It’s been brought up before but I’m not sure if this in particular has been suggested, and I don’t see any current threads about it so here’s a new one.
Currently I think the armor system is pretty limiting. As an artist, I like to mix and match armor pieces for asthetic reasons in every game I’m able to. However to do this in CE messes with the temp system and makes the stat bonuses virtually pointless. You’re forced to wear whole specific sets depending on what region you’re in and what stat bonuses you want.
Yes I know there are mods for this on PC, but for those of us on consoles that’s not an option.
So here’s my proposal…
Remove the temp and stat bonuses for all armors.
Give each piece 1 to 4 “mod slots” depending on level and quality.
Add in more craftable armor mods to replace those bonuses that can be attached like the current armor plating, weight reduction, etc.
Each armor piece would retain its current defense, weight, and durability.
This would make things much more versatile, and open up a lot of possibilities for experimenting. Everyone wouldn’t all be wearing the same thing all the time.
For example…
you could put all your temp mods into 2 pieces and put stat mods on everything else, so you only have to carry a couple extra pieces when traveling between regions and not whole sets.
you could have 2 sets of your favorite armor, 1 each for cold and hot weather.
you could have your favorite armor set up with the stats you need for the build you want (Darfari armor in the north with an encumbrance build? No problem)
you could mix pieces from different sets with dyes to create a unique style, while still having the bonuses you need.
you could forgo temp mods altogether and just use stat mods to make yourself the ultimate badass.
To be honest, I don’t think that’s a good approach. Neat, but I think it flows counter to the point they made with the entire armor system. That is… they force you to research different armors to provide different bonuses, including stuff like the silent legion, reptilian, and Lemurian armors… all of which you need to find/defeat the appropriate dungeon. Thereby, other than looks effectively defeating the bonus you get by accomplishing said goal.
Now… A proposal I might make is perhaps simply a visual one like many other games do, where you can have your appearance look different than your ‘equipment’ armor that you’re actually wearing. This way you’re keeping the individual characteristics of the specific armor in question (Both heat/cold resist and stat bonus) while also not allowing too much in the neighborhood of bonus stacking, but still letting the exile don the look that he so desires (so long as he goes through the effort of producing said armor).
I say yay…
it’s too cold outside but you want to wear jeans not ski pants… longjohn unders works…
to be honest, I’ve never ever in game or history seen one example where temperature influenced armour in the way CE does…
Both frostbite and heatstroke are survivable…
There are people who live up in the Himalayas wherenormal sea level people would freeze, if lack of oxygen didn’t get them first, Everest climbers go up slow for weeks of acclimatisation…
But I guess we can’t expect a game with timed things like decay, to adopt acclimating to harsher biomes…
Players would still complain…
Having said that, yes, some temp based mods to armour would be a great solution…
It’s one of the oldest, and consistently most asked-for/popular suggestions.
Unfortunately, it’s also one of those Funcom has so far been staunchly against - the reason being they feel it’s a fun mechanic that you can guess at someone’s spec/role from the armor they’re wearing.
Not an argument I agree with, for the record. While I can see where they’re coming from since this was born as a pure PvP game, I still don’t feel like it provides enough value compared to the many downsides. Effectively it just reduces the available choice(s) to whatever the meta dictates is optimal in terms of stats, unless you play PvE in which case the whole thing is a moot point.
The best objective point in favor of changing this is that it would remove the (legitimate) gripe that the DLC packs are lowkey “pay to win” since some of the armor/stat combinations that are otherwise rare become trivial to acquire with a quick swipe of ye olde credit card.
Aye I know the feeling. I currently run around in a mix of Light Armor and Relic Hunter, dyed to match, because it looks nice. That is, unless I’m going commando (which honestly I am most of the time) because then I can just kill myself to “teleport home”
btw @Halcyon, sorry for leaving my naked corpse on your doorstep so often… NOT!
I dyed my gear once… it was an awesome mix of red, purple and a black trim… should have gone red, green with black trim in hindsight… but.
Then I got the no corpse bug, so now I don’t bother…
I can live with losing stuff on death, but equipped armour and gear should respawn at last base… only because of bug… otherwise, I wouldn’t care to spend 10 mins to cross the map nude…
Playing without armour at all… that sounds like a ‘journey’… but that sun… hope you keep that skin hydrated with enough aloe lotion… I hear it now comes with a free basket…
Just in case you haven’t heard, it can often be “fixed” by running away from the location of the corpse and/or logging in/out. It’s not definite, but it works a lot of the time.
It puts the lotion in the basket… speaking of which:
This is how the mods for PC work from what I gather. I think it’s a solution as far as modding goes, but in game I feel it’s pretty immersion breaking. I really dislike games that take the whole “character skin” design choice. It doesn’t feel like a legitimate survival mechanic, more like a clear video game solution. They’ve worked hard to make all the mechanics of this game feel at least semi-realistic.
And you’ll have to explain to me why you think it doesn’t flow counter to the point they made with the entire armor system, as you put it, but my suggestion does. I feel its more counter to the system, if you can just reskin whatever you’re wearing. Could be anything underneath. As @Mikey pointed out, they wanted you to be able to guess what setup someone is running by what armor they’re wearing.
What I proposed would still give you an incentive to track down the additional armor recipes, even if only for cosmetic reasons. The ones you get from boss fights aren’t the main reason to go fight that boss anyway. I dont need reptile armor to give me the cold or grit bonus, the vanir armor does that already. Therefore it’s only real value is cosmetic. I go into the Dregs to get the staff I’ll need to eventually take my bracelet off when I end the game.
In the case of silent legion, it would still be the bast armor in the game because of its damage resistance and durability. You would still need to farm kinscourge hearts to make it. But you could make one set for the desert, and one for the north for example.
Add to that the fact that some of the existing skill/temp combos are locked behind dlc paywalls, and the current system starts to feel even more limiting and maybe even a little p2w.
Deciding between the temp resistance types is kinda the point. Or part of it at least. My preferred current setup on single player has a piece of cold armor that actively fights against the rest of the heat resistance of the rest, so it’s not really good in either extreme temperature.
@TeatedCorpse & @Mikey, I’ve been taking my time and just hit 46. This is what I’ve been wearing since 40, unless I’m up north. It’s all red and brown leather straps. There’s pieces from 4 different armor sets here…
If I’m being completely honest, I’m fine with how it is currently. I offered a solution that wouldn’t necessarily defeat the purpose (Besides visual appeal) of having more than 1 set of armor. And that’s just it really. All of the craftable armors (Including the ones you find) differences is their inherent bonuses. That includes silent legion. Believe it or not, Silent Legion Armor is not particularly better just from an Armor/durability standpoint. What makes it so good is the stuff added on that you want added to subsequent armor plates. Thus… if you leave it to simply the base armor/durability it would solely be a cosmetic choice and nothing else.
And while you might not go to those places in search of that armor… if you actually look at them, they do kinda have a purpose. For example, look at the Lemurian armor, it has a cold resistance (Despite being in the jungle)… is it a coincidence that one of the next dungeons is in a cold region? (Black Keep) And then in the Black Keep, the Silent Legion armor has heat resistance… how convenient for the Well of Skelos!
But if the goal is to guess based on what armor is worn, then I would probably have to agree that it should remain as is, and we should just account for the climate! Another survival choice me thinks… Don’t be wearing fur in the desert/jungle… it won’t be pleasant.
Totally agreed, OP has a point and I am kinda inclined to agree, but like you say, the nuanced armor pros and cons are one of the things that makes CE so unique and cool, so they better not get rid of this feature altogether. But as you say, being able to apply different skins on armors would be awesome (could also go about it in a way that would make a player who say, wants to have + STR on Aquilonian armor to have the Kambujan Shaman set armorer as well as the Aquilonian armor armorer). Make it possible to get skins, but not easy.
Also, imo it is stupid that I suffer from cold MUCH more if I am wearing a high quality Aquilonian (DLC) epic armor compared to BEING FREAKING NAKED. Sure, if you have very warm armor, getting heatstroke should be much easier, but wearing almost anything (save for potentially silent legion or other primarily metal armors that realistically would drain a lot of heat from the wearer if not insulated by a layer of fabric/leather) should always give cold resistance or at the very least, NOT DECREASE it.
EDIT: As Mikey below has pointed out, full plate armor would always have to be insulated, of course it would need to have some padding underneath, as plate armor has always had historically simply because otherwise it is not terribly effective, and would be super unfomfortable, but, which is more relevant here, it would also quickly heat up to mad temperatures in hot environments and cause substantial pain, and potentially even straight out burns. So realistically speaking, full plate armor should always increase cold resistance and decrease heat resistance, but realism is not necessarily the main concern here, so I digress.
Aye, “heat resistant” armor makes sense up to a point, but not if you’re in a cold environment. I’ve lived in very hot parts of the world, so I can say with a bit of authority that even when the sun is baking, being (lightly!) clothed is preferable to being naked, but at night (when it can get rather cold!), that same clothing would also help keep you warm - it wouldn’t continue to cool you.
Metal armor likewise would not protect you from heat in a hot environment, it’d heat you up.
That said, I realize it’s an abstraction because it’s a game mechanic and not a realistic simulation, and the Silent Legion armor is conceivably borderline magical in nature.
I have been back and forth over the fence on this one. On one, hand i do like to have my Exile look a certain way for immersion. On the other, checking an enemies armor type has given away where they hang out if scouting and gather intel.
I would be for a solution somewhere in the middle i guess. Maybe instead of have the armor visually giving me what they are possibly running stat wise, it could just be icons above their head. But then we run into the old glitch that lag out opponents if you had an alot of icons popping on your id bar.
I’m wishing that enemies dropped armour. Conan in the movies didn’t craft, he took what he needed from his slain…
I know from a game point of view crafting is a vital component… but what if you had the choice of only wearing what you find on the corpses at your feet… that is until you get an armourer thrall…
But then I also think a lot of self made stuff should be relegated to Thralls, on Xbox our crafting item lists are stupidly cumbersome to wade through…
Last night I raided the black hand ‘ship’… I killed 3 named Thralls, one an armourer I wanted wanted wanted, and left with a named carpenter…
That’s 3 named Thralls more than my mp toon has ever seen there… she got the captain, who sadly died fighting a tiger…
Ok the last paragraph has nothing to do with the thread, but I had to share my fortune…
Crafting and looting need not be mutually exclusive. Sure, it makes sense that a lot of the time we crush our enemies so badly that their armor is no longer useful, but looting boots from corpses is a time-honored tradition on battlefields throughout history. So maybe enemies could occasionally drop armor pieces; possibly in a poor state of repair (like the weapons they sometimes drop), and we couldn’t repair them unless we knew how, just like it works now.
But we could also craft and repair our own armor if we so choose. After all, armor-crafting feats are available, but since we have so many feats to choose from, and so few feat points, we have to make some hard choices. Armor-looting would at least give some defensive options to people who prefer to build chairs and umbrellas instead of plate mail. You’d still be at the mercy of Lady Luck with regards to what pieces you could get.
(What sort of person would want to wear the pants of someone they just killed? One who didn’t have pants before, I guess.)
