Costumes and Single piece cosmetic skins - Facts, and improvements?

Hi All, I think it is safe to say that given the current topics active in the community as well as one of the topics which are considered one of the negatives of Ashes of Creation (not all without Merit, but in some cases there is extra information known which the greater community could learn - as well as some clarity we could get from Steven/Intrepid Studios) - is about the cosmetic pieces. I see there is quite an active thread right now regarding identifying armour types and it is starting to detail a bit, so I wanted to make this thread to elaborate on how the system is known to work (or how we think it does) - and how it could be balanced to be suitable.

Single Piece Cosmetic Skins:

These require first acquiring an actual in-game item that matches the base of the skin. My understanding is that the skins will at least somewhat resemble the design of the original, my hope is that it will resemble the original enough as such that there wouldn't be any ambiguity between what type of armour is being used.

Full body costumes:

These have no requirements and can just be equipped from level 1. This is what has caused the most discussion and where we can find a solution that doesn't cause any issue.

My belief of how it currently works is that you can have your normal gear equipped and the costume will act as a full body overlay/transmog. To me the term costume feels like something just for show though the choice of word isn't important here.

My form of "balancing" this would just be to make costumes non-combat armour. It could be worn but would actually occupy all the armour slots when in use and not provide any combat stats.

The issue I do see with my suggestion is that if alot of costumes will be in the shop and you can only safely use it in Towns but not out in the Wilds then it doesn't really incentivise getting them. And I think this is probably the dilemma of how to make the system work fairly seamlessly.

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What are your thoughts on balancing this, thoughts on my idea/s and clearing up any facts I might not know about that can be backed up with source?

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Comments

daveywavey

If you could only attack or be attacked in certain very specific places, then yeah sure. But making someone who's bought a full cosmetic costume take off all their armour is Pay-To-Lose. Why would anyone want that?

AidanKD

daveywavey wrote: »

If you could only attack or be attacked in certain very specific places, then yeah sure. But making someone who's bought a full cosmetic costume take off all their armour is Pay-To-Lose. Why would anyone want that?

That's the flaw with my suggestion which I acknowledge. So my follow-up to that is where is the middle ground, the best way to handle the way that costumes are handled?

daveywavey

The best way to handle it, is to have the full costume appear over the armour as a cosmetic, effectively replacing the image of the armour on-screen. Pretty sure that's what the plan is already, so we're all good!

mcstackerson

I see this as a loss of functionality and not as a fix.

If it really is such an issue that these can be worn at level one than change that, add level restrictions.

If the fact they can go over any armor is an issue then make them so they are only equip-able if you have the buff for a certain armor type.

daveywavey

Or, the nay-sayers can just stop being costume-nazis, and let people wear what they choose to.

Goatrek

Or we can have a toggle to not show full costumes so the cosmetic cringe lords can play dressup among themselves and the rest of us can enjoy the actual armour designs at all times.

mcstackerson

Goatrek wrote: »

Or we can have a toggle to not show full costumes so the cosmetic cringe lords can play dressup among themselves and the rest of us can enjoy the actual armour designs at all times.

The costumes are actual armor designs in the game. Also, is it that weird that armors could be crafted/re-crafted with different appearances? By default, it's going to change appearance based on the race wearing it.

Goatrek

mcstackerson wrote: »

Goatrek wrote: »

Or we can have a toggle to not show full costumes so the cosmetic cringe lords can play dressup among themselves and the rest of us can enjoy the actual armour designs at all times.

The costumes are actual armor designs in the game. Also, is it that weird that armors could be crafted/re-crafted with different appearances? By default, it's going to change appearance based on the race wearing it.

If all costumes feel "natural" in the context of the game and look like actual armours etc thats fine and I will gladly admit I had too little confidence in IS. But I think we will see people run around in tuxedos, gala dresses, santa/easter bunny outfits and whatever else at some point. Pretty much all cosmetic games ive played have gone down this road of lost integrity.

mcstackerson

Goatrek wrote: »

mcstackerson wrote: »

Goatrek wrote: »

Or we can have a toggle to not show full costumes so the cosmetic cringe lords can play dressup among themselves and the rest of us can enjoy the actual armour designs at all times.

The costumes are actual armor designs in the game. Also, is it that weird that armors could be crafted/re-crafted with different appearances? By default, it's going to change appearance based on the race wearing it.

If all costumes feel "natural" in the context of the game and look like actual armours etc thats fine and I will gladly admit I had too little confidence in IS. But I think we will see people run around in tuxedos, gala dresses, santa/easter bunny outfits and whatever else at some point. Pretty much all cosmetic games ive played have gone down this road of lost integrity.

Currently, all cosmetics are being made for the game world. They are all sets that will be used by NPCs.

Noaani

daveywavey wrote: »

The best way to handle it, is to have the full costume appear over the armour as a cosmetic, effectively replacing the image of the armour on-screen. Pretty sure that's what the plan is already, so we're all good!

This is indeed what the plan is.

Since people will be paying money for these cosmetics, Intrepid are unlikely to ever put players in a situation where others can not see the cosmetics they have paid for (other than potentially sieges). Steven has stated this in the past.

They have also said they are not going to restrict what costume you can wear based on what armor you are wearing, so that is a non-starter.

Since all of the cosmetics so far are fairly good fits for the game world, this leaves the only real issue I can think of to be threat assessment. A player should be able to see at a glance what type of armor another player is wearing.

Intrepids plan for this is to add a buff icon to players (same system as Archeage), This buff will be based on the armor type you are wearing, and likely also improve as the quality if your armor improves. This means a player could target you and see in a second or so what armor type you are wearing and roughly the armor quality.

This completely solves the issue in a 1v1 setting. The issue remaining is when more than one person in a costume threatens you. You now need to target each player individually in order to gain this basic information about them - information that you should be able to gain by just looking at their character (characters do not need to be all that close for me to be able to tell if they are wearing plate or cloth armor...).

To me, the best solution is to shift that buff icon to character nameplates. However, obviously many people would consider that to be too much clutter - and I agree with that.

So, the final step to that solution is to make nameplates able to be customized in the UI.

Have options for first name, last name, title, guild, armor icon and level, and allow characters to decide what is displayed on character nameplates. Then allow for a primary set and a secondary set, with a button (right ctrl imo) to either toggle between the two, or holding it will display the secondary set. Set the default to show first and last name, title and guild.

With this, we have a situation where players that buy cosmetics can wear what ever they want and know that everyone is able to see it, where players that want to be able to make an accurate threat assessment are able to do so, and where players that want a clean UI are able to have that. In fact, a player can have all three of these at the same time.

This is the best solution I am able to come up with.

Okeydoke

You can put me on team full body costumes suck. Aside from the money they make for development, they are objectively bad for the game. Subjectively you may like them. But the damage they do to competitiveness and threat assessment makes them a net negative for gameplay.

Is there lore behind them? Some kind of magical mechanism that makes my fully plate armored (or fully cloth armored) character look like this

Or is it just the ancient lore of 25 bucks is 25 bucks, screw everything else. I think we all know the answer to that. And we all know it's not going to change. Steven has answered the questions about it. I agree with about 98% of Steven's vision, this is just one area I disagree.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter that much, it's just a layer of silliness and cheapness that will be part of an otherwise amazing game.

I would be fully in the camp of allowing a cosmetic toggle, but everyone should look the same to everyone else at all times. So I don't want to see a cosmetic toggle.

I agree with Noaani for once. Give us the option in UI to turn off names and any other relevant screen clutter and only display the icon above character's heads that indicates the quality/type of their gear.

Atama

Okeydoke wrote: »

Is there lore behind them? Some kind of magical mechanism that makes my fully plate armored (or fully cloth armored) character look like this

It's the same lore that lets a tiny person with a dagger take on a bear in hand-to-hand combat and win. Or lets anyone take a massive fireball to the face without flinching. All of our characters have access to a mystical force called the "Essence". That allows us to do things that would be impossible in real life.

Sure, it's a hand-wavey "a wizard did it" explanation, but it's a video game and you either come up with some kind of convenient deus ex machina or ignore it entirely. At least Steven has made an effort to explain things.

Okeydoke

So were all fashion shape shifters. In the land of Verra, the denizens cared so much about the way their clothes look that they evolved to have the ability to WILL their current worn clothes to not only appear as something else entirely, but also to wholly morph into a different material and level of body covering altogether, while maintaining the same qualities and protective traits as the original clothing.

Ashes of Fashion. heh

Atama

Okeydoke wrote: »

So were all fashion shape shifters. In the land of Verra, the denizens cared so much about the way their clothes look that they evolved to have the ability to WILL their current worn clothes to not only appear as something else entirely, but also to wholly morph into a different material and level of body covering altogether, while maintaining the same qualities and protective traits as the original clothing.

And how does a person manage to carry multiple huge weapons in their backpack, and pull a horse out of their own butt, and somehow run around for hours without having to go to the bathroom? It's a video game.

Okeydoke

I don't care about realism in an mmo. My problem with full body cosmetics is that every purpose they have, other than to disguise your armor, can be achieved in other ways - such as through piecemeal skins of appropriate individual pieces, or vendor bought items, such as wedding dresses and 18th century British coats.

By having full body cosmetics and not using the other means to achieve the same objectives, you reveal it's one, true, functional in game purpose. To disguise your armor. And for pvp, that becomes meta. How much of a meta it will be depends on some factors, mainly how good or bad the armor quality/type indicator is.

But even if the armor indicator icon is top notch, the full body costume will still be meta if you're looking for every advantage you can get in pvp. Seconds matter, milliseconds matter in pvp. If it takes .3 seconds to identify the healer versus .6 seconds, that matters. So full body cosmetics will be meta to some extent. And I find that tragic, boring, unnecessary, and frankly wack, as they say.

But I don't mean to sound dramatic. This is not a huge or game breaking issue. Just unfortunate.

Atama

Okeydoke wrote: »

I don't care about realism in an mmo. My problem with full body cosmetics is that every purpose they have, other than to disguise your armor, can be achieved in other ways - such as through piecemeal skins of appropriate individual pieces, or vendor bought items, such as wedding dresses and 18th century British coats.

By having full body cosmetics and not using the other means to achieve the same objectives, you reveal it's one, true, functional in game purpose. To disguise your armor. And for pvp, that becomes meta. How much of a meta it will be depends on some factors, mainly how good or bad the armor quality/type indicator is.

But even if the armor indicator icon is top notch, the full body costume will still be meta if you're looking for every advantage you can get in pvp. Seconds matter, milliseconds matter in pvp. If it takes .3 seconds to identify the healer versus .6 seconds, that matters. So full body cosmetics will be meta to some extent. And I find that tragic, boring, unnecessary, and frankly wack, as they say.

But I don't mean to sound dramatic. This is not a huge or game breaking issue. Just unfortunate.

It doesn't have to have a functional in-game purpose aside from letting you look a certain way.

Honestly, if those cosmetics become common then people will ignore them. The same way you don't assume an enemy is weak because they are small, you won't assume they are unprotected because they're wearing a blacksmith's apron. You'll automatically look for other indicators, such as icons or whatever the UI provides.

This seems like a complete non-issue. Not even a minor issue.

It's not just you who is upset over it, and you are more moderate in your views than some, so don't think I'm targeting you solely in my comment here (even though I quoted you

Okeydoke

If the time it takes to make a threat assessment based on someone's armor is the same whether a person is displaying their true armor or a full body cosmetic then it's a non issue. And that's for every situation, whether 1v1 or 200v200 in all of it's spell effects, bodies morphing past and through each other and cosmetic pets bouncing around glory.

We know, generally, that looking at a character who's a threat and seeing their true armor on display, we can make an instant threat assessment.

So the question is how good is this armor indicator icon while wearing full body cosmetics going to be. Will we be able to make that same instant threat assessment in all situations? I'd say probably not, but we'll see. If not, then it is an issue for pvp minded people. It will make full body costumes an advantage to some extent. Maybe not a big advantage, or even worth thinking about for most people. But the whole thing could have been avoided very easily, and that's what's tragic about it to me.

Okeydoke

Like just imagine a 100vs100 battle. There's battle lines but the lines are crashing into each other at times, there's pushes being made and fallbacks. It's a long, extended mosh pit. Name plates are overlapping each other from characters being so close together, spell effects are going off that look like WW5 in outer space, someone's pet monkey is doing backflips(x30), a mage in the lightest of cloth armor appears like he's Conan the barbarian because of a full body cosmetic. His god damn armor indicator icon is overlapping other's armor indicators, morphing back and forth through the different people passing by him and standing next to him, you can't tell what the fk is what. Sure would be nice to just have people visually display what they're actually wearing.

Atama

Okeydoke wrote: »

Like just imagine a 100vs100 battle. There's battle lines but the lines are crashing into each other at times, there's pushes being made and fallbacks. It's a long, extended mosh pit. Name plates are overlapping each other from characters being so close together, spell effects are going off that look like WW5 in outer space, someone's pet monkey is doing backflips(x30), a mage in the lightest of cloth armor appears like he's Conan the barbarian because of a full body cosmetic. His god damn armor indicator icon is overlapping other's armor indicators, morphing back and forth through the different people passing by him and standing next to him, you can't tell what the fk is what. Sure would be nice to just have people visually display what they're actually wearing.

In a 100x100 fight I couldn't care what any particular person is wearing, nor should I.

mcstackerson

Icon could be centered and positioned right above someones head. Could even put it somewhere in the model and make it render in front.

If the situation is so chaotic, it's going to be hard to read armor anyway.

Any class can wear any armor so even without costumes, armor isn't a clear indicator of the class.

Crafters have control over stats that go on armor so even if you knew the type of armor, you wont know how it was altered.

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