Skelly Curse + Player Cosmetics

I have been seeing this glitch going around - definitely interesting.

Gives me hope that they can at least make a skeleton head/torso that works with jackets/hat cosmetics, to give the Skelly curse a bit more customizability.

I would be cool see my Pirate with skelly curse but with the clothes and extras i haver on hum 👍

@callmebackdraft I mean I know all of that, but it clearly was not an "impossible" task.

Even in the glitchy state I think many players agree that the normal player clothes on skeletons is significantly better than the skeleton cosmetics we do have. I mean the amount of variety is absolutely insane, and many things have a "easy" fix that could be implemented easily. Things like hats and shoes can occasionally clip but can be fixed by simply hiding the foot bone model/top of the head models, or resizing the clothes. In fact there are many cosmetics that are "enclosed" and wouldn't have the issue of interior portions showing when worn with the skeleton curse. As long as clipping was addressed there would be no issues. Not something I would call "unviable"

If Rare were to take an approach of releasing a certain number of cosmetics to the skeleton curse each month or season or unlock certain types of cosmetics (like belts) in future updates, I think the skeleton curse would be significantly cooler. The reality is that right now we have a few cosmetics, with like 6 new ones being added once every 4 seasons, and all of them are extremely similar in style, allowing for no personal identity with the cosmetics.

This is just another example of Rare dropping the ball and gaslighting the community. It shouldn't be impossible to task 2-4 devs with updating a 10-15 cosmetics each month, especially considering the massive quantity of cosmetics released to the Emporium and the lackluster amount released during seasons. The fact they've prevented us from normal cosmetics with skeleton cosmetics, AND starved us from their "better solution" shows how ineffective Rare's management is.

We should at least get some kind of updated statement out of the team from this. Dive into the technical details and the drawbacks. We deserve to know.

Tldr;
Sorry, I have to question how we are expected to simply nod our heads in agreement when the "problem" is smaller than they told us and the "solution" is clearly ineffective. We should at least get some kind of updated statement out of the team from this.

@fysics3037 So you want to force the developers to redo ALL the clothes in the game? It's not just arrogance on your part, it's pointless work that will take too much time. Even I, when suggesting a change in customization, was not so brazen and described in detail the least difficult way to implement customization close to a pirate. I don't think you've ever worked with 3D models.

As Rare strives for a higher quality bar since the beginning of season 14, I can understand why they have not done this yet.
From the general research I did @Fysics3037, it looks like you'd need to work out how change the original rig that the cosmetic was meant to be on to the skeleton form. I guess from the careers link from @Look-Behind-You above, that Rare would use Maya/Houdini to do this. They'd review the reference documentation for all the skeletal rig/movements/emotes, then proceed with retarget the cosmetic (adjusting proportions and reassigning the weights) before rigging/skinning, then retargeting animations to suit. It all comes down to testing it then to see if all works.

Maybe there would be a way to implement Batch Processing as some of the cosmetics use the same base asset but are coloured differently to reduce the effort required.

There are some issues that would stop this from being done, like:

• Resourcing - not sure if they still have the original files handy or the people who originally worked on the files are still with the company, the skeleton models are different indents for each iteration curse (golden, red, obsidian) so that will require extra work. There seems to be two shader libraries that'd have to be processed through as well (Houdini's VEX and DirectX's HLSL)
• Time - Mike Chapman has said that the game was a live service which would operate for 10 years, so if they do have the resources, can they work this into the existing release schedule for outpost shops and pirate emporium in the time they have remaining
• Audience - not everyone in the playerbase has done 100 levels of hourglass and will not be able to wear them

The only way I think this could ever be done is that you hold a competition to get the community to vote on which cosmetics they'd like and limit it to that.
Would like to hear something about it in a future Developer Update.

@fysics3037 said in Skelly Curse + Player Cosmetics:

@callmebackdraft I mean I know all of that, but it clearly was not an "impossible" task.

Even in the glitchy state I think many players agree that the normal player clothes on skeletons is significantly better than the skeleton cosmetics we do have. I mean the amount of variety is absolutely insane, and many things have a "easy" fix that could be implemented easily. Things like hats and shoes can occasionally clip but can be fixed by simply hiding the foot bone model/top of the head models, or resizing the clothes. In fact there are many cosmetics that are "enclosed" and wouldn't have the issue of interior portions showing when worn with the skeleton curse. As long as clipping was addressed there would be no issues. Not something I would call "unviable"

If Rare were to take an approach of releasing a certain number of cosmetics to the skeleton curse each month or season or unlock certain types of cosmetics (like belts) in future updates, I think the skeleton curse would be significantly cooler. The reality is that right now we have a few cosmetics, with like 6 new ones being added once every 4 seasons, and all of them are extremely similar in style, allowing for no personal identity with the cosmetics.

This is just another example of Rare dropping the ball and gaslighting the community. It shouldn't be impossible to task 2-4 devs with updating a 10-15 cosmetics each month, especially considering the massive quantity of cosmetics released to the Emporium and the lackluster amount released during seasons. The fact they've prevented us from normal cosmetics with skeleton cosmetics, AND starved us from their "better solution" shows how ineffective Rare's management is.

We should at least get some kind of updated statement out of the team from this. Dive into the technical details and the drawbacks. We deserve to know.

Tldr;
Sorry, I have to question how we are expected to simply nod our heads in agreement when the "problem" is smaller than they told us and the "solution" is clearly ineffective. We should at least get some kind of updated statement out of the team from this.

I'm not sure they have things set up so it's "easy" to just hide parts of the body. There's also the consideration of resources, the current setup of how the Skeleton Curse customization is done, etc. 2-4 devs working on making regular clothing work with the Skeleton Curse is 2-4 devs who can't work on other features that may be more important.

There's also the fact that Skeleton Curse cosmetics are currently designed to specifically represent various accomplishments you have made since unlocking the curse. They have not released any new Skeleton Curse cosmetics that don't have unlock requirements before they can be purchased and I don't think this is changing anytime soon, if ever.

@dark-master-jmk Yeah I mean you bring up valid points. I don't necessarily agree on the "2-4 dev" being an issue as 2-4 people is not a lot in a 100+ person company and realistically they could have hired a few more people to do the work if it was going to be an issue. But I agree that now it is too late and the choice they made is simply going to stay. I simply wanted to put my thoughts out there on the matter as to why I think the player base got cheated here.

@look-behind-you well, currently every single player model, including the skeletons, has components that get hidden when equipping certain gear. It's extremely obvious as currently the "Graymarrow boots" are glitched and you can see the toes poking out the boots, just like they do when wearing normal clothes with the skeleton curse. So I don't think it's unreasonable to say it wouldn't be much of a challenge to hide parts of the body when certain clothes are equipped. As for adding interior textures, that could be quite a bit of work. But I suggested like 10-15 cosmetics, not sets. Maybe do 2-3 sets a month. The actual model is already there it just needs it's texture maps changed. Also glad I got your favor for becoming a Rare dev.

@unblinkingmass7 yeah I don't think it's something impossible or unfeasible for Rare to do like they led us to believe. I don't expect Rare to go back and change their decision from 6 (almost 7) seasons ago. I do wish we got some kind of developer message about this because I think this has been a major blow to the community for a long time. Nobody was cheering for the skeleton curse without our real cosmetics back the beginning of season 8. If they had the chance to one day, it'd be awesome to see a few cosmetics thrown into the skeleton curse each month. But I don't expect it.

@odin299 No I don't want to force the devs to do anything. I think the reality is that the community are the ones that actually employ the devs and that there's a certain value in their feedback and desires. That value is not to be overstated but something like normal clothes on skeletons is a thing important to the community that Rare let go too quickly and kinda covered up. And that is really a bad practice. I also hate to break this to you but I don't think the devs at Rare need advice on how to best achieve a goal. I included a breakdown of what I'd seen as a player and would consider well within the bounds of Rare's capability, to strengthen my point, not to tell them how to do their jobs. And I don't really care what you think my 3d modeling experience is.