You'll have to forgive the reference, but that reminds me of my characters in WoW shortly after I got my first greens way back in BC O.o

Yeah, there are a lot of elements of SWtOR's design that remind me of archaic MMOs that I used to play, and this is certainly one of them. I suspect that a lot of the defenders of the current status quo are immigrants from these relics, and have some form of Stockholm Syndrome.

For me, getting and maintaining my appearance is just more game content to me - a sort of extra set of quests with rewards that suit me 100%, and with no map markers telling me exactly how to do. I probably enjoy gear-hunting as much (or even more) than other game content.

I fully support everyone's right to make a game of any element they choose, I just don't think that Bioware should be supporting this practice, and that the majority of players would be happier with more convenient customization than those that find the current model to be "fun." Bare in mind, there would still be exploration elements to the system, as you would not be able to use a look unless you could find at least one copy of it, so you might still have to farm a certain mob or track down a rare recipe or something. DCUO, the system I reference as having a good customization system, has plenty of rare and sought after "styles," as they call them.

It even broadens the options, as it effectively makes EVERY piece of gear in the game an "orange piece", so when you do find the piece you want, you can use it from that point on, rather than having to discard it once the stats make it obsolete!

If an appearance tab is going to be implemented (which I hope not), I would prefer that they went all the way - a system that lets everyone pick appearance items freely from all armor pieces in the game, including endgame operations loot. The <i>only</i> limit would be that your character must have the relevant skill ("Heavy Armor" etc).

I think that goes too far. I think that there is value in the progression, that if someone does choose to wear one or more high level pieces, you can acknowledge their progress, and that there is some fun to be had in finding that rare piece of gear. I think that, at the very most, they should just allow for a selection of 3-5 different base outfits at creation, much like you can do when you get your first companion with their wardrobe, and nothing would be available that wouldn't be available already by level 5 or so, mostly just different colored versions of the same style.

Of course, ideally we'd have full pallet control as well, which would make that latter bit moot (at the very least being able to rotate colors around the pallet).

After all, if your appearance is not what you are wearing, then there really is no point connecting the two at all. Why half *** it, when it can be truly effortless?

I wouldn't actually mind if they completely disconnected the two, which I agree would be simpler, and would actually be much more in tune with the license (given that there is no "gear progression" in Star Wars). While as I said I think that there should be some form of "style progression", in which new styles become available as a result of drops, missions, crafting, etc., and there should certainly be stat progression as you level via similar means, they wouldn't have to be linked up, they could go to a model in which you more get direct mods slotted directly onto your person, offering the same benefits gear brings now, but not being attacked to a specific pair of pants or whatever.

Champions Online does this, having six "gear" slots that do not directly correspond to any specific body part, and while some do unlock costume pieces, this is largely an arbitrary process. So SWtOR could go that route, rewarding both "gear" that raises stats, and "costumes" that allow you to change your appearance, but not necessarily linking the two.

That sounds like a massive overhaul though, a complete change to all the gear in the game that would not be undertaken likely. Adding something like "appearance override slots" would be a fairly minor UI modification that a good 2-3 guys could bang out in a week or less, and a full DCUO system would probably not be that much harder to implement. Given the difference in workload, I think adding the latter systems should be the short term priority, but they can consider your plan for the long term.

I would assume orange gear has base stats with this in mind.

But not scalable or modifiable base stats. If they have the base stats to be balanced against a level 20 armor with an Armor Augment in, then they wouldn't even be close to balanced against a level 50 armor with an Augment in, and much less against one with a +Crit or something.

Why not? I'm playing the devils advocate here (I don't want an appearance tab) but if you are going to have it why place restrictions on it? Why make it take effort to get the appearance you want?

and that's why the strawman arguments are so silly, they say "if one element has to be tricky, like leveling, then every little thing about the game should also be a pain in the ###." Well that's just not true, some things should be a challenge, and other things should be convenient. Doing group content should be a challenge, finding a group should be convenient. finding cool appearances can be difficult, but once found, switching between them without harming your performance should be easy.

You are of course right, we should all be level 50, have all companions, a dozen speeders and all titles and gear in the game as soon as we log in.

"If I only had a brain. . ."

I think I like this system. I liked LOTRO's appearance system, but to make it work for PvP, it was just disabled there (people like to know what they are fighting). Here with PvP able to happen in many places, that isn't an option. So you are left with either having armour that protects as it looks, or not. They've chosen the former, and this seems to work.

I reject the idea that you should need to be able to see other people's gear for PvP purposes, I mean you should be able to tell what class they are regardless of appearance, and besides orange gear already allows you to wear armor from other classes, like Gunslingers in full Jedi robes with peak performance. DCUO's PVP there is no way to tell what class or powerset the opponents have until they start attacking, and it seems to work out just fine.

But even if we do entertain the idea that it's important for PvP purposes, it's an easy enough fix. Just have it so that the appearance overrides don't work on opposing factions on PvP servers. While friendlies might see your Trooper as wearing the Guardian robes he thinks looks cool, to any opposing player he would just see whatever random collection of plate he's actually wearing. It shouldn't be a problem to do, since all that happens is the server sends a certain set of numbers telling your client what appearance model to display, all it needs to do is pull those numbers from column A when sending them to friendlies, and column B for any enemies.

In any case, PvE players should not be penalized because PvP players are too stupid to be able to fight a Trooper wearing robes.

Ohh! Lucky Charms armor! I'll bet she was magically delicious!!

Always.

I'm a big fan of LOTRO's cosmetic tab and dyes. Having that much choice over the appearance of your character is a big thing for me (and judging by the AH prices on some purely cosmetic outfits, others as well). Even just an option to color the armor (within a limited spectrum) would be great, because man do I get tired of brown/lightbrown/beige/off-white/dark brown for my Jedi.

I wore the commedation piece for a good long while because it wasn't some member of the brown family:)

 

But not everything in the game deserves to have a value to it. It's like if you go to a restaurant, you expect that the meal itself will cost money, you expect that a nice drink will cost money. You expect that desert will cost money, but just getting water should be free, they should bring some bread to the table for free, using the bathroom should be free, etc. If they attach a price to every single thing, including a fee just to have a chair at the table, then that seems excessive.

 

Some things should have a cost associated, being able to change your appearance within the options you already have access to should not be one of those.

Except that in an MMO, appearance IS usually one of the most premium things available. Everyone wants to LOOK cool :-p

the thing you are missing is that you should only look like the cloths you are wearing, and by making fully modifiable gear we are able to upgrade the gear with a look we prefer. As for the cost, it takes nothing to overwrite a mod only to pull them out. There really is not a reason to give you a DCU type wardrobe. It works in that game because superheroes/villains have a distinguishable look to them and it is a huge thing when they change looks in a the books so they kept it easy for you to feel the same in the game. BW has made it easy for you to maintain the look you want if you want to have a wardrobe then you need to put the work into maintaining it.

Actually it isn't especially when you start getting into the Heroic Flashpoint and Raid gear. With one of the recent builds, on Epic/Artifact (purple) items, they took out the ability to change around the Armoring slot. This becomes a problem with raid gear as it now requires all players to take that gear and look almost exactly the same because we can not pull the armoring mod out of the gear. This is kind of a big deal for tanks as the armoring mod is what gives us the armor rating on our gear.

I don't mind dropping 120k creds on pulling mods out as I have done recently, but without access to 136-140ish rated armoring mods, it's going to be extemely difficult to be able to maintain a specific look for raiding.

ySnip

-No set bonus

 

-No augment slots

 

-No PvP bonus

 

Snip

Crafted critted Orange gear has augment slots and there are PvP stats on some mods (not sure if it just crit crafted mods though).

TBH there needs to be a colour over-ride item to stop it becoming Star Wars the Clown Republic.

Pretty much the gear system in DCUO... Any piece of gear you picked up, the look would be added to the database, and then you could pick from it at will. While it did offer a lot of flexibility. it really did remove the value of the gear looks you acquired. If you have them available all the time, then after a while, it does not matter if they are there or not. That's my impression.

I don't know about that, I mean, on one of my mains I might have hundreds of different styles in total, and perhaps only use one combination of them for months on end, but I highly value those pieces that I do have on, and it usually did take some effort to acquire most of them in the first place. But like this holiday season two of my characters got this nifty Christmas sweater, so I threw that on instead of their standard tops (which took all of ten seconds and did not involve any transfer of funds), and then I took another character and equipped a few pieces of the new "Holiday Elf" set that fit the rest of her look, then recolored a few pieces of her wardrobe from white/light blue/yellow to white with tasteful red highlights. It was fun and easy to do, I can't imagine even bothering under SWtOR's current system, too much hassle.

It's worth noting that the sweaters were a rare drop, only available during the holidays, which none of my other characters have, and the other "elf" pieces had to be purchased using tokens gained from holiday themed activities, so acquiring them required a certain amount of effort, but the point is, once I own them, I can do whatever I want with them.

Except that in an MMO, appearance IS usually one of the most premium things available. Everyone wants to LOOK cool :-p

And as I've noted, acquiring cool looks, fine, that can be difficult, time consuming costly, what have you. But once you have it, it should be YOURS, you should be able to put it on, take it off, whatever, and that shouldn't impact your gameplay. If you get a cool looking level 25 blue armor, then by level 30 you shouldn't be forced to choose between continuing to have obsolete stats in that slot, or having to look for some alternate version of that armor, IF it's available, AND the stats to power it, when you already have that version right there, and you already have a stronger blue/green armor that you picked up automatically as you leveled.

Once you have an appearance, you should be able to do what you want with it, no hassle, no cost.

Crafted critted Orange gear has augment slots and there are PvP stats on some mods (not sure if it just crit crafted mods though).

I still have yet to hear a single confirmed critted orange, so far they seem to be only a rumor, while people have reported making dozens of the things without a single augment slot, which indicates that at best, the rate of crit on these things is far too low to consider their existence to be statistically significant.

i started read posts then just stopped. How long has this game been out??

Everquest: 1999

Star Wars Galaxies: 2000

Dark Age of Camelot: 2001

Dark Age of Camelot: 2001

Everquest 2: 2004

World of Warcraft: 2004

City of Heros: 2005

Guild Wars: 2005

Warhammer: 2008

Age of Conan: 2008

Aion: 2009

only to name a few

THIS GAME 10 DAYS AGO.

Just play any game for a long time and they will just start handing out any gear you want (ie wow). But really, let the game get into motion and let bioware do its thing. There is a reason why this game set records. Sit back and enjoy the ride man...just enjoy the ride.

Aion's system was quite good. You'd take two pieces or armour to a NPC one that looks cool and one that has the stats (both pieces have to be equipable by your class). You pay the NPC some moolah and then he makes the gear with the stats have the appearance of the cool looking gear.

This would be a nice system to have here as I grew very fond of my last Jedi Robes but had to give them up

Or they could go down the lines of DCUO where gear and style were completely seperate. When you collected new gear and equipped it you would gain that new style in your style list, after that any equipment you had could be changed to look like that style by selecting it in the style tab. The benefit of this is it also added value to the gear as people may not want to buy the gear for its stats but would buy it for its Style.

Either way I hope they do add some way to customise the appearance of gear in the future.

Just play any game for a long time and they will just start handing out any gear you want (ie wow). But really, let the game get into motion and let bioware do its thing. There is a reason why this game set records. Sit back and enjoy the ride man...just enjoy the ride.

What is your point? I'm not asking for anything that is a feature of a mature game, this is a feature that plenty of games have launched with, and that has been requested of this game since early in beta. I'm just stressing that the compromises they developed are not sufficient to the task, and they need to make implementing a complete solution one of their priorities.

We have an appearance system coming in the next few months. It may not be what your wanting, but it will let us choose the colors of our gear. This will eliminate the mismatched color issues with armor sets that differ only in color patterns.

There is NO REASON TO GO TO A NEW SYSTEM. We have customizables, so what if you have to put effort into upkeep on their stats. How is that any different than the upkeep for your "underlying armor" of other games? In all honesty, we have the better system. In other games you will find people selling the high stat items at crazy high prices then turn around and charge you an arm and a leg for some junk item that has the looks you want. With the system we have now, you buy one piece then fill it with mods. With mods being easily obtained from commendation vendors or crafted yourself the costs are genuinely low.

If we were to get a system like you are suggesting now, then all customizable armor pieces would become virtually useless, no reason to have more than one style to them since no one would ever have it shown, may as well just be a black and white checkard jumpsuit at that point.

Accept what we have, and see the advantages it offers you. Once you stop complaining and take a good long look at it you'll see what the rest of us keep trying to tell you. What we have now is a better system.

just let them do it there own way ... I liked the cosmetic system in lotro

but they got to far by allowing even heavy cosmetic armor to be used

by classes wich couldnt wear heavy at all ...

its agood system if the look you are forced to by your gear becomes to clownesque

but it remains to be abstract and disconnected from the game or lore ...

I think the approach in swtor is good and shouldnt be scraped in favour

to one of the established systems from other mmos ...

I tzhink the main issue here is, that if you char posses a real and a cosmetic

outfit it just doubles the data load in the database and on the bandwith ...

that was also the reason why in lotro cosmetic outfits in PvP are disabled,

to reduce lag ...

greetz

There is NO REASON TO GO TO A NEW SYSTEM. We have customizables, so what if you have to put effort into upkeep on their stats. How is that any different than the upkeep for your "underlying armor" of other games?

Is that a serious question? Because the game already drops "under armor." If there were an appearance customization system, then you could wear your very best gear at all times, whether you got it from a drop, a reward, crafting, whether its stats were hard-locked or custom. If there were an appearance customization system then ALL loot would have value so long as either it provided better stats than what you had, or looked better than what you had, since you wouldn't have to discard ugly but stronger gear, or pretty but weaker gear.

In other games you will find people selling the high stat items at crazy high prices then turn around and charge you an arm and a leg for some junk item that has the looks you want.

Yes, and it all balances out into a good economy, everything has a value and people charge what the market will sustain, everyone wins.

With the system we have now, you buy one piece then fill it with mods. With mods being easily obtained from commendation vendors or crafted yourself the costs are genuinely low.

As easy as it is to acquire mods for oranges, it's just as easy to acquire standard gear to wear under your appearance, especially if you're Armormech or Synthweave, which is as it should be.

If we were to get a system like you are suggesting now, then all customizable armor pieces would become virtually useless, no reason to have more than one style to them since no one would ever have it shown, may as well just be a black and white checkard jumpsuit at that point.

While it's true that the appearance attached to any individual piece of gear would be less important, the styles themselves would be equally as important. You might buy, for example, a social hat, and only equip it in the style slot, or use it to learn the style, or whatever mechanism they employ, but it would still have value in that role. Now the value of customizable gear over standard gear is in its versatility. While standard gear is take it as it is, customizable gear can be tweaked and upgraded. You can replace mods to make it stronger, or more suited to your play style. Get a piece with great armoring but that you have a better Enhancement for? You can raise it's stats. Does it offer +def instead of +crit? Slot in a +crit mod instead.

You can shape it how you want it, "customize" it, as it were, which is the entire point. It can also be easier to take a level 25 armor and upgrade it using mods at levels 26, 27, 28, 29, and 30, rather than buying an entirely new armor piece at each level, or waiting several levels with no upgrades at all, falling behind the curve. And of course, while an Armormech or Synthweave might have an easier time simply replacing his base armor with new models, a Cybertech or Artificer might be better off upgrading oranges, given his available options.

Accept what we have, and see the advantages it offers you. Once you stop complaining and take a good long look at it you'll see what the rest of us keep trying to tell you. What we have now is a better system.

Or, I know as much, if not more than you do, and still disagree with you.

I think the approach in swtor is good and shouldnt be scraped in favour

to one of the established systems from other mmos ...

They don't have to copy anyone else, I've merely provided examples of other games that do a better job than what we have now. I totally don't mind if SWtOR continues to have a system different than any other game out there, so long as it gets the job done. The current system, for all it's strengths, does NOT get the job done. It only goes half way, and needs to do more, with less.

I tzhink the main issue here is, that if you char posses a real and a cosmetic

outfit it just doubles the data load in the database and on the bandwith ...

It shouldn't. The game would only need to store in active memory what the appearance is of the appearance slotted item, not the stats, since they would be irrelevant so long as it's slotted. For every other player, unless they were using "inspect," the stats of your gear would not need to be sent to their client. If a slotting based system would be too system-intensive, they could instead use a DCUO style of wardrobe, in which case the stats of the "style" gear wouldn't even be a factor, as once you'd "learned" a given style, you could discard the item it was originally attached to completely if you wished. In that case, you'd only be loading a tiny fragment of extra data to the character, the name of the model you were using. Plenty of other games transmit WAY more data, in far more action-paced PvP combat.