Implementing Transmog Properly [Customization Feedback]

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74

From my personal experiences for playing many, committed years between Diablo 3 and WoW, honestly speaking, I like Diablo 3’s approach for transmoging than WoW’s version. Even though they are both different styles of gameplay, the grinding aspect of it are pretty much the same and intensive just different end goals.

Grinding in Diablo 3 focuses on the end-goal idea of being the best on the leaderboards whether if its within the Solo category, 2s, or 4maning while running greater rifts. When it comes to builds, people will prioritize specific set ups that can easily get past GR 100 if they reeeally want to try and hit the top 100 in the leaderboards. If you made it onto the board then they can see you, and your group’s characters transmog. Usually by grinding through normal rifts and greater rifts, you’ll eventually gather enough legendaries, not a lot, that you can select from the Mystic to transmog into.

If I didn’t have the two or three pieces that would match perfectly with my set up, then at least I can choose from the basic collection of gear that was given to me as I leveled up my Mystic, or use the gear that was given to me from one of Blizzard’s bundles for buying said game from a pre-order, collecter’s edition, or by participating a Blizzcon event.

WoW on the other hand, the end-goal is usually getting the best possible gear to tackle on from Mythic Dungeons, Raiding, and doing BGs/Arenas. For others its collecting whether its for mounts, transmog, achievement hunting, etc. I enjoyed mostly in achievement hunting during my off-time, and then the rest fills into doing dungeons or raiding with my guildmates. I only did hard pvp during in BC, Wrath and Cata; I just didn’t have enough time like I used too. When they first introduced transmoging in WoW, I was ecstatic! They even included the items you have already acquired into your list of appearances, but there were some greens that I thought I had prior to. It didn’t bother me early on because I was simple. I enjoyed having my full and old Giantstalker set again, but when I came back into play WoW in BFA the list grew exponentially.

Now there are too many color tints and variants of gear to scour for, but I wasn’t completely discouraged, infact, I kind of like that there is more to choose from. I remembered this Rogue set piece that I wanted to get because it was sick as hell, but it was from the Orgrimmar raid in MoP. There was also a couple of weapons I wanted to gather as well: a sword, and an axe specifically from the bug bosses. Shouldn’t be too hard right? Once I got in I was a god. Wiping the floor full of mobs, gathering their loot like a goblin king, and then off to the side I thought, “how nice it was to go back, and go through old content for the very first time. I bet this experience was fives times over while running with your guildmates during its prime.” Once I got to the bug bosses that will drop my weapons, I got the sword, some paladin pants, but no axe. I didn’t expect much really.

After I was done with the raid, now I’m locked from it until next week. So, time to go to the next raid. Even after playing for five hours plus, whenever I’m off from work, weeks later I’ve been getting pieces mostly for other classes than for the Rogue’s. Back then I would be grateful since I used to play multiple classes, but now I just stick with one class and invest all my time into this one character instead of six other characters. All of this extra stuff doesn’t match the Rogue aesthetic that I desired for, and then it hit me. Not only would I have to farm for each raid, everyday, every week, for a chance for it to drop without duplicates, but I would have to schedule again for every other raid to keep track of all the other transmogs that I wanted as well. On top of that if I wanted a different color variation, I would have to join in the stupid Raidfinder queue, do the Heroic version, and even then I have to split my time to do that instead of farming for arena points, raiding gear, and the extra achievement hunting I solely enjoyed before. There were even pieces of gear outside of raids/dungeons that were just as rare and were being over-priced at the Auction House for a piece of Rare gear. This grind wasn’t even worth it for me anymore, even if it allowed me to go explore old content again, it just became a chore. Where’s fun in that? This was originally a quality of life idea.

For New World, I liked the fact that dyes was a thing and you go out and gather them. Its not easily accessed like Diablo 3, but that’s fine. Although if they introduced a transmog system similar to WoW’s, that would be seriously discouraging. I don’t mind a bit of a grind, but don’t make me work for a month of RNG just to enjoy five minutes with one outfit. If they introduced something similar to Diablo 3’s, at least they can cover the sheer amount of cool and neat common/uncommon/rares that they have pre-60. Then I would be able to appreciate more of the artists’ hardwork for designing these outfits they have for me as a player. That way this saves me more time while I go out for WTs, OPRs, Arenas, Mutations, farm for expertise, and farm salt. Any epics I don’t have as a transmog, sick, more added to the wardrobe! And if there’s a specific type of epic gear that I don’t have, then I’ll go out and farm it if its available. I mean, I think it’ll be funny to be dressed as a full on farmer peasant with this sick looking, glowing, corrupted Great Axe along side with this rusty-ass blunderbuss.

I already love playing New World, but I also like playing other games. Don’t force my time into something I am going to regret in five minutes.

75

Oh yeah! Neverwinter did do that, that would be perfect.

And if they included the wardrobe idea too, I read that somewhere in here. Would be sick if any dresser had the wardrobe function to it to have different styles of it

76

Exactly!

77

I actually like the WoW approach. I spent plenty of time in certain places trying to get a certain armor skin. When I say I don’t want to grind, I mean I don’t want to have to grind through any kind of system where I have to progress through levels or tiers in order to get armor skins.

I prefer the freeform approach of going out into the world, locating where a certain armor skin might drop, and then working on getting it by killing a certain mob or boss, but at the same time, also getting random drops just by going about your gaming business in the way of chests, harvesting etc.

WoW has the first aspect… the specific hunting down of an armor skin. New World already has the aspect of random drops and crafting. A transmog system that combines both would be great.

2 Likes
79

My bad on on the misunderstanding. That was a large part of the thought process behind the original proposition of borrowing elements from Diablo 3 since it had a uniform approach for basic gear but also left unique or legendary gear as things that you can find in the world that other players might not have.

It was one of the fun parts of playing with other people in groups because if somebody found a legendary weapon or armor piece you hadn’t had drop yet, you could trade it before somebody equipped the gear and trade appearances so it was possible to spend less time seeking out specific items you might not’ve been lucky enough to get yet.

One of the nice aspects from WoW is that they had weapon glow transmog where you could change the glow on your weapons to make it look like there was a different effect, but that might not be such a great idea for New World since glows are associated with the gems you have players slotted in. Not sure, haven’t thought about that as much.

There were an addon called Randomizer for WoW where you could randomly select a different appearance for each slot of gear to look like you just came stumbling out of the nearest closet with whatever stuck to you as an outfit. Do you think something like that should be implemented as a base feature along side saving specific outfits or matching sets?

80

It wouldn’t be something I’d use, but based on some of the things I’ve seen in this game it wouldn’t surprise me if some people used it. It would be a case of who could look the silliest. On that thought, I’d rather not see a randomizer, but it wouldn’t surprise me if AGS added that option anyway.

81

It would be kind of a knock to the immersion or seriousness of the tone presented in game.

What about expanding equipment slots to belts, shoulders / bracers and other small pieces that don’t have a specific slot in our normal equipment? That’d probably be one of the biggest issues since right now the “Chest” slot covers a lot of ground appearance wise, including cloaks, shoulders and belts with some of them.

Would the system have equipment slots you can transmog that expand past what we have to equip normally?

Example:

Normal Gear Slots - Head, chest, legs
Appearance Slots - Head, shoulders, chest, belt, bracers, legs

With just the appearance slots effecting how you look and not being linked the normal gear slots, maybe?

82

The increase in development for artists etc would be huge. e.g. a new gear chest piece now has to be developed as 3 pieces (chest/shoulders/belt) and those pieces have to work with all other combinations of chest/shoulders/belt. You’ve also broken the 1 to 1 mapping of gear<>fashion another complication.

1 Like
83

Yeah it’s a real problem, I’m not sure what the solution would be. Later down the road at some point players wouldn’t like not being able to change their belt and other stuff that’s on the chest plate. It might just be better to leave it as is with the 1 to 1 mapping.

84

Holy cow.

You know, when you initially said this:

I didn’t want to think that you were ACTUALLY going to go and imply that because I didn’t critique one person enough for you, despite my one statement towards them… being a critique, not a praise, (although an understanding one, since I sympathized with reason why he would get upset) I was associated with them in RL.

I really wanted to believe that was just a weird statement, I put it aside, because the alternative was that you were legitimately discounting my opinion, because I have a female name, and agreed with someone that wasn’t you.

I didn’t respond to your initial post because, beyond that creepy statement, you firmly and enthusiastically missed the point of quite literally everything I was saying, I should have expected this probably, given I read everything, but I wanted to try anyway. Seeing your response however, just informed me pretty clearly you weren’t there to actually exchange ideas, you wanted to win some sort of argument you thought you were having. It confirmed my suspicions, and additionally, made me feel uncomfortable, so much so that I really didn’t even want to look at the thread anymore.

And then, I saw this, when this thread kept popping up repeatedly today:

And I thought, oh, surely I missed something that Alterros said regarding some lady friend or whatever, surely he isn’t implying what I thought with that last really creepy statement he said, right?

and now this.

Do you know why I made this account and messaged on this thread? It was right there in the very first sentence of what I had said to you:

You, based on your statements previous to that post, told me that you were in RP spaces, and that you were in areas I was also in, it also told me that you had a low opinion of people that aren’t acting the way you do.

You’re essentially a peer along with me in the same areas, making a terrible name for people like me, and unfortunately, like you. I said you portrayed yourself with an ego because you couldn’t help but talk about the self importance you feel towards the gear you grinded out or titles you earned, and the bald-faced cruelty you showed people that don’t act the way you want them to, something that was immediate (in your second post), and out of nowhere. I was hoping that if you looked back at what you said, you would understand that it’s not okay, I was hoping that if I phrased it the way I did, that you wouldn’t take offense, because I meant none, but my feelings were earnest.

I wanted to point out the flaws in your understanding of the system, the underlying connection that people form when they create and adventure with their characters, how the outfit they have, how they look, is all parts of that, and that the way you came about getting those appearances is oftentimes secondary to people as a whole. That by supporting a system that is needlessly restrictive, it prevents people from forming those valuable connections both with their character and with each other. I pointed out that that system you want so badly, still exists within the D3 system, it just additionally makes it more accessible for other people that have different values than you, and simplifies the process. I thought OP’s solution was well thought out and I supported it as a baseline to work from, I didn’t feel I needed to criticize him for anything other than getting a little heated.

And then, you decided to assume my gender, assume that my opinions on the matter didn’t matter, and that I was just some sort of ‘employed person sent to dogpile you’ as you so kindly put it in the statement you edited over due to flagging, (since I saw the flagged message, read it, and came back to see the ‘new’ unrelated one) for this person I just happened to agree with.

You are not a kind person, and I would kindly ask that in the future, you not judge me on my appearance, discount my opinions, and then go so far as to insinuate that because I don’t agree with you, and present as a woman, that “I surely must be dating the OP”

Please listen to what I said to you the first time, since you apparently need introspection far more than I initially thought. Until then, please stop being a complete, and total creep, because that was really gross. thanks.

p.s for the rest of you, My next suggestion is that I would love to see the future transmog system combine with a barber system, so we can adjust our hairstyle/face based on our new armor. It would streamline the process so we come out with a more completed look, and avoids needless running around. You can even use angry earth lore to justify an npc that can do this, as they have transfiguration magic, and have transformed into multiple different things in numerous instances.

85

Yes I think this is similar to my experience really, the problem is that it was yet another thing I had to do for months on end just to get this one thing I wanted. In reality, it shouldn’t have been that hard to just get a virtual t-shirt or pair of pants that otherwise didn’t benefit me at all, when it was roughly the same amount of grind as something that would actually greatly effect my actual performance/gameplay in other areas of the game. Transmogs are purely quality of life improvements, it shouldn’t be excessively hard to access them when they give no one bonuses, and do nothing but let you put on a cool hat. The hilarious thing is, if you wanted to grind out the mogs individually in the d3 system, couldn’t you anyway? like, if you just didn’t buy the set the mystic sold, couldn’t you just run around and get pieces, and those would be added to your set of transmogs regardless? I think if people just… wanted the grind they could just do that. Is it that you don’t have to necessarily grind less worthwhile to them? It’s a little perplexing to me.

Additionally, overall I just can’t subscribe to the idea that giving people choice leads to the lost of individuality. Currently as the game stands, there’s 1-3 crafted sets at engame that almost everyone has to wear to have vaguely decent stats once they hit 60, and still I don’t see the same outfit 10x over when I walk around town. I think we’ll be fine when more choices come out haha!

86

That’s probably one of my top three primary concerns about having a gear collection system. New World already has lots of repetitive content and grinding for materials, so it really necessitates the question of “Do we really need more time sinks?” in a setting where getting to max level crafting in armor can take longer than a month if you’re a solo player or don’t have a lot of gold in come. It’s very unfriendly to the average player’s time.

Transmog shouldn’t be treated as content; its the armor related counter part of being able to change your hair style. Do barbershops require anything but you to sit down and select a different hair style in every other game? No, of course not, because that would be silly.

There is already a lot of visual variety in towns and PvP considering the very restricted range of cosmetic options that people have at the moment; it’s majority paid for appearances and just re-dyed normal armor, but it’s rare to see people looking exactly the same in any scenario unless that group is doing something intentional to be that way.

87

Imho The D3 Transmog system is perfect and should be the standard for many games, complimented further by the wardrobe system (templates). What a quantum leap for QOL if AGS adopted these 2 systems as “verbatim” as possible.

2 Likes
88

Glad to see your feedback! It’d be so good to just head to your local mystic and customize everything that easily. Do you think there’s something you’d like to add on top of that system if they add it in? Being able to disable certain pieces of gear to have a specific aesthetic as an example. (like with the vanishing Dye in D3) Anything that comes to mind?

One idea I’d really like to see is being able to half-disable equipment, so you could have one shoulder pad on your chestplate, or only one hand gloved and do asymmetrical designs.

89

Honestly having spent zillions of hours in Diablo, I’m very happy with their system as it is. Your 1/2 transmog idea is very interesting though. Also I would say that if AGS was to adopt a Transmog System anything short of what the D3 system offers, would be a bittersweet QOL improvement.

Your idea of the vanishing skin, would be welcomed for armors, but I would not enjoy that on pvp weapons.

90

Yeah I don’t think anyone in here as of yet has said we should be allowed to make one weapon look like another weapon simply because it would make people’s weapons too difficult to judge before a fight, invisible ones, even just on your back would be even worse haha!

91

lol, right

92

I don’t think there’s a big problem with changing one weapon skin of another of the same weapon though! they did a great job of making the weapons distinctive enough to see fairly well from a distance :slight_smile:

93

Some restrictions I mentioned in previous posts (dont blame you for not reading, its a short novel up there)

  • No cross-weapon transmogs, great axes can only turn into great axes
  • Transmogging should cost Azoth to apply the appearance to each piece
  • Appearances reference your actual weight total instead of armor class, so that you still have the freedom to mix/match light, medium and heavy armor piece appearances based on the gear you have in that slot

Need to think up some more to round it out properly but those are the basics id imagine would be reasonable

94

Ya I’m busted lol I did not try to read everything! I basically skimmed thru it.