Editing Announcements - 2010/02 - Winter's Knight (section)

=== Multi-slot armor ===
{{Turbine Developer
 |      Date = February 9th, 2010
 |      Link = http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=490338#post490338
 |      Text = Greetings,

For a while now many players have posted concerns about multi-slot pieces of armor and clothing and the ways they are unfriendly to the play experience. In particular is the desire to have the visual impact of certain multi-slot pieces without totally sacrificing stats.

We are working on solutions to make this a little more player friendly. Our goal is to make this better without invalidating current suits or trivializing the process of acquiring armor. I wanted to go over several thoughts we had in our early design stages to let the players give some input.

~ First, shirt and pants clothing (we are not talking armor) would be fixed so any pants and shirt combination gives abdomen coverage. Basically all pants will cover, at a minimum, abdomen and upper legs. This means existing pieces will be extended to cover the abdomen. All shirts would also be fixed so they only cover chest so as not to interfere with pants. This should leave existing player suits intact without additional holes in coverage.

~ Second, a new quest would be introduced so once per month players could, at some effort and/or expense, transform one coat/shirt/hauberk into a breast plate while retaining the visual look of the piece. The piece would be set up so it would still visually cover multiple areas, effectively overriding the visual piece that is already there.

~ Third, a new quest would be introduced so once per month players could, at some effort and/or expense, transform one set of pants into a girth while retaining the visual look of the piece. The piece would also be set up so it would still visually cover multiple areas, effectively overriding the visual piece that is already there.

~ Fourth, we are considering changing all long leather gloves into single slot hands and shorts into single slot abdomen pieces. They would still cover the same areas visually, but they would be single slot armor. Our main concern is some exisiting characters that used these items would now have holes in coverage they would have to fill.

We could also in the future add the capability to the once per month quest to change sleeves into pauldrons and leggings into tassets while, again, keeping the same visual look.

~ Finally, with all this look swapping I am going to look at adding armor coverage into the examination panel when you look at another character. No promises on this; I would need to examine the tech involved.

(We looked at a few other suggestions; for example to allow single slot pieces to be crafted onto multi-slot pieces but they were not feasible with our current tech.)

Sev~
 | Developer = Severlin
 |     Title = Producer
}}

{{Turbine Developer
 |      Date = February 9th, 2010
 |      Link = http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=490346#post490346
 |  Question = This is going to be confusing, not knowing whats covered. Another character? Whats this for, PvP? How about a panel showing coverage gaps for your own character?
 |      Text = If we added it, yes you would see the AL coverage for your own character as well when you examined yourself. But this is mainly to address concerns that this system would not allow PvP players to be able to tell what coverages opponents have. Of course, since it is tied to the Assess system a person could train up deception to hide their true AL coverage.

Sev~
 | Developer = Severlin
 |     Title = Producer
}}

{{Turbine Developer
 |      Date = February 9th, 2010
 |      Link = http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=490347#post490347
 |  Question = With this planned tech, would it be possible to say, make look gen robes that protect head but visually cover the whole body? Would it be possible to change guises in a similar way? An armored skeleton guise would protect head but cover the body?
 |      Text = With this planned tech, would it be possible to say, make look gen robes that protect head but visually cover the whole body?

Would it be possible to change guises in a similar way? An armored skeleton guise would protect head but cover the body?
 | Developer = Severlin
 |     Title = Producer
}}

{{Turbine Developer
 |      Date = February 9th, 2010
 |      Link = http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=490369#post490369
 |  Question = Then I could use a girth/pauldrons/bracers with nice spells on it but my character would appear to just be wearing the Hauberk? One more question. Would the new converted BP still have the same burden of the original Hauberk or would there be a new burden to reflect that it is now a BP?
 |      Text = Yes. And the burden would, as proposed, remain unchanged.

Sev~
 | Developer = Severlin
 |     Title = Producer
}}

{{Turbine Developer
 |      Date = February 9th, 2010
 |      Link = http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=490374#post490374
 |  Question = I have full upper-body coverage... but what happens visually? I would expect the amilu coat to take priority over the chainmail sleeves. Also... I assume that this will all integrate with the general tailoring system? Could you give some examples of the two systems being used together to give is an idea of what will and will not be allowed?
 |      Text = The plan is breastplate > sleeves for visual priority.

It is unclear whether a piece converted by quest from multi-slot to single-slot would be eligible for tailoring. (I won't know until I am hip deep in tech.)

Sev~
 | Developer = Severlin
 |     Title = Producer
}}

{{Turbine Developer
 |      Date = February 9th, 2010
 |      Link = http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=490392#post490392
 |  Question = But why require the Amuli coat in the first place in order to convert it to BP? Why not just allow any Amuli coat to become a 'mask' of sorts that you can wear over your other armor visually. Reduce this 'outerwear' coat to AL 0.
 |      Text = This system requires players to discover multi-slot armor with good stats and decide to run their quest for the month to change over that single piece of armor (with the appearance of the original armor piece). You will not be able to transfer a Breastplate converted Amuli Coat's appearance onto another Breastplate (unless for some reason it's another Coat that you previously quest enhanced). The system encourages players to loot and keep Amuli Coats or other Multi-Slot armor pieces that have stats that would be good were it a single slot piece of armor. After that discovery the player would then have to decide to spend their quest for the month to change over that piece.
 | Developer = Django
 |     Title = Turbine Staff
}}


{{Turbine Developer
 |      Date = February 9th, 2010
 |      Link = http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?&postid=490440#post490440
 |  Question = There are still advantages to using multi-slot armor. Multi-slot armor takes less steel to fully tinker, and if you are using a bot it takes less time to fully bane 5 pieces than 9 pieces. I have a couple of 5 piece 10 tinked armor suits just for using on my mules when they want to go hunting.
 |      Text = Not to mention the fact that it takes less mana to fully buff a robe or 5 piece suit instead of a 9 piece suit.

There are a variety of reasons we don't want to make everything in the game single slot.

The basics are:

1. Ability to find what you want - If all items were single slot the odds of pulling a Yoroi Pauldron would go way down because there are far more total armor pieces. That also further reduces the odds of getting the piece/color combination you want for use in tailoring or standard use.

2. Complexity of completing a suit - If every piece were a single slot item it would become far easier to complete a set of armor. Making only Breastplate and Girth easier to get doesn't make it too much easier. Also this is restricted to one item per month so not every Coat/Legging will become a single slot right away.

3. Some things just don't look right - A lot of the multi-slot armor were designed to only look right with their own appearance. For instance yesterday I had some Celdon Pauldrons with Platemail Bracers because we were playing with prototypes. It looked horrible, the Celdon Sleeve pinches in a lot at the elbow and this really doesn't work with other bracers that are in game.

4. ^--- What Sev said.
 | Developer = Django
 |     Title = Turbine Staff
}}