I understand I am not the first to make a post offering feedback for the new transmogging system, but I would like to focus on the Roleplayer’s perspective, given that I am one (big shock I know).
What has Improved (For me):
Being a relatively new player to WoW, the new UI is a needed coat of paint. It is fresh, intuitive and large. I could say a lot, but I think saying little means more here: It is in line with the modernisation of WoW’s UI, for the better.
The ‘Custom Sets’ tab actually offers us -more- space to save transmogs. From my testing it can go up to 25 individual saved outfits (but it feels as if it could be bugged, and in actual fact be higher). This is highly useful as someone who has maxed out their 20 transmog slots on retail for their RP mains, and has to save mogs as external screenshots ( hard times, I know).
The outfit slot system is novel (if very expensive), and I think I will get some good use out of it with only a few outfit slots. In RP, this will mainly come down to In-character outfit changes: <My character has come out of combat, so removes some of their armour panels.> [Changing armoured mog to shirt and trousers] (As an example). With this new system, I can now do that without having to spawn a transmog vendor.
For the time I do spend doing content, it’ll be nice to keep a mog thats easy on the eyes for casual play, and suits my character’s themes. Often times I can happily tolerate wearing content gear unmogged until I have all the nice, decent iLvl items that I need, but -tolerate- is certainly the key word.
The Negatives (For RPers):
Individual item transmogging. This is probably the biggest downside for RPers. Does your character live in dreary Gilneas where it always rains? They wear a hood, I expect, to keep dry. When you walk into a tavern out of the damp and the cold: </e bill draws back his hood.> And so you open your bags and swap your equipped, transmogged hood with another item, mogged to a trading post scarf. In the new system, you cannot do this. The new alternative is to have a whole outfit slot dedicated to a save that is exactly the same, aside from the difference in head slot. This may feel somewhat niche at first, but I will list all of the different variants of individual item transmog swaps -I- have used in RP. Undoubtedly other RPers will have used even more:
Hood
Backpack
Cloak
Quiver
Weapons (I have a character who carries 3 knives, a sword, a bow and a chakram, so thats 6 individually transmogged weapons carried at one time!)
Gloves
Shoes
Coat (On chest slot)
With all these variants potentially just for one outfit, the outfit slots simply don’t account for the need, and even if they did, are beyond prohibitively expensive (I won’t even go into that). This is plainly a loss in functionality for us. Either you pay for the outfit slots (And then its no longer cheaper) or you break immersion mid RP to transmog an individual item (with weapons now costing upwards of 1,000 gold a change!!)
The biggest one for me is the price scaling. From what I can tell, the price scales based on character level, rather than iLvl. Personally, I make a significant change to my character’s transmog as much as once a day, for RP reasons. While some of these are routine outfits, a good proportion are bespoke sets related to a single RP session, like an event. As it stands, I pay as little as 10 gold for this.
When we RP, we don’t need to fight end-tier mobs in end-tier zones. As a result, an RPer can equip an heirloom, gear upgrade or low iLvl set of ‘RP gear’ that allows us to have the cosmetics we want for RP, for a low cost. That 10 gold figure, is 4.4k with my 80 Warrior on the beta. And this is an accurate ballpark figure. I’ve seen as low as 3k~ and as high as 7k~. Let us just be very clear in this case: That is 440 times more expensive. There is no way of avoiding it. It can be mitigated with the outfit system, but god forbid your character has an extensive wardrobe. And this seriously puts a dampener on the creative options for spontaneous changes to an outfit. Especially with this, I’d emphasize my personal standpoint; having spent less than 200,000 gold on transmogging across 4 extensively played characters over my 2 years on AD, despite my RP, despite doing heroic raiding and despite rampant evenings of roof-sitting where I’d chat with my friends and design transmog after transmog, show them off but for effectively no fee. There is no way this system is cheaper for me and those who play similarly. I think it would be prohibitively more expensive.
Despite the primary aim of this post - for RPers - I want to touch on some other areas where I see a detrimental impact of this system:
For all our roof-sitters I mentioned earlier. Sometimes its nice to come home, turn your brain off and just relax, chat and mess around with your friends. Experimenting with transmogs has been a massive part of that for me, and something I see for plenty of others. I could cite a dozen names of people I personally know who do this, without even asking around. With the prices as they are, this couldn’t happen.
This system is advertised to make things cheaper for Raiders and other content goers, but some guilds have themed raid nights, where they come up with bespoke mogs for that night. Some guilds will do this every week, and that could be a 7k gold charge every time. Compared to Retail thats 3~ remogs of end-tier gear. It certainly isn’t cheaper, and probably doesn’t break even.
Creativity in general will suffer from this. Some people just like to transmog. Experiment with outfits. Make something new. I think its been underestimated just how often people do this, with the costs associated. Certainly it isn’t true for everyone, but it is for a decent number.
That does lead nicely to the questions: Why does somebody have to lose here? Why does the system have to be designed in a way that someone is worse off? Especially given that we were told it would be cheaper.
Fixes(?):
The one immediate fix that comes to mind, is: Why not both? For those issues I mentioned for RPers especially. Why can’t the ‘Custom Sets’ tab come with an ‘Apply Transmog’ button that functions exactly the same as the existing system. One time cost to apply the mog permenantly to a specific item that can only be cleared or overridden by another ‘Custom Sets’ change. (Whilst I get that the answer to the ‘why’ could be: ‘Because we’ve already coded it and it’d be too hard to reverse integrate’ frankly I think what I suggest could’ve been included from the bottom up. So it feels like an oversight.) If the existing system of single-time applications was integrated with the new one, with the current price scaling based on iLvl I think it would solve so much grief especially within the RP community.
Let us recall, the main issue players had with the existing transmog system was the cost. That could have been solved far more simply than this. Point being, the old system certainly wasn’t all-broken nor was it mechanically disliked. It should remain in conjunction with the new.
Now I know, the beta costs are subject to change and maybe I’ve wasted a little while over nothing, writing this post but I wont take the risk of saying nothing, given the potential problems I’ve listed above.
I’d encourage others to contribute below if they wish!
At its current state it’s too expensive for what it is, more so when before we could make as many as we want for free, With the characters I have I will have to put a second mortgage on my in game house.
Jokes aside though, for the average player nobody grinds over 1mil gold par character, make it account wide at least or reduce the pricing.
I was hearing praise about the new flexibility of the system, especially with transmogging things that don’t usually work, like one- to two-handed and had high hopes. Sadly it seems that this is not possible. It would be great to be able to transmog a two-handed weapon into a one-handed with a shield to finally achieve the classic fighter fantasy without being a tank (or the reverse for tanks).
I really hope this will be possible, otherwise I don’t really get anything from it.
I did test a bit around as well. At least when unequipping the item slot the transmog (and base item) still disappears. Which is at least good for helmets being taken on and off regularly.
Personally I am fine with the set slot prices. People can still make and change their transmog slots with the “custom sets”.
If you want to press a button to not pay gold and swap a mog, you should have to work for it. It’s an unlock privilege after all.
The issue with this is that this functionality is being forcibly combined with the Retail system. The cost paradigm in retail is that you pay more or less gold dependent on whether you want the privilege of having your cosmetic whilst doing current content. This new system takes only the most expensive side of that scale.
If the functionality of the previous system remained in combination with the new system, as I describe - Where you can apply a ‘Custom Slots’ outfit to a single item for it to be permenantly transmoggrified until overridden and under the old iLvl price-scaling system - this would not be a problem.
Whilst suggesting we should pay for that privilege is all well and good, you haven’t addressed if thats a privilege we actually want. Personally I was concerned upon seeing the announcement of this new transmog system because I have been content with the current one, and those concerns have manifested: Breaking-even with functionality lost and gained for the style of gameplay myself and others enjoy, at a vastly inflated cost.
Reality is there is no reason we couldn’t have had both the new and the old system integrated as one, and thats what I’m asking for here.
I’m someone who plays the game for transmogs. I do content for transmogs. I am a roleplayer, but I genuinely spend more time transmogging my characters, than roleplaying if I’m honest.
This new system makes me feel like I will have a limited access to the transmogs I’ve created already, the transmogs I have grinded for. All these things I’ve already worked for and PAY REAL MONEY FOR in the form of subscription + ofc the transmog sets I’ve purchased.
I feel very punished and betrayed here. My joy, my “endgame”, the collection that I’ve gathered and created, is going to be less accessible to me.
The transmog costs, making just the sets and changing the said sets is overpriced, badly so. Drop the price to 5% of what it is and we’re talking.
I have dozens of items in my inventory too on multiple characters, for example cloth pieces on a mail wearing class and so on, to easily swap from my mail armor into robes for just the right occasion. And now using these too, will be harder.
I wish this new system wasn’t coming, I truly do. At the very least, I wish it was optional.
I’m not sure there’s enough hopium left to believe it gets much better after beta.
Use one or both free set slots, then just swap the transmogs as you did just before the rework. It is literally possible. It will cost you gold as before. Or never change your “perfect mog” at all and never pay a bit of copper/silver/gold ever again.
And remember, up to the 6th slot upgrade, it costs in total just 6.600 Gold. That’s incredibly easy to make during leveling (where you still have access to the baseline 2 free slots anyway).
People are complaining about not getting stuff for free. It’s hilarious and incredibly petty.
It’s absolutely not. You can still make your custom sets (as before), you can still change your transmog (as before), the only downside you have is that gear bound transmogging isn’t a thing anymore.
Edit: Also, Blizzard already said they will be account-wide
If you could demonstrate to me how to achieve a full transmog on heirloom equivalent gear for a similar price to 10 gold with the new transmog system, as you are able to do in Retail, I’d be greatly appreciative.
And, I don’t know which ‘People’ you are talking about, in this thread. All we are asking for is for things to cost the same as they are ingame now. You can explain to me how thats ‘incredibly petty’.
In my original post I’ve stated my reasons for complaining about it anyway:
If it goes unspoken, I cannot be content that it might go ignored. It is important that we voice any concerns we have, even in the context that they could change. If it does get lowered regardless of what I’ve said, then thats a few hours spent for my own peace of mind, because this is incredibly important to my style of play.
As for this, it doesn’t feel on-topic to the points made above by myself and others. If you don’t think our points are reasonable, please explain that individually.
Heya! Wanted to add in my two cents to this too, and add on.
This you touch on here-
Is in my opinion the biggest issue with the new system, it kinda makes or breaks it if it’s workable or not.
The talk of cost often comes up- but I feel if one can equip and display some off-pieces to a saved outfit will be deciding on how expensive it’ll be in the end. Having 5 outfits saved I predict will end up rather cheap; Having three variations of those for 15 outfits total, will not.
We need someone working on this see this feedback, it’ll be very deciding for RPers I feel.
I agree thoroughly. And I am concerned that a response on another post regarding account-wide Outfit slots may lead to other critiques and issues on the new transmog system being overlooked.
Gave the issue some thought, and this was about what I came up with too;
My suggestion would be to simply add in another, super specific NPC somewhere that lets you access the old system. I outlined how I’d think it work here;
hard times, I know).