Idea: Stylist NPC (Possible Money sink)

as stated by Anet it was a BUG.

the account itself was not altered

you cant even change the account name let alone character graphics

My first char and still my favorite is my Necro. After seeing how extremely awesome white hair goes with black armor, I've been wanting white hair on him for so long now, but he's stuck bein a dull-lookin redhead =/

I would be very fine with just the ability to dye hair, and would pay tons to get it done. I don't really care about every other suggested feature besides hair dye cause some of it seems abit too much lol o_O

/signed, to add in hair dye

i love this idea, i think it would be great
i mean, i always have second thoughts about my characters appearance, and after making my ranger (and getting him further than any other character) i decided i didnt like his hair colour (or his hair style, but i not to fussy) and i would love to change it if i could, the other ideas seem great too
man i hope these could get incorporated it would be awesome
also, as the campaigns progress, i find the styles and colours become much better, so for those of us with prophecies chars, and are restricted to those hairstyles/colours, would give them a chance to change to a nicer/more prefered style, anyway i rambled on enough, love the idea

I LOVE THAT IDEA!!!!!!

I would add Makeup for the women as well, different colors eyeshadow, different shades of lipstick, mascara.

Also I would love to be able to dye my hair myself, just like we dye our armor now, pour a vial of dye on myself in the inventory window, the mix window comes up, and I can mix the 4 bottles of dye until I get what I want.

To facial tattoos I would add Arm, leg, torso and back.

I would pay 5k for each of these services.

Then you've been lied to. The data is there. Of course it can be manipulated. How do you think it got there in the first place?

I think the idea of adding the earings, tatoos, etc, is just plain ridiculous

A hair stylist would be the most realistic and reasonable. I think that if those other strange suggestions (all the extra fashion) keeps gettin brought up and asked for, Anet will simply look at this thread as a joke and not add in a single new feature.

i hate running ito clones

/signed

have you tried to change data after it has been entered into a secure database?

the programmers intentionally made the account unchangeable after an account was created for security.

the programmers have said it cant be altered

the devs have said it cant be altered.

the people who set it up say it cant be altered/spoofed/added to/etc.

why should i believe someone who has not a clue as to how their secure account database is set up?

It doesn't matter whether the database is secure or not. Most any database in any online game has some measure of security, but you're trying to tell me that only Guild Wars has issues with this?

The database could be optimised for reads, yes. Writes are still occuring, so obviously it supports them fully. You argue security. What, UPDATE blocks? GMs can change your name, so obviously it isn't locked down permanently. Whatever it is that could possibly be limiting them can be removed or redone.

Who says this feature would have to alter the original character data anyway? Assuming that things like quest tracking, character-related things like storage access and hats and other things are in seperate databases, what's to keep them from keeping updated appearances in seperate databases?

I don't think you understand what making a new feature actually means. If you want something new, you most often have to alter your existing software. Of course there's a strong possibility that it's impossible to just throw this into the existing code without breaking something, but that's how all software development is, and if something was considered "impossible" to implement if you'd have to alter the codebase a little, I don't think software development would have made it much farther than Pac Man.

I'm not asking you to believe me. I'm asking you to believe logic.

Yep i believe you now. You know what mods/moderators say? A pointless hopeless meaningless thread will get closed or deleted. Well since you, lotethrian, knows that this hairstylist is not going to happen then the mods will delete this. Ok.

Of course it would be possible to implement a hair stylist. Loviatar is just confused, he read something somewhere he misinterpreted, and now he can't remember where he read it anymore. So instead of just posting a reference, he use bold letters to give his words authority.

A hair stylist may or may not be too expensive to implement compared to the benefits. All we outsiders can know is that it is not impossible, and it is not free. So the useful thing to do here would be to concentrate on the benefit (or lack thereof), and let ArenaNet worry about the cost part of the final cost/benefit analysis.

[QUOTE]WRONG

the name is unchangable as is the rest of the account.

if you have a character with a banned name they put a mask in place to show another name but if you customize somethimg later it still shows the original unaltered account name.

*customized for "banned name"

so yes it IS locked down permanently or else the so called change would be reflected in customized for *NEW NAME* which it is not

A system can always be prepared for a great change.

Only time, effort and resources are required for that.

If it is not currntly possible, I ask, what would they need to do it possible?

And then will be our turn to decide if we can take that or not fr such a change.

Way to defeat your own argument there, Loviatar. Even if all of these unsubstantiated claims you're making are true, then surely if they can "mask" a name as you put it, they can "mask" appearances. You aren't going to convince anyone of anything, so try to open your mind a little and listen to logic.

And no. It is not wrong that it can be changed or undone. Everything can be changed. That's how you get new features. They don't magically appear.

I give my 100% support to this idea, as I terribly want to change my characters hairstyle so badly. I know of people who deleted character because they want a different hairstyle.

do you even have the slightest idea of the orders of magnitude difference between a short static lne of type and a fully animated feature (hair)?

search is a bit wonky and the reference didnt turn up in search but this covers it as well.

they can roll back the full integrated database to an earlier restore point but they CAN NOT alter a single account and leave the others untouched.

GAILE GRAY
does *we cannot reset a character* sound like yes we can ?

post number 1 third Gaile post in post number 1 first paragraph

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...a cked+mesmer

I'm afraid you're in way over your head here, Loviatar. I'm not sure you understand how any of this works. There is a limited amount of hairstyles, there's a limited amount of skin tones, and there's a limited amount of facial structures. These are selected from example models in the character creation screen. These are all represented by an integer or a word, most likely a tinyint data type. When you stand in a town, and another player enters that town, the server sends the identifiers that correspond with the features of the player to your client, and your client draws the composite.

The hair, facial features and skin tone are locally stored. On your client. The only thing present on ArenaNet's servers are the identifiers corresponding to the features of the character stored in a database.

If a character's name can be masked, the visual style identifiers can be masked. If the identifiers can be masked, clients can be updated with new styles, and players can have in-game services that alter what that mask contains.

I don't know what you're replying to with that, but it certainly isn't relevant anything I said.

then i will spell it out for you.

Gaile said that an individual account cant be restored/lost items replaced/changed .

only the entire database as a unit.

your characters account which includes appearance appearance including hair is a part of that integrated database.

if you cant change an individual account and the character is an integrated part of that unchangable account it follows that you cant change the hair which is part of that unchangable account.

That is because that person lost their char do to some unknown reason.This is really no different than changing Guild Cape.It just require a little coding if I am correct.
Thanks for explaining this to me as I really wasn't to sure what was in the client.I thought it was mostly the maps.

I want to cut my own hair

I like the idea, but nothing to do with face changes.....

If you took your time to read the rest of my previous post, I'm sure you would have thought twice about posting this nonsense. Give it up, Loviatar.


Save for updates and, if applicable, new ads, most any online game will only send information about the world you're in, as it saves bandwidth. This way, online games can often keep their bandwidth requirements between 2-10kiB/sec down and 1-5kiB/sec up depending on the game.

In a game like Guild Wars, where the main focus of the developers is likely keeping required bandwidth low to keep their business model viable, you'll see them doing as much as possible to keep transmission as low as it can go. Everything is stored locally, and clients do a massive amount of movement prediction to allow the server to send updates about the world slower. That's why you get things like rubber banding and warp lag.

/signed

Most of the changes people want are things that aren't related to changing variables like hairstyle. Tattoos, earrings, and other vanity items should treated as "skins" for toons. My Necro already has earrings but they're a part of her armor. Weird ay? Default features like hair, height, and skin tone should be changeable for free in the character selection screen.

In a semi related issue, what about having different styles of cape? There are plenty of great styles available. I'd prefer a full length burnoose style cloak for my Necro. *lol* She'd look so cute with her eyes peeking over the top. ^_^ Other good styles: half-cloak(it covers you from shoulder to midback and it closed loosely with a cloak-pin), a mantle with fantastical shoulders(mantles are open in the front and usually have decorative should ornaments...in fantasy settings anyway), and the classic full-length cloak with hood(it would look different from Dervish robes because it would be slightly open at the front).

/unsigned, though I may already have, but for differently expressed reasons

GW is a free after purchase game. You get what you pay for.

Alot of suggestions here keep asking for completely frivilous things that have zero impact on the game, only impacts for the player(storage/stylist/universal armor)

That also brings into account bandwidth/server size. Every new option or line of code that must be loaded into an area when you warp/enter/login will induce more lag in general, and take up more space where servers are loaded.
(I believe this may be one reason why the way dye works was changed.)

Sure, the impact on one person's account would be small, but there are tens of thousands of people that play GW, and of those multitudes they pay a one time fee. There is no money streaming in from subscriptions to fund all the little niceties that WoW or other similar mmorpgs have.

About all GW has time/money for is to improve enough to keep existing players happy(potential customers already on the line..), and producing the next chapter(new customers). They don't have the resources to include these huge changes that many people ask for here, when the game plays just fine without all the superfluous crap.

Another money hole! Anet likey.

i support, this would be cool for the litlle four-foot monks running aound that later want to change their height.

/signed -->> i posted this in another spot and just noticed it, i would love this idea, even if it was just basic new color (already from the creation screen) and new style and/or cut (once again even from just the creation screen) after having a character for say a year, i get bored of the same old same old hair color and cut, and i like to have my hair matching some of my, but i dont wanna go through the entire process just to change the hair color


Pretty PPPPPLLLLLZZZZZ add this function in..

ps - once again even if its the same designs from the creation process so its NO new designing or resetting up armor to align with new hair ect..

Good point Sicks. If you can change the armor of a character, why isn't it one can't change the hair coloring and/or style of a character?

Armor is account based. It's said that the hair and characters are account base and can't be changed. But, armor is account based. Which means that hair color and/or style should be able to be changed with the same process that changing the armor is.

Edit: No offense here Loviatar, but, this argument above can not be debunked by using exactly the argument you have placed here. If a character is account based and thus linked into the system, and it can not be changed - how and why is it that armor, weapons and other minor things of the nature can be changed on to your account? What then prevents them to be enabling a hairstylist? A hairstylist acts much the same way an armor crafter does. You pick the hair, you get the hair, it's saved onto your account and thus saved onto their system. There is nothing that isn't already into effect that would not allow this to come about.

Ultimately there is nothing stopping them from creating a hairstylist, which would be an insane way of getting rid of a fair amount of gold into the system considering how many people in the world of Tyria would like to change their hair, grow some hair or go from bright red to dark purple.

Edit: Halo, you can't change the height of a character. You must think "realistically" here. In real life we can't change our height, but we can change the color of our hair and the style that it is in. So, the same must be applied into the world of GuildWars just like it is in ours.

Neriandal Freit, I completely agree. Simply changing the hairstyle of a character is like changing the armour of a character. It wouldn't affect the server that much. I also agree that height shouldn't be able to be changed. The only reason that different hairstyles should become available is the simple fact that the toons improve greatly with each new game. If you go back and have a look at Prophecies hairstyles, they look quite flat, and not realistic. They still look alright, but have a look at Nightfall hairstyles, and compare them, and you'll see the drastic improvement.

There's also the fact that all the games have a different selection to choose from, and a greater number of colours to choose from. I think it would be a good idea to simply put in a hairstylist type NPC for each continent so that if you're a Tyrian visiting Elona, you can get yourself an Elonian hairstyle.

Well... 'the character can't be changed' is not a valid argument. Why?

In the same way the name can be 'covered' with another name. The hair saved in the 'unchageable' part of the character can be overlapped with more data.
In this case, two variables: Hair type and hair color.

obviously you have no idea of the orders (plural) of magnitude difference between masking a single uniform non changing line of text and an animated item such as hair.

also compounding that is at present there are only a few banned names having to be masked.

this might be millions simply trying on new styles instead of hundreds for the name

@Neriandal Freit

your armor is CHARACTER based not ACCOUNT based

the data base was designed from the ground up to allow switching armor on the same character not any other character on the account.

if you customize a weapon try to sell it/or anything else except a hero.

your appearance is locked in when you create the character as designed from the start just to keep accounts from being altered/added to/spoofed/etc.

yes it would be a giant money sink...............i agree on that
yes a fair number seem to want it................i agree on that.

if it were as easy (or even possible) to do as people claim (who know nothing about the data base setup) dont you think Anet/NCsoft would be happy to kill 2 birds with one stone?

make people happy and get rid of a ton of gold at the same time.

but they havent and Gaile stated the people who designed and programmed and set up the account database structure state they can not alter individual accounts but only uniformely roll all back to a restore point.

Well... it's not that they alter it. The game system will do that.

Apparently you didn't understand this when I explained it to you before, so to save you any further ridicule, I'm going to explain it to you in detail here.

Animations are not saved in databases.

Values and strings are saved in databases.

Values and strings are used to tell the client which of the available hair types to apply to a character that is being drawn.

Masking a value or string with another value or string will make the client draw a different type of hair for the character.

Masking any value or string for hair has precisely the same complexity as masking the name string with another name string.

how kind of you.

to make this very simple.

i simply have a choice of who to believe.

1 GAILE GRAY who is in daily contact with the programmers who set it up and know what is or is not possible who say you cant change an individual account/character after creation

2 you and the others who havent a clue how they have set up their database

anybody who makes claims about something they have zero knowledge of is simply blowing smoke.

unless you are an Anet programmer?

The problem here isn't who you believe. The problem is that you're spreading false information about something you obviously know nothing about.

It's painfully obvious that you have no experience with software development, so stop attempting to lecture people about it using fictional technical limitations and implementations.

Unless you can link me to a page where Gaile specifically says that they store binary blobs of animation in databases and transmit the entire physical appearance of a character, skins, models and all, over the Internet to people's clients whenever a character enters the area they're in, your defence is moot.

in this example the characters were deleted by someone who guessed their pass and vandalized the account deleteing the characters.

the account is fine but missing those so easy to add data strings to restore the lost character.

appearance..................................add this string
level............................................a dd this one
titles............................................ add all that apply
unlocks.......................................add all that apply
godly rare items..........................add all that apply
gee she is nice lets add these extras.........see the problem with that?

here is your link saying gamewide roll back but no individual accounts

EDIT for linkie

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...a cked+mesmer

third item in post number 1

note that she said all or none and all that does is restore the still unchanged account/character to the earlier point

Loviatar, nothing of what you posted is relevant to what I was saying, and you didn't present any official quotation saying that they store animations in databases.

No one in this thread are even talking about altering the original character database. I don't get why you keep going back to that when it isn't relevant.

Please stop talking about things you don't know the first thing about.

quoted for breathtaking irony.

you have zero knowledge of their set up and still happily say they can do whatever you want done because on something else you could.

and you talk about not knowing?......breathtaking

come back when you have actually studied that specific setup

Loviatar, there's something you need to understand.

Any data can be modified. You may need to make modifications to your process, but any data that is processed can be modified. This is the one true thing about computing. Ask any software developer anywhere and they'll agree.

Of course it is possible to implement this feature, regardless of how their current setup is. Of course it will take changes, which every new feature does. That is why it is called software development. A new feature by definition requires modification. Would the difficulty in implementing this feature justify carrying it through? That depends on how they're currently set up. Is it impossible? Per definition, no.

There is nothing ironic about my previous post. You fail to understand the principles of computing, but regardless of this, you have no qualms about telling educated industry professionals that they don't know what they're talking about.

If I had made any claims that could potentially have been inaccurate, you could accuse me of anything you'd like. As it stands now, however, the only things I myself, and a number of other people in this thread, have clamed to be possible, are possible by definition and principle.

So when you choose to dispute this, it becomes apparent that you aren't educated in what you're postulating, and that is why I need to ask you to stop making these inherently inaccurate claims.

all right lets start right here

[/QUOTE]

when you know nothing about a companies database setup and toss around statements like that VERY EASY you toss any claim about being a professional out the window

So let me get this right, as i am terribly slow. I do however have a good understanding of database normalization and how to program in both C++ ( in OOP), Visual Basic, and PHP.

If I understood what I have read so far, the character as a whole is saved to the database as a final object once created minus the armor including head decale, etc.

This means that the hair color, style, and face structure are all part of the character object shape which can not be changed.

The client has to have each face style, each hair style, and every other aspect of a char downloaded in order to see it (both to allow the user to select it, and to allow other people looking at my character to see it). The size difference of each object is affected by the “size” of the character. Why then is it impossible to separate the characters object from the style.

Think of it this way, if your designing a character systematically you would have each aspect of a character saved as a separate blob. The hairstyle takes a slot, the armor takes a slot, the face structure takes a slot, and body style takes a slot and each one is used to draw the character.

Once a change is made a new character is drawn and saved based upon the “design new character rendering engine”. This new character is for all purposes a new one with the same name, just a different model. Why is this impossible, you do it once, why cant you do it again. You just pass the character back through the design engine.

If it has to be out of game, it’s out of game, but it’s still possible, and to say that you can not do it would be incorrect. It may be not of great concern to the programmers, but it’s definitely possible – or should be.

I see the following needed to make this change

Add an option in the login screen to pass the character through a simplified generation procedure. Where the user can select different hair styles. The database knows how much money you have on you at the time and could charge you either real money or game money. It is not rocket science and I’ll even assist in whatever programming needs to be done.

If I missed something please correct me, but I fail to see why this isn’t possible.

Edit :

I was thinking about this somemore. How do holiday hats work? We are coming up on a new holiday where their will be even more hats. What if you removed hair completly from the chars object all togehter and hair was a "hat". That solves everything actually.

I'm going to have to draw your attention to the first part of that single sentence that you quoted.

The point of databasing is to allow for easy access and manipulation of data. This is the point of a database. Unless they have a setup actively preventing flexibility, which is very unusual for an application meant to be open to as much change as an MMO, one would assume that it would be relatively straight-forward to implement a feature based on one of the key purposes of a database. Easily modifying data.

So in that, what you quoted me saying is entirely true. Unless they for reasons unknown limit themselves in an environment where limits should be avoided at all costs, this would be an easy thing to implement, according to the principles of databasing.

So far in this discussion, you seem to be the only one to have made any claim not based in known fact or common principle by claiming things to be true based on hearsay, and apparently, by own definition, that makes it clear that you lack the professional background to make any claims as to the technical feasibility of the proposed feature.