Just a few more weeks to go, and the long hoped for outfit designer will be released in SWTOR. Time to plan my financial demise. In this post I'll make an estimation of how much credits the outfit designer will cost me. I'll also present an easy way to calculate this for yourself.
Outfit designer
The devs have kept us long in the dark about what the feature was going to be like (I guess they did not want to make us any promises they could not keep), but everything is freely available for testing on the PTS now. If you are curious, SWTOR Network has an excellent article summing up its features. And Dulfy provides us with an overview of the costs to use the outfit designer as it is now, with the remark that these are subject to change.
It looks like the outfit designer will be another money sink, but it seems to be a money sink players (including me) are happy to endure, since not having to augment and rip out mods each time you want to change outfits will save money as well. I don't know if I'll feel the same at the end of this post, though, because I'll be calculating what the feature is actually going to cost me.
Sorcerer Fárah's outfits (f.l.t.r.): PvE outfit, PvP outft and alternate outfit
The benefits
The outfit feature in SWTOR will cause a small revolution by affecting how players will handle gear. First off, people will make more outfits overall, because it's a lot easier and cheaper than it was before. The in-game market may show a (temporary) influx in (cosmetic) gear demand as a result. In Lord of the Rings Online the introduction of a similar outfit system created an influx of LotRO fashion blogs (e.g. check the impressive blogroll of Cosmetic LotRO). I don't think the same will happen for SWTOR, though, because it will still cost a considerable amount of money to change pieces of your outfit, whereas this is free in LotRO.
Another implication is that the looks of unmoddable gear can now be used without having to equip it. There are many unique-looking unmoddable items in the game that have been pretty much useless until now. Maybe synthweaving and armormech will become more meaningful, simply because unmoddable gear is no longer redundant.
Although there is still no hood-down option (sniff), the devs are trying to remove the armour restrictions for outfits. If they succeed, it will finally be possible to use non-unibrow hood-suppressing circlets on light armour classes and I'll be a happy sage.
The outfit designer will be especially powerful in combination with the legacy gear system. It will now be possible to share gear with multiple characters (by using legacy gear and the legacy bank) without any implications to the looks of your characters. So instead of gearing up both my sorcerer and sage, I can now gear up a set of armour that they can share, whilst still looking pretty. For instance, I won't have to worry about only being able to DPS on Republic side on my sage (both in PvP and PvE) because she has the gear for it, and having superior healing on my sorcerer because I do progression raiding with her. With the outfit designer and legacy bank it doesn't matter whether I feel like playing Republic or Imperial side: they'll both have access to the best gear. I'm totally doing this.
Another implication is that the looks of unmoddable gear can now be used without having to equip it. There are many unique-looking unmoddable items in the game that have been pretty much useless until now. Maybe synthweaving and armormech will become more meaningful, simply because unmoddable gear is no longer redundant.
Although there is still no hood-down option (sniff), the devs are trying to remove the armour restrictions for outfits. If they succeed, it will finally be possible to use non-unibrow hood-suppressing circlets on light armour classes and I'll be a happy sage.
The outfit designer will be especially powerful in combination with the legacy gear system. It will now be possible to share gear with multiple characters (by using legacy gear and the legacy bank) without any implications to the looks of your characters. So instead of gearing up both my sorcerer and sage, I can now gear up a set of armour that they can share, whilst still looking pretty. For instance, I won't have to worry about only being able to DPS on Republic side on my sage (both in PvP and PvE) because she has the gear for it, and having superior healing on my sorcerer because I do progression raiding with her. With the outfit designer and legacy bank it doesn't matter whether I feel like playing Republic or Imperial side: they'll both have access to the best gear. I'm totally doing this.
Preparation
When the outfit designer is released, I want to fix the gear and outfits of at least my main characters (the mirror classed sage Ravanel and sorcerer Fárah) right away, to get that operation over with. I'm anticipating that it will initially cost me a lot of money, although I'll eventually save money by having to gear up one character instead of two. As I play both PvP & PvE and both DPS & healing, I'll need to make four legacy sets and get their outfits sorted.
Sage Ravanel's PvE outfits (f.l.t.r.): healing outfit, DPS outfit and alternate outfit
So how much money will that cost me? Here we go.
The costs
1) Legacy bank storage: 2,500,000 credits (or 750 cartel coins, tempting...)
My legacy bank is full, so I'll need at least one tab more to store the shared sets of gear.
2) 4 complete sets of legacy gear: 0 credits
This is where it's nice to have been a subscriber back when the Galactic Starfighter update was implemented. All of my characters have sets of free legacy gear they got in the mail at that time. The sets look horrible, but hey, outfit designer, right?
3) Adding augmentation slots to the legacy gear: 1,176,000 credits
There are 7 pieces per set, so in total 4 x 7 = 28 pieces. It costs 42,000 credits to add an augmentation slot to a piece, so 42,000 x 28 = 1,176,000.
4) Getting 28 augmentation kits: 0 credits
Every piece needs 1 Augmentation kit, so that means 28 kits. I usually craft these myself with my own materials and I already have about 20 in my bank, so the cost will be negligible for me. On my server's GTN, augmentation kits MK-10 go for around 40,000 per kit at the time of writing, which is actually quite cheap. I imagine the price might go up when the outfit designer comes online.
5) Ripping purple augments from the pieces they are currently in: 327,880 credits
As we established there are 28 pieces to get augments from. It costs 11,710 credits to rip an augment out, so 28 x 11,710 = 327,880
6) Ripping the mods from all the pieces they're currently in: 937,080 credits
This is more tricky, as not all the pieces have the same amount of mods in them. 2 Pieces per set have 2 mods; 5 have 3 mods. It costs 12,330 per mod to rip out.
(4((2 x 2) + (5 x 3))) x 12,330 = 937,080
Hold on, we're almost there...
7) Buying outfit tabs: 315,000 credits
Sorcerer: 3 outfits
Sage: 6 outfits
The first outfit tab is free, however, the more you unlock per character, the more expensive they'll get.
(20,000 + 30,000 ) + (20,000 + 30,000 + 45,000 + 70,000 + 100,000) = 315,000
8) Placing armour pieces in outfit slots: 315,000 credits
There are 7 slots per outfit, it costs 5,000 credits per slot; I have to do 9 outfits:
9(7 x 5,000) = 315,000
The total: 5,570,960 credits
To sum up, that is almost 5,6 million credits spent on arranging the outfits of two characters. That is two out of the 16 characters I have. The majority of my characters will only need one alternate outfit, though, so that will cost me roughly 35,000 x 14 = 490,000 credits. I don't have other characters that will share gear (yet), because they're all of different levels. In total, I will probably spend over 6 million on outfitting all my characters.
I don't promise not having made any miscalculations (my head was buzzing at some point), and there's no guarantee the costs will be the same live, but at least this provides me with an idea about the order of magnitude.
8) Placing armour pieces in outfit slots: 315,000 credits
There are 7 slots per outfit, it costs 5,000 credits per slot; I have to do 9 outfits:
9(7 x 5,000) = 315,000
The total: 5,570,960 credits
To sum up, that is almost 5,6 million credits spent on arranging the outfits of two characters. That is two out of the 16 characters I have. The majority of my characters will only need one alternate outfit, though, so that will cost me roughly 35,000 x 14 = 490,000 credits. I don't have other characters that will share gear (yet), because they're all of different levels. In total, I will probably spend over 6 million on outfitting all my characters.
I don't promise not having made any miscalculations (my head was buzzing at some point), and there's no guarantee the costs will be the same live, but at least this provides me with an idea about the order of magnitude.
Sage Ravanel's PvP outfits (f.l.t.r.): healing outfit, DPS outfit and alternate outfit
Calculating your own financial demise
Following the example above, it should be pretty easy to calculate how much the outfit designer will cost you. Of course, it depends heavily on whether you want to share legacy gear between characters or not, and on how many legacy sets and outfits you plan on making. If you are planning on a complicated system like mine, I'd advice to use the numbers 1) to 8) as a checklist to make sure you're not missing anything.
Cost for one set
Putting pieces into outfit slots: 35,000 credits
Ripping mods out: 234,270 credits
Ripping augments out: 81,970 credits
Adding augment slots to legacy gear: 294,000 credits
The text in italics only applies when you want to use legacy gear. You will still have to calculate and add the cost of 1) legacy bank storage, 2) buying legacy gear, 4) getting augmentation kits and 7) buying outfit tabs, because the cost of those depends on variables I cannot predict.
Are you going to use the outfit designer? How much do you plan on spending?
These seems like a lot of work just to share gear between two characters. Not to mention that you'll have to keep running back to your legacy bank to deposit your current playset at the end of every play session.
ReplyDeleteAre you sure it wouldn't be easier to just upgrade each of them separately? I guess it depends on how often you play each character and in what fashion.
I admit that I'm not really looking forward to having to equip and de-equip my gear at the start and end of each session respectively. However, it's less bad than it sounds, because my characters are more or less parked in my stronghold (next to my legacy bank) already anyway. They are both max level and basically only move between raid locations, the fleet and my stronghold.
DeleteThe hardmode healing gear my sorcerer gathered on the Imperial side is pretty hard to get, and it'll be nice for my Republic guild to profit from it now they are about to start with the more challenging hardmode fights. The other way around, it'll be nice to not have to say "that's okay, but I can only heal" when people suggest to group up for some level 60 Imp PvP.
I've analysed my /played of all my characters yesterday (post about that incoming later), and found out that sage/sorcerer together form almost half of my playtime, even while I have and play all classes. So I think it's worth the effort in this case. It is a bit experimental, but I guess we'll see how it'll turn out. :)
Interesting that this will make that much of a change to you... I know a couple of people who already do the legacy gear transferring thing, so I was under the impression that if you cared enough about min-maxing/playing both factions to do that, you didn't care that much about looks. :P
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, I like the little new "reactions" boxes! Has there ever been a post that couldn't do with more griffons...?
I guess I'm the exception to the rule. I care about min-maxing (and I happen to raid on both factions)... but I care about fashion even more! With the outfit designer I feel I have no excuse anymore to not use legacy gear.
DeleteWhat I'm more excited about, though, is all the unmoddable gear that will become available for outfits. I have a bank tab full with gear including green gear that I just kept to see if I could find a moddable version in the future. I know of some good-looking non-unibrow circlets that don't have a moddable version, so I'm already looking forward to the new looks I might be able to create. (Mira's headband looks good, but it's a bit boring to have the same on all my light armour classes...)
Cool that you like the reaction boxes. Actually - unbelievable as it may seem - this is the first post that seems to need more griffons!
I might use the outfit designer, but the credit sink is a huge deterrent. I'm still working on my apartments!
ReplyDeleteApartments! Very important, too! :)
DeleteThe clothes look great though the cost/hassle seem grotesque. I would only do one character.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should have worded it clearer in this blog post, but if you're going to use the outfit designer only (and not fiddle with legacy gear), it's actually not too bad. If you'd want to switch outfits now, it'd cost you (234,270 + 81,970 credits + 294,000=) 610,240 credits, while it will only cost you 35,000 credits to do the same with the outfit designer.
DeleteSince you're going to spend almost a million credits ripping out purple augments, I'm wondering how much you'll save by sharing gear.
ReplyDeleteThe only true advantage is that your "main" toon may acquire gear that your "alt" may not have access to. I'm not sure that advantage is going to be worth all the gear swapping.
I'm not a raider, so all my toons are "stuck" at max crafting level. At that level I'm dominant at all the stuff I want to do. If you're "alt" doesn't raid, it doesn't matter, and if she does raid, she'll have access to anything she needs...
Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, the gear threadmill is pretty steep at the moment. I don't know if you've noticed, but for the first time *all* commendation gear is useless for progression raiding (unless you're a tank, I guess), because all the mods and enhancements are endurance heavy. So all the mods you need will have to come from raid drops. To make it even worse, some raid drops have undesirable stats as well (like healing sage gear with crit), so you can only use the armoring of some, and then you'll have to collect duplicates to gather the rest. It took us months to get to our current progression level (you can follow our progress in my raiding posts), and it will certainly take a while to get there with my Rep team. While you certainly are fine in commendation gear for landscape PvE and flashpoints, the current hardmode operations (with the exception of their first bosses) are in my opinion on par with the previous nightmare mode operations and I've found good gear does make a big difference.
DeleteThe gear threadmill for PvP is steep as well, as the set bonus pieces come with a lot of unoptimized mods as well. And then there's different sets for DPS and healing as well.
So that's why I think it *is* worth it to share gear in this occasion. Not primarily for saving money, but for saving time and having the best gear available. That said, I wouldn't go through all this if I wouldn't play both of these characters as intensively as I do. :)
I hadn't realized that Ultimate comms are not in fact, ultimate!
DeleteI salute your refusal to put up with bad stat allocation. :)
So you know I don't usually care AT ALL about cosmetics, but... SWTOR stuff is pretty cool looking and this post is enough to get me interested in putting outfits together (even _I_ saved a certain Jedi robe that I thought was particularly neat despite it being unmoddable and completely underpowered). This also helps a lot with my complaint about moddable items making every other kind of gear almost worthless.
ReplyDeleteExciting! Now if only I still played, hehe... maybe in the summer again!
Exciting indeed. It will be easy to add that outfit if you happen to login again at some point: it looks and works pretty much the same as in LotRO. And don't feel too shy to ask for some credits if you are short. My personal economy should have recovered by then. ;)
Delete