There are a lot of customization options in the Sea Of Thieves, but far lesser are there systems. For example, take the vanity chest's famous four that are stacked so often for an unappealing and messy look. These overlays are the curse, scar, makeup, and tattoo, which all do the same thing in different manners.
To understand what isn't there, you must comprehend what is. To easiest avoid making items that clip with others, the design team employed categorical mechanics to simplify the process of making pirate's clothes and vanity. If you want to skip all this hysterically obsessed fashion talk, which you likely do, avoid this next section. It is, in fact, highly advised. However, there may be some concepts lost to one less initiated in what systems there are in place already and their terminology. Tl;dr, Impatient and apathetic pirates start scrolling here.
Gloves and boots: There are three lengths of gloves and boots. Long, medium, and short, and they always reach to the exact same point on the arm except in rare cases, and in those rare cases they tend to cause issues. For example, the rotten bilge rat pants, when used with anything longer than admiral, will abruptly tie off at the knee, like being stuffed into tall boots, transition made so stark by one boot being tall enough to qualify as a tall boot but the other not. There are different arm/pant sleeve parts for the three different types, hooks and peg legs held to the same standard, wherein peg legs are always counted as "long boots" and hooks are mostly "long gloves" but some are medium. Anything but short gloves remove a pirate's cuffs on jackets or shirts that have them, with very few exceptions for medium gloves.
Belts: To avoid clipping, belts will "inflate" up to three levels. They're smallest with no jacket and no shirt, then bigger with just a shirt, and then biggest with a jacket, regardless of what's underneath. This is why belts look so thick on open or short jackets, especially with no shirt.
Jackets: There are, as there are three types of everything else, three types of jackets that determine the coverage of what the pirate is wearing below Closed, half-closed, and open. Closed jackets like kraken show none of your shirt below and often have a high collar, half-closed like mercenary with a v neck showing what's underneath with a droopy collar/lapel section, and open jackets like sea dog that show a large portion of your chest with precisely parallel trim either side.
Collars: Shirts and jackets will either have a short or high collar that effects dramatically how hair behaves with or without a hat. A dramatic example of these effects on hair is ocean crawler, which with a high collar jacket and a hat, just looks like regular hair.
Special slots. There are some slots in Sea Of Thieves that do not interact whatsoever and are between the art, rigging, and modelling teams within Rare's walls. We can only see these special slots in action in costumes and select cosmetics. Examples being seeing the sleeves of items below with the ruffian sea dog dress (pre-patch) and Grimm's Jacket and being able to see your shirt collar and solitary sleeve of shirts and jackets that were added beyond the soulflame crew costume's release.
Impatient and apathetic pirates return here! Beyond these, systems, every item stands as solitary beyond what overlaps it. Costumes use all slots besides your overlay slot in most cases, some allowing you your short boots/gloves or your eyepatches to be customized still despite the circumstance of using a costume, and some costumes have curses that take up said slot.
And it is improper to suggest something so advanced and clipping-inducing as accessories as so many have without how in the ferry they'd actually work, hence all the fashion mumbo jumbo above. Accessories as a negative space/reverse costume, instead of being visible by virtue of overlapping very slot, only appearing on slots that aren't overlapped. For example, when using a jacket/shirt which has short enough sleeves to not have their part changed by the medium glove/hook type, bracelets and bracers could be worn, even with short gloves. With no gloves or short gloves, obviously the highly sought-after rings can be added to your person. With no eyepatch and on select accessory sets, one can wear a pair of glasses (Using the gold curse and an eyepatch will no longer be the only way to be blind!) And for half-closed jackets and open jackets, and with shirts that don't take up the collar slot, you can have amulets and pendants. Earrings can be applied with low collar jackets or just with anything, along with facial piercings chokers and other swag the art team can imagine.
But to the effect of entirely new systems, what I'd like to see is not an update that adds new curses and scars, or sails and hulls for one's pirate or pirate ship, but expands the systems in which these are based, allowing more freedom for the art team to, as they say, "go wild" in future additions. As of now, all of the above are overlays which has already limited the design team. I mean, behold the bilge rat, fearless bone crusher, and sea dog hulls on sloop and tell me this is not a problem, and how scars are just becoming gore tattoos with pretty patterns rather than representing believable injuries, like older scars. Beyond that in the overlay system, if you focus on the face with the overlays, which is often the only part of the pirate not covered.. The only difference between tattoos and makeup is color. The only difference between curses and makeup is that curses can affect the pirate's eyes. And even then, beyond the face only difference is makeup is more localized than the other two.
For the issue with ships there is a difficult yet fruitful solution. Tied to captaincy, allow us to customize the hull and mast. You may think "Well you can already customize them!" But no, you cannot. You can only paint the sails and paint the hull. There have been demonstrative art pieces showing all ship types with mizzen sails, junk sails, and other varieties of sails. Arguments can be made that these should never be added for balancing, visibility creating a "meta" around which masts you can and cannot use responsibly for two reasons, telling when you've got wind and more important visibility while at the wheel. The former already has a system in place, the sail billowing alongside an audio cue upon the wind is caught. The former is slightly more difficult, but as long as more tattered/shorter sails are positioned lower, and triangular sails are angled so that they take up essentially as much space (which would be necessary in order to catch wind the same, they'd have to be at a 45 degree angle to the wheel, so if they're big enough, they'll practically have an unchanged coverage.) This shows the most potential because it entirely overhauls giving your ship it's own character and footprint, expands upon the post-captaincy ideal of every ship being entirely different, and adds infinite extra combos for the sails for only creating a triangular print for existing sail liveries. Now, changing the hull is slightly less rewarding, but far easier! Just a model change for the ship. Now ideally this would slightly edit the footprint of the boat, for example having a slightly more bulbous hull that seems to be more of heavier set, the angle down the side to the shelves being more steep and the shaping of the hull new the brow being more broad. This wouldn't effect the inside of the hull (see the windows on the back of a galleon's second deck,) nor the ladder's distance from center for boarders, nor the deck space, but gives the ship more character and gives ship captains a drastically increased feeling of "this is my ship that I commissioned" rather than "I painted this ship that I rented." However, this option is less likely to be implemented for "meta concerns" and technical issues than the latter, the only upside over it being that it is much easier to texture with the hull livery ornamentation, trim, stripe, and rail model already used. The other, more popular option is that the hull customization could change the pattern the planks of your ship are arranged in, extra details upon the trim, different railing models and canopy models for the sloop, different models for lanterns and ladders on your ship, and other things like extra canopies that have no collision, like figurehead customization. I wish I could link some of the demonstrative art pieces I mentioned because they really do help paint a picture of what I'm talking about, but I can't because I have no idea how.
That aside, if you add captain-exclusive model changes that works alongside the stripe/trim/rail/keel and main/secondary/filler sails system for the liveries, then the sentiment made long ago of "no two pirates being alike" would finally apply to ships as well!
Now, for a few paragraphs up (I get carried away,) I also mentioned curses and scars needed additional systems. as of now, these systems can only reach a certain amount of their vast potential because they are only pretty overlays for your pirate, but in other fiction, they are so much more. From shark people to.. As incessantly requested spare any feasible way for it to exist.. Undead pirates. But for this you'd need an entirely new system for a pirate to become something new without just gluing things onto your face or just forgoing said face altogether, such is the way of costumes. I would suggest as system that divides the pirate's head once it is generated with the slider IPG system. Upon becoming a member of the Sea Of Thieves, your unique pirate's face will be segmented into different models. Nose, jowls, lips, mouth, cheekbones, jaw, ears, eye sockets, etc. Each piece will have a rigging similar to how jackets work on all different pirate types, squashed and stretched and the like for how the pirate's face is different from all others. Now that the face is segmented, you can have a skeleton curse that doesn't just overwrite your pirate, you can have an early version merfolk curse that stretches the eyes (having fins that work like accessories, taking up the "bracelet slot" as described prior) and real breathing gills, you can have.. Literally anything! And you thought I'd forgotten scars.. You can have more drastic scars that give you things like a fearsome iron jaw or remove your nose and ears! It entirely overhauls what your art team and design team can dream up, and the expression for pirates like us. Win win. (also legends curse should make tattoos glow I mean come on)
Now for more advanced and somehow even more farfetched things. I have prior proposed a new button, the same button perhaps for renaming a pet while in the pet chest, to cycle between different variations of a cosmetic to better sort and to better cover wide host of clothing in the Sea Of Thieves. Now.. This one is a lot.
First of all, there are some cosmetics that have never been added to Sea Of Thieves plainly because they are too similar to other cosmetics! For example, there are three true variations for most of the beards added in 2018. The top moustache, the bottom neckbeard, and both together. Well groomed and imperial sovereign beards, there's a missing link that only NPCs have. Solemn and ruffian sea dog, there's a missing link that only promotional characters have. Dapper moustache and sea dog beard, missing link that only NPCs have. It would be nice if some of these beards were consolidated (gold spent being refunded) and you were allowed to buy all three at once, able to switch between moustache neckbeard and both together at your leisure, like in more modern and innovative titles. This would greatly simplify the clothing chest bloat with all these reskins as well, being able to cycle through bought reskins of an item with the variation key rather than by scrolling through five dimmy darned pages of just reskins, and make the sailor tattoo set just one slot instead of TEN! This'd also increase the value of the ragtag collection, sailor and the (rather underwhelming ending reward for the tall tales,) the gold hoarder jacket. There are a lot of different skins of these cosmetics that NPCs have but we can't because they're "not worth bringing into shops," and because where would you obtain the gold hoarder jacket reskins? Easy, perhaps just.. Give them to players who already have these cosmetics, under the ability to cycle through variations. All the GH reskins and remodels, hell, even throw in the half-closed version of the sea dog jackets that have existed since launch! Speaking off more noticeable additions in that vein..
A new level of expression and storytelling for pirates. This feature could alleviate a rather peculiar phenomenon in the Sea Of Thieves wherein every pirate only hurts the same hand, and the same eye.. Prosthetics on either (or both, for sillier pirates,) sides and being able to choose how to wear asymmetrical gloves and boots, like bone crusher and the rotten bilge rat boots, having both of the long rotten bilge rat boot or both of the short bone crusher gloves. This could also add options for wearing your pants over your boots, or your cuffs over your gloves, which would be so, so highly appreciated! And most requested of all, especially because belts on larger pirates look awful with jackets, and some jackets look awful with belts because their length.. It'll finally allow us to use our belts under our open jackets and slightly lower on half-open jackets, using the same part system as shirts. So many players have begged and preyed for belts under jackets, and this could answer their prayers in an efficient way! Additional options are always appreciated, especially for people who want to see the better one of the bone crusher gloves they bought while using a hook, or seeing at all with the gold curse while using an eyepatch.
On a roll with these segues, the gold curse controversy solved easy as cake. Give every pirate the option to use the current version of the curse, or any other that you used to be able to choose using the variation button, just like the gold hoarder jacket, so you can finally cosplay pretty much any NPC you want! Or.. You could if you could also select variations for
Costumes. Now, costumes are very much mixed bags, especially because pirates are very much mixed bags! For example, some pirates don't really wear costumes with hats because they like their hair or their pirate's skinny so the hats look huge, or they don't use costumes with hooks because their pirate's lore states they aren't missing a hand.. Variations for costumes would greatly increase the number of pirates that could use them without distress.
In conclusion, this varieties system, or something similar, would easily increase available customization options by a billion times without adding a single new cosmetic! Some of the things wouldn't just improve fashion potential and customization, but better control for your prosthetics greatly increases roleplay and silly fun potential, cornerstones of this game!
"Tools not rules" most-typically applies to gameplay, but if you take the time to add new systems for customization options to be created, then not only do you bring refreshing new cosmetics that satisfy the player base, but you also free your team's imagination in new and interesting ways for years to come, making sure no addition will be lackluster or considered stale! Though these take more development resources than adding new cosmetics, I'm sure the community would forgive and become more excited for cosmetics to come the moment they get their skeleton curses, free sailor reskins, and accessories.
