It all depends on your world of course, but I'd like to play a game that took a different approach. Why not have the gear provide nothing but utility and no stats by default? I.e. wearing regular clothing doesn't help reduce damage, leather armor reduces it a little, chain more so and plate even more. They don't in and of themselves make your character stronger or have more HP (which is still a bit of a WTF moment for me, how does the gear make you tougher in a way that's not represented by it's defensive qualities?). You'd have to balance the defensive qualities with something else though, or plate becomes the obvious choice for everyone, including mages and thieves. I would argue that having all gear provide the same armor level would be a bit much for me to accept as a player without heavy justification.

Some games have taken such approach, I think Mortal Online is one of them. There gear only have your logical defense stats and it also slows you down and affects your mana to avoid rogues and mages running around inplate by default (although there, it instead created opposite effect, naked mages and thieves.. the irony). I was considering a system which devided gear into several tiers of defense, from very light (rugs/ light robe/ assassins gear) to heavy (plate armor etc). With such system, player would select appropriate tier for their play style, however there is still issue of preventing people to go naked.

One could argue that if there is social only armor in such system, free of negative or positive effects mages and rogues would chose to wear it instead of being naked, which is a valid argument I guess.

You might introduce quality levels and wear levels to differentiate a bit and give crafters something to do. Crude, low quality, average, high quality, master work, etc for quality, affecting weight and armor perhaps. Then you could have rusted gear, damaged gear, unmaintained gear, etc with similar effects. Allow players to upgrade the quality level and repair any wear.
Any stats that were provided by the gear would come from enchantments (which is presumably why a piece of gear would give +10 strength in the first place, unless it's powered armor or something). So you could enchant a chain bikini to give +10 strength or you could enchant a steel cuirass to give +10 strength, the underlying gear wouldn't matter. Allow players to add, remove or swap enchantments, and they the can do whatever they want with their gear.

Enchants is something I have considered, but I am not sure it is a good choice due to confusion reasons mentioned above.

The issue then becomes how do you encourage players to go to new places and get the gear there? By providing new looking stuff those that are interested in that sort of thing will go get it. You could also provide new types of enchantment, but you'd have to be careful about mudflation here too. You could possibly focus on things other than gear progression. That doesn't really exist in real life for example. There's really only quality and wear in real life (rolling things like construction technique and materials into the quality level). I've always viewed individual character development much more highly than gear progression. Give players things to chase other than the goal of having 10K armor or 100K HP. Real people generally fought and risked their lives for something other than the sword of dragonslaying, such as fame, wealth, duty, or a higher purpose.

That's a whole new ballgame of course, and every player wants different things, and you can't possibly hope to provide everything.

The bold part is probably the main question of this topic. How to encourage people to develop their characters for other reasons then new gear? If a game is PvE focused, players need rewards. Champions Online does have some minor rewards in terms of non visual items with stats, but that together with skill advancement is not enough imho. I am brainstorming implementations of some type of character bound enchants/runes/visual effects, but have not come long which is why I started this discussion ^^

What untraditinal ways to advance your character are there, besides talents, gear and player bound enchants?

[quote name='Caldenfor' timestamp='1312395467' post='4844162']
Sorry, I didn't pay direct attention to social clothing. In that regard, Social clothing should be just that, social. It doesn't belong in combat unless you want to sacrifice your armor for it. People shouldn't be running around the woods fighting dragons wearing a tuxedo.

Thus, my stance is that social clothing should only give social benefits, not combat. Perhaps you can have work clothes that increase your crafting capabilities when worn?

Yeah, that seems to be the general approach to armor. However I am quite big fan of Manga and Anime, where most characters are very unique dressed, the way they like it, which greatly improves their character depth. However, recreating similar system in a mmo seems to be quite difficult, which is why I mentioned Champions Online which combined best of the two worlds imho and was curious if there were any alternatives except for that. Seems not ^^
[/quote]

I really enjoy watching Anime, don't read Manga, and I understand your desire for different looks. I didn't expand upon the basics, but if you look at what Ultima Online did you could do something that fits the best of both worlds. Allow some clothing to be worn over armor. This would give you more than just the look of the armor, but also the ability to conceal your armor should you desire to. This could lead to art design issues, character model issues, and even potentially "load lag" issues.

The gear system is very closely linked to the game design so there are different answers depending on the aim. Some games by concept alone require many many different customization options while other concepts don't have high requirements in that department.

The issue then becomes how do you encourage players to go to new places and get the gear there? By providing new looking stuff those that are interested in that sort of thing will go get it. You could also provide new types of enchantment, but you'd have to be careful about mudflation here too. You could possibly focus on things other than gear progression. That doesn't really exist in real life for example. There's really only quality and wear in real life (rolling things like construction technique and materials into the quality level). I've always viewed individual character development much more highly than gear progression. Give players things to chase other than the goal of having 10K armor or 100K HP. Real people generally fought and risked their lives for something other than the sword of dragonslaying, such as fame, wealth, duty, or a higher purpose.

That's a whole new ballgame of course, and every player wants different things, and you can't possibly hope to provide everything.

I truly like Telgin's analysis here. Players don't just play the game for the gear, they play it for the experience of doing so. MMO's sadly, don't directly provide real-world influnce (unless you really want to get into a discussion of purpose, philosophy and possibly metaphysics but you get my point). The influence is strictly kept to the in-game world. That being said, the attachment between a player and the player character comes from the experience of the player living vicariously through the life of the player character and the feelings of character progression, overcoming challenges, and, hopefully in the end, saving the day so the sun can once again rise over the horizon. It may not be about the armor itself in terms of how and why they got it. The armor worn can act as a trophy for one's deeds, trophy that allow other players to know something about the character at first glance. The prestige is an important factor, especially in mmos. Take WoW for instance. In the battlegrounds, i could be fighting any player with mis-matched gear they probably got at the auction house and not even an eyelash. When i see an enemy player walking up to me in a full Teir Set (especially back in vanilla wow) and be absolutely terrified. I don't even know this character but i know what this character has done just by looking at them. Honestly, you can't put a price on that kind of prominence. Gear aside, the same thing could have been said in a game like Guild Wars. The gear gives your character a slight edge but not an overwhelming one like wow. But again, if i saw a player walking around in a 15k set (old GW) i knew that they had invested significant time, energy and skill into that character and would not go down easy.

The armor itself is a trophy of ones accomplishments. Social gear could work like that as well. Lets say you slay an extremely powerful Demon King and one of the peices of loot, lets say, is a t-shirt (a poor example but keep reading). You walk into town wearing said social item and other players walk up to you and either compliment you or rush up to right-click, inspect. "Yes, I slew that Demon King AND I took his shirt!" The shirt is a symbol of your character's accomplishments so far and more challenges with more trophies producing such a social effect will make players want to press forward to proceed to the next area.

Another point i want to make is if the challenge is tough but isn't necessary. The rewards are well earned though. Lets say the quest is to bypass through the Demon King's castle to get across to the other side. The bonus is if you find and slay him. Not an easy feat. One party could have simply snuck through to the other side while another could have gone the extra mile and slew the king (thereby earning the shirt). The rewards for going the extra mile can be a nice little sweet spot in the game and may even rise the reaction from the other party "hey, i kind of want that shirt too" (adding re playability to the mix as well).

Overall, its not just about the armor when thinking about player-character bond but the story behind getting the armor that can really strengthen the relationship between the two individuals.

[quote name='Telgin' timestamp='1312397668' post='4844170']
The issue then becomes how do you encourage players to go to new places and get the gear there? By providing new looking stuff those that are interested in that sort of thing will go get it. You could also provide new types of enchantment, but you'd have to be careful about mudflation here too. You could possibly focus on things other than gear progression. That doesn't really exist in real life for example. There's really only quality and wear in real life (rolling things like construction technique and materials into the quality level). I've always viewed individual character development much more highly than gear progression. Give players things to chase other than the goal of having 10K armor or 100K HP. Real people generally fought and risked their lives for something other than the sword of dragonslaying, such as fame, wealth, duty, or a higher purpose.

That's a whole new ballgame of course, and every player wants different things, and you can't possibly hope to provide everything.

I truly like Telgin's analysis here. Players don't just play the game for the gear, they play it for the experience of doing so. MMO's sadly, don't directly provide real-world influnce (unless you really want to get into a discussion of purpose, philosophy and possibly metaphysics but you get my point). The influence is strictly kept to the in-game world. That being said, the attachment between a player and the player character comes from the experience of the player living vicariously through the life of the player character and the feelings of character progression, overcoming challenges, and, hopefully in the end, saving the day so the sun can once again rise over the horizon. It may not be about the armor itself in terms of how and why they got it. The armor worn can act as a trophy for one's deeds, trophy that allow other players to know something about the character at first glance. The prestige is an important factor, especially in mmos. Take WoW for instance. In the battlegrounds, i could be fighting any player with mis-matched gear they probably got at the auction house and not even an eyelash. When i see an enemy player walking up to me in a full Teir Set (especially back in vanilla wow) and be absolutely terrified. I don't even know this character but i know what this character has done just by looking at them. Honestly, you can't put a price on that kind of prominence. Gear aside, the same thing could have been said in a game like Guild Wars. The gear gives your character a slight edge but not an overwhelming one like wow. But again, if i saw a player walking around in a 15k set (old GW) i knew that they had invested significant time, energy and skill into that character and would not go down easy.

The armor itself is a trophy of ones accomplishments. Social gear could work like that as well. Lets say you slay an extremely powerful Demon King and one of the peices of loot, lets say, is a t-shirt (a poor example but keep reading). You walk into town wearing said social item and other players walk up to you and either compliment you or rush up to right-click, inspect. "Yes, I slew that Demon King AND I took his shirt!" The shirt is a symbol of your character's accomplishments so far and more challenges with more trophies producing such a social effect will make players want to press forward to proceed to the next area.

Another point i want to make is if the challenge is tough but isn't necessary. The rewards are well earned though. Lets say the quest is to bypass through the Demon King's castle to get across to the other side. The bonus is if you find and slay him. Not an easy feat. One party could have simply snuck through to the other side while another could have gone the extra mile and slew the king (thereby earning the shirt). The rewards for going the extra mile can be a nice little sweet spot in the game and may even rise the reaction from the other party "hey, i kind of want that shirt too" (adding re playability to the mix as well).

Overall, its not just about the armor when thinking about player-character bond but the story behind getting the armor that can really strengthen the relationship between the two individuals.
[/quote]

On the killing to acquire a collectible item you could take it a step further. Have certain rare items be able to be acquired, but not an instant drop gear. Acquire rare resources that can be used to create very specific, rare, collectible pieces of gear. An example of the aim would be the Ranger armor from Ultima Online. In UO it was obtained through a newbie ticket system that ceased after a certain period of time. This then caused the Ranger Armor, same look as studded armor but green in color, to be a rarity and you could collect each piece of armor to complete the set. The items don't necessarily have to be more powerful, but they have to be able to make the earner/owner stand out for their accomplishment. It could be done similar to EQ Epic quests were done. Collect all of these random/rare/difficult to obtain items and fashion them into something for the individual. The prevention of escalating the power curve between regular gear and special gear needs to be maintained.

I am not sure if it would be possible, but a fantasy example would be raiding a massive giant castle, defeating the lord giant of the manor, and removing a piece of his skin. Take the skin, gather the other necessary ingredients and then create the rare piece of gear/item to display. Similar to Trophies in Dark Age of Camelot, but rather than just decorating your house you could possibly make gear/tools/etc that only a few would ever obtain. The giant could be on a long respawn timer, or he could never return, or another giant could move in to the castle after an amount of time. The Giant King is dead! So the next toughest one tries to take over. The players involved with the killing of said Giant would then be able to sell/trade/craft the skin and even collect a whole set of the end products making them quite collectible. If you use it, it will still break down, so most people won't be using them willy nilly.



To influence players into exploring and going to far distant places is to properly spread out the content of your game. Don't make X spot the only place to be to develop your character. Provide incentive to go off the beaten path and into the depths of far away caverns. For instance, if the only place to acquire Rubies would be by going into a cave beneath the exterior of a volcano, people will go there if the rubies are of value. Just don't place all of the value into a small amount of land area.

For my game I'm going with the enchantment option.

Clothing starts with no stats... but players can enchant the clothing to have stats. Thereby allowing players to wear whatever they want, and stat it the way they want. Then you don't end up with everyone wearing the same top level gear for their level range... and looking like a bunch of clones.

Clothing can still be hard to obtain... as it is a vanity item. So you can make it as rare as you want. You can also make the enchantment items as rare as you want. You give players more things to collect, give npcs/chests/monsters more variety of items to give, give players more control over what stats go on what, and you avoid the clone issue.

So yeah, I'm definitely using the enchantment approach. This way you don't have to worry about having armor and then having vanity clothing over the armor (2 sets of clothes, like some mmos do) You just have the vanity armor that you like the look of, and you put stats on it.

Need to have armor and normal clothing automatically switch out. Very little is more annoying than have to spend a bunch of time in any sort of menu to min-max, WHEN you're just repeating an old action without any changes.