Ideas for new appearance options

[SireGoodman]

Hi all,

There was a discussion last night on discord which I found interesting:

What if appearance options were not restricted to classes but rather to skeletons/races?

Hear me out:

Dwarves, Elves, Dark Elves and Empire would have access to their entire race equipment for appearances.

Unfortunately, Greenskins and Chaos would have fewer options available as I suspect the pairing would be BO/Choppa - SH/Shaman - Chosen/Marauder and Magus/Zealot.

It would still represent a huge step up in terms of available customisation/fashionhammer. I assume it would be relatively easy to implement as well,since it would only be for appearance purposes.
The actual usage of the items would remain unavailable unless you are the proper class of course.

If the devs are wary players will get confused, then no worries, there already is the possibility to deactivate appearance options after all.

I do believe this would be a great progress to renew interest for players. You would get a ton of new customisation options.
Imagine an entire squad of Dwarfs in IB armor, or Choppa in BO skins, Elves mixing the lion pelts, SW hoods and so on.

Players would still need to grind and farm the items but I am convinced it would be great fun and would stop the "clone wars" we are seeing right now.

It would be great if a dev could explain how hard it would be to implement this.

Thanks in advance for the cordial discussion!

[Omegus]

The purpose of the restrictions is to ensure each character has a strong silhouette which makes them instantly recognisable from a distance. It already breaks with a couple of classes (2H Choppa and 2H Black Orc being the obvious ones), and adding more ways to break this will make it even harder to identify classes in a fight and add to the visual noise.

Your solution to this - disactivate all appearance options - makes characters as a whole less visually appealing as everyone will be in a random mismash of equipment due to combining pieces from different set pieces.

Additionally, a lot of these requests go against the established lore (either the core Games Workshop IP or whatever has been established in WAR's own universe). Why is an Archmage wearing a lion pelt when the pelt is symbolic to the White Lion's career and lore? The pelt is the lion that the Elf had to kill as part of the process of joining the Phoenix King's bodyguard.

Finally, remember that this game is built on an IP which has very strong visual identities for classes (or units/regiments) from the tabletop game. The classes are (mostly) a more-detailed and in-depth representation of classic Warhammer Fantasy miniatures which have very distinctive visual designs and those visual designs were tied into the gameplay. Some people are still playing this game due to their strong fondless and attachment to the tabletop games and the setting as a whole.

Imagine an entire squad of Dwarfs in IB armor

Please no.

[Orgruk]

Alleviate or remove the restrictions for weapons your character can effectively use could be a great thing and still lore friendly.

By example: on my Choppa I love the appearance of 1h sword but can't use them when wearing 1h axes.

[oaliaen]

i would love this idea

[Osred]

Being able to immediately tell what class+race an opposing player is by a split second clance is critical to the overal design of this game. This would remove one of WAR/RoR's strongest art design decisions and to put it politely is nonsensical to remove it. No.

[wildwindblows]

It would be good to use 1h sword as a weapon for my mara

[dwar]

I envision Witch Elves and Hunters alike having stealth replaced with cunning disguises and make up. Like really expensive special greenskin dyes and tons of stuffing for the Black Orc Suit disguise. *humming mission impossible theme*

Back to topic:
There were shoulder pieces of the opposing faction on live iirc (dunno if that's still a thing in ror. Never noticed). Sure a bit more liberty would be neat but one should not leave the consistency of the universe out of sight.. and there are bigger gripes than this ;D

[NSKaneda]

Honestly xrealm items brought that "loot taken from a worthy foe" feel and they were well hidden behind long quest chains or world boss hero kills. Almost like it was done on purpose... Still, even if I disagree with the argumentation given I've come to accept the fact that those items are lost till Twin Tailed Comet appears on the sky again.

Xclass items...
a. there is an option to turn off alt apps in game
b. addons like pure will provide class name
c. 2h mara? IB with engie spanner? Choppa with shield? BW with shield for crying out loud... Either rest of the outfit points to what you're dealing with or there are options listed above.
d. most of them are rewards of hidden quest chains, for 90% of classes only one or two items in the whole game.. And this is by design, so they're not easy to obtain...

I'm not about to stir another chapter of fashionhammer wars: I think we've arrived at some form of middle ground. However I would happily trade all xclass items for unreleased NPC armour pieces
Class-restricted ofc

[marisco]

Yes, remove class identity. Amazing idea.