Dithnir.4593

for the record, it splits into two. It seems an obvious outcome, but at 1000 gems, I was a little nervous.

The game may well have been designed pre raids, but that doesn't preclude a UI update to better support players who do raid being planned and done more recently. Thanks for the pointers and responses, all.

dang. An odd oversight in a game with raids. Thank you.

Some great responses. Thanks all. I did go through all the outfits (as opposed to wardrobe cosmetics which have additional issues, I imagine, in getting adjustments made to them to go cross gender) and while there's plenty of variety, it's interesting that where there are differences, particularly in light and medium outfits, they are so that females can show more flesh, excepting the FABULOUS Elonian set. Outfits like the Arctic Explorer or Jungle are less gendered and so more swappable and more value for money. It's nice to have something skimpy of course, and the Elonian set shows how it can be done for males. Perhaps going forward, new outfits could be more generally 'skimpy' or 'practical' but otherwise fairly neutral between genders, i.e. an outfit has a certain style and amount of 'skin coverage' that's consistent between genders, so if you like the outfit, you know it's going to work across most of your characters so will feel like you'll get more use and value out of it. Less than a quarter of all the available outfits to preview I would buy because the rest I don't like one of the genders (mostly) and because some of them don't transfer well to Asura or Sylvari (in my own opinion). To address Rogue's thoughtful response regarding the prohibitive costs, I guess costs are only prohibitive relatve to ROI. Anet have the telemetry from the shop, so I imagine they're driving their work backlog from whatever yields the highest ROI/revenue. If that means outfits for females show more cleavage and leg but male equivalents have to be more 'sensible' we're stuck.

Hey Rogue, thanks for the detail :) I'm a producer, I just worry about the team's health and productivity. You say the tech isn't there, you mean it isn't in Maya or isn't in the toolset the Guild Wars character artists use? From what you're saying it would seem like the IK handles that determine the transformation would have to be different enough between male and female, say human, to make the work to get a suitably similar quality transformation happening unfeasible (e.g clipping issues). Or, the meshes themselves are different enough that the cost is prohibitive. Is that the case with the GW2 characters from what you can tell?

that would solve my problem, too, if i could buy the pants and just put them on women :)

Hey Mil, how do you know it's too complicated, late and hard to implement? The armours wouldn't look any different to how they are now, except for whatever subtle differences are made to accommodate the different rigs. Of course I gave some personal likings, they were examples. Other players may have their own preferences for such a feature, as Westenev has in their comment. I'm not asking for this to apply to all wearables, but to outfits, because you can't mix and match pieces, so your options are limited and I think from Anet's point of view, they're losing money from players who have male and female characters but only like the one sex's outfit. As for your not wanting to see males in dresses, have you seen the S+M wardrobe items and outfits that, as I said above, wouldn't look out of place in a Ru Paul convention. Besides, I wasn't actually asking for males in female outfits, so my particular request shouldn't upset you, unless women in trousers upsets you.

I presume from your believing the costs to be prohibitive you are, like me, a game developer. In which case, we probably don't have a common view of what it takes to apply textures to rigs. I'd be interested to understand what differences, within a race, there are between rigs, as the devs are already constructing very different 'female' rigs for the females in the different races. It feels like it's incrementally more work, for a great deal more player choice. It's a suggestion for Anet really, they'll have the game telemetry to decide if there's a sufficient ROI. I agree with you, Greyhawk, that there are some good 'neutral' options already, particularly in the wardrobe, but if they were to develop, going forward, the incrementally increased variety while their character artists are creating the outfits, they could at least learn if there's a sufficient market to make it worthwhile. I'm a data point in their analysts' considerations for how to improve monetisation. It's why I'm expressing my view. I appreciate your thoughtful response. I had rather fewer thoughtful responses in world chat last night when I mentioned this :)

The game's existing aesthetic is pretty OTT as it stands. The main thrust of my proposal is aimed at outfits which could 'reasonably' transfer across the different sex's character rigs, just giving the outfits, for example, more choice, as they're already limited in the sense you can't mix and match pieces.