PvP and PvE Armor Design: Why Bioware's Design Aesthetic is Fundamentally Flawed

i like alot of the lower level gear too. much better than the sets.

some of the black hole gear.. i kinda feel like bioware should pay me to take the mods out and not vice versa.. after all, im making their game look better.

The orange gear with critted augment slots is a bit step forward, and if they manage to go ahead with the ability to add augments slots to any orange gear it will be a HUGE step forward.

Because it can, at the moment, feel rather like you say.

If they just designed the gear to look like the ones the vendors that sell you the gear are wearing, I think it would all be just fine. Unfortunatley for example the sentinel recruit/champ gear looks like someone pulled out an iron man picture without the helmet and called it a day.

You're damn right they are. I just take the components out and put them into my Jedi Initiate's vestments.

When I heard 1.2 was coming out and Bio was going to let us look like we wanted I got excited. I dropped cybertech and took up synthweaving, I collected every pattern I could over two weeks of constantly logging in to check the gtn. I bought greens/blues in hopes of learning those patterns, I farmed credits to buy [prototype] items in hopes of using that gear, I ran heroic quests on low level planets collecting gear, I farmed low level dungeons. All this effort came to a smile and a shake of my head when I logged on for 1.2

All I want is a pair of black leather boots, some black pants, and a black hooded tunic (without neon lights on it) for my sith inquisitor.

Please just tone everything down, simple is beutiful

My assassin had the perfect look from his teens until he dinged 50, a sleep black hooded robe. but suddenly, upon reaching 50 he turned into a fluffy chicken... Yuck! I suddenly understood why my brother had been playing with hide head slot, and without his chest armor for months.

My BH started off on the weak side, that is, the look was perfect for a fresh BH, he looked like a rookie BH. As he progressed his armor developed and he became sturdier and sturdier and in his 40s he really looked how I picture a BH should look like. But, upon reaching 50 he suddenly turned into a hillbilly predator/insect hybrid.

pre 50 armor feels very Star Wars, but the end game armors feel more like WoW. If I wanted to play WoW I would play WoW, but I dont, I want to play Star Wars, so please let my characters look like they belong in a galaxy far far away and not in Azeroth.

This is a hot topic among me and a few members of my guild. I've finally removed all teh mods from my Sorceror's chest piece and stuck them in a low level hooded top that looks much better. I still retain my Columni/Rakata set bonuses since I'm still wearing the other four parts of the set. Bonus: the STUPIDLY RIDICULOUS shoulder pointies and behind the butt pointies are GONE! I'm basically "ok" for now.

But that doesn't change the fact that what I'm wearing at 50 now breaks my immersion completely.

During each weeks downtime I spend that time (unless I'm working on a gig) sketching out the ideas I have for the characters. Truthfully, I come from the KISS school of design. I'm a profession comic book artist and an avid Star Wars fan.

KISS IS:
Keep. It. Simple. Stupid.

Clearly the designers at Bioware do not. Nor are they fans of Star Wars at all. This is clearly truth. The lived in universe of Star Wars is always lived in. 3000 years from the timeline we are currently in it's just as lived in. I don't see why this has to be shiny and glorious and why clothing designers in the time think that a Jedi should wear and old west spittoon (that's what it looks like to me) on his head, or for no apparent reason put what amounts to duckbills on the shoulders and gloves of consular armor.

Yes, I said duckbills. Quack quack.

Consulars and Jedi's and Sith should all have relatively the same appearance. Other models of armor - particularly the ones that look like robot parts should only be used if one has a desire to use them. We should be given choices and options and not have these flamboyant - for lack of a better term - Lady Gaga designs foisted upon us.

One of my first designs was for a better style of consular gear. The headslot would be used for a cloak, and be given the option to have the hood up or down out of the box. No head armor necessary - there's already so much bad stuff and luckily we can all hide our hide slot (our poor companions can't though /sigh).

JEDI CONSULAR DESIGN by Sendai Sa'teph / Sentai Imogen of the Harbinger server.

I find that on many of my characters - I'm always on my own quest. With Consulars at first - it's always "The Quest for Pants" which thankfully is solved by running social points to level 2 and going to Balmorra or doing space missions and getting the first tier of pilot pants - combine that with match color to chest piece and we're fairly well off. But this is always due to the design features of that end game armor. Like all other authors in this thread I find myself attracted to the armor that we get leveling up and not any of the end game armor which always feels overly complicated. Star Wars is a practical universe. It's not Warcraft in space.

I really truly believe that Bioware shouldn't wait to get simple designs out there. And I also believe that they need to modify their database tables on the mods in the current Columni/Rakata/Tionese so that we can transfer the mods and set bonuses out of them. The false advertising that they would let us do that in 1.2 was highly misleading. I wasted 240000 credits to find out it didn't work. Then they tell us that "Oh, that's only for the NEW armor."

Lame Bioware. Lame.

Step it up.

George Lucas made 3 prequel movies to the original trilogy. You should check it out sometime.

I would agree, except the prequels kinda also missed the mark in terms of Star Wars design Aesthetic, as did KOTOR. Those are very much the movies that SW:TOR takes its designs from.

That said, the armor in 1.2 on any design level, is just plain horrible. It over the top, its full of drama, it has more in touch with a fantasy genre then sci-fi. Its simply the wrong type of armor. I think the designers may have been pulling a bit to much from other MMO's, rather then the movies and extended universe content. Thats where I think this has gone wrong. Other then Star Trek: Online, there are very few other MMO's to draw inspiration from in terms of space design. EVE Online doesn't let you see your avatar sadly, otherwise that would help. So all thats left is Warhammer: Online, and a host of other fantasy based games.

A bit of serious advice for any of the design team who happens to read this feedback. Please take a serious look at the extended universe comics, please read the books. Watch the original trilogy, and ignore the Krath brotherhood.

Thats my advice. I hope it helps.

I have. And they're ok - best part about them is the action and the acrobatics of the lead martial artists. Jedi and Sith do in fact look like Jedi and Sith and most of the classes that appear in the new (lesser tho than the original) trilogy are still faithful to the traditional SW aesthetic. The new trilogy is still far better in design then the armor designs in this game. All the austentatious stuff was left to the politicians and queens.

They can have it.

I'm a Jedi damnit.