Why They Avoid Making Real New Player Models

Community General Discussion
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Have you ever noticed how your helmet looks different when you’re playing a Tauren compared to when you’re playing a Human?

A new Player model means the Devs have to go back through every item that has geometry and adjust it to the new model.

Back in the old days, that was EXPONENTIALLY easier.

Why?

  1. Most of the armor was painted on your character’s body. Only helmets and shoulderpads had geometry to adjust;

  2. There weren’t that many items to adjust.

But now we are on the way to Expansion 10. There are LOADS of helmets and shoulderpads. Plus a lot of belt buckles. And chestpieces with 3d stuff. And pants with 3d stuff. And gloves with 3d stuff. And boots with 3d stuff. Now there’s even a wrist item with 3d stuff lol

Making a brand new model that requires adjustment just got extremely resource intensive, to the point where it may no longer be worth the money.

They could spend a gazillion man-hours to make playable Gnogres (half Gnome half Ogres), or they could give Dwarves a new coat of paint, call them a new Race and re-use all those 3d armor assets they’ve already made for Dwarves, sparing those man-hours to spend them on things like new Tier Sets and stuff.

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2

Didn’t they just announce that season 4 is literally going to be reusing old tiers and bonuses?, I’d agree with you but it seems we are getting neither? :man_shrugging:t4:

So they saved time and money reusing Dwarf Model, saved time and money reusing old raids, dungeons and now tier sets and bonuses in season 4 until the next expansion, where’s the new stuff?.

I don’t know, personally just seems like a lazy way to save money, you know maximise profits as much as they can, but that’s just me.

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after dracthur I think we all knew that was the beginning of the end.

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4

Blizzard is just getting lazy, putting in the least amount of effort in order to keep the cash flowing.

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5

Psh. That’s just a month or two for an unpaid intern or two.

Imagine if they allowed dedicated fans to help out with this? Earn bnet balance or tendies.

I’d sign up!!

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This is just speculation, but I think this season 4 was never meant to happen, and it’s being cobbled together because the War Within is going to release later than they originally expected and they don’t want a content giga-drought.

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They definitely need to revisit Tauren helms. On the female model, the BC crafted “pimp hats” that never go out of style hide their faces instead of perching on their heads.

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Vulpera were a creative application of allied race tech. Wish we’d see more like that. Gnogres being smaller Ogres could leverage Pandaren/Kul Tiran. Maybe we could get some hunched over Ethereals based on Foresaken or some beefy Gnolls based on Tauren.

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This is the type of “brute force” work that AI might change for the better. Rather than paying a team of model artists to manually rig 1000+ transmogs. They could pay a small team of model artists + a small team of AI programmers. The artists build the core rig, and then review the AI work to make sure it didn’t “do anything stupid” and tweak things.

But yeah, I think without that there’s a huge cost to designing new character models.

Also, “Player Models” is funny to me. I’m the player and I don’t want anyone coming to my house to remodel me. :slight_smile:

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:joy:

I meant it as “models for players” as opposed to “models for NPCs” lol

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Ion already said they were exploring using AI for stuff like this. Could usher in the new-model utopia.

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They did for the dress in this month’s tradepost. I am welcome to see AI used for own work upgrades vs what the neckbeards abuse it for.

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