Guild Wars 2 to have better character customization

The PC Gamer article of so long ago said something about adaptive armor for different classes, probably talking something along those lines. I doubt they'll put in too much customization... certainly not extreme like CoH because they load so much other stuff into the game.

Too bad they just can't just borrow some Sims technology for ultimate customization.

Not all, but most really are. If you look at a weapon from the top, particularly swords, they look pretty thin, that never bothered me though...

More so with Prophecies and weapons that were around in the betas

However its something that more recent skins have steered away from...

Its especially funny looking at some of the BIG sword/axe skins and then seeing them disappear when I look at my character from the right angle because they are only 1pixel

I agree! My Sims 3 game arrived the other day and GW has taken a back seat since. The level of customization is amazing.

The Harathi could always be what the Maguuma Centaurs call themselves. Or they could be from a region of Tyria not currently accessible to us...

Do not doubt Guild Wars weapon sharpening technology.

I'm not even convinced GW2 will ever be released. I tend to think funding will run out and NCSoft will drop the title, or with all the pending lawsuits against NCSoft, they'll just liquidate Anet's assets.

Think about it though, even if it does manage to see daylight... by the time they finally get it it out the engine/graphics are going to be horribly outdated... I tend to think GW2 will never succeed as a game.

It's possible they are using something similar to AION in character customization. I know Character customization is a key selling point to new MMO's coming out on the market. Champions Online seems to also have a good system down for customization.

Good find!

Nice troll attempt, too bad you made it really obvious because you probably could have gotten some good rage replies going.

I got a Fiery Blade Axe in eotn, I thought it was made of cardboard.

customization is easy. I think all you got to do is store a 'morph target' in the 3d model and there you go, even use a slider with it. but the trouble with an mmo is probably memory, if you had 200 characters on screen with many different morphs you know it would start to be a strain on people's systems... we'll see but again I think GW2 won't be too radical, maybe more dyable emblems or something... but I mean if WoW and Age of Conan can't do great customization, you can expect GW2 is probably stuck in the same realm of limits...

Ok but seriously, by the time they ever release GW2 the graphics are going to be considered bad and the engine is probably going to outdated compared to most games. I just foresee them having huge issues at launch, and if you've been keeping up with some of the new MMO's that have been released over the past few years, you'd know the single biggest game killer is a shitty launch.

That's what I'm expecting for GW2, a huge mess.

Graphics/Engines don't get dated during development. You're picturing GW2's engine being set in stone 2 years ago and that it will be unchangeable and old by 2011.

GW went through many different major engine overhauls in the time I've known it. There was the very first iteration which was god awful, and you never saw it but I think there's some screenshots floating around still, the E3 2003 version which was a massive improvement, the BWE version which was even better and ran on DirectX8, the DirectX 9 version that came out 4 months after release, and even today there is a newer late-08 version which takes advantage of todays hardware. GW has one of the most scalable client/graphical engines ever made, and it's stood the test of time quite well.

GW2's client engine will be no different.

You already called out the troll who has no idea what he's talking about. No reason to keep responding to him.

That certainly didn't stop WoW from becoming a monster, ja?

But honestly: if you're going to be an MMO you're gonna need as many players as you can get, and the low-end PC owners *always* outnumber the high-end.

Granted GW1 did some magic by being amazingly optimized while still looking good (and looking great with everything maxed out) but I don't think I'd be terribly upset if GW2 looked just a teensy bit "dated".

...but then again this is coming from someone who still plays Doom 2 and Thief D:

+1's, daaaawg!

Go to youtube and search for Guildwars Beta/Alpha? Whatever... from 2002 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm0mWUh49g4, then try and google some screenshots from 2004 then look at the game now, Several engines are used during a games beta till the final one is release for the modern age, so no..the graphics engine won't be out dated. I still think GW looks like a modern game, and using common sense, one would think a 2nd game in the series would have better graphics, better then the already great looking ones in guildwars 1. Just like Kunt0r said, Nice troll attempt.

Agreed, I never met anyone, or saw anyone who couldn't run guildwars at max graphics on a graphics card that was even a couple years older then the game itself. Best engine ever to come from a game. Its a shame theres still trolls that pick good games like this apart, not to mention picking apart a game that they didn't even see screenshots of or even played yet.

I hope GW2 has more customization than GW1. The only way to differentiate characters of the same class (besides a few armor skins) was to pick different skills from the 100s available. But the majority of them were useless, and there were a few builds that were so much better than the rest, that everyone uses the same builds and it gets boring.

PvE for the most part is so easy that the 'skill over time' doesn't really work, because for the most part, anyone part of an 8 man group can do well enough that how 'good' they are won't matter. I hope the customization in GW2 actually allows characters to be noticeably different and allows us to play them in unique yet still efficient ways.

And GW2 isn't in development longer than any other game, it was just announced much earlier than it should have been. But this was unavoidable given the mechanics that were introduced in GW:EN

It is a shame though, that nobody has the concept of originality in this game, I never use those stupid "everyone use this build cuz its good and if you don't you suck" builds.

Plus don't game developers get access to the newest hardware before the public does anyways? They won't be dated then.

Graphics are mostly the smallest thing to consider anyways. A game could have great graphics but be a video card hog and suck as a game, or it could have "poor"/simple graphics but be really fun. I'll take the latter.

Um... I CAN'T. I run my game at with low/off except for post processing and medium for textures.

One thing I've yet to see anyone ever mention about the GW engine is the smooth turning. I've recently been trying quite a few MMO games, all of which were released within the last year or two, both P2P and F2P. Without exception, none is as smooth as GW.

This has nothing to do with computer requirements, my graphics card pretty much is in idle mode even with the most demanding of them. What I mean by smooth is when rotating (while moving or just standing in place) in GW the effect is a slow smooth pan which then accelerates to a non-jerky fast pan.

Most other games have a noticeable "jump" type of rotate, the turning rate is always the same and just isn't "smooth". Some games aren't bad, LOTRO, Free Realms and another recently released but not quite yet in NorthAm / Europe and is quasi-NDA so I can't say the name just "in case", are good but still not GW quality. Others are just plain poor.

I don't know how the engine was early on in GW as I started playing mid-2008, but I am just amazed that major games (let alone the F2P ones where you don't expect much) released in 2008 are inferior to GW, a game that is now 4 years old.

Granted, GW isn't perfect. When you get massive amounts of monsters and effects during combat there is sometimes (rarely) a slight slowdown, which doesn't seem to be graphics resolution related, as I've seen the exact same thing with everything turned down low and lower resolution on same machine. The GW animations are showing their age compared to some recent games, especially the soon to be released one. And I swear almost nobody can do a decent "male just running to next area" animation, they are all terrible.

Pretty impressive that GW still looks so good even without having the less detailed cartoony graphics some other newer games have.

I pretty much played solely as an Elementalist for the 2+ years that I regularly played GW (I own all the chapters/expansion). It got to the point where, at least for 75% of PvE, spamming SF was the most effective Ele. Sure there were a few pbAoE earth builds that were alright, but Elementalists were generally called upon for crowd control, and there were 1 or 2 builds to choose from that were mindless, but effective. I know people that tried creative builds, and they might have been more challenging, but for the most part, there wasn't much originality.

I hope GW2 has a more traditional creation system, where you pick strength, dexterity, luck, wisdom, etc. That, coupled with being aligned with one of the 4 new races, could bring much more interesting builds and characters.

On a somewhat related note, I hope there is more diversity to weapon and armor stats as well. Within a few hours of playing the game, you have a weapon and armor as good as someone who has been playing for years. My main problem with GW is that after you finish Prophecies, every next chapter and expansion turns into 'lets find better weapon/armor skins!'. That's it. From the end of Prophecies, to the end of GW:EN, the only way that my character has been 'customized' in any way has been through a few weapon skins. ANet is scared for some players to have weapons/armor that is actually better than what other people, but doing so makes the game feel 'pointless' after a while, because your character cannot get better/stronger in any way. And after a while, the user does not get better either (in PvE at least), so there is absolutely no change.

I Agree with your weapons/armor thing about people getting the max equipment really fast, one thing that kinda make the game lack lust. That and the warpspeed leveling of factions o.O ....

Well, I just brought my character over from Prophecies, so it wasn't warpspeed leveling, it was nonexistent. But yeah, I see where you're coming from. Prophecies had a really great progression to it, that was impossible to mimic in other campaigns because you had both new and old characters starting there. It's a necessity that every addition to GW2 is an expansion, not a separate chapter, for this reason.

Valid points BUT....

I personaly do not want certain traits tio be tied to certain race..
To muich separation and race discrimination towards certain proffesion..it will cause (Yoda much)

There is enaugh diversity of weapons now..armors too assuming you do combos

the reason YOU SEE so much of same armor and weapons is because of PRESTIGE and RARENES.. not beacause there are littlwe skins....

There is a reason why tjhere is low lvl and easy way of reaching it...skill>time thing..regardles of how deteriorated it is now is still present...

Costumization wise..never had a problem..but i surely wouldnt mind more costumization regarding weight ...width.,...facial is not on my primary list opf things as i am person whoi loves fully armored chatractyers with no skin showing...this is why i am a warrior..i like that feeling of securness that there are no obvious weak spots....so yeah.

I didn't mean to say that there wasn't enough skins, but rather functionality. A game like Oblivion - every weapon you find does something COMPLETELY different. I'm not expecting that much, but a little more variety would be nice.

But you will have Gear Wars not Guild Wars....

I completyely with you on the theme of PvE and Uber gear..i prefer having uber gear in PvEn just for the kicks.. but you know as long as PvP wise its skill based and not gear based im all for it.....Im Still against the traits tied to races thiough...abused they will

actually i think cartoony graphics are not bad at all. it gives a fun atmosphere.

example: ragnarok online.

i remember that at its peak, it has 14m users.. which is a feat that wow still has not matched yet. its still popular even now, despite that its been like 9 years old.

e.g. of what makes it fun

it has the ability to mass customise your charc.
eg. refine armor / adding cards to armors / diff armors / classes / towns / music / even the boss hunting (MVP) is vastly different compared to GW.

This is really belated, but that's false; I used to create textures for 3d models and as long as the mesh is good and the bump mapping decent, they can be indistinguishable from reality.

If a game's graphics look plasticky, they were designed that way on purpose.

I like the fact that you can instantly tell an opponents class from a distance using their avatar, and am a little worried that we will lose that with too much customisation.