You more than likely aren't going to get an appearance tab. The most recent dev comments are about making the custom gear system more accommodating. BioWare chose their path a while ago and it includes some visual progression but, doesn't include appearance tabs. I feel they chose right.

The issue I have with keeping the mod system as currently implemented in favor of an appearance tab, is that in order to keep the look I want and the stats I need, I'm required to spend thousands of credits taking mods out of new items I get in order to keep my stats up to date without sacrificing appearance. I don't feel that I should have to pay that much on a regular basis just to not look like a clown. Probably my favorite thing about LOTRO was the appearance tab. If I'm going to RP a character, I need to have control over that character's appearance, and to penalize those of us who are interested in appearance seems incredibly unfair. Edited January 11, 2012 by IGsChevy

So frakin' what?

 

PvPers are always talking about how much more manly they are because PvP is so much tougher than PvE. PvPers can get over not being able to ID someone's class at a glance instead of trying to cherry pick their targets.

 

Exactly. I have ZERO sympathy for PvPers that have a problem with not being able to tell their opponent a a glance if it gets in the way of my character's customization. Besides, even under the current system there are plenty of ways to craft a misleading costume if that's your goal. If PvP has ANYTHING to do with the lack of an appearance tab then the situation needs to be isolated to PvP content only, allowing for an appearance tab but with restrictions that apply to how you're viewed in PvP, without impacting how PvE players see you.

 

You more than likely aren't going to get an appearance tab. The most recent dev comments are about making the custom gear system more accommodating. BioWare chose their path a while ago and it includes some visual progression but, doesn't include appearance tabs. I feel they chose right.

 

The recent dev post does nothing to solve the need for an appearance tab system, it's just more of the same custom gear stuff, which is, at best, a patch.

 

The issue I have with keeping the mod system as currently implemented in favor of an appearance tab, is that in order to keep the look I want and the stats I need, I'm required to spend thousands of credits taking mods out of new items I get in order to keep my stats up to date without sacrificing appearance.

 

Yeah, and the costs are a bit silly too. I swapped the mods between two pairs of level 30-ish pants last night, and each blue mod cost around 1500-2000cr to remove, and one purple cost 4000cr to remove, even though it was several levels lower than the blue in the alternate piece, and thus actually had lower stats than the one that cost less than half as much to remove. It cost more just for being purple, rather than for actually providing a stronger effect. They really need to look into rebalancing that sort of thing, so that a purple mod that provides +10 endurance would cost the same as a blue mod that offers +10 endurance, or at most a very slight amount more.

People saying there's no need for a tab because of the mod system are not paying attention.

 

Crafted Items are way, way sub-par to the pvp and pve endgame armor.

 

This needs to change, or there's no point to crafting unless you want a significant decrease to your stats.

Didnt read all the posts, so apologies if these 2 points have been covered.

 

1. Social gear is only really usefull for light armor users. Would love to have the sand people armor on my Juggernaut. An appearance tab would allow everyone to make use of social gear outside of running around the fleet/station with it.

 

2. Purple gear at level 50. Whether its the PvP or the PvE (HM and Ops) The main armor mod cannot be removed, so the great system of 1-49 of being able to hunt for and find a set of armor that fits your characters style or that simply you like the look of. Which for me was a brilliant move to allow greater diersity in player appearances.

 

Then you get to 50 and start collecting HM, Ops, PvP gear and everyone, after a while, will all be equipped the same.

 

I wouldnt mind as much not having an appearance slot if they made the main mods from lvl 50 purples removable to allow the diversity of appearances that the previous levels allowed. Or add the mods (even if it takes a little more effort overall than buying the present piece) so we can add the mods to the gear we like.

 

I'll get around to posting this some time in suggestions:

 

By allowing us to acquire the same level mods that is in the pve/pvp sets it will also open up the possibilty of adding more level 50 orange, unmodded armor and weapons to the crew skills to give more utility and increase the desiribility for those skills at max level.

Didnt read all the posts, so apologies if these 2 points have been covered.

 

1. Social gear is only really usefull for light armor users. Would love to have the sand people armor on my Juggernaut. An appearance tab would allow everyone to make use of social gear outside of running around the fleet/station with it.

 

No real opinion on this, as long as they don't do stupid things like make a heavy armor dancer outfit or slave bikini or somesuch.

 

2. Purple gear at level 50. Whether its the PvP or the PvE (HM and Ops) The main armor mod cannot be removed, so the great system of 1-49 of being able to hunt for and find a set of armor that fits your characters style or that simply you like the look of. Which for me was a brilliant move to allow greater diersity in player appearances.

 

Then you get to 50 and start collecting HM, Ops, PvP gear and everyone, after a while, will all be equipped the same.

 

I wouldnt mind as much not having an appearance slot if they made the main mods from lvl 50 purples removable to allow the diversity of appearances that the previous levels allowed. Or add the mods (even if it takes a little more effort overall than buying the present piece) so we can add the mods to the gear we like.

 

This has been suggested over and over again since they messed up the mod system in beta and will be addressed in patch 1.2 (purples will be fully moddable again, set bonuses transferable, etc).

 

By allowing us to acquire the same level mods that is in the pve/pvp sets it will also open up the possibilty of adding more level 50 orange, unmodded armor and weapons to the crew skills to give more utility and increase the desiribility for those skills at max level.

 

Critically crafted orange gear will be the best gear there is come 1.2. I just hope they up the crit chance on crafts/disassembles because right now acquiring critically crafted orange gear is nigh impossible and getting new schematics from disassembling is barely worth the cost.

Add more Goldrecipes not a stupid apperance tab NO NO NO

noeone needs gold amor then, no one nees cyber anymore, no one needs arifice...wow what a bad idea

Add more Goldrecipes not a stupid apperance tab NO NO NO

noeone needs gold amor then, no one nees cyber anymore, no one needs arifice...wow what a bad idea

 

They can continue to add orange recipes, the team that does itemization would be completely different people from the UI team that would be adding the appearance tab.

 

As for an appearance tab removing the point of mods and moddable equipment, bull####. DCUO launched with one of the the best appearance customization systems out there (CO is the best at the moment, although they each have their strengths), and yet they just spent the time to ADD a modding system to the game, allowing players to craft and slot mods into their gear. Why would they do that if a good appearance customization system would make modding pointless?

 

No, that is a completely ridiculous argument, of course adding an appearance tab would not make custom/mod gear pointless. The point of mods is flexibility. rather than having to take what you can get, with whatever drops, or is rewarded, or whatever, you can adjust it to suit your own playstyle. Value AIM over Crit? Then slot +AIM rather than +crit. Value accuracy over surge, then slot accuracy, it's up to you. Get a chest piece at level 30 and the next one to come along isn't until level 35? Just swap out a mod or two, every other level, rather than waiting to replace the whole thing and being five levels behind the curve until then.

 

Basically, the mod system gives players options, and options are a good thing, but the existence of the mod system is no excuse not to also have an appearance tab system as well, they do two very different things, and each is MUCH better than the other at the things they do well.

Edited January 13, 2012 by Ohoni

The recent dev post does nothing to solve the need for an appearance tab system, it's just more of the same custom gear stuff, which is, at best, a patch.

 

What you percieve as a why the game needs an appearance tab are not reasons necessarily shared by all players and BioWare. While some players may want unhindered flexibilty in their customization, BioWare seems to be making avoiding "the clone effect" and haveing the potential to make wide varieties of outifts as their goal. They avoid appearance tabs in order to retain some level of visual progression, meaningful appearances over costuming, motivation to go and gather in-game items and to consume resources and and credits. I personally agree with their direction.

I would on one hand love to see an appearance system, being able to define how my PC looks is one of my favorite things about playing LotRO. On the other hand adding such a system would pretty much destroy the value of crafting in this game :/ if you were allowed to put any gear whatsoever in your appearance slots as in most games.

 

Maybe if they made an appearance system but only allowed certain social and crafted items to go in the slots that would work. It'd probably have a huge negative impact on mod creators and the like, but it really would be great to see /something/. One of the many great things about appearance systems is that they conserve gear slots and don't require people to carry around extra sets of gear just because they want to change to a certain look. This is essentially impossible with the mod system.

 

I really like the idea of an appearance system and would love to see one put in game, I just hope that when/if one is the devs consider some way of keeping crafting viable.

Edited January 13, 2012 by SWImara

I used to be a supporter of the appearance tab, but no longer. My reasons are simply based on RP asthetics and immersion. Currently there are three types of armor being light, medium and heavy.

 

The last thing I want to see is a BH clad in heavy armor head to toe and having all that armor "masked" by a slave bikini. It makes no sense to see that on a battlefield or the open world, unless you are a light armor wearing profession.

 

Case in point, the mod system is beautiful. If you want to wear light armor like a slave bikini, you can, but dont expect much "coverage" in both senses of the word. It is both immersive and realistic.

 

In conclusion, the solution is not an appearance tab, it's for development to make better looking gear for all professions. As of this point, most of it, especially end-game and social wear, looks like crud.

What you percieve as a why the game needs an appearance tab are not reasons necessarily shared by all players and BioWare. While some players may want unhindered flexibilty in their customization, BioWare seems to be making avoiding "the clone effect" and haveing the potential to make wide varieties of outifts as their goal. They avoid appearance tabs in order to retain some level of visual progression, meaningful appearances over costuming, motivation to go and gather in-game items and to consume resources and and credits. I personally agree with their direction.

 

 

Yea I could go with that reasoning if the end game gear didnt look like crud.

Implementing an appearance tab, hurts the crafting community. You will be able to get any look you want, and keep stats in line.

 

Admittedly I'm not "end game" yet, but in the midgame, I have yet to find mods anywhere near the equivelent of armor I can craft. And, of course, end game is when the game ends, and I do something else until an expansion, and thus anything there is irrelevant IMO.

 

So I am currently put in the position of wearing inferior armor that looks good, or superior armor that looks horrible. And will be for the forseeable future. And, from what I can tell, the price for the inferior mods to improve the good looking armor is far more that the superior but bad looking armor

 

So no, the current mod system does NOT work.

I had an idea about this 'problem'.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=173248

Agreed... no few people I know enjoy when their gear is a hodge podge of rainbow junk

 

Hey, I LIKE my bright-orange coat and post-apocalypse orange gas-mask.

 

Which is why I demand that they convert champion gear to a fully-slotted system so that I can remove the plates and put them in my orange gear. I'm body type 4, I don't want to have to wear the suit with the blurry designs smeared into brown meaninglessness across their poor implementation on the body 4 wireframe.

By allowing us to acquire the same level mods that is in the pve/pvp sets it will also open up the possibilty of adding more level 50 orange, unmodded armor and weapons.

 

Unless I'm misunderstanding how the system works, there is no such thing as lvl 50 orange, unmodded armor and weapons.

 

The lvl of orange gear is determined by the level of the hilt/barrel/armoring slotted into it.

 

Which is why (from a power perspective) orange gear is no real benefit to synthweaving/armorcrafting.

 

You can make orange gear practically at skill lvl 30 (or whenever the easiest orange schematics become available) that is just as effective as orange gear made at skill lvl 400. The effectiveness of the gear comes from the armoring that is slotted into it, and that's all cybertech. Now, you could take some kind of poll I guess, and make it so the "good" looking orange schematics all require high skill, and the "bad" looking ones require low skill.... but I suspect most players don't particularly care how they look, and even then, "good" and "bad" are highly subjective.

 

Incidentally, I happen to be of the "I don't give a @#@# about realism" school of thought. I want my heavy armor wearer to be able to be in heavy armor but look like she's wearing a slave bikini. Now, maybe costume slots shouldn't work in PvP warzones so you can better tell what class a person is at a glance, but that's a different issue, I'd argue. Heck, they can easily add options to show real armor vs. show costume armor if it really bothers people all that much to see a heavy in a bikini. (presumably different options for self and others)

I disagree slightly m8, I think a lot of players care about the appearence of their toon. Some more than others obviously, but I think 99% of the player base would use some feature that allowed them to wear matching sets etc.

Perhaps I mispoke.

 

Unless they've gotten to the point where they have *literally* nothing else to spend credits on, I expect the majority of players aren't going to pay what a lvl 400 person would expect to get for a critical crafted item using top grade mats vs. what a lvl 30 would expect to get for a critical crafted item using grade 1 mats solely for a "better" appearance.

What you percieve as a why the game needs an appearance tab are not reasons necessarily shared by all players and BioWare.

 

True enough, but conversely what Bioware and some players are willing to accept as an appearance customization system is insufficient for many other players, which is part of the point of this thread.

 

While some players may want unhindered flexibilty in their customization, BioWare seems to be making avoiding "the clone effect" and haveing the potential to make wide varieties of outifts as their goal.

 

Then they're doing a backwards job of it. Enhanced customization is the best way to avoid a "clone effect," I've never once seen the exact same character in DCUO, even given the number of people who've made deliberate effort to look like Superman.

 

They avoid appearance tabs in order to retain some level of visual progression, meaningful appearances over costuming, motivation to go and gather in-game items and to consume resources and and credits.

 

An appearance tab would retain visual progression, you just wouldn't be a slave to it. You couldn't look like a fancy pants endgame guy until you actually were one, but you'd still be free to look like a scruffy old desert nomad if you wanted to, even at endgame. That's still possible even today, it's just more annoying.

 

On the other hand adding such a system would pretty much destroy the value of crafting in this game :/ if you were allowed to put any gear whatsoever in your appearance slots as in most games.

 

No, it wouldn't. It would, in fact, increase the value of crafting significantly, as you could slot in crafted gear of any level without worrying about it messing up your look. Green/blue/purple crafted gear would no longer be useless to characters that have found an orange piece they like.

 

The last thing I want to see is a BH clad in heavy armor head to toe and having all that armor "masked" by a slave bikini. It makes no sense to see that on a battlefield or the open world, unless you are a light armor wearing profession.

 

They're under no obligation to allow you to have the appearance of light armor while wearing heavy. They could easily implement a same/same mechanism that would prevent that if necessary, although personally I don't see any problem with it.

Penny Arcade is apparently on our side. It's only a matter of time now. . .

I have a simple solution: add a setting to show original gear instead of costumes.

 

Then all those that don't like the idea of appearance tab would have that option selected and would see every other player in his/hers original gear and not the costume.

 

Those who care about the looks - would be able to customize it freely and those who don't like it - would not be forced to see it.

 

Win - win?

 

I should never be told how I should enjoy my game.

 

 

 

LotrO does this perfectly - you have two free costume slots (up to eight if you unlock them) and you can put in it any gear that you can wear, any gear that you've acquired (instances, raids, barters) or any that your alts did (due to shared wardrobe stash).

 

On top of that you can dye most of those items and there are like twenty colors to pick from.

 

As a result people look stunning (there are even fashion contests).

 

 

 

Here? My prediction is that after some time most max level people will be using either pvp gear or raid pve gear (or a combination of it), therefore people will look similar.

 

Next expansion comes and after some time almost nobody will look like that, but they will still be looking similar to each other (new max lvl pvp gear / pve raid gear).

 

What is it? Clone wars ?

 

 

P.S. To those that don't want appearance tab, how is this hurting crafing, exactly?

Edited January 17, 2012 by FoxNemhauser

Case in point, the mod system is beautiful. If you want to wear light armor like a slave bikini, you can, but dont expect much "coverage" in both senses of the word. It is both immersive and realistic.

 

Thought the general MMO armor design rule was: The less it covers, the better it protects!

I agree but wouldn't mind a gear color kit thingy.

Practically all armor pieces have an RNG and players can access any of the PvP armor RNG shells for 50K a set. You want a smexy look? Well you gotta work for it.

 

As for me I am working to pull my PvE mods into the Legacy RNG gear cause it pretty.

Edited April 19, 2012 by TalkingDinosaur

I would love it if there was an appearance slot so i could actually make my guy look how i want him to. so far almost every armor piece i have found that is helpful looks kinda awful, most that i like i dont use because its weak or i out leveled it. or make it so i can take one item and make it look how i want by merging looks with another item somehow