Restyling Masterpost

Arthg

Brilliant suggestion, brilliantly suggested - thanks a lot!

bertenburnyb16_ESO

Recremen wrote: »

[*] Restyle armor to any material type. NOTE: this is a purely cosmetic change and is not meant to allow switching between actual armor types. Thus, your Heavy Armor shoulder pieces could be made to appear as if they were Medium Armor shoulder pieces, but they would not actually change in armor value, nor count as Medium Armor for the purpose of skill line passives and Champion System passives, etc.

this is wrong IMO,
you should not be looking like a dress wearing mage and have tank stats, heavy is heavy, light is light, but you should be able to change between skins of all heavy without having to recraft and reupgrade everything
ex: if the option is added you should only be able to change the appearence of a heavy helm with one of the other heavy skins for helms, not a medium or light skin

best way to do this IMO is add it to the crafting UI, adding a new tab with a slot for your gear piece you want to change(keeping the stats), and a slot for either an armorpiece with the look you want (keeping the skin) or either a motif style stone thingie (forget the name), and a 3th slot where you would need to add a new item, a Transmutation stone (whatever it will be called), this could be in various levels depending on the lvl of gear you want to change (also adding a new rare consumable to guildstores and, ashamed of saying it but they're gonna do it anyway, crownstore), and lastly a button "transmutate"

this method would also give more value to end lvl crafters, if they add some passives depending on what lvl gear you can transmutate and so on

an extra option would be you could chose the stats of one item, and the set bonus of the other, (skin of one of the 2)
GW2 had a very good and simple method for transmutating like this

Recremen

willymchilybily wrote: »

UI for consoles makes this slightly more challenging. but Id welcome being able to make use of more of my styles i have learnt.

i did skim read but didnt see how you address multiple characters? are my styles to chose from per character or per account.

Eg. my new character level 3 knows no styles. so this isn't for them. but my main who knows many styles can now outfit himself with said styles?

Yeah I imagine everything is harder to negotiate on console, not much can be done about that. As for multiple characters, I mentioned that if it's strictly based off achievements then it would not count for all of your characters and you'd need to learn the motifs separately, but that I feel the system would be better if it's account-wide. That's really up to the team who would be in charge of monetizing such a system, though.

Recremen

bertenburnyb16_ESO wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

[*] Restyle armor to any material type. NOTE: this is a purely cosmetic change and is not meant to allow switching between actual armor types. Thus, your Heavy Armor shoulder pieces could be made to appear as if they were Medium Armor shoulder pieces, but they would not actually change in armor value, nor count as Medium Armor for the purpose of skill line passives and Champion System passives, etc.

this is wrong IMO,
you should not be looking like a dress wearing mage and have tank stats, heavy is heavy, light is light, but you should be able to change between skins of all heavy without having to recraft and reupgrade everything
ex: if the option is added you should only be able to change the appearence of a heavy helm with one of the other heavy skins for helms, not a medium or light skin

best way to do this IMO is add it to the crafting UI, adding a new tab with a slot for your gear piece you want to change(keeping the stats), and a slot for either an armorpiece with the look you want (keeping the skin) or either a motif style stone thingie (forget the name), and a 3th slot where you would need to add a new item, a Transmutation stone (whatever it will be called), this could be in various levels depending on the lvl of gear you want to change (also adding a new rare consumable to guildstores and, ashamed of saying it but they're gonna do it anyway, crownstore), and lastly a button "transmutate"

this method would also give more value to end lvl crafters, if they add some passives depending on what lvl gear you can transmutate and so on

an extra option would be you could chose the stats of one item, and the set bonus of the other, (skin of one of the 2)
GW2 had a very good and simple method for transmutating like this

I explain further down in the post that changing armor type visuals is no different than what we already accomplish via costumes. It has pictures for examples and everything! I've also got to disagree with needing to change an individual piece of gear at a crafting bench. We already spend so much time running around to different benches in the world, and adding all those extra materials needed to change a simple cosmetic seems clunky and overly costly. Most of the game's cosmetic systems have consistently been easy to use and free to switch after your initial investment, and I think a restyling system should follow suit.

bertenburnyb16_ESO

Recremen wrote: »

bertenburnyb16_ESO wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

[*] Restyle armor to any material type. NOTE: this is a purely cosmetic change and is not meant to allow switching between actual armor types. Thus, your Heavy Armor shoulder pieces could be made to appear as if they were Medium Armor shoulder pieces, but they would not actually change in armor value, nor count as Medium Armor for the purpose of skill line passives and Champion System passives, etc.

this is wrong IMO,
you should not be looking like a dress wearing mage and have tank stats, heavy is heavy, light is light, but you should be able to change between skins of all heavy without having to recraft and reupgrade everything
ex: if the option is added you should only be able to change the appearence of a heavy helm with one of the other heavy skins for helms, not a medium or light skin

best way to do this IMO is add it to the crafting UI, adding a new tab with a slot for your gear piece you want to change(keeping the stats), and a slot for either an armorpiece with the look you want (keeping the skin) or either a motif style stone thingie (forget the name), and a 3th slot where you would need to add a new item, a Transmutation stone (whatever it will be called), this could be in various levels depending on the lvl of gear you want to change (also adding a new rare consumable to guildstores and, ashamed of saying it but they're gonna do it anyway, crownstore), and lastly a button "transmutate"

this method would also give more value to end lvl crafters, if they add some passives depending on what lvl gear you can transmutate and so on

an extra option would be you could chose the stats of one item, and the set bonus of the other, (skin of one of the 2)
GW2 had a very good and simple method for transmutating like this

I explain further down in the post that changing armor type visuals is no different than what we already accomplish via costumes. It has pictures for examples and everything! I've also got to disagree with needing to change an individual piece of gear at a crafting bench. We already spend so much time running around to different benches in the world, and adding all those extra materials needed to change a simple cosmetic seems clunky and overly costly. Most of the game's cosmetic systems have consistently been easy to use and free to switch after your initial investment, and I think a restyling system should follow suit.

Well i dont agree with their way of costume use either,
And there should be some cost/ investment involved, not like it is Now by having to recraft everything, but also not like some magically click and poof Every 5sec change

Recremen

bertenburnyb16_ESO wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

bertenburnyb16_ESO wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

[*] Restyle armor to any material type. NOTE: this is a purely cosmetic change and is not meant to allow switching between actual armor types. Thus, your Heavy Armor shoulder pieces could be made to appear as if they were Medium Armor shoulder pieces, but they would not actually change in armor value, nor count as Medium Armor for the purpose of skill line passives and Champion System passives, etc.

this is wrong IMO,
you should not be looking like a dress wearing mage and have tank stats, heavy is heavy, light is light, but you should be able to change between skins of all heavy without having to recraft and reupgrade everything
ex: if the option is added you should only be able to change the appearence of a heavy helm with one of the other heavy skins for helms, not a medium or light skin

best way to do this IMO is add it to the crafting UI, adding a new tab with a slot for your gear piece you want to change(keeping the stats), and a slot for either an armorpiece with the look you want (keeping the skin) or either a motif style stone thingie (forget the name), and a 3th slot where you would need to add a new item, a Transmutation stone (whatever it will be called), this could be in various levels depending on the lvl of gear you want to change (also adding a new rare consumable to guildstores and, ashamed of saying it but they're gonna do it anyway, crownstore), and lastly a button "transmutate"

this method would also give more value to end lvl crafters, if they add some passives depending on what lvl gear you can transmutate and so on

an extra option would be you could chose the stats of one item, and the set bonus of the other, (skin of one of the 2)
GW2 had a very good and simple method for transmutating like this

I explain further down in the post that changing armor type visuals is no different than what we already accomplish via costumes. It has pictures for examples and everything! I've also got to disagree with needing to change an individual piece of gear at a crafting bench. We already spend so much time running around to different benches in the world, and adding all those extra materials needed to change a simple cosmetic seems clunky and overly costly. Most of the game's cosmetic systems have consistently been easy to use and free to switch after your initial investment, and I think a restyling system should follow suit.

Well i dont agree with their way of costume use either,
And there should be some cost/ investment involved, not like it is Now by having to recraft everything, but also not like some magically click and poof Every 5sec change

Well yeah of course there's a cost/investment involved, I outlined several monetization strategies specifically for that purpose. The point is that, much like the direction they're taking almost all the other cosmetic changes, you only monetize once off of each item and then the player is free to change as they see fit. This is apparent with the dye system, and most especially with everything under the Collections interface: mounts, costumes, pets, and soon to be hairstyles, body markings, and the like. It makes far more sense and leads to a much better playing experience if these things are simplified and incur only a single up-front cost. It also guarantees more use of the system. Imagine how unpopular costumes would be, for instance, if you were stuck wearing it until you bought a new one, and then lost access to the old one.

Recremen

Added another point after some discussions with players, just to drive home one point we felt might get brought up on the dev side.

"But Men'Do, what about the sense of accomplishment you get from obtaining a new piece of gear?"

You still get that exactly as often as you were before. The thing is, nobody is crafting a whole new set of gear just for looks except in a rare instance when a new motif comes out. I don't have any hard stats to back that up other than countless player conversations, but I'm quite confident any ZOS employee who feels otherwise can just go to the business intelligence folks and ask. Look for gear that gets upgraded to legendary, look how often that happens, and see if it's the same set or not. Odds are it's something new for that player, not a repeat of an old set in a new style. Adding a restyling system should only encourage more participation in crafting, since folks will be looking to learn new motifs and will be less reluctant to try crafting new sets since they know they aren't stuck with the look forever. Further, this line of thinking completely ignores the problem with dropped sets. Exactly what options do a PvPer or PvEer have when they want to run Malubeth or Vicious Death or Viper or any other set that only comes in one motif? It's great to want to instill a sense of accomplishment for players who put in the time to get new gear, it's dreadful to force us into either aesthetic limbo or an aesthetic wasteland for it. Let's keep the freedom to change appearance uncoupled from gear progression, which by all rights are already halfway to being separate systems thanks to existing costuming systems.

Lancillotto

I am with the OP 100%
and ZOS... you have put some very useful new monster sets in your latest DLC, but I am not going to buy it until you add restyling/transmogs, simply because I am not going to grind for items that although useful look freaking hideous!
Looks above all! :P

Banana

Id be happy with just a concert to whatever motif you know like you can with imperial.

Anthony_Arndt

This sounds like a great system, very well thought out.

I'd also be happy with just a simple Outfit Tab system (like what LOTRO has and SWTOR adopted).

Or even simpler a two tab Equipped/Displayed system like AoC.

Or perhaps simplest, adapting the "Convert to Imperial Style" so that a character to change a piece of equipped armour to their own race (e.g. my Khajiit would have the option to "Convert to Khajiit Style" perhaps with a cost in Moonstones.)

Recremen

Anthony_Arndt wrote: »

This sounds like a great system, very well thought out.

I'd also be happy with just a simple Outfit Tab system (like what LOTRO has and SWTOR adopted).

Or even simpler a two tab Equipped/Displayed system like AoC.

Or perhaps simplest, adapting the "Convert to Imperial Style" so that a character to change a piece of equipped armour to their own race (e.g. my Khajiit would have the option to "Convert to Khajiit Style" perhaps with a cost in Moonstones.)

Not bad! I did mention both converting to style and using style materials to convert, but hopefully explained why both of those aren't strictly the best option. After all, if it costs a style material to convert, how often will people really be using it? We won't be able to try out new motifs very often like that, so the number of times people change their look will once again stagnate. The hope is to get a system that encourages frequent branching out into bold new aesthetics.

The "convert to Imperial Style" is OK, but it leaves out changing to the look of different armor weights. I also suspect there's a problem at the code level, otherwise we'd be able to convert dropped sets and monster helms. While I can't say for certain since I don't know exactly how appearance information gets encoded and transferred, I strongly suspect that there would be better performance if information about appearance wasn't coupled with information about gear stats.

s7732425ub17_ESO

Unfortunately, your biggest assumption is incorrect.

The style of a piece of gear is a single variable. Changing the style of a piece of gear is as simple as updating that variable. This means that converting a single piece of armor is the simplest and least amount of coding required by ZOS.

Your UI suggestion is interesting but unnecessary. It would be much easier to just have a crafting window where you plop in a piece of gear, choose the style, and hit go.

Strider_Roshin

Thank you very much for writing this. You did a phenomenal job addressing the potential arguments against this. My only hope is that ZOS will consider this, and our voices won't fall on deaf ears.

Recremen

s7732425ub17_ESO wrote: »

Unfortunately, your biggest assumption is incorrect.

The style of a piece of gear is a single variable. Changing the style of a piece of gear is as simple as updating that variable. This means that converting a single piece of armor is the simplest and least amount of coding required by ZOS.

Your UI suggestion is interesting but unnecessary. It would be much easier to just have a crafting window where you plop in a piece of gear, choose the style, and hit go.

Unless you're a coder for this game, I'm disinclined to believe that the assumption is incorrect. It could be incorrect, but your assertion only covers half of my assumption. While this page that details how to link items for in-game chat strongly suggests you are correct regarding the style being a single variable, style is not the only component of character appearance. There is also armor weight, item level, colors, costumes, hats, personalities, and of course the base character model and their current stance/animation. These point to a more comprehensive appearance data structure which, while it may pull from the single variable you had mentioned, may be better manipulated directly.

Think of it this way: there are only a handful of ways that appearance data can be reasonably (or unreasonably) passed from server to client. On the one hand, they might pull full appearance data every single time someone sends any message to the server about movement, etc. That sounds preposterous and costly. Alternatively, the server may have a comparatively small table that simply lists the registered appearance of everyone in a zone. This table can be transferred to the clients, and only updated when someone changes appearance, zones in, or zones out. Then every server message about character movement doesn't need to contain appearance info, it just needs to contain the character ID and the client can cross-reference to their local appearance table. If this more-likely method is used, then manipulating such an appearance data structure directly will be much more efficient than calling to a larger database, merging queries, etc. Plus changing out your gear won't change your appearance, so you it again limits the amount of database transactions in the likely event that a player wants to keep their current look between armor sets.

Hopefully that clarifies my assumption a bit more for you!

Aliyavana

please zos implement this