I love GW2, but what the hell is up with the serious lack of armor and weapon variation? I have been using two handed hammers from the start. Now I'm lvl 40, and the hammers still looks the same! The armor variation has been a little better, but its still pretty minimal. Yes I know about dyes, but the dyes dosn't change the shape or form of the armor pieces. It just seems like some really lazy desgin choises to me.

Give it time, I'm sure more sets will be released. I have never played GW2 I'm on the fence. Is there any end game outside of PVP?

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that the armor models are different for each rarity (i.e. all blue heavy armor looks the same, which has a different model than all of the green heavy armor, etc.). Same seems to go for some of the weapons.

@ajamafalous: I know it's not that, because I've seen at least a few different skins per item per rarity.

@PhantomGardener The variety definitely increases at higher levels, and it may increase based on item rarity as well. The starter-level (read: shitty) skins appear to persist through to 80, though, so you could just be getting unlucky drops.

@ajamafalous: I know it's not that, because I've seen at least a few different skins per item per rarity.

@PhantomGardener The variety definitely increases at higher levels, and it may increase based on item rarity as well. The starter-level (read: shitty) skins appear to persist through to 80, though, so you could just be getting unlucky drops.

go into Spvp and look at all the armor skins and weapons in the locker, There's a decent amount of variation. This also translates into pve as items of the same name will look like their Spvp counterparts.

Different regions have different styles. Norn have huge looking runic styled weapons, where as the sylvari have weird plant like ones.

Crafting also gets you unique skins (later on); there's legendaries and every mystic weapon has a unique skin too.

Armour is differentiated more by your level. A lot of the earlier ones look pretty similar, particularly for the heavy classes, but there is a lot more variation later on. I agree that probably wasn't the best system for the armour, because unless you're crafting, you're stuck with very samey looking stuff for a long time. Crafting and doing dungeon runs is your best bet for cool looking armour.

There's a decent amount of variation if you ignore repeats, but it's definitely lacking when compared to most of the competition. To go off on a random tangent though, they sure as hell seem to have put the most work into the light armor sets. They seem to have the most variation. I'm sorry, but the medium armor designs are lazy as fuck. There's a few good ones, but most of them are fucking boring. The heavy armor sets aren't as good as the light armor sets, but they're definitely better the most of the medium ones..

@BongChilla said:

Give it time, I'm sure more sets will be released. I have never played GW2 I'm on the fence. Is there any end game outside of PVP?

Nope. You can grind for gear, but you have to run dungeons a ridiculous amount of times.

edit: Well, I think there is a dungeon that open up at 80, but nothing I would consider long term or anything. If you run with a dedicated group, you could probably complete it in a night or something and well...that's about it for the 'endgame.'

@ajamafalous said:

@Dark_Lord_Spam said:

@ajamafalous: I know it's not that, because I've seen at least a few different skins per item per rarity.

@PhantomGardener The variety definitely increases at higher levels, and it may increase based on item rarity as well. The starter-level (read: shitty) skins appear to persist through to 80, though, so you could just be getting unlucky drops.

I'm in the high 50s and so far I've only seen one model for blues the entire time, and only two models for greens (in addition to some very low level greens that used the blue model). Maybe it's also partially decided by the stat affix?

As Snowblind says, a lot of it is dependent on where the drops are coming from. For instance, at some point I had two daggers with almost identical stats, but the one from Ascalon was a gas-powered chaindagger and the one from the Shiverpeaks was a massive hunting knife.

@Marz said:

go into Spvp and look at all the armor skins and weapons in the locker, There's a decent amount of variation. This also translates into pve as items of the same name will look like their Spvp counterparts.

Well I don't do Spvp, so that sucks for me I guess. @WinterSnowblind said:

Armour is differentiated more by your level. A lot of the earlier ones look pretty similar, particularly for the heavy classes, but there is a lot more variation later on. I agree that probably wasn't the best system for the armour, because unless you're crafting, you're stuck with very samey looking stuff for a long time. Crafting and doing dungeon runs is your best bet for cool looking armour.

I guess dungeons are the best bet for me then, have kinda given up on crafting

@BabyChooChoo said:

There's a decent amount of variation if you ignore repeats, but it's definitely lacking when compared to most of the competition. To go off on a random tangent though, they sure as hell seem to have put the most work into the light armor sets. They seem to have the most variation. I'm sorry, but the medium armor designs are lazy as fuck. There's a few good ones, but most of them are fucking boring. The heavy armor sets aren't as good as the light armor sets, but they're definitely better the most of the medium ones..

Yeah I agree, light armor sets definitely seems the most varied, and medium is by far the most boring. I have an engineer, and it's not cool :/

Also, I see alot of people talking about later on it gets better. Well, whats later on then? 70-80?

@PhantomGardener said:

@Marz said:

go into Spvp and look at all the armor skins and weapons in the locker, There's a decent amount of variation. This also translates into pve as items of the same name will look like their Spvp counterparts.

Well I don't do Spvp, so that sucks for me I guess.

It takes about 10 seconds to travel to the mists...

Hit "h" on your keyboard > click the PvP tab > click "travel to heart of the mists" > walk 5 steps to your right to the PvP lockers > hit "f" on your keyboard.

Most, if not all, of these armours are available in PvE.

Many of the skins are reserved for endgame or are harder to obtain than the handful of 'world' armour sets you get from drops, which is understandable considering the endgame is getting all the pretty skins.

This game actually has some of the highest number of unique armor pieces that I've ever seen. Does it have WoW + 4 expansions-worth? No. But when you consider the fact that other games tend to just reskin/colour swap existing armors and call it 'different,' I think you're getting a lot of bang for your buck.

Here's a sample from the beta of some of the more 'accessible' armor for a single race/sex/armor type:

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/6186/heavyarmorwithnamesfina.jpg

Notably, the above is missing the majority of the karma stuff in the game.

@PhantomGardener: Yeah, pretty much simply because that's the level bracket in which you get the tier 3 cultural armor as well as the few final dungeons. Some of other, lower-level dungeon and cultural medium gear looks pretty good, but the 'regular' stuff is, in my opinion, completely boring. 99% of it like some form of a trench coat lol.

@PhantomGardener said:

@Marz said:

go into Spvp and look at all the armor skins and weapons in the locker, There's a decent amount of variation. This also translates into pve as items of the same name will look like their Spvp counterparts.

Well I don't do Spvp, so that sucks for me I guess.

You don't have to do Spvp, i'm just saying, if you want to see the different varieties of armor the game has to offer, that's an easy way to see what the armor and weapons look like is by going into the locker and previewing the different items.... most of what you see you'll find in PvE as well.

yep patience is required...especially if like me you don't play a lot. I also have the impression that skins do not change much. But the saddest part is that when they do, they are uglier than the strater ones, at least for the greatswords...all the greatswords skins I could touch so far were so large and bulky they looked more like cricket bats than swords...freaking anime disease. so I end up actually transmutating the new swords with good stats into the starter skin that looks like a sword at least.

I find that the world drop blues are generally generic, while greens and karma gear usually have unique models.

If you really hate the style of weapons you have go look at the tier 1 or tier 2 cultural weapons and armor vendors in each races capital city. Those will definitely be different. Also looking over the auction house might not be a bad thing either. The majorly different stuff usually comes from the Asura and the Sylvari. Other wise most of it looks very similar.

@BabyChooChoo: I'm going to have to disagree on the second part. I think the heavy armor generally looks pretty bad. Though i agree light armor seems to be the best. The exotic medium armors and cultural ones are pretty good though, just not the normal ones.

@PhantomGardener:

There's loads and loads of models - and far from all are backloaded - but plain looking gear drops much more frequently. Just use the transmutation stones you get from exploration and such. There's unique gear for pretty much every dungeon, multiple tiers of looks for every race, each faction has gear with unique looks, there's secret karma vendors, WvW specific looks and so forth and so forth.

Check out your PvP locker in the Mists and preview a majority of weapons and armor in the game. There's truckloads. Now factor in multiple houndred shades of dyes and the up to 4 channels deep customization on each piece of gear - your gear can and will look more and more unique, the longer you play, and the more you understand its systems.

@BabyChooChoo said:

There's a decent amount of variation if you ignore repeats, but it's definitely lacking when compared to most of the competition. To go off on a random tangent though, they sure as hell seem to have put the most work into the light armor sets. They seem to have the most variation. I'm sorry, but the medium armor designs are lazy as fuck. There's a few good ones, but most of them are fucking boring. The heavy armor sets aren't as good as the light armor sets, but they're definitely better the most of the medium ones..

@BongChilla said:

Give it time, I'm sure more sets will be released. I have never played GW2 I'm on the fence. Is there any end game outside of PVP?

Nope. You can grind for gear, but you have to run dungeons a ridiculous amount of times.

edit: Well, I think there is a dungeon that open up at 80, but nothing I would consider long term or anything. If you run with a dedicated group, you could probably complete it in a night or something and well...that's about it for the 'endgame.'

Every dungeon in the game has one or more level 80 exploration modes, with all new bosses and cutscenes and everything. Every dungon has a unique looking set of armor and weapon models. There are karma vendors on Orr giving out exotic armor, if your server manages to successfully complete certain event chains. There's more and more, and I don't even know the start of it, because I'm not reading up on the game - just thoroughly playing it and discovering stuff for myself.

There's no endgame shift in GW2, you just play whatever you like best. sPvP, WvW, exploration and open world PvE, 5man dungeons, trading post money grubbin' - you name it. Players usually reach lvl.80 with 30%-40% world completion, and due to downscaling of player level and upscaling of drops, all content stays viable and challenging and appropriately rewarding regardless.

There's just a whole lot of game, and either you dig it, or you don't. That's GW2's endgame.

@Marz said:

@PhantomGardener said:

@Marz said:

go into Spvp and look at all the armor skins and weapons in the locker, There's a decent amount of variation. This also translates into pve as items of the same name will look like their Spvp counterparts.

Well I don't do Spvp, so that sucks for me I guess.

You don't have to do Spvp, i'm just saying, if you want to see the different varieties of armor the game has to offer, that's an easy way to see what the armor and weapons look like is by going into the locker and previewing the different items.... most of what you see you'll find in PvE as well.

Yeah sorry, my mistake. I completely misread what you wrote.