Clothing Options

[Under the moon]

Layers..

 One usually also doesn't wear thick cloths under armor as it simply can get _very_ hot inside an armor.

Hold the phone here. (sorry for picking your one statement out, Kerol). It seems as if there is a misconception on armor in general. It is not a base for everyday fashion. Not was, not is, not ever will be. It was only worn when it was needed, or for pompous events.

Reasons:

1: We will start off with part of the quoted statement. Armor is hot. Very true. Even thin leather armor is hot. Ask any Biker. They will tell you.

2: "One usually also doesn't wear thick cloths under armor" Very false. The base of all armor (especially plate and maile) is a good thick coat of padding. Without this padding, maile is next to useless, and plate not much better. It is the armor that catches the edge, but the padding that softens the blow. Wrap a mellon in some maile, or a tight fitting piece of steel, then hit it with a hammer and you will know what I speak of. Even a helm has a good inch of padding that goes on first. All this padding is hot. Refer to reason #1.

3: Weight: Armor, even 'light' armor, is heavy. Plate can weigh close to 70-100 POUNDS (sorry to the metric folks). That takes a lot of power and work to heft around all day. Work makes you tired and hot.

4: #1 + #2 + #3 = hot + hot + hot. Ok, now add in the factor of sweating in a non breathing enclosure... 3 X hot X sweat= you guessed it, BAD smell. And after wearing it ALL day? Very bad smell, and a breeding ground for festering diseases. Why do you think the ladies all carried scented handkerchiefs back then? Ya... not to mention all the heat can kill very easily...which creates another smell all together that we will not go into here.  It is not unknown for soldiers to die just from the heat, rather than an enemy blade.

5: Simply put, cost. Only the rich would wear plate armor, and not even very often. Maile iwas very costly also. Much of the armor we see from that time was for jousting and tournaments. Useless in actual battles. With a proper (and cheaply made) neckhook, knights (nobles mostly) were peasant fodder. Once hooked, a person in heavy, hot, smelly armor becomes completely defenseless. The true power in medieval times? Archers with minimal armor.

So, that is the argument against wearing armor all day long as the fashion. It is simply not practical, or sanitary.  Many of you will say. "Hey, this is just a game!" Hmmm. True, but it is a game aimed at creating a virtual world, not a get-the-best-armor-and-baddest-sword-you-can-and-hack-things game. It is to be different from the hundred or so games that do that already. However, there is a good argument for it as well. No one wants to have to try to put armor on right before a fight. Lots of folks complain about just having to draw their weapons, as if is hard work.

Now, I do have a suggestion. Do something different. Don't wear armor all the time. *gasps are heard* Oh yes, you heard that right. But it is unrealistic to put on and take off armor before and after a fight, as doing so is not an easy task in the first place, taking a half hour -at least- to get all the gear in place, and the help of a comrad or two.

My solution: Wear normal clothing. Have an assortment of clothing options that would dazzle even the best of fashion gurus. The, when danger is near, do the He-Man thing. Hold your Glyph of Righteous Armor in the air and shout "I have the..." er...you get the point. Cool flash of special efects, and there you are in all your shining glory. Hail to thee... now go kill somthing befor your spell wears off.

[Xillix Queen of Fools]

not to meantion it could be done in two macros

[Anne Ominous]

visually it could be awesome to have a spell toggle de/equip armor; as opposed to creating armor that fades after time...especially as that idea is really just adding a nice visual to the rock armor spell... but i'm sure all the elves & krans will be happy if that means we finally see their armor in any way shape or form... 
--it would also be neat to have spells to repair armor/weapons, maybe needing high ranks &/or a few rare glyphs...but thats offtopic

[Croza Grimwell]

you get to choose your clothing at the start of the game, well you will probably be able to in future releases but like above whats the point in changing clothing when you will be wearing armor and stuff anyway

[Under the moon]

:/

It seems you skipped my post entirely, Croza.

The point is, clothing is what your character should wear most off the time. Armor should only be worn into battle. Now, wearing armor ALL the time is pointless, and puts unessesary wear on your equipment. If it is worn all the time, the metal will rust, the leather will harden and crack, and the padding will become compressed and useless.

[neko kyouran]

People are going to wear the armor at all times if there is no reason that they must take it off.  I don't want to say laziness, but for back of a better word, that's what it is.

So, going off of UTM's thinkng, why not simply have the armor decrease in quality the longer it is worn and/or, drain a small amount of health (maybe 1-2 points every 5 minutes or so as a health thing as UTM suggested) to push poeple in the direction of that they should only be wearing armor when they really need to (see UTM's examples)?  Then the push will be for people to get the funky clothing to express themselves and the armor will have more of a purpose to what it is supposed to be used for.

Edit: oh, and the drain would have to be low enough that the armor would still be useful to use, else it defeats the point of armor.  But that could be tweaked.

[Venae Rell]

Aye, and that funky old armor should give a negative modifier to your CHA score as well! Yucky!   

[Anomaly]

Well its should be the physical stamina that is drained and it should drain dramatically over time. If your wearing armor thats adding an extra 50 pounds like a full plate set its going to slow you down and require you to use more physical stamina to keep moving.

And since you cant move once your physical stamina is drained, this will obviously make people take off thier armor more often. =)

[Kiraki]

I like a lot of ideas mentioned in this thread but since but since I am way too lazy to read it all again just to check who said what I will simply add on my own thoughts below and hope I will be forgiven for not mentioning from where each idea originated from.

I am sure everyone agrees that having different layers of clothing is a good idea but most people seem to be undecided about whether it should be a) Armor, Clothes and Equipment or B) Clothes, Armor and Equipment.  I think that a combination of this would work well.  The layers would as follows:

First Layer: This will obviously be for things such as shirts or dresses.

Second Layer: This would need to have a dual function as it can either be for things such as aprons, rings and other accessories or it can be used to wear armor and weapons. (Or even a combination of these).

Third Layer:  If the second layer is used for armor then this becomes an accessory layer for hats, cloaks, robes and such.  It should also function as a “secondary first layer” for those that would like to wear their shirts or other clothing over their armor.   
This needs to be of a completely different design than the first layer though.  The second clothing layer should be specifically made to wear over another layer such as tunics for instance. Surely a nice skirt that fit snugly before would just tear if you tried to pull it over some bulky plate armor? 

I also like the idea of using a spell to equip armor.  It would work very nicely if you could preset your armor to a spell to toggle it quickly if you needed it.  There could be a option to remove all items from a specific clothing layer say pressing number 1, 2 or 3 for layer one, two, three or how ever any there might be. (This is for when you are wearing fancy accessories that need to be removed fast so you can put on your armor). Then simply cast your spell and… wow, look at that, instantly ready for battle!

Having the armor decrease in quality as well as draining stamina is a great way to encourage people to only wear armor when they need it but I don’t think this should be a constant effect.  Often at events such as weddings people would like to look their best and for people such as warriors for example their best clothing items will often be their armor.  These functions can sometimes be extremely long and one does not want to find that your armor has completely deteriorated half way through the event!  If, however, the decrease only comes into effect when you are moving, fighting and basically being physically active it should work very well.

Making specific clothing for certain jobs will also be very interesting.  There can be different styles to these as well and perhaps even make a certain level requirement to wear them.  The more you practice your profession the more items become available.  This way one will easily be able to distinguish between say an apprentice and a master.

[Anne Ominous]

first, armor decreasing heath seems pretty sill, especially when endurance & will are functional...

second, i mentionned before tht the idea of a heman style spell t equip armor seemd like it'd be cool but sort of already would exist if there were a visual added to "Rock Armor"... And i should mention, to not make that part double-post like.. it would be cool if when under the effects od rock armor you can practice in light/medium/heavy armor until it fades... whichever of em, but that it should maybe train armor

[Under the moon]

Wonderful post there, Kiraki. I agree wholeheartedly. That would be a good place to start things off.

Anne: *chuckles* In real life, put on some heavy armor. No...since you don't likely have that, put on a heavy coat, and weigh yourself down with fifty or so pounds of whatever you can find (that would be light chainmaile, if you are wondering). Now, walk around all day. After doing all that, come back and say that losing heath is silly.

Will has no effect on something such as this. Endurance, somewhat. Wearing armor should drastically reduce several stats. Agility, for one, as is is heavy. Endurance for the same reason. Health? Yes to that at a certain point, perhaps at half endurance. When you push your body past a certain point, you ARE damaging it. There is no arguing that.

[Anne Ominous]

hm, that would make sens. If i kept pushing myself to move around in it beyond what i could endure; as in endurance. we are stopped from acting beyond our endurance in the game, otherwise rather than being to tired to fight we would just hurt ourselves trying to.

I say losing heath is silly because if you wanted to do it like losing 1 hp every ten minutes it would b so negligable it would heal becor it could accumulate or be noticable... if you made it a more noticeable amount it would start to defeat the purpose of wearing armor. perhaps if not already implemented endurance % should affect regeneration of hp....

I also wanted to respond to the weight of lugging it around to say: if its weight is the real factor then shouldn't you have to sell it rather than dequip? you are still carrying it after all..

[The Shadow Nose]

Thats a good Idea Kiraki.

For a sort of easily-implementable version of this:

Imagine if you take a container object (like a sack) called a 'wardrobe' its basically a sack but contains only clothing items that can serve as an entire wardrobe for a character.

So, you buy and empty wardrobe and then place 1 torso armor, some pants, boots etc inside it.

Then when you activate it, it automatically switches your presently equiped items with the items in the wardrobe.

So you can have one wardrobe filled with battle gear, one for working gear, and another for formal occasions. Or any number you want. You are only limited by your carrying capacity.

Then when you want to change, its simply a matter of selecting one and switching your clothes with the clothes inside.

This should work well with the current equipables setup, adding multiple layers of clothes would be nice, but it would require quite a change in the layout.  


And as for an incentive to not wear heavy armor, perhaps it reduces the max running speed [I am wary of encouraging anything that would involve hp drain, a change in the combat mechanisms, or equipment disintegrating].

[Cherppow]

Hello,

just few of my opinions.

- I like the layered clothing idea in general, but I think mix & match overlapping separate meshes would be animators nightmare. Some visible common clothing would be nice. Dresses. \o/

- Natural resources --> dyes idea sounds fun

- I think wearing heavy armor should deplete ones stamina much faster than wearing light/none armor, I wouldn't go into reducing health though (except for some cursed armors). Maybe if one could continue fighting after stamina has run out, then it could begin to reduce health. Currently PS also has attribute requirements, that prevent you from wearing "too heavy" armour. Also note that irl doing exhausting stuff slowly makes you stronger.

- Temperature inside an armour would likely depend on the outside environment. Metals are good temp conductors.

- I agree there should be different advantages gained by wearing different clothing. Some are made to protect you, some to make you look charismatic, and so on. Also note that wearing a shiny armor can increase ones attractiveness. (just don't take that helmet off!) Job specific clothing sounds good.

- To me would seem pretty unrealistic seeing characters equip armour/clothing in mid-fight.

Edit

- I like the reduced running speed idea. Maybe extremely heavy plate could disable running alltogether due to both weight and cumbersomeness.

[Rolf Blacksmith]

Hmm, changing armors and generally clothing on the fly sounds rather unrealistic and, besides that, promotes power-gaming on the expense of roleplay (character's appearance changes completely within a moment).

Ambushed without wearing armor? Bad luck. Be better prepared next time, or, even better, don't let yourself be ambushed. I'd even support the already mentioned opinion that you have to put on and off your clothing in layers, so you cannot change your underwear when still being fully armored.

The idea of armor draining health if excessively used is somewhat silly when we're not able to push ourselves over the edge in other ways, e.g. running, mining or fighting.