Let me preface this by saying that I understand certain equips are intended to look gaudy and ugly in order to motivate people to purchase Cash Shop items to cover them up, in order to better personalize their character, of course. I'm perfectly fine with that. Heck, I remember when the Scarlion hat's first came out, they were so ugly and covered the players entire head. So I, like so many other people, made sure I had a transparent hat in order to hide that hideous monstrosity from view. I didn't mind repurchasing the transparent hat every 90 days. It was better than sporting that "mommy wont buy me NX" look so many kids had back then.
But; Here we are something like 10 years later, and now we have Giant Badges under our guild, weird titles and crazy things like giant bugs hovering over our heads, androids taking up the rear, and totems with ghostly visages following our every move. Its gotten to the point that in order to have good stats, you're forced to look like a gaudy hot mess. And there's literally nothing you can do about it.
Since when did this:
Look better than this:
Something's got to be done!
So I am suggesting Nexon give the player more control over how our characters appear to ourselves, and other players.
Clearly we can't
not have a medal, totem, android, title, and still hope to have competitive DPS. It's already to the point that if you want to kill an enemy in less than 7 attacks, you need to have a minimum of double stat epic potentials on every equip, and if you want to have a chance of playing real end game content, you'd better make that 25%+ potentials on practically every equip. This means not equipping equips that penalize us with gaudy visuals is pretty much a non-option. I mean, sure, it is, if you don't want to have an enjoyable play experience, but who wants that?
I realize some people enjoy showing off their Love Bot, ehm, I mean Android, and they should be able to do that, if they want to. After all, they've probably maxed out a credit card, or two, getting everything to look just right. But we all know the fantastical Android comes ugly specifically because they hope you will make it pretty by spending money on NX. It's a clever plan, and it works. But some of us don't even want to *see* the android. But at the same time, we don't want to be forced to take a 20-100k DPS hit for not equipping it either!
While I would prefer there to be a "hide Android Sprite", "hide Badge Sprite", "hide Totem Sprites", "hide Medal Sprite" and "hide Title Sprite" in the graphics settings, I realize this is probably too much to expect.
Still, I think this would be a good solution because it gives players who want to show of their rare title, android, medal, etc the opportunity to do so. However, lets be entirely honest. The fact is most people can't or wont. Those rare items rarely have useful stats, meaning a vast majority of end game players will be wearing the same "BiS" item (e.g. the Monster Park medals).
Yes, we know there is a Cash Shop item that allows players to "fuse" medals, giving them the opportunity to have their good stats put onto a medal they prefer the look of, but this is problematic for a few reasons. First because you're still forced to have *something* showing under your guild name. There is no option to have nothing there. Secondly, some medals are irreplaceable, such as "time traveler" or "maple bigwig", etc, meaning unless you're never going to change medals again in your entire maple career no matter what content comes out, it will get retired and go back to just taking up another slot in your inventory because it can't be re-issued if lost.
So if there's no chance of getting graphic's option for hiding those sprites, give us the option of buying transparent items. A transparent android, a transparent title, transparent medal, transparent totem, etc etc.
Let those of us who prefer a simple clean streamlined look be able to attain that, instead of forcing us to look like a christmas tree threw up all over our character.... While also allowing players to flaunt their sprites like a grandma wearing jewelry at a bingo game.
And don't get me started on familiars.... Which I forgot to include in the picture. If I want to increase the chance of dropping an item, I have to run around with a spider twice as big as my own body aggro'ing all the mobs and messing up my rotation... Why can't I just toggle that to a buff instead?
Anyhow, Thanks for any attention you give in this matter, and apologies for the wall of text. There's a lot more to be said on this subject, but I'm sure most people are wishing for a TL;DR at this point anyways, so I'll stop while I'm ahead.
Comments
And you know, a lot of these things are subjective. There are plenty of people who like Scarlion and Targa hats, and Fantastical Androids come with some decently popular royal hairs, if I recall, like the Overgrown hair for males, and that hair with the kitty ears for girls.
I personally don't mind medals and titles, but it would be nice to have the option. As for androids, I think they said they were working on splitting opacity effects, since right now android opacity is controlled by the skill opacity option. Changing the opacity isn't really the same as hiding it, since it's just for you, but it's still something.
http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/discussion/15866/add-toggle-options-for-transparency
http://forums.maplestory.nexon.net/discussion/21135/fully-transparent-pets-familiars-and-androids
We certainly agree that it's personal preference. I tried to relay across that I want people to be able to make their character look as loud and dazzling as they want, but they should also be allowed to tone it down and have something simple and clean. Right now the deck is stacked in favor of the extravagant or garish. It's not feasible to go without a medal, title or android to maximize DPS, but should we really be obligated to look like the a subway wall while doing it?
I was being somewhat facetious regarding the scarlion hat, though I really didn't know anyone that liked it, I do realize there are masochists in the world... ;P
Transparency isn't currently a viable solution for the very reason you mentioned, its not split apart from the weapon effects, which can be important for judging distances and other things, that and all it does is hide the problem from you, but you still look like a medieval jewelry merchant to everyone else.
Glad to see I'm not the only one, though clearly with your post having been made over a year ago and those others, some just as old, discussing the same issue with much more practical justifications (the screen clutter impairing the ability to cooperate effectively during boss battles, leading to unnecessary deaths due to inability to see when certain actions happen), all with no response so far, I concede my post was probably a waste of time.
As many times as I've died from something like damage reflect because I couldn't see the indicating animation due to all the unnecessary clutter on the screen; I'd say that's a far more valid and important aspect of this issue than just my vanity, though my vanity is important too. After all, our vanity is a large portion of what provides Nexon's staff with a salary.
And all that's not even to mention the lag that comes from so many sprites being generated. How many times do we need to die for not owning a 7th core i7 gaming PC? If I had a dollar for every time I pressed a skill button that turned the game into a slideshow, I could by enough NX to fund an entire 5th Rank Legendary Legion...