Created 259 days ago
by
HfxTenor
Gamer, Singer, Trainer, Storyteller, and all-around swell cat.
Been playing WoD since the original VtM came out back in 1991, though I've been into RPG's since the D&D red-box in Grade 6.
First book I ever read: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (I have the hots for sinister female leads thanks to this novel)
Favourite Movie: The Sound of Music
Favourite Computer Game: Any adventure game by Sierra On-Line, particularly the Gabriel Knight series.
Merit: 3 Flaw: 0
armour
clothing
crafting
equipment
fashion
gear
loot
MMO
weapons
WODMMO
Categories:
World of Darkness Blog
Views: 2837
Print
I’m a red-blooded straight guy....and I love clothes. To quote the excellent Broadway musical The Scarlet Pimpernel – “La’, but someone needs to strike a pose and bear the weight of well-tailored clothes! Each species has a sex that’s fated to be highly decorated. That is why the Lord created men!”
Okay, maybe that’s going a bit far, but at the very least – variety is the spice of life. As Morgan Freeman said in Robin Hood when the little girl asked him why God had painted him – “Because Allah loves wondrous variety.”
I realize that straight guys who share my opinion are most likely a minority. Most dudes I know would prefer to only have to wear T-shirts, hoodies, jeans and sneakers for the rest of their lives. Heck, I know quite a few women who’d be happy in those too. But if there’s one thing in MMO’s that I can’t stand, it’s a lack of variety in equipment. It just doesn’t make sense to me for my character to wear the exact same thing day after day after day. It’s boring. I need variety and colour! I’ve walked away from games when I found out that every class ends up in the exact same armour, wielding the exact same weapons as everyone else playing that class because doing otherwise puts you at such a significant disadvantage as to make the end-game unplayable. I’m looking at you Guild Wars, WoW, and Lineage II...
Maybe this is another of the differences between RP’ers and non-RP’ers? Now that I think about it, the folks who could not care less about what their characters look like also seem to be the ones who spacebar/skip their way through every cut-scene or piece of dialogue and don’t RP. But I’m rambling...
Some of the MMO’s who have married customizability and function effectively include The Secret World and Lord of the Rings Online – giving characters cosmetic slots in addition to “regular” equipment slots so that you can either enjoy the benefits of gear while displaying the stylish fashion of your clothing choices, or having the ability to switch back and forth between stat-neutral styles and functional outfits. In The Matrix Online where, thematically, clothing was actually just code layered onto the code of your avatar in the Matrix, clothing served as your armour – each item coded with a different set of bonuses and advantages. On top of that, they added thousands of different styles and articles of clothing, some even sharing the same bonuses so that players could reap the same benefit and still customize their look.
For WoD, I imagine that the need for armour will be limited at best, what with most supernaturals either being practically immune to mundane weapons or having rapid healing abilities. Furthermore, depending on how Fortitude and Blood Pool are implemented, aggravated/supernatural damage would render most mortal forms of protection moot. We already know that crafting in the game will be negligible at best, which means there will be no such things as PC tailors or weaponsmiths. Whether or not we’ll at least be able to own stores that sell clothes has yet to be confirmed, but I hope so. Judging by the fact that CCP had initially hired fashion designers to help design clothing for the game (before that dark round of layoffs in 2011) was a really promising piece of news for those us hoping for a large variety of styles to choose from.
But it goes beyond just clothing for me as well. As a Storyteller/Dungeon Master/etc., and even as a player, I’ve always had a problem with how magic items are handled in most games. The fact that “+1 sword of this” and “+4 armour of that” have become common parlance irks me to no end. It makes loot feel so....Assembly-Line Arbitrary (tm) (c) (Inc.) (left justify) (AO)
Magic items should not only be rare, they should be special...even unique! I’m from the Tolkien school of magic items - Every enchanted weapon, piece of armour or jewellery or fetish that a character has the supreme and rare honour of obtaining should have its own name and history. If I’ve worked my shapely buns (well-defined thanks to the tailored suit I’m wearing, of course) off to acquire NightShade, an enchanted sabre that was originally crafted for the Byzantine pirate Telveticus, and so on and so forth, then I should rightfully expect that no other character can obtain that particular weapon in the game. Obviously that’s a bit too much of an extreme expectation to put on a game’s developers, but you get my point.
Maybe a nice compromise would be to allow us to apply custom “skins” to our weapons or armour? For example, a Toreador and Gangrel both complete whatever prerequisites are in place to finally obtain a sword. The Toreador chooses the “epee” skin for the weapon while the Gangrel chooses “zweihander”. Same weapon, just looks different. They could even make such skins purchasable via an online store, releasing new skins every few months. The same could be done for clothes, vehicles, buildings, you name it!
10 Comments
You need to
register to comment.
-
0 Merits
Noah
244 days ago
I'd be good, as long as I could have my character mug some poor idiot npc to get their red coat. Imagine this: You start the game. You yourself aren't the kind to spend real life money, money which you generally need for food, paying the bills, water, etc., but you want to get that one coat that you've seen staring at you, tempting you. With it's beautiful fur, it's crimson red color... Then you suddenly see some douchebag passing by, stylin' and profilin', getting other npc's attention. Then you have a choice t omake: Do you leave that guy alone to walk the streets with that nice coat that he probably got from his rich daddy? Ooooooooooooor, do you grab the fucker once he walks in an alleyway, beat the crap out of him and take the coat for yourself?! "I take door number 2, Johnny!" I don't know about others, but I find the thought of being able to do that in a game to be very adding to the immersion! Especially since in the World of Darkness, this probably happens on avarage every 2-3 minutes, :D;;;
Reply
-
0 Merits
243 days ago
I don't think that we should be able to all-out steal items that real people paid real money for. We could trade transacted items away, of course, but your average street bully shouldn't be able to get all the money items not only for free, but at the further cost of griefing another player. Players should not be rewarded for griefing. ---- However, I COULD see players being able to mug one another for money or small items like rings - non-transacted items. The only way I'd be able to see "stealing" transacted items would be if you didn't actually steal anything - just got a copy of the same transacted item, but the muggee keeps their original item.
Reply
-
0 Merits
Noah
243 days ago
Oh, no, no, no! I don't mean stealing from other players. I was mainly talking about taking stuff from the masses of blood that are the citizens of the town our characters will be inside~
Reply
-
0 Merits
242 days ago
That's a little more workable. I like the games where you get to loot EVERYTHING off your targets, like weapons and armor, as opposed to Silver Rings and Dried Up Monkey Paws. Between that and a minimalist inventory, I think it could work well.
Reply
-
0 Merits
Bloodartist
253 days ago
I would rather gear have no bearing on character's strength. Customization is very important to me in today's games, so I would love if clothes/armor was restricted to being cosmetical only. As for weapons, they could be functional and have different skins I guess.. But even that might create the problem that everybody would end up wearing same weapons. The problem with The Secret World MMO for example is that you can immediately tell whose weapons come from a dungeon (being very strong) and whose does not in a completely un-subtle way.
Reply
-
2 Merits
259 days ago
Different weapons need to have different stats - that's why we have such a huge variety of weapons in the world. Different calibers, different metals, different ranges, different weights... It all factors in to how well you can use a weapon, how accurate you are, etc. I think we'll be seeing a pretty complex "functional" mechanic for weapons, if EVE Online is anything to go by. ---- As for clothing and armor... that's one thing from tabletop I could stand to see changed. Given the ranges we saw in Redemption and Bloodlines, it got a little ridiculous - Heavy Leather armor really isn't going to do THAT MUCH to stop a bullet, but it drastically increased your defense in Bloodlines. I would prefer to see street clothes staying street clothes, and armor remaining armor. If you want the protection, you have to go for the look, too. ---- Of course, there are such things as custom-fit kevlar vests that can go under a shirt, and SWAT gear that can go over anything. But these extremes should be - you guessed it - extremely rare and expensive. In modern times, in "street fighting", being able to dodge and find cover is a MUCH more common way to fight that wading in through a hail of bullets in full-on armor. ---- I, too, would like to see a huge variety of clothing so I can get my look down just right... but when I get that look down, I'm usually happy with it. Give me black hooded robes for a mage character, and I'm good for the rest of the game. It's more important to look good than it is to look shiny, in my book.
Reply
-
1 Merits
259 days ago
Also, I hope we get things like custom-placed tattoos and scars. They did a pretty good job with that in All Points Bulletin (only I didn't get it to work quite right), and it would do a lot to make players feel like they are personalized and living characters. For Nossies, especially, we need full-on "squidginess", which means no two Nossies can afford to look alike. Custom placement of deformities and scars and all sorts of ickiness means that players will be able to play THEIR character. I know we all have some very specific looks for some of our characters, especially one of my Nossies and of course Rick Gentle. It would mean a lot more to me if I can give them their appropriate distinguishing marks.
Reply
-
0 Merits
HfxTenor
259 days ago
This x10
Reply
-
0 Merits
259 days ago
This is why I really like the idea of anything "modular" in computer games. Not only does it mean you can put things together with ease, it also means you can combine them in different ways to make things customized. So for Nossies, you could have "Gross Bump 1", "Gross Bump 2", "Gross Bump 3", etc - but you hover the mouse over the body region where you want to stick it, and then it pops onto the character. Same could go for scars, moles, pimples, deformities, etc. I've never played a game where I could get Rick Gentle's scars to look exactly right.
Reply
-
1 Merits
Rivina
259 days ago
I heartily agree. Cosmetic slots tend to be really good for giving a character a distinct look. Even WoW's (sorta) joined the cosmetic bandwagon (though of course they seriously halfarsed it to the point where why bother?) with Transmogrification. As for custom skins on some form of cash shop, I could see that being done and done well if it isn't too expensive and there is some way to earn cash store points ingame.
Reply