Stats, definitely.
Like Rachael, I'll save some pieces if I think they look good and aren't worth the hassle to sell, just to wear in town. Fashionquest is real.
That said, I'd much rather be happily surprised by a piece that looks good than I would knowing I could just dye anything. That happy surprise was always part of the EQ charm to me.
-Tralyan
While adventuring I always went with best gear. But I always enjoyed the class armor quests, and collecting sets. In some cases, like others, I kept certain peices that I would wear just fo the fashion value if I was not specifically doing anything, or it had an effect I desired for what I was doing.
Which brings up the idea of "Armor Sets/Gear Groups". Being able to preset a couple sets of gear that can be swapped out with single click (Not on a whim), rather than drag and drop 1 peice at a time from your inventory. Like only available be preformed while out of combat/agro.
Liav said:Stats, with the hope that Pantheon supports an appearance/wardrobe feature. If not, still stats, I'll just look like an idiot.
Agree. They said they were going to have it where you can swap out clothes quickly for different enviroments so I would have some town cloths in a rotation or how ever it worked perhaps.
Aich said:Liav said:Stats, with the hope that Pantheon supports an appearance/wardrobe feature. If not, still stats, I'll just look like an idiot.
Agree. They said they were going to have it where you can swap out clothes quickly for different enviroments so I would have some town cloths in a rotation or how ever it worked perhaps.
I've said it before in other threads but I'll be seriously disappointed if that's how it ends up going.
Even during combat aesthetics are super important to me. Having blue chain pants and green plate gloves just couldn't look good under any circumstance. It ruins the entire thing for me really, looking like a bag of jelly beans for no real reason.
Cromulent said:I generally only care about stats but I do enjoy making myself look as ridiculous as possible. I loved my rainbow coloured armour when they introduced armour dyes in EQ. You could always spot me at a distance because I had such garish armour on :).
I always personally got annoyed when I saw those rainbow people in EQ but eh, to each their own. I guess ultimately I'd rather people have the freedom to do that than be stuck with armor that is subjectively hideous to them.
All in all I think having an appearance system would promote diversity in the way players look, and eliminate complaining about a specific armor design being undesirable.
It never worked in eq kilsin, when we tried to match colors we ended up going for stats and then forced to dye the armors.
Thats why i think armor should allow us to dye it. I didnt really think people would want to look like a christmas tree, but they did.
All for resistance gear, but a warrior Rogue in a robe, colored like a christmas tree.... just seems wrong!
My reason for being so reluctant when it comes to the subject of gear customization is nebulous at best.
In no other MMO since EQ have I had those experiences where I would stumble upon another player and look in awe at their gear. Never. This doesn't mean I wouldn't inspect players, but that was pure research and not because I cared about how it looked. For example, I would routinely examine other Wardens in LOTRO, ask them questions about resists, mitigation, avoidance, and so on based on the gear I saw there, but those inspections were done out of the desire to min-max my class, and how well known those Wardens were on the server. Furthermore, you didn't actually need to be in front of a person to inspect in LOTRO. You see a name flash on the chat box, you right click, and hit inspect.
I'm not sure what it is about EQ that made the gear just POP out at you. Was it the color scheme? The detail? Maybe even the LACK of detail? I really have no idea, so I try to rationalize it like so: (That POP heretofore referred to as "That feeling")
EQ gave me That Feeling.
No other MMO gave me That Feeling.
EQ did not necessarily have MORE gear choices
EQ does not have superior graphics
EQ gear is not more detailed
Surely those factors would give That Feeling even stronger.
So what did EQ have or NOT have that could have possibly contributed to that feeling? What did it have in common, or not have in common, with other MMO's? Only two come to mind when it comes to That Feeling.
1. EQ gear was harder to obtain, which made it harder to see everyone wearing the same thing, which made someone wearing gear different than the norm stand out more
AND
2. EQ did NOT have a wardrobe or gear customization system (Even post dye-able gear) - Caveat: I stopped playing after 01. If such a system was implemented, I have no knowledge
--------------------------------
I realize that second reason is probably a non-issue. How can something as silly as a wardrobe or gear customization mechanic contribute to That Feeling, or the lack of? Call it a half-cocked, flying by the seat of my pants, hunch. But when every other game has that mechanic, and the one game that did NOT is also the one game that precipitated That Feeling, it leads me to the conclusion that maybe that mechanic is partly at fault for That Feeling not being existent within other MMO's.
Or maybe it's the first reason and the second one has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Who knows. I'm really just talking now.
=Edit= All said and done, I really don't have a problem with gear customization/wardrobe systems. If it makes other people happy, it makes me happy.
I think it's pretty simple.
EQ was new, as was the concept of gear. It was very difficult and time consuming to get some pieces of gear in EQ, mostly because players were ignorant of where they even came from in the first place.
I don't think it is possible to recreate that in a new game, at least not on the same scale. We're not as ignorant as we were back then, so that sense of mysticism will never really be able to be recreated as closely as it was in-era.
The first 5-10 people who get their epics will be considered gods among men for a few weeks, until the information and everything trickles down a little bit and we start to see the game saturated with them. This is as opposed to EQ where the number of people with epics was staggeringly small for months, or even a couple years, for numerous reasons.
While color dyeing might change the appearance some, it was the armor designs and adornments, bands, embossements and straps that made them unique in appearance.
And that is important for the devs to keep in mind. Not to take a bronze breastplate, add some stats, change the color and call it Epic Chestpeice of the Gods.
Fulton said:While color dyeing might change the appearance some, it was the armor designs and adornments, bands, embossements and straps that made them unique in appearance.
And that is important for the devs to keep in mind. Not to take a bronze breastplate, add some stats, change the color and call it Epic Chestpeice of the Gods.
Yeah, for sure, although in EQ's case, I think it was mostly just to minimize the number of unique models for performance reasons.
