ArchMikem wrote: »

For those of us who aren't total Fashionistas, can I just use the new Outfit Stations to change the style of select armor pieces willy nilly without having to save them as their own separate Outfits? I'm pretty happy with half of my characters already and all I ever see myself changing are Hands, Shoulders, Belts, and Shoes here and there mainly.

You can change just the style of any piece of equipment, but you have to use an outfit to see it. No changing the actual gear. Only one outfit can be equipped at a time.

Not sure if that answers your question.

I plan to do this with some of my characters, but you do have to use an Outfit.

Here's my Orc Storc for example



On the left is what he currently looks like on Live under his costume. You can see he has Briarheart bracers and belt, this is the bit I really don't like about his current look.

On the right is his Outfit on PTS. This is the look I really want for him.

When you open a new Outfit on the outfit station each armour piece and each weapon defaults to the style of the armour/weapons you are currently wearing. I dropped Heavy Malacath gaunlets and girdle over the Briarheart bracers and belt, and left the rest of his stuff as it is. I filled the first dye channel on everything with a more appropriate Oricalch colour, and that's it. A proper looking Orc.

That's...kind of inconvenient? Why does it have to act like a costume? They couldn't just make a system that takes the item file and tells it "you are this style now"?

ArchMikem wrote: »

That's...kind of inconvenient? Why does it have to act like a costume? They couldn't just make a system that takes the item file and tells it "you are this style now"?

Because you don't have to do it to every single piece of item this way.
Having to restyle every item once I change sets is a bit more inconvenient than giving me the option to make costumes that cover every item slot or just a few specifics. + the option to get more outfits.

ArchMikem wrote: »

That's...kind of inconvenient? Why does it have to act like a costume?

Because that's how they monetize it. That's the overriding concern dictating how the system is designed and implemented.

Recremen wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

That's...kind of inconvenient? Why does it have to act like a costume? They couldn't just make a system that takes the item file and tells it "you are this style now"?

@ArchMikem

It's probably easier for them to store the data this way, where there's a max of 10 total appearances a character could be using, than to add a new piece to the data structure of every single armor and equipment item in the game.

I believe he was asking why it was not like the transmutation and make a permanent reassignment of style change. Doing so does not add anymore to that data structure as they all exist within the game and in fact would lower the data structure as you are not having all the outfits being created and read by the system.

Think about it, outfits are basically their own unique piece being created and added to the game. There is a combination limit on repeated design but it's a huge possible number of combinations. What is this going to do to the data structure in the long run?

Seems that greed over ran common sense on this one. They could have added the function to the transmutation station and still have a style token sold in the CS to be used instead of the transmute crystals.

Instead of modifying the style of the item as a transmog, which you would have to modify for each item every time you wanted to switch to a new set, you instead can just create one outfit and have that look apply no matter what gear you have on underneath. Turning on or off costume pieces as appropriate, so you can decide what shows through and what's costumized.

Frankly, I feel they put a lot of thought into the current design, and I approve. I still want to see a few more things added to it (contraband clothing, Hide Slot for all slots just like Hide Helm does, and Crown Store components as Costume components), but those can come later down the line, and I've been seeing enough hints of future implementation for it that I'm okay with waiting.

ArchMikem wrote: »

That's...kind of inconvenient? Why does it have to act like a costume? They couldn't just make a system that takes the item file and tells it "you are this style now"?

While I suppose it's something of a personal preference, I (and evidently quite a few others) like the current idea a lot more. It means if my character has like 5 gear sets - PvE dps/tank/healer, PvP, perhaps PvE solo, whatever - instead of separately changing the looks of every single piece of gear in every single set(and gods forbid I ever replace any, like find a piece in better trait or decide to swap out a set completely) I can just make one outfit and have my character look exactly the way I want her to all the time. Imo it actually offers a lot more flexibility.

Grimm13 wrote: »

Recremen wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

That's...kind of inconvenient? Why does it have to act like a costume? They couldn't just make a system that takes the item file and tells it "you are this style now"?

@ArchMikem

It's probably easier for them to store the data this way, where there's a max of 10 total appearances a character could be using, than to add a new piece to the data structure of every single armor and equipment item in the game.

I believe he was asking why it was not like the transmutation and make a permanent reassignment of style change. Doing so does not add anymore to that data structure as they all exist within the game and in fact would lower the data structure as you are not having all the outfits being created and read by the system.

Think about it, outfits are basically their own unique piece being created and added to the game. There is a combination limit on repeated design but it's a huge possible number of combinations. What is this going to do to the data structure in the long run?

Seems that greed over ran common sense on this one. They could have added the function to the transmutation station and still have a style token sold in the CS to be used instead of the transmute crystals.

@Grimm13

No, it would be incredibly silly if they were already tracking the entire data structure for every single object in game. All you should need to track is a reference to the kind of object, plus any unique properties of the object. Unique properties will be things like enchantment, enchantment charge for weapons, item health for armor, and dye color. There are other ways you could handle the data but that's an obvious and easy one that's minimalistic and elegant. What they were suggesting would be adding a NEW unique thing that every item needs to track, which while I doubt would need a whole lot of extra data per item still adds up to a significant amount.

And I have thought about it, which is why I'm confident this is the better route. Outfits represent a much smaller data need because it's a capped system. You can have 10 outfits per character in which you need to track a reference to the unique style-weight-tier combos, plus the dyes. You'd need at worst two bytes per slot to cover the style (covers 65,536 possible style-weight-tier combos), and then since there's only 177 colors you only need one byte per color slot (covers 256 colors), so five bytes per slot total. As I understand any given outfit actually holds info for each weapon/shield type per bar, that's 7 slots for armor, plus 6 slots per weapon bar at two weapon bars, for a total of 19 slots per outfit to track. At five bytes per slot, that's only 95 bytes per outfit. 10 outfits per character, so 950 bytes of data per character maximum.

On the other hand, if they were to let you modify the items themselves, that's two bytes per item. That's not just every item a character can hold in their inventory, but every armor and weapon piece in the game, wherever it is found, including in mail, on guild traders, etc. Thus, no cap, so it ends up being way more potential data to store.

You seem to be thinking that there needs to be a unique identifier for each possible outfit combination, but this is not the case. In fact that would be quite impossible. The above method suffices, and that's without doing any fancy algorithms to shrink the needed data further.