Yeah I don't see a reason to tie it to a difficulty scale, since this is a core RP feature. I mean I do enjoy the idea of the game rewarding us with little things that go beyond just an achievement on steam, just not for characterization of this sort. If I can see it in the game that feels different to me, which is why I think it works nicely for dice skins on honour. Doing random stuff with difficulty scales should just give us a ton of different Dice colors there, but for equipment and visualizing the Player Character in avatar this is basically stuff I'd want in Explorer mode too. It's good for all players I think.
The difference between character Creation and in-game progression for the visualization shouldn't be quite so pronounced. The mirror is a good start. Hair and Wardrobe should be a thing that the player can spend a full session on if they choose to go wild there, or double back like a couple hours later to just a whole weekend on that alone. Because there is no custom/import portrait here the avatar has to do more heavy lifting to create a similar sense of having a unique character. The same goes for voices, where we get a spectacular Jaheira voice with great barks but you can't use em for the Tadpoled Adventurer. Stuff like that. I think most of our armored appearances we're able to preview in Act 1. With a couple notable exceptions we see all the armor and robe designs pretty early on, and the only thing that changes with each is how the dyes apply to the various components on it. It would be different if there were like 4 designs for each chainshirt, but for each type we get one visual basically and it's just the colors that progress.
Then without transmog you often get an issue where you're trying to combine metallic looking armor with accent pieces that look like fur or studded leather, or you'll get a mismatch like chunky heavy armor in the forearms like Popeye with something all lithe in the torso, or vice versa. Or maybe where something looks weird just cause it clips. In all those cases I want to hide the offending article of clothing or replace it with something more generic probably. I want my color choices to carry through into the Portrait and the character sheet.
Right now I don't feel like we have much of a character sheet. I mean the way we have to pull up our inventory, or the whole party view to see our avatar. The fact that it's the same avatar we see if just switching out our equipment. I think that view should be something that includes idles and emotes, a color field or background. Ways to carry the color choices through into the Char sheet visual. I think having a 3rd in-game view would also be nice, so basically a Standard appearance that over-rides the Equipped visualization, in exactly the same way that the camp clothing appearance can override it. They gave us an item that allows us to disguise self in the camp chest, this would just be an extension of that, but for our duds and getups rather than our heads/phenotype.
Top priority right now would be to Replace Appearance/Hide for capes, gloves, boots etc. Then a toggle to show/hide weapons outside of combat or in dialogue, the same way helmets work currently. The clipping is atrocious with some stuff right now. Like ears still going through hats, capes twisting into the chest, weapons just looking extra jank at the back. It feels like light trolling sometimes, but then I'm sure they want to clean all that up if they can right. Meantime just an option to hide what isn't working and replace it with something that does in the interim.
ps. here this is crude, but just that idea suggested above where maybe it could key off the basic armor type. So in the first appearance set you could have say standard Jaheira exactly what she's wearing when we first meet her, or you could key into another regular cloth look for that. For a medium armor you could transmog to another medium armor keeping the major components or colors. Then for Hide you could have that replace with the standard appearance or just key off the main torso piece. So basically Hide/Look 1/Look 2 for any of the equipment slots. Having to actually equip the loadouts might also be cool, for the regular equipment since that would be another use for that stuff on the characters. For each character to do the quick switch with anything in their inventory and have it set that way for the look. Loadout 1/2, however many. Then the same for the camp stuff, but just add all the slots to those so we can wear the cool boots and hats and capes for it hehe.
![[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]](https://i.ibb.co/DYYNP7Q/transmog.png)
