armor change dramatically reduces visual customization of characters

[KromeHWI]

dont get me wrong, im not necessarily against the IDEA of sets, and especially not against the idea of armor pieces giving cool bonuses, but i really dont like that clothing has been removed from the game, and now we essentially no longer have any way of visually customizing our appearance beyond which set of armor you pick.

some context before i get into the meat of my argument:
this is a sandbox game, and it has always had a strong sense of visual/aesthetic customization in character appearance, gear loadout, and base design. its all been about freedom of play. i am the type of player where it is as important how my character looks as to what they can do (and i KNOW im not the only one). i would often run around in a skirt because i liked the way it looks, or a trench coat, and carefully build my appearance with dyes and combinations of armor bits and clothing bits to get the look i wanted. to me this was large part of the fun and RP of the game. and, in my last coop game, on hoard night we would take off all our fancy armor and put on color coded three piece suits and shades and cigars to add some extra spice, and show off how good our horde base was because we were safe enough to flaunt it a bit. it was fun. it was RP. its now gone from the game. yeah i guess we could just get "naked" but thats not as fun. lets face it, playing dress up is part of the appeal of many video games and was always a big part of this game too.

but it gets deeper than just that.

i inherently rebel against any game (especially a sandbox game) "forcing" an aesthetic on me as much as this game does now. yes there are many sets of armor to pick from, but actually not as many as you initially think, given that they are split between the light medium and heavy types and you will most likely only use armor from one of these categories. yes, there are MORE armors in each category now than there were before, but this was greatly expanded upon before with the clothing options that gave you a lot of additional control of your visual appearance. you cant even dye your armor anymore (better hope you like the default colors)!

but deeper still, as much as i like the idea of adding buffs to armor, it actually works AGAINST the concept of sandbox player agency of look and function. it is saying, you want this look? ok, better hope you like THIS effect then. not your build concept? too bad. you are not optimized now. or worse yet, you want this effect? well then you HAVE to look THIS way. there is no way around it, unless you want to ignore the effect and just go for visual look. the game now strongly limits and disincentivizes player freedom of choice in visual appearance.

and even if you DO want to ignore the effect and go purely on visual appearance, there is still almost nothing you can do to actually customize your look beyond which armor you pick. the fact that each armor is only 4 parts and one of them is 90% of the visual appearance of the armor, means you cant even mix and match to any significant degree (the biggest change you can affect is to pick a different headgear for the outfit, gloves and shoes are barely noticeably different). if they had instead added all this new cool variety as separate armor bits in the old system to be mixed and matched with clothing as you saw fit (pun?) it would have been AWESOME! but instead they stripped 90% of the visual customization of your character's appearance from the game. i would even have been more ok with still having different pieces of gear and clothing having effects on them, so you could craft your own build, but instead of doing that, they lumped the effects together in their own ideas of "builds," and by adding "set bonuses" they strongly disincentivize players from building their own builds via their armor. no, you only use OUR builds! NO CREATIVITY! which is so weird and backwards given that the rest of the game is ALL ABOUT CREATIVITY and player choice!

and yes we still have decent variety in physical body appearance, but that doesnt really matter when you are covered head to toe in armor. so it doesnt really make any difference if you have black skin, purple hair, and green eyes, and are male or female, you still basically look like every other lumberjack out there.

to me this feels like a large step in the wrong direction. i would 100% chose to return to the old clothing/armor system than have sets of armors, even if the bonuses are cool.

[boogada]

Yeah gear bonuses are dumb imo, like who's going to change clothes when they go farming/mining/whatever.

[Psilo]

Yep, you are right on all points. body armor taking 90% of the asthetic is also a massive issue never talked about. such a step back for customisation.
magic bonuses on armor are also an awful idea. Bonuses should match the visuals: like a chance to zap enemies when hit with a heavy electrified armor, not more damage just because you're wearing gloves (???).

Harvesting armors are such an awful idea i dont know how they made it in the game. they just add tedium to all harvesting activities and throw off the balance of the game. You now have to change into your miner gear to mine, which is an added tedium that brings nothing fun to the game

[KromeHWI]

Originally posted by boogada:

Yeah gear bonuses are dumb imo, like who's going to change clothes when they go farming/mining/whatever.

exactly, i mean it actually kind of forces you to do so, because (esp in farming) the absurdly backwards to reality concept of having to harvest multiple "fruits" to get even a single seed, means that you really NEED the farm outfit bonuses to effectively farm. so now you actually need MULTIPLE armor sets collected, so you have to change into the right outfit for the activity you need to do?!? talk about extra work and time and what ever the exact opposite of qol is.

[KromeHWI]

dont get me wrong im not complaining just to complain, i love this game (have over 1k hours in it) and by and large i think that the changes from alpha to launch have been pretty great all in all, but this one thing just boggles my mind! i REALLY hope they realize what they have done and at least partially revert back to the old system. or at least let us mix and match more to make our own builds.

[KromeHWI]

a cool solution would be to have different armor and clothing pieces have a "random" selection of possible effects added to them, so that you could customize how you look AND have the bonuses you want. like it was always annoying how good the xp boost glasses were, because it bsically forced you to wear them, even if you wanted the look of goggles. but if they ALSO had goggles that gave those bonues, you would pick the look to match the effect you wated.

[KromeHWI]

or the BEST solution would be to add more mod slots to all gear, and remove all effects from gear and make ALL the effect buffs based on mods instead. so you could literally look however you wanted and then MOD your look to give the build buffs you wanted. you could even have more types of mod slots (similar to the dye slot vs the other mods) so having more slots doesnt just mean you can stack every basic mod on one bit of gear. t1 gear would have one slot for color, 1 slot for an effect, and one "generic slot" for a pocket mod, or thermal etc. this would be the best of both worlds. or maybe a t1 gear wouldnt have an effect slot at all and that would be a perk of getting to say, t4 or something. it would add effects. and t6 might have multiple effect slots rather than just one.

[Psilo]

Originally posted by KromeHWI:

or the BEST solution would be to add more mod slots to all gear, and remove all effects from gear and make ALL the effect buffs based on mods instead. so you could literally look however you wanted and then MOD your look to give the build buffs you wanted. you could even have more types of mod slots (similar to the dye slot vs the other mods) so having more slots doesnt just mean you can stack every basic mod on one bit of gear. t1 gear would have one slot for color, 1 slot for an effect, and one "generic slot" for a pocket mod, or thermal etc. this would be the best of both worlds. or maybe a t1 gear wouldnt have an effect slot at all and that would be a perk of getting to say, t4 or something. it would add effects. and t6 might have multiple effect slots rather than just one.

dis is da way. Mods are our only hope now, i dont think devs care for feedback on this topic since they love magic bonuses (Candy, drinks)

[KromeHWI]

or the other obvious solution is a "transmog" system like so many other games use. avoid the issue entirely by letting us just make ourselves look like whatever we want. the literal best of both worlds. have your sets and eat your looks too. diablo4 has an excellent system for this.

[God Bless The Dead]

The old clothes were pretty trash compared to the new cloths/armour in my honest opinion looks wise. but being able to dye the new armour would be better, but that is coming.

All people should really worry about when it comes to the new armour, it's still the light, medium and heavy armour, just like before, but now we get buffs, if we want them.. we are not forced to wear them, sure some things can be tweaked a bit, there is also more different looks now, with 16 different sets, that can be mixed and matched to make many combinations of looks.

I did like a few of the old hat mods you could get though, like the cowboy hat mod, that changed whatever hat/helmet you had on into a cowboy hat, appearance only, some mods like that would be sweet, even an invisible hat mod, so you could see the players head.

[God Bless The Dead]

Also, clothing is still being worked on a bit, they will add more to it as they add the weather back into the game.

[Psilo]

Originally posted by God Bless The Dead:

The old clothes were pretty trash compared to the new cloths/armour in my honest opinion looks wise. but being able to dye the new armour would be better, but that is coming.

All people should really worry about when it comes to the new armour, it's still the light, medium and heavy armour, just like before, but now we get buffs, if we want them.. we are not forced to wear them, sure some things can be tweaked a bit, there is also more different looks now, with 16 different sets, that can be mixed and matched to make many combinations of looks.

I did like a few of the old hat mods you could get though, like the cowboy hat mod, that changed whatever hat/helmet you had on into a cowboy hat, appearance only, some mods like that would be sweet, even an invisible hat mod, so you could see the players head.

We are forced to wear them. In game design, it is known humans are optimization machines. Not using something that's vastly superior when available feels generally bad. ¨Players will optimize the fun out of a game" aka use the best armor regardless of what they would want to use.

Same reason every player drinks water with water filter mod and keeps water jars for crafting in the late game

[KromeHWI]

Originally posted by God Bless The Dead:

The old clothes were pretty trash compared to the new cloths/armour in my honest opinion looks wise. but being able to dye the new armour would be better, but that is coming.
...
we are not forced to wear them, sure some things can be tweaked a bit, there is also more different looks now, with 16 different sets, that can be mixed and matched to make many combinations of looks.

when one piece of the armor is 90% of the visual look of said armor i disagree that you can make many "different" looks via mix and match. and my op comments directly to the "16 sets" of armor not really being as much variety as it appears at first. im glad to hear that dyes are being worked on for armor, i would hope so, as they still have a slot for them. this will help some, but does not address the root of the problem very much at all. and yes you are correct we are not "forced" to wear them, as much as we are HEAVILY incentivised to, and this works against player freedom.

[KromeHWI]

and thank you for reminding me that they already had some "transmog" via the hat mods, just do this with everything else. let us craft a transmog mod from a piece of gear we dont need. "simple" fix to most of my complaint (but not all).

[KromeHWI]

Originally posted by God Bless The Dead:

Also, clothing is still being worked on a bit, they will add more to it as they add the weather back into the game.

i hope this is true. and that if/when it is its not treated as an invisible slot and actually affects the way you look.

[william_es]

Weird, I think the armor sets are cool.

I just swap out clothing and get a set of instant buffs? Without having to change skills or perks???? ridiculously OP.

Chopping wood, wear lumberjack. Salvaging a bunch of broken cars around town, wear scavengers. Harvest crops, wear farmers.