Critique on current approach to fashionhammer (Including lore argument and clarity argument)

[Absinth]

Hello, there has been a precedence that caught my eye and that is the usage of the argument that "this is not in line with lore" and similliar things revolving around the lore as a way of showing that something should or should not be in the game.

The Lore argument holds no value with the changes done to the game by the dev team and it should be more used at this point as a guidance (as if not almost totally ignored) especially during the current resurgence of fashionhammer police.
The current view and approach on the crossrealm/crossclass appearances aswell as other npc gear is currently to remove it at all costs and it seems like the main argument is lore, it goes so for the nurgle helmet (the one that made every chosen player happy that they finally can look somewhat different than your classic tzeentch look) got ninja added and removed (the official version is that it was added by mistake), and here we could also include chosen shoulders for mara that also got removed because "lore" I guess (to my understanding and the limited abilities of the search engine on this forum I was not able to find a official reason to why the appearances get treated this way, especially when in 90% of the cases they are not glitched nor they look out of place. Instead it all was thrown into blanket statement called LORE). Of course I could give examples of stuff that is in the game and watch it go away in matter of seconds but id rather have and enjoy my character that looks differently than any other clone trooper out there.

This creates this weird and toxic place for fashionhammer where you are increasing a chance of waking up into your character looking like default clonetrooper if you share your appearance pieces with other people. Making people into it more focused on gatekeeping stuff rather than sharing. This game is soo great because there are many ways you can play it and it seems like devs are half into the fashion (look at the amount of dyes in game) yet their another half hates it with passion (look at removed appearances).

I have also seen a argument of the clarity, that for example giving dok a sorc robe will make him look way too much like a sorc but its two different poses and ways the characters play out that will make them look different, not to say about all of the belts, gloves, shoulders and helmets that will give away the difference in matter of seconds (not to say that from what I know most people use keybinds to target people and they are not fishing thru sea of the people to find a target using their mouse). And is the clarity really a issue in the game where its either not enough people that you can clearly check and see the class or its soo blobby that the target selection does not really matter and you just unload your AoE abilities. There is already a fashion appearance from the release of the second capital city that literally throws the clarity out of the window.

[Hazmy]

I think a lot of misunderstanding here comes from different perspectives, how a Player looks at it and how it is Development-wise.

From what I can share, there's a lot of database complications involved with many of the so called "fashion" items, that do cause significant trouble development-wise. Most of these items are actual mistakes in the database - even from Mythic days - that's a nightmare to go through in order to make mass changes or any kind of progress for itemization.
So from that point of view, cleaning up the database and first making sure the foundations are all clean and structured is very important to help Devs. manage items in the long-run.

From a player's point of view, this is extremely annoying since you see nothing positive of it except the messing with appearances, so naturally it causes tension between us and players. Devs. will always try to minimize these changes but it's not always possible.

Trust me when I say, we are also into fashion and love cool looking characters, but at the stage we are in for now, in order to later improve player experience, we need to focus on cleaning things up first.

Meanwhile we also keep adding cool new cosmetics like Shields as much as we are able to, but it needs to have a proper structure and vision if we're also to keep things true and loyal to the Warhammer franchise.



Regarding the Nurgle Chosen Helmet...

It was an innocent mistake during the Tier 1 Gear Rework and while it was a cool mistake, it still had to be fixed for the moment while Database work is being done. In the future? Who knows?

[tazdingo]

thanks for clarifying thats all very understandable. we will just be patient then...