The game doesn't have clothing physics or else the engine would melt. At best you'd have a cape that is glued to your character skeleton.

SilverBride wrote: »

No capes, please.

or at least a Motiv for it

SilverBride wrote: »

A motif is just a style, not the actual piece of gear.

yea im cool with that, doesnt need to be another piece of gear just a add to whatever u got on or however they would do it

A non-physical cape would be fine, something that would appear after some moments of inactivity. Could do fun stuff with it too, like having wings made of smoke instead of a cloak altogether, or some sort of aura around the player.

Take a look at any character with even semi-long hair and you can see why capes are a bad idea.

Guild tabard already have simple velvet animation. Just enlarge it to shoulders and thats it.

Though i can't imagine how to render all weapons and shield on the back. This can be done by disabling rendering of weapons at all... Or you need way more powerful engine, as already mentioned.

Big NO from me. I hate cloaks & capes with a passion you wouldn't believe

As other people have said they wouldn't work very well with the game's physics engine. Look at how skirts, robes and the Breton Hero Armour works - they all stick to your character and warp slightly as they're running rather than moving like loose cloth. If they added a cape it's likely it would be stuck to your back and move very oddly, or not at all. More like 1/2 a tabard than a cape.

Incidentally it's not just this game, apparently cloth physics is difficult to get right in a lot of modern games, especially attaching loose cloth to moving characters without causing performance issues. I remember reading an article that when the Batman Arkham games were being developed (where they couldn't avoid having a cape) one person spent 2 years on nothing but getting the physics and animations right, and part of the reason they used it for so many gameplay things was to justify that effort.

Having said that GW2 had the same problem and they sort-of worked it out a while ago and now have some capes. The physics is a bit janky - they often do clip through other things you're wearing, or through the character entirely and there's usually a noticeable gap between the character's shoulders and the cape. Also being GW2 a lot of them are heavily stylised or not made of cloth, they're shiny plastic strips or lava or smoke or whatever. But people who kept on asking for capes seem happy with them, so I suppose they're good enough.

Papasears1982 wrote: »

IMO I would rather have guild cloaks/capes than tabards or hell why not both. Make it happen

Yes, yes, EVERYONE wants all the clipping issues that capes and cloaks would bring. They would work great with staves, bows/quivers, two handers, and shields. There couldn't possibly be any problems with pauldrons, tassets or faulds, and I'm sure it would never interfere with sheathed swords or sheathed dual weapons. All the hair styles and hats and masks and headpieces would work perfectly as well. .... Yes, that was totally, completely sarcasm.

No capes/cloaks please.

Papasears1982 wrote: »

ArchMikem wrote: »

The game doesn't have clothing physics or else the engine would melt. At best you'd have a cape that is glued to your character skeleton.

get what your saying im not looking for Nvidia hairworks type cloak. just something simple

You don't get what they are saying. Go look at the Breton hero armor and that is the best a cape / cloak can look in this engine.

These are the reasons I've heard over the years from the community for not having them, but each have pretty simple counters:

1) Cape physics would put too much strain on the engine—it's impossible in ESO.
Then don't implement cape physics, give them pre-defined animations a-la World of Warcraft, Runescape, etc. (loincloth pieces in armour already do this).

2) Capes without proper physics would look like cardboard, so better to have no capes at all.
Not necessarily. Again, loincloth pieces already do this on armours in-game, and they don't look jarringly out of place. In fact, even our player characters use pre-defined animations for different motions, yet I don't see people complaining about how cardboard we look. Well-made animations would nullify this problem.

3) "No capes!" Edna meme.
I don't care about your meme.

On the other hand, these are some more serious arguments I've just come up with off the top of my head (but they also all have counters):

1) Game balance. Adding a new gear slot means retroactively developing a cloak piece for every set in the game, which is A LOT. More worryingly for game balance: whereas now you have 12 gear slots to while balancing monster sets, dungeon/trial sets, and mythic items, you will now have 13 gear slots. This will change everything about how gear balance will work, and will likely require re-turning of *everything* in-game.
Or... just have it be cosmetic like a tabard. Why not? A tabard is probably more cloth than a cloak would be, so why would a cloak NEED to be considered a "gear slot" and a tabard not.

2) Continuity. Since Morrowind TES games haven't had cloaks, so adding them to ESO would be a break with what makes ESO special: it's connection to TES. We can't go around changing anything willy nilly otherwise it ceases to be a TES game and becomes something else.
A cloak would hardly break the fabric of the TES universe. In fact, Harkon in TES5 already has a short cape on his outfit, it's just not a piece of equipment per se. It's kind of silly to imagine that people in this universe wouldn't wear cloaks, especially in colder climates like Skyrim. They're not gonna break established lore, and it's not so much of a continuity change to make a difference.

Caligamy_ESO wrote: »

This game barely runs as it is..

I recently put *simple* clothing physics onto capes in Skyrim via modding and even that was taxing, in ESO it would be an absolute Ohio simulation.

(and for those who say you want a physics absent cape like above) Please view the Breton Hero costume, and its attached cape which already exists in game, and tell me you really want more of that.

...maybe they should just give us more of that so we don't have to see more of these cape threads.

Then we would see "hide capes" threads.

They are sitting over there with the Templar Group Utility, Stamplar Buffs, Necro Fixes and PvP balance