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This is a feature that I absolutely love in MMO's. Not having it is actually a big turn-off for me, nowadays.
I find it especially important in games like FFXIV. With these kinds of games, I play them primarily for the lore, world, and community. It really breaks story immersion for me when I'm forced to run around in a weird clown suit where everything is mismatched while I'm leveling.
To clarify what I'm talking about, it's the feature whereby you have a second equipment screen where you can equip gear. This second set of gear adds nothing to your stats, but it overrides the appearance of your real gear.
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"Outside the dream world, life can be harsh--even cruel, but it is life"
there are plans to add vanity slots after the release of ARR
"Nova Crystallis: How is progress on the vanity slot system coming along? Will it still be released in a later patch or might it make it for the official release?
Yoshida: The design is already in the system, so it’s just deciding when to implement it. If we sort of add that slot to the UI now it won’t work straight away so it’s just about the timing. I probably won’t add it in the beginning because it might be too complicated and won’t look great, so maybe in six month’s time."
Oh, nice. Maybe if I pester the devs a little once the game goes live, they'll turn the feature on early.
I guess they want to delay it, so they can build up a decent roster of gear. But I don't really see that as necessary. Give people a chance to set themselves apart early on.
One of the best things about FF is its iconic characters. Even if you hate certain characters, they've always had really unique-looking protagonists.
They even managed to pull it off in the SNES era. Almost all of FF6's many playable characters look really unique. They should give people a chance to invent a style of their own.
It may also have to do with Artifact Armor. Might just see people use it to stay in their Artifact Armor, and therefore more high level armor (or nice looking armor in general) will be needed to help curtail this from happening. Though it's as you say, some might want to use low level gear to get their in game "look" and not have to worry about things such as aesthetics at that point. Maybe a few months in they'll release it as opposed to an extended length of time by comparison.
Artifact Armor are piece of gear obtained by quest that are specific for Jobs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6C5E-yfLK8
They were job specific armors that could only be obtained through quests related to that job. In FFXI it sometimes took an entire party helping you grind areas and complete difficult tasks to unlock each piece individually.
In FFXIV 1.0 each job had a storyline of it's own, and you could learn new abilities and eventually get artifact armor that resembles what class you have mastered.
Here's an example of one such quest (one of many in the path to becoming a paladin).
Note: If you want to watch the entire Paladin storyline, then you might want to find a video that starts at the beginning. This one is towards the end and may have plot twists.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20YcoD5t4Zo
WHM, BLM and DRG all looked pretty awesome. Then paladins and warriors with skirts made me a little wary. But then I saw the male bard wearing high heels...
All in all, this is quite demoralizing.
They tend to look a little different on male characters. Though with regards to paladin, it's just because it appears to be a scale/chain suit that makes it look like it's a skirt at first glance. The "shirt" like armor that's covering their body.
Their past and history in this game also attributes to the changes between FFXI and FFXIV's paladin artifact set (I don't want to get into the lore of Eorzea's Paladins in case people want to find that out for themselves when they have whole new paladin quests in 2.0).
I dislike gear overwrites like how the OP is asking for.
Vanity slots are fine as in I have town clothes I can wear around for fun, but when you can overwrite the look of any piece of gear it really takes away from the lore / affect / style of what the gear was designed for in the first place.
Imagine if you could overwrite a Scorpion Harness with a leather harness.....
With FF games you are getting detailed textures,gear so i don't understand the need for appearance gear,well i do understand it but,there are much better options as i will explain.
The best idea i saw while playing Runes of Magic and i am sure other games have the same idea.What they did was use a system that allowed you to mix two items to receive the stats of one and the looks of the other.It was a great idea,gives you the best of two worlds.So as you can see it is quite doable without getting into fake or unrealistic cosmetic looks that have nothing to do with what you are really wearing.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!