Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Not Your Normal Wardrobe System
In a lot of games out today there is some sort of cosmetic wardrobe system. A system that that allows a player to cover up the calico mismatched appearance of the items they actually have equipped. Some systems allow you to save the appearance of any item you have obtained, other systems it’s a costume, or a combination of both. WoW has Transmog, SWTOR has Wardrobe by item slot, ESO can craft in style or wear a costume, GW2 Transmutate and costume. etc.
The issue I find with the transmog and transmutate is that when I equip a new item I still look like hell until I can get around to trans'ing the item. The problem with constume is that I don't get to be involved in the stylization. I'd much rather see a system that combines the best of SWTOR's Wardrobe System and ESO's Crafting in Styles System. This would allow me to craft the look I wanted and have it permanently displayed on my character no matter how many items I have replaced over time. So here is my take on a system that may just provide that.
Instead of the aforementioned systems I would like to offer a system that incorporates both the adventure sphere and crafting sphere into the wardrobe system. Whereas players can design their own armor appearance and then have it crafted and be able to store it in different wardrobe load-outs.
As players venture out into the world they are going to come across different regions of the world, different dungeons, and may encounter items from both present and past eras.Say a player starts out on one continent, as they travel from village to village they will see shops, here they may be able to obtain a sketch of the armor they like, as they travel on into the vast world they may uncover some ancient armor in some far reaching dungeon and again obtain a sketch of the item. This continues on thorough a player’s travels and adventures. Basically you have jotted down all the unique craftsmanship of armor types across world and time. A player then can open up a GUI to view all the different ornate armor sketches they have acquired. The GUI will also allow the player to come up with their own design based off the many different sketches they have acquired.
Once inside the GUI window a player may select Heavy Medium Light Armor. From there the player will select armor slot: Head, Shoulders, Chest, Wrists, Hands, Legs, Feet. Once Slot is selected the player may then select various looks and styles that will appear in the display window. Once the base style is selected the player may move on to ornamentation (engravings, crests, runes, spikes etc.) then on to color palette Primary, Secondary, Tertiary coloring of armor. Player can move back and forth between base style, ornamentation, and coloring until desired look is decided upon.
The GUI will also support a rag doll so that the player can view each piece of armor on their character all at once. While looking at the rag doll portrait the player may not like how one piece does not match quite right with the rest and may go back and select that slot and change it a bit towards their liking.
Once a player has designed how they want their appearance to look like they then save their sketch, which places a sketch scroll for each slot in their inventory. The player then can take the sketch scroll to a designer NPC, hand over the sketch and some coin (sink) and the NPC will give them an armor schematic and components list (repeat for each armor slot).
So then the player then has to track down each of the components to make the armor, some components will come from gathering/harvesting while other components will come from different crafter professions (crafter interdependency). Once the Player has acquired all the components he then takes his schematic and components to a crafter who can assemble them (Black Smith Plate Heavy, Outfitter Leather Medium, Clothier Cloth Light). The crafter then assembles the item for the player and they now have a piece of gear that has the appearance they want.
This system gets adventurers out looking for armor appearances across the world so it’s not just about what drops and what stats, it may be total junk but still hold value in vanity. It also keeps the crafters tied into armor appearances vs just having an item mall costume or skinning your item with another item one found someplace.
Actually, maybe there is not a schematic NPC, maybe there is a schematic crafting class. Whereas, a player would have to take their sketch to another player to get there schematic and crafting components list.
Maybe the item crafted from the schematic isn’t just a wardrobe item maybe it is an actual slot item that you can work with the crafter to get the right stats on for your build. Or, maybe a crafter can take an existing stat item that you already have and retool it to look like your sketch.
As far as appearances go, as stated before players would have to adventure to find them all. Developers could develop sets for regions, specific races, dungeons, raids, events, and expansions based on associated lore and culture themes. A player may find a breast plate in an area, and decide to try to find the complete set, or just move on.
Anyways, I think this is a more involved and interesting way of keeping both the adventurer and crafter tied together in the wardrobe system.
Opinions, Thoughts?
Comments
That said, I would settle for an amalgamation of ESO's crafting in styles and SWTOR's wardrobe system.
Also I agree