To what degree should players be able to change the appearance of armor?

That still does not mean anything. You can still make a warrior with nothing but wizard skills. No longer a warrior but a wizard. All range all spell damage.

Not true.

You are granted 8 abilities. 4 of those are dependent on your weapon (and subsequently dependent on your Primary Class) and cannot be changed.

The other 4 are Character Abilities that fall into 1 of 4 different Archetypes.

Furthermore, your abilities are modified by your gear. If you have a Warrior equipped as a Primary Class, your Wizard Abilities might cost more mana than if you had a Wizard equipped.

Your Warrior is still a Warrior, even if he has a few Wizard Abilities.

I personally find armor customization a must. Now, as many are saying, a plate wearer should not wear cloth, but if the plate wearer wants a hood, or a shawl/cape, then that coincides with platemail quite well. I think it's stylish and heroic! Let customization give freedom of expression. I feel that the more I can make my character look to fit my needs, the better I can be immersed into it, and better find myself living in that world (of course, only when i'm playing. I have a job and responsibilities lol).

That's one thing they did comment on, that ability costs don't change to fit your Primary class - so if you're a Warrior, who naturally has a smaller energy pool, you might only be able to cast one Wizard spell and then you're stuck using your weapons until you regenerate. *shrug* Which is where gear is going to come in heavily, lowering the cost of abilities and such.

I stand corrected. Still, same result.

Rating my post down doesn't change the facts.

Proof: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...VFYMF-W0KYrK6DZxLoZsxSQ&bvm=bv.52288139,d.cGE

And http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...cCZR9RWHnP5kvxZdDIwdTtg&bvm=bv.52288139,d.cGE

We know the tempest is in. So that is already contrary to this statement. If customization is that strong and we are playing characters more like a moba and less like wow/everquest1/Guildwars then we will have classes that can change at a drop of a hat. On top of this the devs have said that we will be able to change on the fly to be more capable in our present situation. If that is the case will we need to gather 40+ sets of gear?? Common that is insane! As said before its stances weaponry and abilities you will need to watch not their armor.

Your Primary Class cannot be changed inside of combat. This has already been established by the Devs.

How they handle the equipment loadouts has yet to be discussed, but don't expect a Wizard to "hulk out", whip out a battleaxe, and instantly become a Warrior.

I think armor should be broken into categories.

Crafted Armor: You should be able to customize the look a ton, there should be styles to choose from, patterns to add, embroidery, gems, trims and dyes. If you craft it you should create something unique. Crafting should be the Landmark of tradeskills.

Random drops, ROG: You should be able to dye it, maybe add upgrades that can alter it. You have a robe, and a fellow leather worker gives you leather kit, when it is added to the armor it gives the robe more armor and changes collar and shoulders to have a leather trim. Or a skinner gives you deer hide trim, and you can add a fur collar to the robe and it gives a bonus to evasion. Maybe there are quests that can alter armor. You do a quest that requires you collect a dragon egg from a nest in a volcano. You are rewarded with a dragon talon dagger and can choose from two armor auras, an ash aura or a smoldering effect to your armor so all the edges look like they are still burning. These auras should work on all armor.

Unique Dungeon Armor: This drops from big bosses, these bosses have icon looks and aren't the same a dungeon trash mobs. You kill the Mad Mage King and get his robe, this robe along the edges shifts colors to match the surrounding environment. Which is meant to fit thematically with the unique active effect that the robe gives which makes the player invisible for 6 seconds. You cannot dye this, add trim, kits or gems. You can add auras which make the robe look worn. You did that epic quest in the volcano... even the Mad Mage Kings powerful robe might get singed in a volcano so you take the smoldering effect. Where the robe isn't smoldering the robe still shifts color. Or maybe you do a survival challenge in an arena and have to keep killing increasingly more difficult waves of Trolls. If you get to certain wave you earn a blood stain effect and you can add a blood stained look to your Mad Mage King robe. But the idea is that if a player sees the robe they know you are wearing a unique piece of armor that few people have obtained.

And the last thing I want to discuss is transmuting the look of an item with inferior stats to another item that you might think is ugly but has better stats. I am okay with this! If people aren't cool with the simplicity maybe try to be innovative and add a "Reforge" system that costs crafting materials to upgrade unique items only. You love your level 5 sheep robe, and never want to part with it even though it has terrible stats at level 50. You decide to reforge it and so it costs, 90 wool cloth, 1 Imbued Dragon Hide Armor Kit and 45 Mystic Essences. Now it is a level 50 robe, with appropriate armor level and stats. This method would be data intensive since all unique items would require a internal chart that knows what each new level gives in terms of stats and now much materials would be required to reforge it.

Those are only concept ideas with thee most common phrase being. 'we can't talk about that yet' so what we will have for real will be very different then those ideas. Stop thinking about this as wow or any of the games you've overplayed. At best dnd3.5 multiclassing or rift with many changes. Moba with build-your-own-class mentality.

But needless to say many of us that will farm those with the need to see our armor before they can press a button will just run around as naked as we can get. That will make this entire argument moot. It is either complete customization or we go back to wow clones. Take your pic.

Yay!!!! Time to start collecting 40+ gear bits! I don't want to live in your world.

Uh, I never mentioned WoW clones or anything else.

That being said, the topics discussed in those videos (which I know you didn't watch, it's an hour long, and I only posted them 30 minutes ago), are solid design foundations.

They aren't going to make an announcement on the game and say "This is how things will work" and then change them inside of a year when the Beta is released.

Jumping the gun on assumptions. Good work.

Crafting should give the best customization. I agree

And it will.

From the PC Gamer article:

By the way, this article also says that each class will have it's own requirements on armor and weapons, reinforcing what I said earlier.

Lol!! You must be new to game design. And don't need to watch videos when I was there. Third row from the back right side is where I was. The idea that seeing is the only way to know what someone is is stupid. And it's cloneing. Just like every other game I've played. Sony is already selling costumes in their new mmos. Better get used to it.

Please, explain to me which game uses the system they outlined in EQN that makes it a clone.

Also explain how it's good practice to have a press release on how things work, only to change it within a year?

I'm.. really confused. What are you arguing, exactly? Yes, the Tempest is in. How does that change the fact that they've said, flat out, that your energy pool, your armor, your weapons and such are decided by your Primary class? You can't change your classes in combat, and we don't know how we're going to change it OUTSIDE of combat yet, either. Just that we can. Whether we go to a trainer, it's just a button press or what not they haven't said. *eyebrow*

What I am saying is simply this, 40 classes in not 3, 4, or the normal six most people are used to. We don't have ten different sets of armor variety to bad too because I miss the old darklands style game. We have three, light, medium, heavy. I doubt very much if 40 classes plus multiclassing will have each and every class fit 1 of the 3 types. Just does not work, either there is healthy variety or most of the classes are just clones with different names. And I do not believe that. What they said at soelive was we could play a class that's style is us and we could look like we wanted. Right now some people want us to look like clones fitting one of three arch type and I am saying that will not work becauseof the base the classes are built on.

And I don't want to have 1set of armor for every possible class combo. We are not all erza scarlet.

Nobody said that we wanted to look like clones fitting one of the 3 archetypes. That was your assumption, and it is very, very wrong.

In any case, their design direction has been settled: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCwQtwIwAA&url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq4l3CiIM2g&ei=3r04UuPjDeOTiQKQx4DoDQ&usg=AFQjCNHpchQuUbz8fOi7KZYXF8NppZzYhw&sig2=xfrxSOB2KN1nUxO6oiuHnA&bvm=bv.52288139,d.cGE