<div id="post_message_558198"> Quote:
Originally Posted by Cantatus
If that's the case, I imagine it'll become much more apparent when people start playing the game and getting head items. If every race can wear the same exact looking helmets to cover their faces, it'd essentially be the same thing. Hopefully they'll adopt EQ2's ability to turn off all headpieces.

One of the nice things about EQ was, regardless of what people were wearing, you could tell someone's race just by looking at them. Halflings had big feet, Dwarves were stocky, Erudites had big heads, Ogres were fat, etc. Hopefully Vanguard will be able to have this still be the case beyond just how tall my character is. Even just looking at the screenshots of all the races next to each other, while they look nice, it's hard to tell which race is which.



Not sure why the bodies have to be so similar either. If they can stretch an item so both a Gnome and Half-Giant can wear it, why can't they make it so Gnomes and Half-Giants don't just look like tiny or huge Humans, respectively. They need to do more to emphasize the differences between the races. Make it so, from looking at any Vanguard screenshot, I can tell what race is it, rather than wondering if it's a Human, Elf, Half-Giant, etc.


We hope to have race specific animations in the game too, further differentiating between the races. So it's not about uni-posture or uni-animation (although since they can be all shared, you could be cursed and be forced to walk like an undead zombie, which would be pretty cool). And again, I won't back down on this technology decision -- while you guys haven't seen many outfits yet (there are many coming and in fact many that are done and just need to be hooked up), this technology allows us to make orders of magnitude more outfits/armors/etc. than if the skeletons were not shared, and what you look like, how unique you look, based on the items you have earned are are wearing, is what it's all about in an item-centric game like Vanguard. Plus, as I've mentioned elsewhere, we can do cool things like true morphing, where the size and shape of the body are permanently or temporarily changed due to spells, as well as a character's face. Plus, each and every NPC will look different in-game, both in terms of face and body, making the world much more immersive and varied. Designers can either choose that the NPC receive random customizations or specifically design an NPC to look a certain way (the fat baker, the studly guard, etc.).

So you haven't seen all of the outfits and variations, nor the race specific animations. I think the benefit is already clear both by my explanations of our tech and its advantages as well as the screenshots we've released, but as I said, there is much more coming that is much more varied and compelling. That said, I'm sure even after launch some people would have preferred something else -- you can't please everyone, and tech and design decisions have to be made. Having been involved with games that didn't use this advanced tech, I am more than confident we made the right choice, but ultimately it will be up to all of you to determine that. Perhaps screenshots and videos in the future will do so, or perhaps you'll see the advantage once in game, or after playing a while and seeing all the different outfits, the different tiers of armor, the various outfits for the other spheres (crafting, diplomacy, etc.).

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