Festival Hats - Not just for show anymore.

For a while now, I have been interested in taking festival masks and turning them into actual pieces of armor that characters can use all the time, instead of just 0 AL headgear that we can only see often during festivals.

The issue we have here is to limit the armor system so that starting players can't go out and buy one of these masks to have max AL on their head. I've come up with a few ideas on how to allow level 20s to access the helmet at their standard max AL while starting levels will not have any or much benefit over their other armor.

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System One - Armor Based On Level

1. Go to the Festival Hat Maker if you don't already have a Festival Hat. Buy one for 10g.
2. Pay the Festival Hat Maker some money (For the sake of this suggestion, we'll make it 5k), and he will give it an armor rating that will be appropriate to your level, the same way that armor increases by level with Heroes. This customization of your Festival Hat will have a label that shows up the same way that "Infused" would show up on any piece of armor.
3. Customize your Festival Hat with runes or insignias, and dye if possible and desired.

Under this plan, the headgear's usefulness increases only with your level, so there could still be an imbalance with your other armor, since the hat's AL changes every level, and the rest of your armor is whatever you bought it as. This idea puts standard max AL at level 20s and, depending on their level, can force lower levels to buy real armor because it has a higher AL.

Runes, insignias, and dyes would all function normally, and would probably be of better use on this helm, since you wouldn't be later discarding it for a higher level piece of armor.

Concerning the +1 attribute of the mask:

System Two - Vanity Slot

Suggested by Lynxius Pardonus

Adding on to that idea, the normal headgear a player wears is toggled in the Inventory menu. I'm guessing that a good place to put such a slot would be above the Cape toggle slot where there's room. You could then toggle when and where you wanted to show off your festival mask.

Some festival masks are currently able to carry runes on them. To fix that, people might have to buy new Festival Hats, or ANet could allow Festival Hats to be salvaged for runes only. Also, I'm not sure how much this would matter, but those items can also be infused. That would need a new helmet to replace if you wanted something clean.

Another option could just be to make any Festival Hat in the Vanity Slot to have bonuses of 0.

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The festival masks truly are for show, but what good is it to show something off when it becomes counterproductive? I'd like to see more people be able to wear their masks freely where they'd like, instead of being in danger of getting 1-hit KO'd.

Thanks in advance to anybody who contributes ideas.

So you want the festival head gear to have "standard" armor stats? I suppose its feasible since you can already put runes on them...

/not signed

No...people would overuse this and then keep buying festival hats..for show only man this would be impossible.

signed for system one would be fun

Overuse something that costs 5k? Lol. You must be loaded.

Why would it be impossible? It's a piece of armor. Why do people on Guru decide what ANet can and cannot do with programming?

Overused how? I made two plans and explained them both so that I could check all bases, but if I missed something, please be kind enough to tell me what I'm missing.

My guess, since you left out reason, is that you think people will continue to buy Festival Hats instead of the standard headgears. This seems to me like a Functionality vs. Look issue.

What I'm saying is that you can have the Look of the Festival Hat, and still contain the Functionality of the Headgear, but the AL of the Headgear would be limited because low level players could get them, and so we wouldn't want them to immediately have a high quality piece of armor.

If you really wanted to try and balance it out to stop overuse, 5k is only the start, or an example of what the price might be. Perhaps a quest could be put in place so that your masks can be made out of a true quality of material that would be battle worthy. Maybe the price could be 15k, or have some materials thrown in. Anything that's overused can certainly have some other requirement strapped onto it to prevent it from being overused. Besides, people still have to buy the Insignias and Runes to put on them, not to mention Infusing them if they need to.

Next time you post here, at least tell me how it is that people will overuse this.

That's pretty much it, but at the same time, I don't want all the low level people to have the unfair advantage of getting max armor early.

I'm not a festival hat person however surely if they can assign armour values to hero armour dependant on their level, they could do this with the festival hats as well?

Well, I sure don't work at ANet.

All we can do is have faith. I'm certain that if they're able to do it with Heroes, they're able to do it with us. I'm a little more concerned with my second plan, because that seems like that would be an entirely different direction.

Why would anyone use that, other than for prestige? They would "keep buying" them? Why wouldn't they just stick with one? It's already easy enough to get a max armor piece, and they cost significantly less than 5k.

I like this idea. I would wear my jester's hat all the time if they put it in.

I have a better suggestion. >_>

How about an extra litle optional armour slot of vanity?

Where you drag your hats into? >.>
Seems much simpler me thinks, the original headgear would still be there (hidden if the festival hat was in use), and the hat would be decorating your char without having 0 AL.

Just my opinion!

PS: But nevertheless your suggestions are good!
Just more complicated me thinks. /signed

/notsigned

Nobody here has played or heard of Runescape I take it? Christmas hats from Runescape are some of the most valuable items in the game just because they are astetically pleasing and show someone's lee7ness just like that super rare minipet in GW. Now GW hats are customized and can be made at the hat maker, but it still does pose a problem with the obsessive collector. In general, giving usable stats to joke items creates tensions between the haves and have nots and generally causes more greifing then it does to appeasing the masses. Elitism is not good.

Furthermore, pretty much this EXACT explination was given by a.net when the very first holiday hat (the original Pumpkin helm) was introduced. A.net is aware of the precidents of this in other games and are trying to avoid the problems caused by it while still giving us an item that is just for fun.

You have just admitted to having played Runescape. You have just committed opinion-suicide.

They are even gear, they are not meant to be protection, just decoration.

You don't fight with a decorative sword.

Well, for one, you missed the fact that Santa Hats, along with Party Hats and Halloween Masks, are tradeable items in Runescape. That's not the case here, since the Festival Hats are customized. I would say that the general sense of elitism comes from people having items of value vs. people not having those items. I can see it in the case of minipets, but it's just not going to work with Festival Items.

Besides, there's already the case of the "haves" and "have nots" with the Festival Hats. Giving them a chance to be useful isn't going to change much there.

What exactly is the "obsessive collector" going to do anyway? There's not much reason to keep more than two or three hats to use.

Also, I'd like to see some kind of reference to look at for what ANet said.

What's FoW armor then compared to all the other max armors? People don't always use things for their functionality. Look can be something they want to have too.

I see two ways to make the hats useful:

1 - When crafted, give them max AL if a level based AL can't be easily done. Remember we are talking experienced players here, as in players who get ran to droks or ferried to consulate docks for max armor anyway. Besides the areas where your meant to be using non-max armor are easy with the intended armor, so it won't make much difference if more people get max AL headgear there. But having a variable AL system for them would be more complex, meaning it will take ANET longer to make.

Maybe make the max AL set (which will take inscriptions) cost about the same, if not more, as the normal max AL hats. But if this is done, keep the 10 gold 0 AL vanity hats.

2 - The vanity slot idea. Put an event hat in this slot and it overrides the skin of the hat your are wearing.

/signed for either

Because tattoos and ranger masks give sooo much protection.

Not signed

It is obviuos that the hats are intended to be an adornment from the very beginning. They are meant for celebration not combat. Also that is how it is in real life , a man goes to work and puts on his hard hat which is intended for protection then goes home grabs his son and they go to the baseball game and they put on thier team ball caps , it will give some protection from the sun but its main purpose is to show support for thier team. And as for your not wanting low levels to have high level armor, a level 1 player can walk into Kamadan right now and get ferryed to the consulate docks and have max armor immidiately. I personally would rather have ANET working on something i could really use. If ANET builds us an ingame Auction House i will put on my dragon mask and celebrate. I think it was a nice thought but at this stage of the game there are many other things that are more important for ANET to work on.

ok have you seen some of the mesmer armor? the little girls dressed in teddys? Wow thats great armor there! I bet nothing gets past your nighty!

/signed

I would wear my dragon helm all the time

~the rat~

/signed

why not? it'll look awesome

/signed

I doubt they'd do it but it'd be cool to be able to wear them and still have the armor applied. You can already attach runes, in some cases dye them, and even infuse them.

/not signed

Keep them as festival headgear, no need to make them have armor.

Chock this one up with the other ideas of having mini pets pick up your loot, or have an attack capability of 1 damage.

/signed

If they were meant for decoration only, then why is there a space for a rune and why can they be infused?

/signed

If they were meant for decoration only, then why is there a space for a rune and why can they be infused?

That was my idea too, but I think festival hats should stay festival hats and not armor pieces. So /not signed

Mechanically speaking, they ARE armor pieces.

Female 15k Gladiator's Armor

Monk's Dragon Scar Pattern

Necromancer Scar Pattern

You can't seriously tell me that in a real fight those would provide much protection at all. A couple of tattoos ain't gonna stop me from shooting an arrow into your heart and killing you instantly. If a couple of tattoos or shreds of metal can stop me from sword thrusts, why can't Pumpkins or Reindeer Horns do that?

Your second comment tells me that you fully disagree with the second plan, but the first one would be much better, and you would probably support that.

In fact, why not have it for all areas of the body? I've been hoping that ANet will release entire armor sets in the future for holidays. I've seen the idea done in other places, and I like it. This could probably be a third option for the Festival Hats.

I'll post that in the first post, and give you credit. I like that idea a lot.

/signed but you should also make it like hero armors where you get +1 to attribute depending on the rune attached, cause really all helms provide the +1 bonus. i would also be for the vanity slot, would solve both problems

Thanks for pointing that out. I'll make mention of it in the first post.

I like that "Vanity Slot" idea.

One big problem is that each class has a different max armor value... having the hats have "max armor" is very different for each class. That, and you only need a little bit of gold to buy one, not materials and 15k or whatever.

Wow. Umm yeah, I've never played Runescape before in my life. Way to just dismiss my example because I actually am knowledgable about other games. Some people....

Currently every single armor piece is customized to the character that got it created, and characters can only view armors that their class can use. So when we are talking about adding an armor type with max AL, what we are really talking about is adding 10 (one for each class) for each hat skin, but you can only ever see 1 at a time.

Adding a hat option for each attribute would also serve the same purposes and would probably be easer for ANET to produce, at the cost of more clutter at the hat maker.

I understand your first comment, but I don't see where it fits in with this idea. Maybe I need to clarify something to you and Oso Minar. My plan for upgrading the Festival Hats would work much like upgrading your storage account with the Material Storage (or did they give that to everyone already?). There's not much need, I wouldn't think, to open a whole Armor interface to upgrade the Festival Hat.

Your second point reminded me of something. I'll make note of it.

/Signed.

We can try at least...

/signed for the vanity slot

We are playing a game right? 'Play' means have fun right?

So why not have something more who lets us have fun while slaughtering some foe?

I'm kinda torn between this. I really like the idea of the vanity slot, but I'm worried it would become overused. I don't want to log in to observer mode and watch 90% of players in the top guilds wearing santa hats, pumpkins, and reindeer horns.

why not it would be funney, oh and bilateralrope my idea would not be that hard... its how heros work, i just figured like you said it would be less clutter lol.

Aww, why not? It's my dream to send a team through HA and do GvG with all Dragon Masks. Besides, the only people who can wear Festival Hats are PvE characters, and I doubt that 90% of the players that PvP run PvE characters.

I know some people that don't buy the Primeval Armor for Warriors just because almost everyone else has it. The same case could be apparent here. People might not do this just because everyone else might be doing it.

Plus, it's not like every single person is going to be wearing the same thing. It might get a little out of hand shortly after holiday events, but after said events, the number of people you see with Festival Hats from that event will probably die out.

On a separate note, I might start keeping a list of signatures for and against this idea.

No thanks. Some things should just be for fun (read: no practical purpose).

List of signatures finished. I'll try to be keeping track of the numbers from now on.

I also scrapped the Second Plan that I had come up with, because I decided that it could be too well exploited.