If you're reading the title and thinking 'what the heck is cosmetic crafting', allow me to explain. I'm a roleplayer, and as such, I find myself detesting the way that my character looks during her travels through Tamriel, always clad in a mismash of crafted whites, greens and blues, which themselves evoke memories of the 'clown suit' days of Burning Crusade. I want my character to have a cohesive look that is upgraded as a whole throughout her adventures, not just as and when she finds a new piece of gear with +1 more in a beneficial stat than the last piece. And indeed, once she reaches end game there are only a few sets that I actually like the look of for her, rather than the plethora of sets I've come to know and love at the lower levels.

I've thought long and hard about how to improve this situation, and have come to this conclusion: Zenimax needs to make substantial improvements to the game's costuming system, as well as making additions to it's crafting system. As it stands, all we have is a single costume slot, that serves, ostensibly, as a way for your character to equip disguises. That's all well and good, but it could be so much more than this. Why have only a single slot, when there is a veritable acre of UI space begging to be filled? By all means, retain the single slot for an overriding costume, but at the same time, there should be a new window for cosmetic gear which will allow us to place individual cosmetic pieces on our characters, and more importantly, allow us to hide them as well, an option we don't really have if we're RP-ing with certain costumes, such as the sea-drake disguise.

By now you're wondering where these cosmetic items would come from, and this is where my second suggestion, the one for the crafting, should come into play. Simple! Add in a veritable truckload of gear, both civilian and military alike, to the crafting system in a variety of styles and colors, and label it as a 'costume' piece, that can only be worn in the costume slot. Want that ragged, torn up shirt you saw that beggar wearing? Craft it! That fancy gold and red number that Dunmer noble is wearing? Yours, if you have the flax! Of course, some of these items should also be tied to the racial motif books as well, such as that Dunmer's fancy shirt.

Another addition to this crafting system would be the use of gems in the head slot items of cosmetic gear. However, instead of adding something mundane, like +12 magicka, it would instead be tied to your unlocked racial motifs to allow you to add a very unique effect to the piece: the ability to change your character's race when worn, much like Razum Dar's earring changes the player into an Altmer. Now, I can already hear the voices crying out that it would nullify the bonus of pre-ordering to create the any race any alliance combination of your dreams, but there's a simple fix for that. The race you would change into would be a universal, uncustomisable stock model (for each gender, of course). That way, you can easily wander around as an Argonian to your heart's content, but at the same time it won't really feel like your character, just a disguise they've donned for a little while.

So, what do you think? Should something like this be put into the game?