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Cosmetic Depository?

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Curious, but how much work would it be to add something to the soul vault that allowed us to choose cosmetic options for our equipment?

Meaning, we take an item to the soul vault, there'd be something similar to a disenchantment circle, you'd place an item into the circle and then use the circle to destroy the item. This would then send the item into your cosmetic depository which can be accessed via a NPC similar to the peons that hide helmets or change your hair color. He'd have options to change each equipment slot and it would cycle through all of your available cosmetics similar to cycling through our hair colors.

I think it'd be best if this saved to our characters, but given our save character limit this might be too much? I think saving it to the vault would be fine in the event that saving it to the character is too much.
 

Zwiebelchen

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I'm all up for more cosmetic options. Planning to do something there related to crafting, but nothing specific planned out so far. Now that the map size limit is gone, I can freely add more skin textures at leisure.

I don't think it will be like transmog though. I felt that somehow took the magic away from getting a new piece of gear. If anything, I'll allow selecting between 2 different fixed skins on each item or something or play around with the skin colors.
 

Jumbo

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Sounds good Zwieb. And yes, transmog ruined item visuality in WoW. I am all for alternative fixed skins though as long as it is only colour.
Making several unique skins (i.e. doing more than just colour differences) for every item will be a large amount of work for very limited benefit and in the end a completely luxury feature, which I don't even like in the first place since it is, on a smaller scale, similar to transmog.
 
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Weird, I completely feel the opposite. Its especially disappointing if we like the look of a specific item even though the item itself doesn't fit the build of our character. The magic of finding a new item would still exist because obviously it'd be a stronger item.

I don't know how having more cosmetic options available can ruin a game. It helps keep older content more relevant if we like the looks of an item from that piece of content, especially if it aesthetically matches something that comes out later. Like, I absolutely hated the look of Hat of the Archmage and it would have been really nice if it cosmetically could have retained the look of Ghostly Hat. Furthermore, it allows for items to vary in how they're designed when they're made. If we're limited in options then everyone tends to look the same, and every item upon creation kind of needs to match the other items of the same level. Having more freedom is always a good thing.

The game already has all of the model data in it to begin with. We'd only need something to allow us to cycle through everything it already has, right?
 

Jumbo

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If every item has the option to have ANY model, the idea of item models is thrown out the window. Item visuals is not just your personal wardrobe, but primarily a way to communicate your progress to other people.

Yea, we can mouse over and select a hero and read each item icon but this is nothing compared to just being able to look at that "damn cool flaming sword" or whatever it is that another player has on his/her actual character model. Making everything convenient makes everything generic and boring. The sadism and masochism-combo of allowing a D4 item to look like something from Crab boss is beyond me - especially in a multiplayer game.
 
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If the person who has the flaming sword doesn't think it looks cool then why should they be forced to look at the items they earned if they prefer a different items appearance? If somebody things the cool flaming sword looks cool, then they should go earn the item themselves then. Generic and boring is when everyone looks exactly the same because they all just wear the same meta build items. The very least we can do is give our own unique flair in how our characters look, since the builds themselves will all be identical.
 

Jumbo

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@Box: the thing is that we won't all have the same gear if there are enough difficulty variation in the end game for some people not to be able to complete all content (at highest difficulty). I dont mind all of you dedicated Gaias players having full legs - I myself won't, since I find farming to be extremely boring. Even at that point we will not have the same gear. Imagine then, if there is content that not everyone can beat. Or at least items that take so much farming of hard content that only the most dedicated people can achieve it. (Example from old Wow is the Marshal pvp sets or baron epic mount).

Well in the end it is up to Zwieb to decide what he likes. Personally I hate the convenience of comtemporary mmos so naturally I am against anything like that.
 
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How is there even any convenience here? You'd have to actually earn the item before you're allowed to add it to your cosmetic catalog. And you're complaining about people having more cosmetic choices even though you play each version for a whole 5 hours before giving up and being done? If you're not even going to play long enough to see people in cosmetics, then how does it even affect you?

I'm just so so confused about how allowing players to use previous gear they find as cosmetics for later gear if they don't enjoy the look of the later gear.

Anyhow, I thought maybe it could work off of the internal item registry, and the only thing that would actually need to save is a checklist of the items you've unlocked the cosmetic for. Changing the appearance would just cycle through all of the ones with a checklist and skip the ones without a checklist. Maybe it can't work like that, Im not sure x].
 

Jumbo

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Convenience because it makes people feel good about the looks of their character. I don't want a fashion simulator. I want an old school RPG where that ugly 'Hideous Axe of Destruction' actually looks ugly as it should - people have to deal with item looks. A Volvo isn't a Porsche either, and a bus isn't a racing car, so why should it be able to look like one?
 
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You just exactly made my point. Theres a billion different brands of cars that all look different even though they are essentially the same in terms of functionality. Cars come in all sorts of different colors and different options so that people aren't all driving exactly the same thing. Clothes come in all different shapes sizes and colors, why should an MMO be any different? Surely you realize how stupid "I don't like this because it would make people happy" sounds, right?
 

Jumbo

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Dude, try actually to not misunderstand my point deliberately just because you disagree. This is a waste of time, since you cannot engage in a proper debate without resorting to that.
 
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You've left absolutely nothing to debate. Your point is "I don't like this because I say so". What exactly am I supposed to debate here? If you could come up with some actual objective analysis as to why this is such a bad thing then perhaps we could actually have something to debate about. Subjective evidence isn't something to debate about, so I have a hard time taking your issues seriously to begin with. Its so petty to worry about how other people want their characters to look. If you truly want to see hideous axe of destruction, then get one yourself and have it on your character! Everyone is happy yay!
 

Jumbo

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You have to learn to read and understand other people's point of view. You don't agree with my point, but that is no excuse for using cheap tricks.

There is nothing objective about this subject of discussion. You have an opinion I have another. Your subjective opinion will make every item potentially the same visually which I am against. I want people to look like what they wear - How hard is it to understand really..
 
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Box just wants people to have the option to destroy a piece of gear to have it become a cosmetic, while Jumbo wants people to just look the same as the other person playing the same character.... hrmmmm
 

Jumbo

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ugh... did you even bother to read my posts? Clearly not, otherwise you would not make such a flawed summary. I don't want everyone to look the same... this is a misrepresentation of my words.

Since I have to repeat myself:
I want gear visuality to show the uniqueness of each item and also to differentiate players from each other - one player might have full D4 gear and beyond while another has some whitepine, some D4 for example. If there are enough items in the late game and enough content to differentiate people - just as legendary items are doing now but at a larger scale - we won't all in the least look the same. Only you hardcore people who play a billion hours of Gaias to get full best gear on every hero. And even for you people there will be colour variation as Zwiebelchen suggested. That is my point - try to read it more carefully this time please.
 
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And allowing for older gear to be used cosmetically allows for even more freedom and uniqueness, its fantastic! Thanks for the support.
 
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I did read, and it just seems like your whining that you don't want people to have more options in style, for the sake of "people who are elite should look elite," in which case, if someone wanted to show off their "eliteness" ,if they could change the how their gear looked, they just simply wouldn't. I'm not saying that people should be able to choose how they look from every option from the start, because that would be stupid, but I think if we had the option to destroy an item to gain it as a cosmetic, that'd be frankly awesome and ideal, because it would still require obtaining that item and having to do that content, and it could even be used as a nice gold sink if done correctly, AND it even adds value to lower tier items that may be easy to get, but a player might love for some odd reason.

TBH I don't see a single downside to having the ability to destroy gear to gain it as a visual cosmetic because to do that, like I just said, you'd actually have to do that content, so us players who are "elite" can still show off our elite gear and it still has its unique value, but it also gives older items like Lunar Mantle more awesomeness because it has a unique cape, but its stats suck by modern standards so its never used in the meta, which I think is a real shame ='/
 

Zwiebelchen

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Anyhow, I thought maybe it could work off of the internal item registry, and the only thing that would actually need to save is a checklist of the items you've unlocked the cosmetic for. Changing the appearance would just cycle through all of the ones with a checklist and skip the ones without a checklist. Maybe it can't work like that, Im not sure x].
If I do it like this, consider the maths here:

Let's say there are 30 skins total just for armors. That would mean storing 30 binary possibilities, which results in a total of 2^30 = 1.073.741.824 combinations. That's 10 full digits in a decimal-based save system. Now obviously Gaias uses base 60 not base 10 to encode save data, which means the effectively added number of digits would be lower, but still this would be the calculus for armor skins alone!


A better solution would be to just restrict armor skin changes to a simple "destroy an armor to permanently apply that skin to the hero until a button is pressed" functionality. In that case I would only need to store a single number to the savecode for all possible combinations.
 
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A better solution would be to just restrict armor skin changes to a simple "destroy an armor to permanently apply that skin to the hero until a button is pressed" functionality. In that case I would only need to store a single number to the savecode for all possible combinations.

TBH I like that second part, ecspecially if you put a gold sink that'd be like 10*(sell value of item) creates a gold sink for every use, however it'd be hard to tell what you'd look like with new gear....

Unless, you could have it save just 2 armor skins that you can change at the press of a button, your singular saved one, or the current equiped one
 

Jumbo

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Well you brothers sure are similar. Can't take disagreement without resorting to calling the other opinion "whining" or claiming that it is not a valid opinion. Slander all you want, I still don't think this is a good idea for the perfectly valid reasons I mentioned. I respect your opinion - but I disagree with it - deal with it guys.

TBH I don't see a single downside to having the ability to destroy gear to gain it as a visual cosmetic because to do that, like I just said, you'd actually have to do that content, so us players who are "elite" can still show off our elite gear and it still has its unique value, but it also gives older items like Lunar Mantle more awesomeness because it has a unique cape, but its stats suck by modern standards so its never used in the meta, which I think is a real shame ='/

You don't see it, but yet again you fail to see that I already mentioned what problems I have with it several times now.

Allow me to elaborate a third time: I don't want a hammer to be able to look like a sword simply because they classify as the same item type. I don't even want one sword to be able to look like another sword, because it isn't that other sword. I don't want Bull's helmet to look like D4 helmet because it isn't that other helmet. No, I want style to be a secondary fun thing that people can engage in by having extra items to equip that they don't need. I don't want it to be a main feature of the game, because - as I stated twice already - I like items to keep their uniqueness.

Anyway, we need more people to enter this thread if we are going to have any serious way of measuring opinions about the topic.

And allowing for older gear to be used cosmetically allows for even more freedom and uniqueness, its fantastic! Thanks for the support.
In my opinion this only flattens out the visualization of item progression. Thus rendering visualization - which for me means a lot in a roleplaying game - meaningless, similar to a dressing simulator (which is not a roleplaying game in the style of Gaias).
 
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This argument still completely lacks substance. You don't like it because you don't like it. How is this any different than me claiming not to like Zharo'ken because it involves a tank tanking a summoned unit that isn't intended to be killed because I feel like in an MMO we should have to kill everything in an encounter and that our tank should be tanking the main boss of an encounter? If you disagree with me, then you're wrong because its just my opinion, even if my opinion completely lacks substance and is based on nothing more than what I claim are my feelings. Its a very very poor approach to deny a concept.

I have no problems if you don't like a concept because you have substantial objective evidence as to why a concept is detrimental to the game. You've still provided absolutely nothing other than your feelings. This isn't good enough. Zwieb has provided enough information as to why we can't have my entire vision in the game. The save code gets in the way, I have to accept that as a limitation as to what we're allowed to do here.

So lets assume Zwieb goes ahead with the 1 item at a time display thing. Would it be possible to get the item back should we decide we want to change to the cosmetic look of another item? Lets assume it costs some amount of gold to apply the cosmetic to our character. We wouldn't get the gold back, but perhaps we could get the item back. Re-grinding for a Sage's Robe every time we'd like to switch is a tad much, but we do have a lot of unused stash space that I think could go towards holding items for cosmetics should we want to. This provides us with a nice gold sink, and gives us reason to keep items and use the storage space we're allotted.
 

Jumbo

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@Ihazdialup : I happen to be one of those people Ihaz. Again you just insult for no reason other than disagreement.


@BoxOfFaith :

Anyway, here is a summary of this so far - without the meaningless accusations and insults:
Why do you like your own suggestion? - Because it adds cosmetical variation to players and therefore allows no item models to go to waste. Adds incentives to complete stuff for sake of vanity and nice looks. Adds a nice gold sink.
-All valid points.

Why do I dislike it? - Because it takes away uniqueness of items and renders item visualisation meaningless - a pure vanity instead of a progression indicator and a badge of pride and sense of differentiation between players.
-All valid points.
 
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How did this peaceful topic turn into this shitstorm, god damn I thought zapper19 returned. "Wipes sweat off forehead"
 
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actually solution is here: make cosmetic repository for non red items, so if you get something unique it will be seen by other players
 
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Id add for non red and non crafted from bags and non d4 gear :D you can transmog your greens at will :3
 
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