand? I've said before: it'd be nice if we could change the look of our armor class to one other armor class.

For example, you want your guardian to wear that nice medium Elegy chestplate. Great. You can. But you have to transmute all the other armor pieces to medium, as well. Or if you want your elementalist to wear armor, you must transmute *all* armor pieces to heavy.

 

What's definitely annoying is looking at some of the NPCs - a few of the desert bandits, specifically - in PoF who wear a mix of light and medium/heavy armor. Or this one guy who wears medium head armor with the Monk's outfit.

[Zephire.8049]

23 minutes ago, Roda.7468 said:

Here's the reason they won't (not can't, mind you) do it, and it's not about your character's race:

Compare all the light/heavy armor pieces, well, more specifically the chest pieces and leg pieces.  You'll see that all of the chest pieces cut off at the waist, and any coat tails or skirts are assigned to the legs slot.

Now look at the medium armor, which has a reputation of being "all trench coats, all the time"  All of the dangly bits are assigned to the chest pieces, while the leg slot items are mostly just pants.

So, if you were to combine a standard medium chest piece with a standard light/heavy pants, you're going to have a degree of clipping that is past the point of acceptability.

Now, they could, in theory, go back and edit either the chest or the legs of either armor so that one has priority of being shown, while the other's problematic bits would be hidden if clipping were to occur (like how gloves work), and I personally would appreciate that, but it's probably not that high up on their priority list. :T

  Hide contents

(Tho, I would prefer, if they were going to go back and revisit old skins, for them first to try to add genderswap variants of some of the more radically different male/female designs of the same supposed skin. Too often am I seeing a piece I REALLY like, wondering where to get it, and then realizing, "oh, I already have it, my version just isn't as cool/perfect as the "masculine" coded piece. ☹️"  I know it's a lot of work, so I'm not holding my breath, but kitten would it be nice...)

 

The Foefire pants are a really good example of this. They're a gemstore item and quite recent so it's reasonable to assume they have the latest available tech put into them and have had time spent on them so they look good so the company makes more money. The heavy and light skins have the various strips of leather but the medium one is basically booty shorts with some glowing due to how badly they would clip with medium chest armour.

Which of course means the heavy and light chest are minimal but the medium chest comes with a belt that looks like there was a wrestling championship match in the Final Fantasy universe.

If they aren't even future-proofing gemstore skins to work with a mix-and-match armour weight system, that's not even close to being a priority rework even if it would be nice for players to have.

[Fueki.4753]

27 minutes ago, Khisanth.2948 said:

Once upon a time GW2 developers had aspirations of making a great PvP game.

So they thought it might be a good idea to give different classes more easily identifiable silhouettes so it would be quicker to identify what kind of opponents you are fighting but it seems that was  thrown away even before the betas since you only have 33% chance of being correct when looking at a staff or scepter/focus light armor class

Even then they wouldn't need to make multiple body types.

They could simply have set profession restrictions on the armour pieces, like WoW and FF14, instead of modelling them onto different body types.

[Khisanth.2948]

14 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

Even then they wouldn't need to make multiple body types.

They could simply have set profession restrictions on the armour pieces, like WoW and FF14, instead of modelling them onto different body types.

Without any experience in 3D modeling nor in work associated with things like making clothing sets for a game I can't comment directly but it does seem like it would have made sense to have different "templates" for light/medium/heavy armors. I recall there was a dev comment about how medium armors always have the "bones" for animating the trenchcoats even on skins that doesn't look like a trenchcoat.

[AgentMoore.9453]

Not sure how they'd manage interchangeability between armor weights, but I wish they'd manage it - even with clipping. They don't call it FashionWars for nothing.

[Swagger.1459]

13 hours ago, Depths.4051 said:

It’s been 84 years… and still no interchangeable armor skins. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some outfits, because the games does have many well made outfits. However I do sometimes like to feel a little unique with my look, and that’s when I’ll drop the outfit for my armor skins. The only thing about this is that I am quite limited in choices when considering medium armor thats attractive. I would absolutely love to throw on some light and heavy armor pieces in conjunction with possibly some medium. Idk if it’s a coding problem, or if the meshes need to altered, but I feel this is something that would be a really huge step in the games end game fashion. 

Ok, here we go again!

 

 

Dev quote to start…

”Armor sets are one of (if not actually) the most time expensive things we make for GW2. Each set has an incredible amount of detail and customization, and then has to be fit to very disparate rigs.”

 

Outfits are outfits, they are onesies.

 

Armor is armor, made up of multiple different pieces. 
 

Those are 2 different things.

 

It’s less time and resource intensive to create outfits.

 

It’s one of the most time consuming things to create armor.

 

To make armor, the devs have to make each individual piece fit 5 races and 2 genders, so that’s a lot of work compared to the onesies Outfits.

 

The devs probably will never redo outfits to become armor pieces. No point, especially since they already offer a carp ton of armor pieces to choose from already. 
 

Does this make sense? 
 

 

[Redfeather.6401]

I like how in elder scrolls online you can wear any type of armour you please. A sorcerer could wear a heavy plate chest and cloth skirt if they wanted. Armour weights have passives for each piece worn. It's cool.

[Depths.4051]

9 minutes ago, Redfeather.6401 said:

I like how in elder scrolls online you can wear any type of armour you please. A sorcerer could wear a heavy plate chest and cloth skirt if they wanted. Armour weights have passives for each piece worn. It's cool.

Agreed part of the reason I bring this topic up is actually because I’ve played a lot of ESO, and they literally have 100+ sets of different armor you can mix and match with their outfit system. I bring up this topic not because I haven’t seen it before, not because I haven’t heard the explanation like swagger has described, but because I question why this cannot be done when it has been done by other games. Of course it would take a time investment to get it done with transferring over the armors to a new changed mesh, but it would open up more opportunity down the line for customized fashion that they could capitalize on. Right now there’s not a lot of choice so you might as well don an outfit. I’m not saying they have the budget right now, perhaps when it goes to steam they will finally be able to breathe a little. I would just like it to be on the agenda.

[Swagger.1459]

1 hour ago, Depths.4051 said:

Agreed part of the reason I bring this topic up is actually because I’ve played a lot of ESO, and they literally have 100+ sets of different armor you can mix and match with their outfit system. I bring up this topic not because I haven’t seen it before, not because I haven’t heard the explanation like swagger has described, but because I question why this cannot be done when it has been done by other games. Of course it would take a time investment to get it done with transferring over the armors to a new changed mesh, but it would open up more opportunity down the line for customized fashion that they could capitalize on. Right now there’s not a lot of choice so you might as well don an outfit. I’m not saying they have the budget right now, perhaps when it goes to steam they will finally be able to breathe a little. I would just like it to be on the agenda.

And GW2 has like 300 sets of armor, plus outfits. Yeah… that’s not a lot of choice… 
 

Looks like ESO uses standard character models to create armors for all their races. GW2 uses 5 different models (+ genders) to create each individual piece… Do the math on what’s easier to produce. 

 

Nah, the devs aren’t going to throw away resources redoing outfits for 5 different race models plus genders. 
 

 

 

 

[Swagger.1459]

1 hour ago, Depths.4051 said:

Agreed part of the reason I bring this topic up is actually because I’ve played a lot of ESO, and they literally have 100+ sets of different armor you can mix and match with their outfit system. I bring up this topic not because I haven’t seen it before, not because I haven’t heard the explanation like swagger has described, but because I question why this cannot be done when it has been done by other games. Of course it would take a time investment to get it done with transferring over the armors to a new changed mesh, but it would open up more opportunity down the line for customized fashion that they could capitalize on. Right now there’s not a lot of choice so you might as well don an outfit. I’m not saying they have the budget right now, perhaps when it goes to steam they will finally be able to breathe a little. I would just like it to be on the agenda.

Also…

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4uqx15/out_of_the_shadows_devs_here_ask_us_anything/d5s52tj

 

“Armor sets are by far the most expensive reward we can make. A full set includes heavy, medium, light, times five races, times two sexes, so it’s like developing 30 sets. It takes nine months to develop. (That’s for a normal armor set — legendary is much longer.) It’s not something we can do for Living World episodes. Individual pieces are good rewards for Living World episodes; full sets are more something for expansion packs.”

 

 

Is this understandable to you? 

 

[Depths.4051]

32 minutes ago, Swagger.1459 said:

Also…

 

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4uqx15/out_of_the_shadows_devs_here_ask_us_anything/d5s52tj

 

“Armor sets are by far the most expensive reward we can make. A full set includes heavy, medium, light, times five races, times two sexes, so it’s like developing 30 sets. It takes nine months to develop. (That’s for a normal armor set — legendary is much longer.) It’s not something we can do for Living World episodes. Individual pieces are good rewards for Living World episodes; full sets are more something for expansion packs.”

 

 

Is this understandable to you? 

 

You know you could make pills easier to swallow if you weren’t so condescending at the end. 

Edited March 22, 2022 by Depths.4051

[KeoLegend.5132]

Of course not. I want classe and race identity

[Depths.4051]

Please close thread, if people are gonna be like this then I’m out. Not interested in being talked down to, or made fun of with reactionary emotes. The general reception was fine, if a little surprising, but snarkiness isn’t my cup of tea. I’ve learned my lesson for now, don’t open a thread if you’re not willing to eat some kitten. 

[Doggie.3184]

I wish. So many medium armor pieces ruined by bizarre waist attachments, turtle necks and other oddities. I'd enjoy the game 100x more if I could throw on any of the heavy/light chest pieces with medium pants and medium pants on heavy/light armor classes..

[Ausar.9542]

15 hours ago, Roda.7468 said:

 

So, if you were to combine a standard medium chest piece with a standard light/heavy pants, you're going to have a degree of clipping that is past the point of acceptability.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

(Tho, I would prefer, if they were going to go back and revisit old skins, for them first to try to add genderswap variants of some of the more radically different male/female designs of the same supposed skin. Too often am I seeing a piece I REALLY like, wondering where to get it, and then realizing, "oh, I already have it, my version just isn't as cool/perfect as the "masculine" coded piece. ☹️"  I know it's a lot of work, so I'm not holding my breath, but kitten would it be nice...)

 

But shouldnt this be a player choice if thats the case?

 

Because I remember this being the same argument used by the developers for not including Capes, which people asked for, for a while. And we see Capes and Back Models work just fine, clipping and all. 

 

If Anet didnt like clipping so much, they wouldnt have made Charr a playable race.