IMPORTANT UPDATE! ZOS PLEASE reconsider your decision to no longer make FEMALE Light armor!

baratron

You know what's depressing when you look at the Crown Store costumes?

I posted my screenshots of a short, fat, busty character in #422, describing how the costumes make her bust and bottom smaller.

@babylon posted screenshots of a taller, thinner, smaller-breasted character in #460, showing how the costumes make her bust and waist broader.

When you look at my pictures alongside @babylon 's, it's obvious that the Crown Store costume meshes make no allowances for our characters' original size and shape.

The Evening Dress and Wedding Dress which look amazing on my fat, busty character are warped on hers - because both of our characters are exactly the same shape in that mesh!

The Noble Dress which is almost right on her thin, smaller-breasted character is horribly warped on mine - because both of our characters are exactly the same shape in that mesh!!

This honestly makes me want to never buy another Crown Store costume again. What's the point if instead of the costume fitting my character, her body gets warped into the shape of the costume? I swear armour doesn't do this - since 5 of my 6 characters are Magicka Healers, I often pass the same armour pieces along to different characters as they level, and I swear that almost all armour fits each character properly.

Even more depressing is the fact that the shape of the bust and corset of the Corseted Riding Outfit and Off-the-Shoulder Evening Dress is wrong for basically every female character who's ever worn it. Corsets are supposed to reduce the size of your waist and push up your bust... that "corset" is completely straight up and down. Honestly, my male characters look better in the Corseted Riding Outfit than my one female character does! [Picture not included to spare your eyes]

WalkingLegacy

baratron wrote: »

When you look at my pictures alongside @babylon's, it's obvious that the Crown Store costume meshes make no allowances for our characters' original size and shape.

Well yeah. They have said that in an ESO live. Costumes and and crap are no longer designed around your character. They're designed with premade bodies 'close' to yours and swap your head in.

baratron

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

baratron wrote: »

When you look at my pictures alongside @babylon's, it's obvious that the Crown Store costume meshes make no allowances for our characters' original size and shape.

Well yeah. They have said that in an ESO live. Costumes and and crap are no longer designed around your character. They're designed with premade bodies 'close' to yours and swap your head in.

But that's ridiculous! The only way in which these bodies are "close" to my & @babylon 's characters is that they're both female! They need to at least make several different versions, for skinny, fat, and muscular characters of each gender.

The interesting thing, as my husband pointed out, is that it's only the top halves of each costume that are identical. The bottom halves do seem to have been adjusted for build. In particular the skirts seem to be wider on my girl with her big bottom and hips, and narrower on @babylon 's character with smaller bottom and hips.

As a general comment to ZOS, I wish it was possible to get transcripts of ESO Lives. Many of us don't have the time to sit and watch an hour-long programme, but could quite happily find 10 minutes to read a transcript of it. Text is more accessible to players who don't have English as their first language because it can be put into a translator program for an approximate idea of what's going on. And some players have disabilities which mean they can't understand TV if it isn't subtitled. If ESO Live is going to become more important in providing information than the official forum and the game's Launcher, then they really do need to make that information accessible to all players.

In other news, there exists a thread for armour which does not dye properly. People who have been "enjoying" (*cough*) this thread may also wish to add comments and screenshots there.

LMar

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Thank you for all the feedback and screenshot examples. There are a couple different types of issues we're looking at right now. One is the issue that this thread was created for - the way some armor sets look on certain character models, particularly the female chest area, but not limited to just that.

We went through this thread and pulled all the examples of that specific issue. Here's what we have so far (in no specific order):

• Trinimac's Valor set
• Alliance Armor sets
• Malacath Armor
• Ancient Elf
• Ancient Orc
• Phoenix set
• Meritorious Service set
• Marksman's Crest set
• Vicious Death set
• Warrior's Fury set
• Bahraha's Curse set
• Syvarra's Scales set

We're also looking at your reports of armor pieces that have issues with clipping or floating, or can't be dyed. These specific items or armor sets were called out for having clipping issues, floating pieces, and/or undyeable pieces:

• Soul Shriven Belt (undyeable)
• Malacath Heavy helmet (removing hair)
• Malacath Shield (undyeable)
• Malacath Light Chest (hole in torso that looks like texture is missing)
• Trinimac's Valor Light Shoulders (undyeable unless helmet is hidden, then they appear normal)
• Abah's Watch Medium Armor (clipping when mixed with any other style; shoulder protection is floating on character model)
• Certain armor chest pieces with tabards (Trinimac's Valor heavy, Abah's Watch heavy, Alliance Armor sets, Mercenary)

Let us know if you encounter any others! (And please be sure to /bug them in-game, too.)

Thanks for responding!

I just wanted to add another bit here. When wearing heavy Ancient Elf Chest and Leg Armour combined with Light Glass Head Armour, the goatee on my Altmer character disappears. Once I switch "Hide Helmets" on in settings and there is no head piece anymore then my goatee comes back. It is a nice way to change the look but I don't think this was intended . Thanks!

phreatophile

MornaBaine wrote: »

phreatophile wrote: »

Maybe we're all just spoiled by the quality we see in single player game mods. Can't expect a highly trained and paid team to do better work than one person by themselves on their own time with their own equipment working for free, can we?

Okay, admittedly, I laughed. But we have to remember that what you can get away with in a single player game without really impacting performance is a lot more flexible than it is in an MMO. I look at the gorgeous characters I can create in The Sims using Custom Content and LONG for some of that here. Especially when it comes to HAIR! My Sims have WAIST LENGTH HAIR for pete's sake!!! SIGH

Point taken. But we're not talking about waist length physics enabled hair and hi-poly models here. We're talking about aesthetically pleasing shapes and outfits that conform to those shapes. Being completely fair, the images in this thread are examples of shoddy amateur hour work that a respectable mod author wouldn't put up for download because there are so many errors and they would get called out on all of them and they would tank their reputation if they left them. Corsets that make our skinny characters fat and our busty characters flat, dresses that make the bust wider than the shoulders, random clippy bits, armor parts that float inches from the body, and cloth chest pieces that look like they are part balloon are not made badly to avoid server load they are made because QA is non-existant or has a case of the screw its.

babylon

baratron wrote: »

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

baratron wrote: »

When you look at my pictures alongside @babylon's, it's obvious that the Crown Store costume meshes make no allowances for our characters' original size and shape.

Well yeah. They have said that in an ESO live. Costumes and and crap are no longer designed around your character. They're designed with premade bodies 'close' to yours and swap your head in.

But that's ridiculous! The only way in which these bodies are "close" to my & @babylon 's characters is that they're both female!

They're not even female bodies...they really do look like men in dresses.

gamerguy757

I see what you're saying...but too distracted by the sexiness that is the characters in the pics

L2Pissue

first world problems

babylon

Would love to hear the official response on what they're going to do with all the info we've given them since Jessica first requested more details.

khele23eb17_ESO

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

baratron wrote: »

When you look at my pictures alongside @babylon's, it's obvious that the Crown Store costume meshes make no allowances for our characters' original size and shape.

Well yeah. They have said that in an ESO live. Costumes and and crap are no longer designed around your character. They're designed with premade bodies 'close' to yours and swap your head in.

Whats the point of having detailed character customization options on the character creation screen then?

babylon

khele23eb17_ESO wrote: »

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

baratron wrote: »

When you look at my pictures alongside @babylon's, it's obvious that the Crown Store costume meshes make no allowances for our characters' original size and shape.

Well yeah. They have said that in an ESO live. Costumes and and crap are no longer designed around your character. They're designed with premade bodies 'close' to yours and swap your head in.

Whats the point of having detailed character customization options on the character creation screen then?

And doing that, nobody is going to buy those costumes, as it makes us look horrible.

Why don't they just do that in Cyrodiil only - make everyone look the same with the same body and in the same outfit too, and leave customised characters everywhere else.

MornaBaine

babylon wrote: »

Would love to hear the official response on what they're going to do with all the info we've given them since Jessica first requested more details.

Well, to be fair, I'm actually expecting any further official word to take a couple of weeks because, as we've discovered, the scope of the problem is huge and multi-faceted. It's going to take some time for them to formulate a plan to deal with what has turned out to be a multi-faceted issue. And I'm betting a good 2 solid months before we actually see results. Hopefully not MORE than that.

MornaBaine

phreatophile wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

phreatophile wrote: »

Maybe we're all just spoiled by the quality we see in single player game mods. Can't expect a highly trained and paid team to do better work than one person by themselves on their own time with their own equipment working for free, can we?

Okay, admittedly, I laughed. But we have to remember that what you can get away with in a single player game without really impacting performance is a lot more flexible than it is in an MMO. I look at the gorgeous characters I can create in The Sims using Custom Content and LONG for some of that here. Especially when it comes to HAIR! My Sims have WAIST LENGTH HAIR for pete's sake!!! SIGH

Point taken. But we're not talking about waist length physics enabled hair and hi-poly models here. We're talking about aesthetically pleasing shapes and outfits that conform to those shapes. Being completely fair, the images in this thread are examples of shoddy amateur hour work that a respectable mod author wouldn't put up for download because there are so many errors and they would get called out on all of them and they would tank their reputation if they left them. Corsets that make our skinny characters fat and our busty characters flat, dresses that make the bust wider than the shoulders, random clippy bits, armor parts that float inches from the body, and cloth chest pieces that look like they are part balloon are not made badly to avoid server load they are made because QA is non-existant or has a case of the screw its.

I admit I'm pretty dumbfounded about this. And would have expected better of the people who crafted such a visually beautiful game world and gave us the ability to create truly gorgeous characters to "live" in it. I was shocked when I realized how badly they dropped the ball in char gen with hairstyles (far too few to choose from and NONE that I would genuinely consider long as well as many that are just flat out ugly), make up options, jewelry/adornments, facial hair, scars and tats. ALL of that feels like a rushed last minute afterthought. I think it's the main reason why players have been clamoring for a barber shop practically since Day One.

Laplace

babylon wrote: »

They're not even female bodies...they really do look like men in dresses.

If they really, truly, honestly can't afford to pay their designers to create a decent (or at least believable) female body mesh along with the male mesh - which I find unbelievable considering they were offering $1,000,000 simply for logging into the game not that long ago - they should ask one of us to make one in exchange for lifetime ESO Plus or something.

For God's sake, Bethesda's modding community is legendary. The optics of begging their players to make them a female mesh can't possibly be worse than this shoddy work that would be laughed off of the Nexus alienating anyone with a female character (not to mention female players).

Heck, ask if they can use the CBBE body. I guarantee you not only would the author say "yes," it would be a mark of pride.

MornaBaine

Laplace wrote: »

babylon wrote: »

They're not even female bodies...they really do look like men in dresses.

If they really, truly, honestly can't afford to pay their designers to create a decent (or at least believable) female body mesh along with the male mesh - which I find unbelievable considering they were offering $1,000,000 simply for logging into the game not that long ago - they should ask one of us to make one in exchange for lifetime ESO Plus or something.

For God's sake, Bethesda's modding community is legendary. The optics of begging their players to make them a female mesh can't possibly be worse than this shoddy work that would be laughed off of the Nexus alienating anyone with a female character (not to mention female players).

Heck, ask if they can use the CBBE body. I guarantee you not only would the author say "yes," it would be a mark of pride.

Well I think we know THAT'S not going to happen. I WILL be interested in their explanation for this problem though. If I understand the situation rightly, they stopped modeling armor using a female torso way back when they took all the Redguard light armor we all loved so much and saddled us with its incredibly bland and boring replacement that no one uses. Yet armors that came out AFTER that time have NOT had the distortion issues we are seeing in so many armor sets now. Ancient Orc, which came out with Wrothgar, fits beautifully and one supposes it was created using the "new" method. So this may not actually explain what went wrong with Trinimac, which came out at the same time. I DO hope they'll share the technical details with us once they've sorted it out for themselves.

Kharnis

I'll admit, what I know about costume and armour coding would probably fill a whole sentence (and that sentence would begin with, "Ummmm..."), so definitely be kind in pointing out just where I'm wrong. From what I have taken away from the responses/statements from Gina and others is that since ZOS creates their costumes (and later armours) by using a default body, the game is then supposed to make minute adjustments to the costumes/armour to conform to the characters' bodies. For some reason, though, the calculations to make those adjustments aren't being done, or are being done incorrectly, and that's why we're seeing these distortions.

Am I getting the gist of what is happening right now, or am I like the proverbial blind man who's touching an elephant's trunk and saying, :"Well, clearly this is a snake I'm next to?"

Moonshadow66

MornaBaine wrote: »

Aimora wrote: »

It's a shame that in such a beautiful game things like this are overlooked

It wasn't just overlooked. It was a conscious design choice to no longer make female character model armor. @ZOS_GinaBruno actually mentioned it on an ESO Live. WHY they decided to cut corners here is a mystery to me. Is the game REALLY doing that poorly financially? Regardless of the reasons, it is a terrible decision and one that was made ON PURPOSE.

Things like this are the reason I'm more and more turned off from playing the game. And there are many more of those things, also not just since yesterday either..

MornaBaine

Kharnis wrote: »

I'll admit, what I know about costume and armour coding would probably fill a whole sentence (and that sentence would begin with, "Ummmm..."), so definitely be kind in pointing out just where I'm wrong. From what I have taken away from the responses/statements from Gina and others is that since ZOS creates their costumes (and later armours) by using a default body, the game is then supposed to make minute adjustments to the costumes/armour to conform to the characters' bodies. For some reason, though, the calculations to make those adjustments aren't being done, or are being done incorrectly, and that's why we're seeing these distortions.

Am I getting the gist of what is happening right now, or am I like the proverbial blind man who's touching an elephant's trunk and saying, :"Well, clearly this is a snake I'm next to?"

Being as my own knowledge of actual coding is on a par with yours.... all I can add is that this seems the likliest scenario to me as well. Hopefully @ZOS_JessicaFolsom or @ZOS_GinaBruno will be able to enlighten us further.

Ra'Shtar

Most of the bloating issues are caused by the game not having cloth physics due to the strain it would have on Cyrodiil.

newtinmpls

WalkingLegacy wrote: »

Well yeah. They have said that in an ESO live. Costumes and and crap are no longer designed around your character. They're designed with premade bodies 'close' to yours and swap your head in.

Cool to know. Now I don't have to bother with further attempts.

newtinmpls

Laplace wrote: »

For God's sake, Bethesda's modding community is legendary.

^^^^^^This!

EXQUIZZICA

babylon wrote: »

K here's a comparison between one of the old costumes on same character, and the new costumes. This is all on the same character. You can see massive waist thickening and the bust is widened (like someone whacked a fish eye lens over it) and in some the shoulder area is also rounded off...all taken together giving a very masculine "linebacker" appearance, as if it's a male crossdressing rather than a female in a dress...all of which needs to be fixed. These are costumes I won't buy because they distort the shape of my character so much.

Incidentally I actually gave my character hips in the character creation screen, and in all costumes my characters have boy hips (as in, no hips). Where did my girly shape go? The Corseted Riding Outfit really highlights the oddly boyish hips/thick waist/broadened bust issue very well. That is no woman!

Underneath each image I have provided a quick linked comparison (click normal vs this on each to see the normal body comparison image vs the distorted body costume and flick between both images to more easily see the difference in shape).

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom


/sic/

Changing the look of Crown store items so drastically should be illegal, we paid money to have those crown store getups and expected them to look the way they were advertised when we bought them, we shouldn't get a butchered version after paying for them. It should be illegal for the rest of the designs too.

Edit: I should also say that I am not very pleased with Elven Hero Armor costume. Even though I still bought it (I half-love the design...) I would have much rather had the originally advertised design found on http://tesonews.com/eso-crown-store-2-11-updates-preview/ and in the original trailers for the game.

(If someone could edit that so that the link appears under the word "here" so it's not too messy, I just don't know how to do that).

EXQUIZZICA

This sucks.

Dromede

MornaBaine wrote: »

phreatophile wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

phreatophile wrote: »

Maybe we're all just spoiled by the quality we see in single player game mods. Can't expect a highly trained and paid team to do better work than one person by themselves on their own time with their own equipment working for free, can we?

Okay, admittedly, I laughed. But we have to remember that what you can get away with in a single player game without really impacting performance is a lot more flexible than it is in an MMO. I look at the gorgeous characters I can create in The Sims using Custom Content and LONG for some of that here. Especially when it comes to HAIR! My Sims have WAIST LENGTH HAIR for pete's sake!!! SIGH

Point taken. But we're not talking about waist length physics enabled hair and hi-poly models here. We're talking about aesthetically pleasing shapes and outfits that conform to those shapes. Being completely fair, the images in this thread are examples of shoddy amateur hour work that a respectable mod author wouldn't put up for download because there are so many errors and they would get called out on all of them and they would tank their reputation if they left them. Corsets that make our skinny characters fat and our busty characters flat, dresses that make the bust wider than the shoulders, random clippy bits, armor parts that float inches from the body, and cloth chest pieces that look like they are part balloon are not made badly to avoid server load they are made because QA is non-existant or has a case of the screw its.

I admit I'm pretty dumbfounded about this. And would have expected better of the people who crafted such a visually beautiful game world and gave us the ability to create truly gorgeous characters to "live" in it. I was shocked when I realized how badly they dropped the ball in char gen with hairstyles (far too few to choose from and NONE that I would genuinely consider long as well as many that are just flat out ugly), make up options, jewelry/adornments, facial hair, scars and tats. ALL of that feels like a rushed last minute afterthought. I think it's the main reason why players have been clamoring for a barber shop practically since Day One.

On day 1 you couldn't zoom into your character's face at the creation screen, even though there was a 'Zoom' button, it just didn't work. Basically, every character from Day 1 has ugly eyebrows and weird face proportions because of that

babylon

Dromede wrote: »

On day 1 you couldn't zoom into your character's face at the creation screen, even though there was a 'Zoom' button, it just didn't work. Basically, every character from Day 1 has ugly eyebrows and weird face proportions because of that

There is also a voice bug, where some voices just don't match what we selected. That was a Day One bug. Would be pleasant if we get one free total character barber coupon when it first comes out (per character), at least for our probably slightly screwy Day One characters.

badmojo0777b14_ESO

Greiver wrote: »

Does it really surprise you that much? Not the first corners they've cut.

this wasnt about cutting corners, i can almost 100% gurantee this is about politicially correct twits who get their panties ina bunch is armor is not 100% generalized and comepltely non sexual. lots of complaints and lawsuites these days about... female amror being "too sexy" and such. yea yea, poeple have to find somehting to complain about....

Gadamlub14_ESO

MornaBaine wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

Uriel_Nocturne wrote: »

ElderBugOffline wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We started following this thread a couple days ago, and digging into why some of the light armor sets look the way they do on female character models. We can confirm that the way certain light armor sets - like the Trinimac's Valor set - look on female character models is not desired or intended. We're still investigating this issue, but we are working on it and will make it better.

sorry, i cannot resist

That made me spit out my coffee...

Well done. lol

HEY NOW! I object to this abuse of my poor toon!!!!! ROFL!!!!

I'd be more concerned with who she has been hanging around with.

Yeah if it's someone who can actually knock up a vampire.... that's kinda scary! lol

I will direct you to this quest from Oblivion.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Origin_of_the_Gray_Prince

Spoilers contained within.

MornaBaine

Gadamlub14_ESO wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

lordrichter wrote: »

MornaBaine wrote: »

Uriel_Nocturne wrote: »

ElderBugOffline wrote: »

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We started following this thread a couple days ago, and digging into why some of the light armor sets look the way they do on female character models. We can confirm that the way certain light armor sets - like the Trinimac's Valor set - look on female character models is not desired or intended. We're still investigating this issue, but we are working on it and will make it better.

sorry, i cannot resist

That made me spit out my coffee...

Well done. lol

HEY NOW! I object to this abuse of my poor toon!!!!! ROFL!!!!

I'd be more concerned with who she has been hanging around with.

Yeah if it's someone who can actually knock up a vampire.... that's kinda scary! lol

I will direct you to this quest from Oblivion.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Origin_of_the_Gray_Prince

Spoilers contained within.

LOL I am well aware of The Grey Prince. However, it was his father who was a vampire, not his mother. There are no ES lore examples of female vampires giving birth. This has spawned endless debate in the RP community, believe me! LOL

ListerJMC

Dominion heavy armor has weird distortion issues as well. It looks a bit less ridiculous than on light armors, but it still looks like my character's jammed something down her front and stolen the body shape of some larger broad-shouldered character.

Now I actually like the fact that the Dominion heavy armor doesn't have individual boob cups for females; I've never been a fan of that look on heavy armor so I was pretty happy to have an alternative design. However, this is what it looks like on her (featuring a bonus clipping issue with the Dominion shield) - it looks distorted like the armor was not intended for her to wear:



**I didn't write it on there, but I'm also going to add that the several pauldrons clip pretty horribly through the armor (tested Altmer, Khajiit, Dunmer, and Bosmer; Mercenary pauldrons did the other extreme of floating off to the side). Ancient Elf is the only one I could get to not clip which is a shame because I'm not a fan of them.**

Anyway I was hoping it'd be more like these armors; they still retain shapeliness without having individual boob cups and actually look like they were made for the wearer.





So yeah... those are my thoughts on this. It was confirmed that this was distortion was unintended on light armor, but what about heavy? Is this look intended?

Elsonso

badmojo0777b14_ESO wrote: »

Greiver wrote: »

Does it really surprise you that much? Not the first corners they've cut.

this wasnt about cutting corners, i can almost 100% gurantee this is about politicially correct twits who get their panties ina bunch is armor is not 100% generalized and comepltely non sexual. lots of complaints and lawsuites these days about... female amror being "too sexy" and such. yea yea, poeple have to find somehting to complain about....

This is about the "politically correct" panties? No. I am not saying that those people are not out there, or that they are not complaining, but it actually makes no sense. It is a fun reason to throw out, but beyond that, it cannot be taken seriously.

While I am pretty sure that "political correctness" is not a serious reason, I am equally sure that there are enough other reasons that there is no single reason.

Technical and System reasons include limiting the assets that have to be stored on the client and rendered by the video card. People want high frame rates, and limiting the geometry being rendered for a scene is a good way to do this. Every character, NPC, animal, mob, building, structure, tree (and more) adds to the complexity of the scene, and potentially reduces FPS. Characters and NPCs wear clothing and have different hair styles, which additionally adds complexity to the scene. This all adds up to build complexity, and for many, drops the frame rate. ZOS has to "cheat" in order to make this work, and one way to do that is to limit the number of models and textures that are in any given scene. They reuse models, and that includes unisex models.

Resources and Financial reasons include limiting the number of people, and the amount of time, that are spent creating and maintaining models and textures. This is the "cutting corners" reason, and it is a valid reason. They less time they are spending creating models and textures for a single set or costume, the more time they have for other things.

So, I think it is a combination of technical and resource. They are reusing models to save on both effort and performance. On top of that, I think that they have a problem with how models are being scaled for female, and maybe even male, characters. They don't scale right in the proper places, which makes the torso too broad, or makes the breast plate push out on females. Even if they notice these problems, ZOS is too busy to go back and fix things, particularly if no one complains about them. If people do complain, they have to decide whether it is actually worth it to root out the problem.

Model and texture work demands attention to detail. The people who are really good at this are good at it not just because they make stuff that looks good, but because they also perform good. This is attention to detail and knowing how all the parts work together. What we are seeing is either very deliberate, or a bug in the system. Intentional or unintentional, deliberate or accidental, the only thing that really matters is what they intend to do about it.

EXQUIZZICA wrote: »

Changing the look of Crown store items so drastically should be illegal, we paid money to have those crown store getups and expected them to look the way they were advertised when we bought them, we shouldn't get a butchered version after paying for them. It should be illegal for the rest of the designs too.

It is not necessarily illegal for them to change stuff. If you purchased a 2000 Crown armor costume and they changed it into a 700 Crown blacksmith costume, you could have a legal case. If the 2000 Crown armor costume is bugged and defective, then I would expect them to be able to change it. In this case, the argument could be made that it is just as illegal for them to not change it. After all, people paid money for these things and expect something that looks and works properly.

In the end, I suspect that they will not change it. Not for legal reasons, but simply because they won't be going back into things once they are made for something as trivial as appearance. The only way that I can see this changing is if they have a bug in the scaling of the models, which they may choose to fix because it could have a longer term impact.

EDIT: fix errant copy paste