Do You Want Capes? I want capes.

[WARIORSCHARGEING.2637]

they was good for Guild Wars but in the case of Guild Wars2 not so much and if they did them . well it be like all the other armors and so forth in this game with the clipping art not properly done . ;)

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"videoboy.4162" said:I never know what to make of the "it would be difficult" responses. Sometimes I realize that it's probably a valid excuse, but other times it sounds really lazy. That might be because it's been used for many more things than capes. I've seen Anet put out some really nice things, so I feel like they could accomplish a lot more if they tried or perhaps were able to hire an additional team to do the trying for them.

Not once has ANet ever said, "it's too difficult." What they say is whether they think the cost of doing something outweighs the benefits. Hiring more people solves some problems, but doesn't automatically address everything... and it introduces new issues. Notably, each person hired has to be trained in the Art of Doing Things GW2, which takes time from the new hire and from veterans. There are only so many people that a company can add at one time.

There also has to be a balance. Hire too many designers and there isn't enough content to match. You need translators and voice actors for some stuff, or economic balancing for other stuff.

And of course, all of that stuff costs money. And there's very little that pays for itself. It's the collection of everything that gets people to spend on the individual things to make the "everything" more fun. For example, I didn't like BDO enough to invest in any extras at all, not even the ones that made it easier to play; the "everything" for BDO wasn't enough to make the specific things worthwhile.

So when ANet says, "capes are tricky," they aren't saying, "it's too difficult; we're not going to try." They are saying, "on balance, it's not the best use of our time and it's probably not the best use of any new hires we get either." And when some of us on the forums say, "that doesn't sound practical," we aren't saying it's bad to bring up the idea; we're saying that, on balance, there are other things that might be better for the community or the game, that use similar resources.

[videoboy.4162]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"videoboy.4162" said:I never know what to make of the "it would be difficult" responses. Sometimes I realize that it's probably a valid excuse, but other times it sounds really lazy. That might be because it's been used for many more things than capes. I've seen Anet put out some really nice things, so I feel like they could accomplish a lot more if they tried or perhaps were able to hire an additional team to do the trying for them.

Not once has ANet ever said, "it's too difficult." What they say is whether they think the cost of doing something outweighs the benefits. Hiring more people solves some problems, but doesn't automatically address everything... and it introduces new issues. Notably, each person hired has to be trained in the Art of Doing Things GW2, which takes time from the new hire

and

from veterans. There are only so many people that a company can add at one time.

There also has to be a balance. Hire too many designers and there isn't enough content to match. You need translators and voice actors for some stuff, or economic balancing for other stuff.

And of course, all of that stuff costs money. And there's very little that pays for itself. It's the collection of everything that gets people to spend on the individual things to make the "everything" more fun. For example, I didn't like BDO enough to invest in any extras at all, not even the ones that made it easier to play; the "everything" for BDO wasn't enough to make the specific things worthwhile.

So when ANet says, "capes are tricky," they aren't saying, "it's too difficult; we're not going to try." They are saying, "on balance, it's not the best use of our time and it's probably not the best use of any new hires we get either." And when some of us on the forums say, "that doesn't sound practical," we aren't saying it's bad to bring up the idea; we're saying that, on balance, there are other things that might be better for the community or the game, that use similar resources.

Sorry, I guess the quote you shared did just say "difficult," rather than "too difficult." It doesn't really change my view on things though. I would think they already had someone responsible for training new hires, so that doesn't seem like it would be an issue if they brought in more team members.

I agree with you about BDO. It had pretty characters and armor, in some cases that surpassed GW2, but I don't feel like it did the other things Anet is good at as well.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"videoboy.4162" said:Sorry, I guess the quote you shared did just say "difficult," rather than "too difficult." It doesn't really change my view on things though. I would think they already had someone responsible for training new hires, so that doesn't seem like it would be an issue if they brought in more team members.There are HR people who orient new people to the firm. But that's different from explaining how the culture is, how people approach code, the past practices and configuration management procedures, and so on.

If you drive a truck for UPS and swap to DHL, you probably just need an orientation. But if you switch from working at Amazon's websites to working at Facebook's, there are all sorts of other things you'll need to learn.

But ignore the difficulties of acclimatizing new people. There are still the other limitations. 9 women won't have a child in one month, for example. Two cats is about 3x as much effort to take care of as one, and three is about 4x more difficult than two (depending on the critters). And you can't just arbitrarily grow one team without worrying about the size of other teams.

Hiring more people can solve some production issues, but it won't solve them all. And it comes with headaches of its own.

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

Real time physics with cloth (capes or whatever) has always been janky in vidya games. Especially when you want to introduce dynamic obstacles to interact with them. Meaning, if you wish to have the player's body actually collide and prevent clipping of capes...it'd take more processing power. I don't even think ANET has a collision mesh rigged to the characters to even make such an interaction possible (just guessing). And even if they did have the right setup for cloth physics it still wouldn't look like "cloth" since the poly count is going to be low (regardless of tricks in the normal maps the edges will still be jagged). If you increased the poly count for the sake of argument you are going to multiply the processing power of each player within sight/rendering distance...and that's not something ANET is going to do given the low settings that people run this game at anyway.

[videoboy.4162]

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"videoboy.4162" said:Sorry, I guess the quote you shared did just say "difficult," rather than "too difficult." It doesn't really change my view on things though. I would think they already had someone responsible for training new hires, so that doesn't seem like it would be an issue if they brought in more team members.There are HR people who orient new people to the firm. But that's different from explaining how the culture is, how people approach code, the past practices and configuration management procedures, and so on.

If you drive a truck for UPS and swap to DHL, you probably just need an orientation. But if you switch from working at Amazon's websites to working at Facebook's, there are all sorts of other things you'll need to learn.

But ignore the difficulties of acclimatizing new people. There are still the other limitations. 9 women won't have a child in one month, for example. Two cats is about 3x as much effort to take care of as one, and three is about 4x more difficult than two (depending on the critters). And you can't just arbitrarily grow one team without worrying about the size of other teams.

Hiring more people can solve some production issues, but it won't solve them all. And it comes with headaches of its own.

Yes, I understand how these things work, considering it's what I do.

Keeping with my example of adding more to the Armor/Outfit team, that seems to be the area that they lag behind in. That's why I suggested it. They spent all that time working on PoF and we got all those beautiful maps, enemies, and stories (along with so many other things). But, for some reason, we barely got any armor. This is especially true when you take into account that at least three of those sets are just copies, with a few more details added. Obviously, that was the team that was dragging behind the others.

I'm not really sure why you used that example about women not giving birth faster, the more you add, you're just getting nine kids in the same amount of time that you would have ended up with one. Each armor person tends to build one set at a time (after the designing and approval). You're going to get more finished products with seven people working on one set each, as opposed to two people working on one set each, in the same amount of time.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@videoboy.4162 said:You're going to get more finished products with seven people working on one set each, as opposed to two people working on one set each, in the same amount of time.

Throwing more bodies at a project doesn't always mean faster, better, or more. And even when it does, it isn't the only project; projects have to match up with other projects; and the people working on them have to mesh

It depends on the product. It depends on how the teams are setup. There are all sorts of situations in which it's not practical to have seven people working on a set or in which they won't manage the same quality as when two work on a single set.

We simply don't have enough details to know what their considerations are; we just know that we want more stuff and ANet has other priorities besides that.

[Wakthor Thorwak.2819]

no i dont want capes but if we can hide them sure im ok with it

[IonoI.3956]

hell no they're ugly. They are one of the main reasons why i've never tried gw1. i've never seen anyone wear a cape in real life for a good reason: they have no practical purpose.i might be ok with them only if there is an option to hide it not only for my character but for everyone else around as well.

[Shard.4791]

They'd need to be back item skins for multiple reasons. At the moment guild emblem doesn't play any role in the game which is a shame. In Gw1 style capes could bring those designs to be seen.

[DoctorOverlord.8620]

Capes just aren't very high on my list of things I'd like to see.
Now, summerwear for our characters is another thing.

@mercury ranique.2170 said:NO CAPES!Thank you, I was hoping someone would post this scene from The Incredibles :)

[Arnox.5128]

Why the hell are we suddenly caring so much about clipping? You know what else clips in this game? Everything. When I wear my longsword on my Charr, the top part of the blade clips right through the ground constantly, but I don't hear anyone saying a word about that.

Yes, a cape would clip a little bit. No, it doesn't have to be perfect.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@"Arnox.5128" said:Why the hell are we suddenly caring so much about clipping?

If the devs didn't care about clipping, things would be worse. Below is a dev talking about how difficult it was to get the effects on Binding of Ipos, the main point being: game development is about compromises. There will always be some clipping; the question is how noticeable, in how many spots, and with how many permutations.

---

So that's why firebrand didn't get real tomes.

ANet Chelsea

It was not. I came up with the idea for and made the focus, and I work independently from the skills and balance team. The focus was not designed with tomes in mind, and guardian tomes were not unused because of the legendary. The weapon went through several iterations and eventually landed on a book, and when it came time to figure out how the character would hold it I didn't want to have to resort to having the character just holding a strap on the binding like other book focuses. I wanted something unique and awesome, remembered guardian tomes, and continued from there. It took a lot of problem solving to get it to work at all (weapons work differently from spells like the guardian tomes, not to mention all the other animation and art work that had to be done for it) but eventually /u/anet_mattp and I figured it out! It has a lot of crazy stuff going on behind the scenes that we hadn't ever done for weapons before.

That said, it was a nice bonus for me to get my tome back in a roundabout way and I hoped you guys would be happy with it too! :)

---

ANet Chelsea

One of the problems I had to tackle

was how to give you a different hand. Spoilers: I didn't. I covered yours up, hence the large size of the claw - it has to fully encompass your hand. It's not your hand anyway, it's a magic demon hand. Also, don't let the preview window fool you, it's not actually accurate size in there (though it sounds like you crafted it).

When the book is on my hips my hand on that side just goes in it and never comes back out...it just bothered me somehow...

Believe me, it bothers me too; even more so since it's my creation and I want it to be perfect! This was yet another problem I had to deal with and it ended up being something I could not solve. Since I can't move the arm I'm limited to moving the book around and messing with the size.

The book actually does scale down and it squishes flatter while on your hip to help a little, but no amount of scaling or squishing would remove the clipping on some races unless you want a book for ants. Scaling it down also presents its own set of issues so the final result you see was the best solution.

I tried everything.

These are problems I deal with every time I make hip stowed weapons and there are quite a few others that share this issue. Making weapons is a game of compromises and it's an art to even get things to look as good as you end up seeing them in game. Game development in a nutshell.