Pipedream Possibilities, aka Texmodding, the Game, and the Community

Thinking about the game recently, I got to wondering; with so few developers left working on the original GW, there isn't much left they can do. I can accept that, but there are still plenty of things we always want added to the game. Armor, of course, is one of them. We aren't getting any more, the team is busy. They don't have time or resources necessary to make more models, or retexture and redesign the existing ones.

But what if we did it for them?

What if we took the drive (laziness aside), the skills, and the numbers of the community and set them to work making things for the game? Ergo, this shot-in-the-dark, purely hypothetical, never-going-to-happen-in-a-million-years-but-still-fun-to-think-about proposition.

What if we held a Texmod Armor Competition?

Let's say we took our tools and worked out our own versions of things we would like to see. Sure, reskins aren't as amazing as new models, but as EotN proved, you can still get nifty armor using the same models as before. If we extracted all the textures from the armor across the game, mixed and matched and manipulated, and used all our photoshopping, screenshotting, image rendering know-how to create something fresh and new? Structure it with themes like Elite Ascalon armor for endgame prophecies, or Kurzick/Luxon armor for Dervishes and Paragons, or even vague ideas like Zaishen, Mursaat, Corsair, and Orrian. Everyone can work on their own particular armor set, even for a single profession, and when we all come together, contribute enough to complete entire sets. Collaboration, voting, and assistance could tweak each category until every single gender and profession has a completely new look, all of which can then be handed over for coding.

Fan driven, fan made, fan delivered, and incredibly easy to add into the game without serious developer inconvenience.


Likely to happen? Probably not a snowman's chance in Hell's Precipice.

But still, would it not be nifty?

It would be.
But the community is mainly consisted of snobs and no way in hell would Anet accept this.
But I still hope they do.

It would indeed by "nifty" although it is never gonna happen. Think of the ideas for armor that the community could come up with!

Design a Weapon happened....

but even if nothing comes of it, it would be fun to do.

One word: liability.

There is a reason gaming companies can *NEVER* take ideas word-for-word from Suggestion forums.

I suppose Anet would have to make an official contest, with legal disclaimers and such...

making the "grassroots" approach unlikely.

most would be stolen models from other games too no doubt. Also TexMod is accepted bceause it doens't actually effect the game what so ever. It is client side and only edits images/textures used with in the game.
If players were able to make their own armors wouldn't it be pointless to have them on sale in the game?

I think it's a kickass idea, but think of the people that'd turn this into a joke.

:O

We should ask ANet to release the never released expansion. Which they formed into EotN.. I read about it and it seemed awesome

Biggest flaw of your idea. I don't envy the poor sob who gets the task of coding in a whole truckload of armor designs. If they had the manpower for that they would have done it themselves. Furthermore, you just know some wanker is gonna design a dick armor (literally), just for the laughs.

I don't see why guildwarsguru or another big alliance of people couldn't host a contest like this with judges, rules/guidelines, different catergories, simple in-game rewards for winning. Not only would it be fun but lots of new texmod skins would be available for everyone. Forget trying to setup anything with anet just won't happen. But a community of people can set this up. Some of the guidelines would have to be all entries are free for use for everyone and such no copyrighted materials or anything that breaks the EULA.

The exact opposite can happen: a brilliant artist can come up with an awesome armor (it's actually one way to get seen by companies like Anet, and possibly to get a role or even a job offered...). The wanker armor will make some people laugh and then end up in the universal bin of bad ideas.

Who remembers the nice Design-a-Weapon art behind a CC, a BDS, a draconic aegis, a froggy, or a Dryad bow?

The way that this would work would be relatively straightforward, on the community level.

"This is my new [Kurzick] [Paragon] armor!
reqs: Vabbian chest, sunspear hands, elite sunspear shoes, ancient pants
Tpf file here: {link}
Let me know what you think"

If Anet were to then decide to make such a thing official, it would be a contest done in the same manner, where the entrant sent in the tpf file (or equivalent textures) along with what pieces of armor were needed.

Actual entry into the game once the art was designed would be relatively trivial.

Two main problems:
1) 3rd party software is against the EULA. This includes Texmod: ANet has stated that they will not enforce this segment of the EULA against Texmod users, however that is completely different from encouraging it's use, which this contest would do. To hold this contest would require a rewrite of the EULA to intentionally allow such graphics-changers that have client-side-only effects and do not affect gameplay, which would requires lots of lawyer-money, I'm sure.
2) I will not be able to participate Part of the Windows 7 security and stability improvements makes it such that programs like texmod can't get at the inner workings of other programs, like the graphics calls GW makes. Thus Texmod doesn't work in Win7, and I doubt anyone is going to dev it any more to find a workaround.

But I like the idea.

Perhaps, but the issue here is with the coding required. Anet can't even keep up with the workload they have now, what makes you think they can put in whatever brillant designs comes out of this? As a textmod only project it might work but to expect coding from anet, well, you can only wish and hope i guess.

I would really like to see the lvl 50 up magic armour from this game made similar in GW.Click on image to see it bigger.

PWI Armour

That goes with some of the weapon skins.

Weapons

It's much less work than a PvE zone or a PvP map, the Live Team have a few more people (and a test team made of selected players, which means less stress on QA). Anyway, even if it stays as a textmod-only contest, it's a nice thing and shouldn't be discouraged because Anet may not pick it up.

(as I said above, some people may actually get a job from such an experience, this only is a good reason to have it, rather than to look at all the wankers)

GG to OP and see post above!

As "nifty" as it would be. How about something playable, like a skill contest. Or maybe a contest to change the functionality of certain skills. If not, a decent skill update that doesn't just cover one or two classes, and makes more skills legitamately playable in PvE and PvP would be nice.

Perfect World? Pretty, but it's not as pretty ingame as GW. And absolutely grind-tastic. bleh.

And armors would require very little work if done in the way described, because the models would already exist, with full UV mapping, etc. And the textures would be made by the contestant in the appropriate format or they wouldn't display in Texmod.

Putting it in game would involve making a copy of the armor pieces in-game-object, altering the texture paths, and attaching them to the apropriate Armor-selling NPCs.
Well, that and the HoM stuff.
Nevertheless, relatively trivial compared to creating the armor in-house, which uses modeling and texture-artist resources which are already fulling involved in GW2.
BTW, dropped a link to this discussion on Regina's talk page. Just for the hey.

Arenanet have proved time and time again that they are not valve.

/not signed.

1) hate texmod cheating program (solely in my humble opinion)
2) GW is already beautiful
3) competition will not be fair, since not the whole world can participate because of the restriction
4) looking back at most of the competitions, they were not "fair" in judging at all (solely in my humble opinion)

hence I think this will not be a good idea.