PVP matches should show character costumes and hats

I think it would be nice if the costume/festival hat that your toon is wearing should be allowed to be shown within pvp matches. They show in the outposts but not within the matches themselves. I would like this very much, and I am sure it can't be too hard to put this place. Costumes and hats show within explorable areas, and so I cannot see why there would be a significant reason as to why they don't show in PVP matches.

It creates confusion in pvp.

How? o.O It's pretty simple to see who your team mates are and aren't.

Because one of the defining factors for me in pvp is to be able to see what professions are doing what, usually this is a combination of things but almost always the gear they are wearing, if there were only vail wraiths floating around I would have to take time toggling through them to find my target.

That's pretty much why costumes were never allowed to pvp: you can determine the composition of enemy team with a simple look, instead of tabbing trough all theirs components.

And it isn't a small thing.

This won't happen due to the above. However, as a compromise, costumes and festival masks do work properly in festival PvP arenas.

well, i understand where a visual is needed necessarily what itme they are holding and clipping issues with the costumes and weapons/shields...but i see no reason to not allow hats in pvp respectivley, i posted a similar thread ages ago and they just claimed "i look at enemies to see what profession they are"....and regardless how many times i said tab and C they still closed the thread. so...

i can see why no pvp costumes but not festival hats.

What if some team was running some sort of EoE bomb and they had a player with no armor what so ever and they hid this by using silly costumes. It would create an unfair advantage.

Being able to instantly recognise the profession/character in PvP of a red or blue dot, without having to target, is vital to competitive play.

This attitude of elitism is what is wrong with pvp and why pve will forever be more popular. If only they allowed costume hats and minipets in pvp it would be much, much, much more popular and fun.

I don't see any reason not to allow it. I hate the excuse of "We need to be able to see what armor you are wearing so we know exactly what you are".

In PvE, when you come across a mob of, let's say Tengu, do you know exactly which one is the Healer? The only way to tell is by what weapon they are wielding or by cycling through them or watching what they do during the battle. That's how it is with almost every group you come across. There is no visual armor difference to let you know who is who.

Why should PvP be any different? It's not hard to look at your enemy and see what they are doing regardless of what armor they are wearing. Plus PvP should be about the element of surprise. You shouldn't be able to tell what your opponent has planned just by the armor they have on.

Wearing a costume in PvP is no different than a bunch of male characters running around in their underwear (since they all look basically the same you couldn't really tell the difference by their armor).

So yes, I would like to see costumes/hats be allowed in PvP.

This is not a very valid argument. In PvE, all creatures that wield a daggers are assassins. In PvP you might see a warrior with daggers and specially during this month's flux see a few rangers with them.

What about the rest of that sentence that you half quoted? There is other options besides just looking at weapons. It isn't hard to spend a second when approaching your enemy to target them and see what they are. Or even glance at the battlefield to see what they do so you know who is who.

Just because they don't wear specific armor doesn't mean that it is impossible to know who your opponent is. Having to rely on what their armor looks like is a bad way to go about it. A skilled PvP player shouldn't have to rely on what your armor looks like so they know who to attack. There is other means to let you know.

No, you don't.

But you have plenty of time to realize who is who, even just by trial-and-error tactics.

You can't do this in PvP tough, since:

Vital being the keyword.

Remember that April Fool's where everyone were stick figures?

Sure it was fun for a couple of days, but no longer.

I didn't feel the need to identify to flaw with the other part of the sentence because I thought it was fairly obvious:
In PvE you have much more time to do things, such as checking all the targets for what profession they are. In PvP, when you're in the middle of a fight, you need to be able to switch to prioritized targets as fast as possible in order to stop the other team from retaliating. Being able to target enemies by sight is much faster than hitting tab potentially 7 times before finding the correct target.

Hats used to be allowed because they fell under the same catagory as helmets/headgear. The reason they don't work now is because they were merged into the coding for costumes.
The reason why costumes must never be allowed in pvp has been stated many times already now.

Its not only this the problem. It is also that guild/team with costumes will get an advantage respect guild/team without it, since they can use the trick of not showing who is gonna do what. Hovewer costumes are bouhgt with rl money. You are giving advantages to people with rl moneny.

Moreover it would be chaotic and less fun not to know who is who in pvp.

How is this by any means elitism? Costume hats and minipets would barely impact the popularity of PvP and only stand as a status symbol at most.

Costumes add unnecessary clutter and confusion when you're trying to target an opposing player or see what's splitting off from the main team. In any form of PvP, a quick glance at the appearance of an enemy is all you need to determine what's going to be attacking you as compared to manually tabbing through the targets and wasting time.

This attitude that elitism and superficial crap like minipets and costumes are what's keeping people out of pvp is what is wrong with you, and why pvp players will forever laugh at you.

I mean, seriously, you and all your friends are not playing pvp right now because you can't wear your costumes in there? BULL.

Furthermore, even if it were true, it's about as relevant as saying that more people would play PvP if PvE skills were allowed. Whether or not more people really would end up playing is entirely ancillary to the real problem, which is that such an update would be bad for PvP. All PvP, not even just high level PvP, would be worse off if people could hide their classes like this.

@Spyder: get over yourself. PvE is so, so, so much slower than PvP in terms of how quickly you need to react to situations and player movements, and you can't always tab over to a target to check if that's a mesmer or a ranger midliner pushing your backline. "I don't need to be able to glance around the battlefield and instantly know which professions I'm fighting" says nothing about whether that is or is not a necessary aspect of PvP. Protip: it is. FFS, you can pretty much c-space your party of heroes into almost any mob in the game, regardless of composition, and come out alive and unscathed, and you're going to even try to claim that the skillsets necessary in one mode are identical to those necessary in another?

And, really, "it's no different than running around in your underwear"? OF COURSE IT'S DIFFERENT! The guys running around in their underwear are giving up 60-100 armor, 75 hp, and 3-5 attribute levels for the ability to confuse the opponents. Uh, fine, they can do that if they want to, they'll die before it makes a difference. This is entirely different from being able to hide your profession from visual identification while keeping all of your armor bonuses. What the hell compelled you to make such a ridiculous comparison?

A skilled PvP player knows that it's the fastest way to determine who is where, and wouldn't suggest tabbing through the enemy team over and over again when trying to determine where their monks are. Do you have any GvG or HA experience at all? This is basic stuff, here.

I'm mainly a PvE'er who has never done high-end PvP and I think it's a bad idea.
I'd wager if they implemented allowing costumes, it would be the final nail in the PvP coffin. Those who are serious about PvP would bail (what few remain), leaving the...um...rest to run around in their pretty Dwayna dresses shooting Flare at each other.

I can understand why the main costumes aren't allowed in PvP, but I think the hats should be allowed in PvP (afterall, the festival hats used to be, and there's several shared headwear art for professions anyway). I can't see how it would be confusing so long as the bodies stay the same.

^I was about to say that. Festival hats should be allowed, imo, and treated just like common head amor.

I bought all of them (and will buy any more they add), and still think they should NOT appear in any PvP arena other than Festival games.

I paid for them to support ANet and have more options to customize my characters, not to clutter visual cues in PvP.


It's true that each profession has its own rig, but some professions share animations for certain things, and that makes them indistinguishable while doing those things and also wearing costumes.

Players should be able to see what is what without having to select a character to see the profession initials.


I don't care much about hats, though, since there's already common headgear.

everything has been said already, i totally agree with mithran.

@SpyderArachnid, completely bs, really. If you really want an element of surprise you just run some kind of weird build, no one will see it before the match. PvP just doesn't work like you think it does.

Also, if im playing prot for example, i want to see if it's a war or mesmer on shield set walking to a target. It would become completely useless to guardian a target when there is no melee at all at that point.

In pvp it's required you need to watch the field and characters, like said several times before.

But if a player is wearing a dread mask? or a mask of the mo-zing, or the other common armor headgears?

Should we remove those since those hide the profession?

I know they are relatively rare compared to if festival hats where available in pvp but i still wonder how harmful it really would be?

EDIT:


beaten

allow festival hats, keep costumes forbidden.
What you guys think about the middleway?

1 piece of headgear does not hide the profession. A full costume does.

Bad example - vaetires are mesmers who deal melee dmg as well as not seeing weapons they hold.
But in general in pve most often you can spot the profession or have done research beforehand.

From a pve point of view ( i dislike pvp ) i can see what others mean as - seeing the profession.Yes there are red and blue dots but im sure at times if everyone was in costumes ( off the scale and say all wore lich and were male ) and at a shrine the dots are almost merged and then you cant visually see each persons profession you have to spend time changing targets to find what your after - eg a monk.
Pve your team literally kills everything going - how many of us pvers have vanqiushed a zone and after be able to name each profession and how many of ? We get focused on the job - which actually should be the same in pvp - mr monk is focused on keeping his team alive and taking time to constantly switch target to see what profession of foe is charging towards him.
Probably a bad example but it may show what i mean.

That would the best way to solve it (and prolly what Anet meant to do), but as other ppl said is matter of coding. Atm hats falls in the headgear of costume slot.

/signed for this