Quote:
Originally Posted by Vul
The game sort of reminds me of EQ2 with more WoW zest; I never really played DAoC[I only played this for a couple days and quit because I hated it] or the original EQ, so my range of comparisons is limited. I do like the interface and icons quite a bit, but some of the character models looked bland. Or rather, all the apparel seemed brown or greenish brown. It might be because of the lower levels or that you guys haven't implemented all the armor types yet though. The dungeon around them looked blandish as well; although the lighting does add to the atmosphere, and the big circle on the wall gave you something to look up at. Again, I'm sure you guys will fix up some of this nit-picky stuff further down the line, but it seems a little empty right now. I noticed that the area seemed enormous in comparison to the small player characters, but I like that.



Keep in mind you're seeing the real game with real characters who have earned those levels and items. At that level you start getting some pretty cool stuff, but you're really just seeing the tip of the ice burg in terms of variety. First, one aspect of Vanguard's item centricity is that you have to earn your way towards looking both interesting and different. The more you travel, the different items you collect (through adventuring, questing, crafting, etc.) the more different you will look. The higher level, the more different you will look. I think several upcoming videos, especially those aimed more for the press and publications, will show higher level and more interesting gear and outfits.

Also, rememeber the spheres -- how you look outifitted for adventuring is very different than crafting, harvesting, diplomacy, etc. You might put on a dingy suit of armor for combat and then switch to a beautiful aristocratic robe for parlaying with the high brow NPCs of New Targonar or Agrham.

Lastly, we have a LOT of outfits that aren't in the game yet. In fact, I'd say that we've probably 50% more to get in, just for adventuring alone, before ship. So you're seeing lower level gear, adventuring gear, and the items you collect as beta proceeds and we get more art assets in, will point to more and more of a variety of outfits in-game.

Vanguard is quite simply going to have a greater variety of outfits/apparances/gear that is actually visible in-game (as opposed to just the item icon in your inventory (though we'll still have thousands of those) than any game by far. This all goes back to our decision to make our character technology use shared skeletons, morph targeting, etc. By sharing these skeletons, we're not limited as in other games (say, EQ 1) where the same item worn by a halfling looks different when put on by an orc. There was some controversy surrounding this issue when it was first announced and fears were voiced that our player characters would therfore look too much alike because they shrared skeletons. I think the farther the game gets along and the more outfits you see, the more this fear will subside.

To us, looking different should matter more relative to what you are wearing than what race you have chosen. Don't get me wrong -- both are very important and I think our races will end up (if they're not already there) looking plenty different. But in the end it's a bit of a trade off, and I'd much rather see many more outfits. The closer we can get to a 1:1 ratio of items in your inventory or equipped to how you look in game, the better. No, we're still not going to acheive 1:1. Texture memory and such still is in the way and it will be a few years before we achieve that completely. But Vanguard's character clothing tech I think it's safe to say is unrivaled by far.

Also remember that it's *any* humanoid skeleton. So what I mean is that it's not just player characters. Any NPC that is humanoid can wear any outfit or item that a player character can and vice versa. Same with character customization -- NPCs will vary in how their faces look, or their bodies in terms of stature. Designers can have NPCs appear random or they can specify specifically how an NPC looks (say fat and dumpy, or tall and slender, etc.)

The only thing this keeps us from really is player character races that are not humanoid (say a thri-kreen style character). We won't have any of those by launch, but we have some ideas for after launch, and the tech will continue to improve, so the future is bright indeed


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