Player-Studio - Creating your own cool look and feel

After meddling around with the ornaments trying to find a nice look, I came to the conclusion that "self-made" seems still the best. I heard about this Player-Studio and most ornaments designed by players are a world better than the boring standard stuff. There seems to be a big difference when players give their love and dedication to a product without thinking about time and money or when a company limiteds creative minds with "time and money".

Why did they remove that feature? They could have much better products and that nearly for free?

Is nobody really interested in that?

Why did they remove it? Poor management. The money people seem to think only about the bottom line and do very little to invest (make opportunities) in making enticing options for players to spend money. I think they felt the time spent on accounting for the player studio was misspent time.

The player base wants to spend money in the game. The Extra Life campaign should have shown that to them as the players blew their projections out of the water. And now we've got no heritage crate and no LoN prize packs in the marketplace.

Someone specifically in charge of putting things in the marketplace and reopening the player studio would pay their salary and then some. But you have to be willing to invest to do that.

There was a lot of management involved in the Player Studio which also involved being able to handle the legalities and taxes in multiple locations with payments to contributors as well as the agreements made with them as freelancers. Because of various legalities and taxation in different jurisdictions, it was never able to be opened up widely, too. I suspect new PS was ended when the management at that time decided the resources should be allocated elsewhere.

Even at the height of it, though, there were only a limited number of player artists that were able work within its strictures for graphics requirements and limitations as well as the location of the artist. There were complaints about the slowness of the approval process and the reasons why some items would be rejected even if it was reworked a few times (generally because of some incompatibility with something in the graphics used and the target game). There were far more PS items done for EQ2 than EQ due to graphics limitations, too.

Oh the stories I could tell. But I won't.

If you think about it in terms of the situation now. It costs them nothing to keep making money off our player made items. Pure profit as it stands. Weighed against an expense to start the program again, for an unknown possible increase in sales.

I think they calculate they make the most they can off it now. I disagree, but apparently more and more, what do I know?

I will say there are people still interested, we still get our checks. But FashionQuest is a thing of the past for the most part.

If they would completely throw the "recompensation" part away then I am very sure that enough players would design for free only to have some fresh "look and feel" instead of earning money. The community in other games do that.

The principle of these software parts (games, google, facebook, twitter, etc.) is always that the players pay for their own time they spend in these products. Some sell this time to others for making money. A Player Studio simply for the sake of designing own stuff would even fit in that scheme. So the problems with rights would be gone. Only a little bit of management. Since the change into 64bit the technical part should not be a problem anymore.

I am disappointed in the fact that there hasn't been any updates to the transmogs in 15 years. They 50 robes but the same generic plate/leather/chain. The only time there is something new it's the "clockwork stuff that is expensive or the "get lucky heritage crates."

And whom ever put the fin on top of the plate helms I hope gets fired...

Just click your amulet of necropotence. Problem solved.

There are also laws against unpaid work which would catch into a lack of recompense if they did away with that (especially since they're located in California).

Player made ornaments are worse than those from devs because the quality control was poor. There are nice player made items but those are rare. Just take a look at the shields in the marketplace, 90% are oversized, exaggerated, ugly and weird. This is what happens when the work of noob artists got accepted.

I don't know about shields, but I like player made robes. Too bad the program was axed.

Every Player Studio submission was reviewed by the Art Director Kevin Lydy:
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/get-to-know-your-dev-kevin-lydy.281209/

Some were rejected, some required revisions, until they met Mr. Lydy's standards.

Some of us learned a great deal from the process, as well as helping each other learn the ropes in the private section of the forums (you guys can't see).

Your opinion is your own, and you're entitled to it. I'm glad I got to learn the art director's opinion and fine tune my work to the point of getting accepted frequently on first submission.

It was so much fun. And now just sad that I am the only one (participant) to even come here and defend it any longer (I greatly appreciate other's kind words).

Just because you don't like them doesn't mean others do. There are a lot of things I see equipped by players that they bought which cause me to roll my eyes or laugh including oversized, exaggerated, and what I think is ugly or weird. There are several graphics styles that are quite popular that I cannot fathom how anyone can like them (WoW's oversized shoulders and other armor bits including shields among them). Those that don't appeal to me are likely done by full-time artists how have been working in art for many years. Heck, there is a lot of art hanging in museums and galleries that I find unappealing, but are highly appraised.

As for how the PS items were accepted, every single item went through a review process with someone on the art staff for the games.

I was not one of the artists (I moved to Canada right as the programme was being introduced) but know several who were, mostly for EQ2 but who also submitted for EQ if they could alter the graphics to fit the requirements.

Your are one of the better artists MasterMagnus. I also like most of the work from Rollen and had bought two of his items. Kevin Lydy was a bit to nice with some of the artists from my point of view. It definetly can be hard to reject the work of artists when you know how hard they worked on something and maybe the plan was to motivate them for better results.

For the honor of Kevin Lydy, I had seen the fashion of player made items in other games too and the results were similar but often even worse than in EQ. I think it was the right decision to bring that fashion to an end. With higher quality standards nothing speaks against a return of player made items. It could be a waste to relinquish on such work but maybe there are also monetary reasons and that coaching and overseeing the Player Studios was taking to much time away from more important stuff.


@Rijacki
Oversized items are a popular aberration that many games do use. Maybe there are marketing statistics that do point out that such items do sell better, especially to a younger audience.

Don't forget the review process to be sure the artist isn't basing it on others copywritten works. An in-house artist employee where you can watch the process is a lot safer; and Daybreak *is* hiring.

There cheap prob got tired of paying the people that made the items. There were alot of cool items very sad they stopped it.

The market was quickly saturated especially with robes, some I liked, some I cannot stand to look at as they seem out of place with EQ graphics.

My biggest disapointment with the introduction of heros forge is the utter lack of new graphic designes for the drop armours. We have been stuck with the same boring robe graphic for years, just in different shades.

Sadly the Player Studio robes are all the same model. We only submitted textures. They gave us one sample (the human male robe). We had no way to view our robe on the other races/gender before submitting. This made it easier and more streamlined for them obviously.

We were never allowed to make armor of any kind, hats, or hair (although they said we might get hair at one point then reneged).

I don't think they have any incentive (in-house) to go very far with armor.

Hero's Forge = Made by a salaried art employee. Even if they made the coolest most popular thing, it doesn't earn them any more, nor even get them recognition.

Player Studio = As long as the game still exists, we are getting paid, directly in proportion to the items popularity.

That being said, I've found through other artistic/creative endevors, it's really hard to anticipate what people will want (even for the oracle). It's better to just make what you imagine, do your own thing, and hope people like it, than try to chase what is going to be the 'next big thing'.

I liked to push the limits and do things nobody else was doing. But I don't think any of us got very far 'out of bounds' for this world. IMO

If they had provided us with all 32 (race/gender) models and allowed us to make armors, imagine what you would have seen. Even if I seem crazy, I would have been using my Arms and Armour of England (purchased by myself in the Tower Of London Bookshop 1973) for my first reference material.

Can you preview multiple slots of gear at sametime?
I haven't figured it out.

I want, Improved preview window UI in the UI update coming April 2023
able to retain whatever you previewed and preview many items at once.
More options, able to see whats in your inventory/character and swap/add those onto the preview. Shouldn't need to open your bags, it should be in the UI

yes this is UI, the functional code is already they just need to have the preview stay not clear itself everytime there is a new item to preview. UI person can handle this.

Sadly, the over proportioned, cartoony, massive shoulder decoration, etc., is what's popular, based on what I see others wearing around the guild lobby and PoK. Not quite as bad as the WoW shoulders, but not too far off for many. The non-robe armor is worse than the robes.

However PS armor is the limited to robes which there is a saturation of them. Andonly cloth or leather wearers can use them due to the limitations of the ornamentation feature which is a different sort of annoyance.

Worse, they no longer have more than a single shade or design like they did in the original robes and armors, just one single colour over the most generic of robe. Most of the time this can be overwritten with a single colour dye to change it, but it's still same same same same same just a different colour.

But, for all the classes that can't wear robes, there is even less of a variety. Most of the Hero's Forge armors have the goofy over proportioned shoulders.

But... I remember complaining about the lack of variety in armour back in the pre-2009 days when I was playing before. Adding dyes then was a HUGE thing since you could at least have a cohesive colour scheme rather than mis-match (though I still cannot wash the the neon yellow and pink ogres and trolls out of my memory!). Then when I was playing EQ2 and the appearance tab was added, it was Nirvana! However, there, too, after the marketplace was added, it seemed there were significantly fewer new amour looks as drops or crafted that weren't just a recolouring. But in EQ2 they do add in a few non-Marketplace new looks every couple years.

The fact the Hero's Armor unlock is per character rather than per account is a different matter and also something that I really dislike. It's too expensive to be per-character as a purely fluff thing.

Yes, FashionQuest is truly dead, if you weren't aware the above points are incorrect.

Please take note and spread it around:
ALL class/race/gender combos can wear Robe Appearance while using Stat Armor (or any appearance while wearing stat armor).


Typically called the Illusion Trick.
-Put on item you want appearance of (cloth shirt with awesome robe ornament if you like).
-Cast illusion on self.
-Put on Armor you use for stats.
-Drop Illusion.

* optionally add in Persistent Illusion AA for convenience