Interested in an alternate appearance functionality?

Oh, you're Welcome? (hoho). I posted under Drogar and stated that you pretty much covered everything I wanted to say.

EQ2, LotRO, and SWG all have ways for players to alter the appearance of their gear.  Seeing a new request for customization is common in the suggestion forums.  My personal take is what I call Character Portraits (though I really ought to finish out the rest of the sections I made), but the long popular one that works just as well is the Appearance Tab (which I think is what these other MMORPGs use anyway).

I'm baffled as to why Blizzard would be against it.

(( Except such a feature could easily be disabled for PvP, and with the controversy over the overcloak in particular, Blizzard's stated reason is nonsensical on bizarro-world levels because you can already choose to hide your cloak, thus completely preventing any PvP opponents from knowing what item you've got on in that slot.  Whether invisible or masked with a different texture, the result is exactly the same.  It's not really a "bad precedent" as they stated, since we already have freedom to customize our appearance to the degree of turning the cloak off entirely.

I'm baffled that they thought anyone would consider that an acceptable answer.  I keep watching the thread in hopes of seeing another blue post with a retraction/correction, as this seems to be one of those cases where they really need to avoid insulting the intelligence of their subscribers. ))

We haven't had that in a couple years now.  Casters are running around with a hodgepodge of each others' gear, and let's not forget T9.  Plus, items that can change your appearance have been in the game ever since release.  How do you know what class that deviate fish pirate is?  

Besides, I'm sure a lot of people would choose their class tier sets anyway.

No offense to all that hard work designing armor, but some of them are just ridiculous looking.

(( I would hazard a guess that the Real ID fiasco was resolved not only because of the amount of negative responses, but because many of the posters put quite a bit of extra emotion in making their opinions clear.  I'd not compare this situation to that one in terms of impact on the player population, but the "further emotion" can count for a lot, especially when it concerns a feature a lot of people want, the absence of which has been "justified" with their recent nonsensical answer.

We're roleplayers.  We have servers just for us, at least in theory.  We provide a decent chunk of their subscriber income, and we have a say in what gets included in the game.  I'd frankly encourage people to be as passionate as possible about it -- follow the forum rules, but do more than just post once with a quick statement of support.  Send them an email, post your thoughts to the Appearance Tab thread on the Suggestions forum, keep some insightful discussions going.  I think at the very least we're due a better answer than what's been posted. ))

I'm talking from a design point. If everything is recolorable there's mostly armor with huge patches of color. One big "primary color" and one "decal color"

So that's what it's limited to.

(( "with maybe the exception of bust size..."

I dunno, I've always thought Elrin was a little lacking in that department.  You could even give the left and the right one different names, like the twin swords he had back in the day.  ))

Player1: I wanted to make them bigger but this is as far as the slider goes. :(

Player2: Where are you? All I can see are some giant boobs on my screen.

Recolor would be a lot of work cause the texturing techniques have changed since the original models. There would be no blanket fix.

They already have the largest programming team outside of a production company. Plus because they can do it doesn't mean it's universally wanted. I've played a -lot- of games with recoloring and it makes gear streamlined and dull.

Ehh, ignore me, i'm feeling ranty lately. I'll break down my particular argument.

We, as customers, have unlimited wants. I don't feel ignored as an rper, the amout of detail and things they put in just for the heck of it has been introduced a little at a time and at this point has piled up high.

Every event, every title, every clothing item, specialized trinkets, there's a mountain of stuff thats for no one but us.

Heck, every piece of lore that's put in the game is -just- for us. They're giving us an entire new proffession thats rewards are basically rp items and -gasp- the joy of actually learning more about your surroundings.

There are plenty of reasons outside of financial ones for not giving the alternate appearance tab. Let me see if I can rattle off a few.

1: This is what I personally think is likely, that they considered putting it in would cause the players to act in a particular way they saw as being detrimental. Whether it would be, for example, that they thought that all players would latch on to their favorite tier set or that there'd be a lot of orcs in pink AQ dresses running around, I cannot say. I mean, right off the bat I can bet that most paladins (some rping paladins too) would wear judgement forever and ever.

2: In writing, they saw some technical difficulties that they hadn't thought in another angle. The pvp argument can be related to this. They wanted you to be able to size up your enemy by what they were wearing so you could concentrate on weaker targets when being attacked or attacking. They simply didn't think of solutions like displaying actual gear for the opposing faction. That or there would be some sort of issue in changing that that would require tearing down how the server sees information and rebuilding it from scratch.

3: Does not meet the artistic wants of the design team. Not sure how likely it is, but it could very well be that they're concerned with issues from number 1 affecting design. "why bother making new pally sets, everyone's wearing judgement" that sort of thing.

I thought those three on the spot just now, It ma very well be a financial decision as well. For now what we know is it was talked about and turned down for unknown criteria. What i'm annoyed with is the -THROW MONEY AT IT- reaction.

They've added several clothing options in the expansions, plus racial tabards and race capital titles (well, all titles that can be used for RP, really).  I know I was pleased when they added the "bandage" shirts in Dalaran.  Both Dalaran and Shattrath have places specifically to roleplay in.

I actually don't mind them not doing housing.  I never understood what was supposed to be so amazing about it.  There's plenty of places people can RP in.

As for selling changes, what about the Dressing Room?  Key ring?  Linked flight paths?  Holiday events?  There are a lot of features that Blizzard didn't directly sell, but make the game better overall nonetheless.  I don't see appearance tab customization being much more difficult to set up than the Dressing Room (basically telling the client to refer to X when deciding which model to draw instead of Y).  That's not a matter of cost (and I still think that "dyes" are far too expensive for far too little customization; there's no such thing as unlimited budget and manhours), but in this new thread they specifically said it's a design decision.  For whatever reason, they view separating appearance from stats as a bad thing.  That's what I can't understand.