Reduce Customisation Restrictions

[GiganticHowlslime]

Hi all, am noob.

Recently gotten to trying EFU, and I've had a really great experience so far. Thanks to all who've been involved with a maimed bride having the normal amount of panic attacks for someone in her situation.

I've recently gotten to the point where it makes sense for her to adjust her outfit to fit her new circumstances, and was kind of shocked to find the tailor system that's actively hostile to my intent every step of the way.

No robe adjustments.
No adding robes to new outfits.
No weapon modification.
No helmet modification.
No cloak modification.
Limited colours.
Limited armour pieces.
No modifying existing item appearance.

This is absolutely alien to me - every other server I've played on has a simple "Here's the open tailor in the starting area, have fun, don't be too exploitative or we'll bonk you." - and that system works. People make outfits how and as they want, and if anyone's use of such is particularly immersion-breaking, then there's always DM intervention for that. But typically, it's just a matter of letting you tell more stories with your appearance.

When I've raised this in the Discord, two arguments have been presented:

1) If robes are unrestricted, then people can make their fullplate look like a fancy coat.
Though I've never personally felt that someone else having their character look how they want is negatively impacting my experience, this seems more like an argument for restricting a specific few robes, on a specific few armour types. Not for gutting the system for everyone.

2) Cool appearances are an expensive prestige reward for questing.
This makes sense on an MMORPG, but less so on a roleplaying world. At the moment, it seems that the suggestion is for my character to become rich and powerful enough to quest to find the location where, for a huge sum of gold, and perhaps an application to a DM, I can successfully make her look like she's barely scraping by. This seems a little absurd. Nothing is stopping me from making an outfit that makes me look 'good' and bringing it in from the starting area. All I'm being restricted from is telling the story of a characters development, partly through their changes in outfit.

I might well just be screaming into a void full of dead horses here, but I really hope the team reconsiders this stance. For me, it's actually such a significant issue as to be a dealbreaker for the server for me, and that's a real shame. I just can't understand the concept that letting your players customise their characters is something you want to restrict as heavily as this.

[Renouncer]

I would like to see robe options on clothing. I can see the argument to keep them restricted on actual armour though.

[GiganticHowlslime]

Robes over armour:
(Or "bases" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bases_(fashion) )

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I could go on. Robes on armour is not a bad thing. People actively stretching an available system to remove any armoured appearance is.... I guess a little irritating to some people, but I boggle at the mind that would decide that such minor irritation is worth ruining peoples ability to design their character how they want.

I went on a big adventure last night and one guy actually griped IC that they hated how their armour looked. I've already had to trash an item that gives me much-needed AC because it looked like an ugly square of turd-brown lego with tasteless lumps of metal in it and base NWN 'spiky leather' bits. (itself looking more like Studded Leather than the Cloth it was meant to be).

Just.... Why? How is it making the server better to prohibit a bit of fashion souls?

[GiganticHowlslime]

As far as I'm aware, there's not many ways to manage helmets under hoods/hats in NWN.

I believe it can be done with certain 'cloak hats', but I've never seen anyone choose to do that on any server where that's been an available possibility, mainly because it looked a bit silly and unrealistic, so people went with stuff that looked good instead.

Once again, there's historical and fantasy comparisons:

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I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic or not, though.  I'm assuming not!

[ADarkDaysKnight]

You can customize a new set of armor at the leatherworker, armorer and tailor that can be found in the module, fairly close to the main hub. These are, however, quite expensive depending on the item you make. Full plate will naturally be more expensive than cloth for instance. This armor will be a brand new set of equipment, with a small amount of optional customized stats for a fee. Quest and faction related armor cannot be customized.

Dyes can also be purchased from the tailor.

[Bearic]

That's part of the ascetic for the setting. Generally, people not a part of a faction don't have the best looking clothes. The stuff you find in quests is taken off dead adventurers, monsters or something similar.

EFU has always been based around a despotic and trying environment where powers are vying all at once for any hope of control. It's not to punish players by preventing them to make interesting fashion choices, but to reinforce a tone, and really shine any one that can still manage to otherwise find these benefits.

[GiganticHowlslime]

Really not pursuing the 'best looking' clothes. I can make fancy and swanky looking armour using the very limited selection, or I could've just made the fanciest looking clothing to arrive in and worn that. Heck, I did that, because that was my character's backstory. I'm only struggling now that I'm trying to naturally progress from "Wearing a super fancy, fragile dress" to "Looking like I fit the setting".

I'm trying to explicitly make my equipment look cobbled together from trash and what I came here in, a tattered remnant of a life left behind now forced to adapt to this horrible, dangerous new place. As in, I'm trying my best to reinforce the setting you're trying to create. I'm being stifled in doing this by a system put in place to stop me doing the thing it's not stopping me from doing, but stopping me doing the thing it's meant to be forcing me to do.

I'm trying to:

Get a ragged, dirty looking scarf, rather than a billowing, full-length magic cloak.
Get a simple cloth hood to hide my elfiness, rather than an ornate, enchanted, polygonal metal helmet that are so common I find them in charity boxes and trash.
Make a ragged outfit with a skirt out of the remains of my character's arrival clothing. This is entirely impossible, because skirts aren't possible to modify, since they're robes.

I want to look like my toon is desperately struggling to make their way in a despotic, trying environment. This isn't about me wanting to look like a high noble fancy-pants superhero, it's about having access to tools that allow me to fit into the setting you're trying to portray.

I'm being funneled towards just slapping whatever gear I find on for the stats, because everything is equally ugly and uneditable, so why even try?

Sorry for coming across as hostile, if I am. It's just been so disappointing to enjoy the server so much up until now, and find myself running into an attempt to force me to look like a video-gamey mess, rather than sticking to the setting. The idea that "looking like a desperate, ragged mess" is something I need to acquire resources, power, and explore deep into the lower rings to do - As in, things that require me to -not- be a desperate ragged mess - is so backwards as to be comical.

Meme for less hostility:
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[Howlando]

Thank you for your feedback. I completely understand your perspective. In our 15+ years of existence, this has been a common issue that has been raised by other new players over time.

Allow me to explain our general policy -

1) After a few days, most new characters will have the resources to make an enchanted set of any armor type to their aesthetic preferences that will be basically as good as anything they're likely to find on their own (faction loot / DM loot / some very rare specific items being the exception as these items are usually the best in their class)

2) We don't like to permit customizing existing ambient loot (sometimes they can be dyed), because generally these items are specifically designed by a DM to have a look (and indeed sometimes even being "balanced" by having good properties but otherwise being ugly or bad looking). I am personally particularly opposed to having full-plate that has an appearance identical to (for example) the Cleric's Robe, as that can be misleading to other players in PvP situations. Unless it's a very rare item, full-plate should be visibly full-plate. NWN's graphics aren't good enough to convincingly represent robes over bulky armor. Tabards are implemented as appropriate on some armor models, but frequently they are used to represent slightly superior items and not just the first random trash you find from some dead goblins.

All that said, I think most EFU veteran players rapidly do learn how to get the look that they want after a couple of days and indeed many find it a pleasing challenge. Looking good isn't something that will happen on day one, but is another thing to work towards and is really just part of the game.

Get a ragged, dirty looking scarf, rather than a billowing, full-length magic cloak.
Get a simple cloth hood to hide my elfiness, rather than an ornate, enchanted, polygonal metal helmet that are so common I find them in charity boxes and trash.
Make a ragged outfit with a skirt out of the remains of my character's arrival clothing. This is entirely impossible, because skirts aren't possible to modify, since they're robes.

There are many scarf-items (cloak slot) with useful properties that can be found. You don't have to wear a billowing magical cloak.

There are a wide variety of useful invisible head slot items (earrings, necklaces, etc.) that can be found (or some cloak slots that are slightly better but don't allow you to equip a helmet). It's also quite common among many players to just not wear a helmet until or unless they find something that they like. It's a slight but very manageable mechanical sacrifice. We are working to increase the variety and availability of invisible slot items. When supported by models, you can type "/c togglehood" to have a hood.

Not sure I understand exactly what you mean in terms of adding a skirt, but again if there's a look you want you can probably make it. Perhaps in a perfect world we would implement some modest customizability for existing items, but again NWN's armor models are rather clunky and it's just easier to turn off the option altogether rather than see egregious and implausible modifications that don't respect the original theme of the item. We have many thousands of items, and identifying specific items according to their look is also something that experienced EFU players will come to be able to do.

I appreciate your passion about this issue. I genuinely think that if you choose to continue playing EFU you will get the knack of achieving a great aesthetic for your character and will come to understand as we do that our policies are for the best. It is a real achievement to unlock or acquire the best outfits available in this ancient game, and this is something that should not be available to a day one PC.

[GiganticHowlslime]

With all the love - if it's an issue that's regularly raised by new players, is it possible that it's one of the things that's putting people off, and making it hard for them to enjoy the server on their arrival? Is that it's bought up so often perhaps a suggestion it might have been a bad decision that could due with some reconsideration? After all, for every person who's willing to raise an issue, there's a dozen that sit in quiet resentment, or give up and leave.

With regard to that, would you consider allowing the following at tailors?

- The ability to make a statless, plain cloak, the appearance of which you can modify to create the various half-cloaks, scarves, and so on.
- As above, for hoods and helmets.
- Robes to be added to statless, plain clothes.

Even accepting the desire for players to wear the dev-designed items and to not modify them, the above three points shouldn't disrupt anything, no?

As an anecdote - on many servers, you can walk into the starting tailor, and turn your helmet into an ostentatious lich-king crown with giant sparkling gems on every point. It's a bizarrely high-fantasy appearance that would be inappropriate in almost any setting. I've seen this crown available on many servers. You can make a level 1 PC and stomp out into town looking like Glam Metal Sauron.

And I've never seen anyone using it. Because when people are given total, limitless freedom with their outfits, just as they are with their characters speech and actions, they try and do things that support and enhance the setting, not damage it.

[Scumlord Spiffy]

This is also a 'do I want to script this insanely complicated and massively bloated way to implement this?'

As someone who has played with tailoring scripts in the past, here's just a few of things someone scripting this has to consider.

1. What appearances do we wish to allow? Project Q, unfortunately, has some adult themes inappropriate for EFU- and while indeed most players are tasteful enough not to do this, you will have someone who gets drunk and thinks it's the funniest shit in the world. You have to find the 2da number of this particular appearance in the massively bloated project Q hak- who, instead of removing old assets, simply write over the old ones with new ones, so you have to figure out which asset is in current use.
2. What happens if I accidently skip the appearance I want? There's HUNDREDS of torso models, do I want a 'back' option? - This sounds simple, but it really isn't, this can be dozens of lines of buggy new code which, when referring to issue one, is a way to exploit the 'skip' function, so you have to write cases again for the 'back up' part.
3. How much should it cost? Certain appearances imply a certain level of savvy, should they cost more? Headaches...
4.  What about hak appearances that do not work with 'large phenotypes?' - Say, someone is cursed to become FAT, and they go the tailor and exploit the fact that the hak model forces them into a slimming, pleasing appearance. Is that an exploit? How do I enforce it?
5. Some of the project q cloaks are entirely inappropriate for the city of rings- namely, the deity cloaks, most of which have no representation of presence in the City itself.  While the Sunpurse cloak uses the Lathander model, it's more of a clever use of an existing asset than purposefully designing the logo for IG use.

So on and so forth...

This is HOURS and HOURS of work that is often simply unrewarding when you can create things like Eldritch Archer and other cool perks for players to play with in game.

Sometimes, looking awesome is an investment that needs more than money, it needs achievements, and DMs are never stingy with DM loot or cool looking rewards in my experience.

[Howlando]

With all the love - if it's an issue that's regularly raised by new players, is it possible that it's one of the things that's putting people off, and making it hard for them to enjoy the server on their arrival? Is that it's bought up so often perhaps a suggestion it might have been a bad decision that could due with some reconsideration? After all, for every person who's willing to raise an issue, there's a dozen that sit in quiet resentment, or give up and leave.

I think I more meant that this is something new players are sometimes surprised with. Even that to be honest isn't quite right, maybe one new player every couple of years will comment upon this issue in particular but as far as I can recall everyone has grown to understand and embrace our ways. It's ultimately an extremely trivial thing, and I think what I hoped to accomplish with my post is helping you understand that with time almost everyone gets used to how the various quirks of EFU works and begins to either appreciate it or realize this isn't the server for them.

I mean - we also control where new PCs can rest, and don't allow unrestricted sales of ambient loot to NPC merchants (gold control), and we don't have mechanical parties... these, and many other things, require some adjustment. I understand that and we do want to make the learning curve of EFU easier. However, we're also not interested in fundamentally changing our core principles just to attract new players. We may have too many players as it is, given the limitations of the DM team. It's more important that for EFU to continue to prosper that we attract the right kind of players.

With regard to that, would you consider allowing the following at tailors?

- The ability to make a statless, plain cloak, the appearance of which you can modify to create the various half-cloaks, scarves, and so on.
- As above, for hoods and helmets.
- Robes to be added to statless, plain clothes.

Most of the cloak models aren't appropriate for EFU, but certainly the standard cloak models + scarf should be available if they aren't already.
Hoods is just a matter of typing a voice command.
Most helm models are available, we do restrict many of the more interesting ones.
As far as I can recall tabards can be added to standard clothing via the tailor.

As an anecdote - on many servers, you can walk into the starting tailor, and turn your helmet into an ostentatious lich-king crown with giant sparkling gems on every point. It's a bizarrely high-fantasy appearance that would be inappropriate in almost any setting. I've seen this crown available on many servers. You can make a level 1 PC and stomp out into town looking like Glam Metal Sauron.

And I've never seen anyone using it. Because when people are given total, limitless freedom with their outfits, just as they are with their characters speech and actions, they try and do things that support and enhance the setting, not damage it.

Okay, well, I can guarantee you that if we had the fancy crown model (which we do not in fact reserve pretty much exclusively for ONE specific actual important plot item that most characters will never even see) people would absolutely wear it and the model's significance would be damaged.

Overall, it is true that we are sparing in our assets. If you see a PC wielding a fancy weapon, or a glowing weapon, or have a jeweled crown, or have wings, or glowing-eyes, or a tail, you know that this will be significant in some way. This general philosophy of restraint is not something we are going to change.

But certainly, if there isn't a mundane scarf model available in a shop somewhere we will be sure to add it.

[GiganticHowlslime]

(stuff)

Totally appreciate some of the script-based reasons, I can imagine it's a bit of a fuss to code in exceptions.

maybe one new player every couple of years will comment upon this issue in particular but as far as I can recall everyone has grown to understand and embrace our ways.

I'd suggest maybe it's a "Because the rest of the stuff is so good, they suffer through it.", as I'm trying to do!

Everything else I totally respect as unique server things - no parties is fine, no 'dump loot into vendor' is a weird but totally understandable idea that prevents a more MMO economy, it's all good. All the unique stuff is understandable. I just really like having my outfits match my RP and help tell a character's story, so it's utterly jarring to find a server that seems to be pushing me to put on a brown bin bag and a janky polygonal boar helmet and give up on that ridiculous notion.

Most of the cloak models aren't appropriate for EFU, but certainly the standard cloak models + scarf should be available if they aren't already.
Hoods is just a matter of typing a voice command.
Most helm models are available, we do restrict many of the more interesting ones.
As far as I can recall tabards can be added to standard clothing via the tailor.

I can't find anywhere to adjust or buy cloaks, yet - the tailor has no option to adjust them, and only one fancy enchanted one for sale.
The hood command I wasn't aware of, that helps a bit, thanks.
I assume the helmets are available at a smith somewhere, as I can find no way to custom-make a helmet.

Tabards (and skirts/jackets/wraps/robes) are specifically prevented in tailoring even on basic cloth. The tailor (Salarius the VI) declares 'You are wearing a robe which I can't model' when asked to duplicate my existing clothing, and has no option available for adding or adjusting the robe on any clothing.

If it could just be fixed to allow robes on useless, equivalent-to-being-naked cloth armour, I'd be enormously grateful. This is the same service that is offered to all characters in the creation area - and I've honestly come close to making a new character explicity to take advantage of this, then drop-trade my outfit over, but I suspect this'd be frowned upon.

To really drill down, I hope these aren't asking the server to 'adjust its core principle's....

- Can the in-game tailor please add robes to cloth outfits, just like the New Character Area tailor can.
- Could the in-game tailor also maybe sell a few scarves and cloaks.

That's really about the core of my needs. It'd be lovely to see the server adopt a MUCH freer stance on customisation, but I can probably drag myself through with these little details.

[Howlando]

I just really like having my outfits match my RP and help tell a character's story, so it's utterly jarring to find a server that seems to be pushing me to put on a brown bin bag and a janky polygonal boar helmet and give up on that ridiculous notion.

We want the the equipment to tell the story also.

Which means, for a while, your character might be using odd pig-helmets off a dead goblin, or might be painstakingly collecting bits of cloth from piles of garbage to painstakingly sew together a "Trash Picker's Scarf", or making an amulet from all kinds of useless little trinkets you find.... but then perhaps join a faction, or start your own, or plunder your way across the Rings and acquire dazzling ornate robes from some distant land....

To really drill down, I hope these aren't asking the server to 'adjust its core principle's....

- Can the in-game tailor please add robes to cloth outfits, just like the New Character Area tailor can.
- Could the in-game tailor also maybe sell a few scarves and cloaks.

I was puzzled by your remark, but it turns out that whoever set up the Peerage tailor (which was relatively recently) neglected to add the variable to permit the tabards. So we'll fix that at some point.

We will also look into increasing the availability of scarves and cloaks.