Would it be possible to add visible belts?

[CosmicKirby]

Honestly, I'd rather they removed belts from the game, redistributed their stats across other gear as necessary, and use that added slot for a different kind of visible gear. A "headwear" slot so you can have a hat and glasses at the same time, maybe. It could be purely for glamour but I think it'd be more useful than an invisible gear slot that has extremely low stat value.

I'd be in favor of this, if only because we can finally remove the stupid exceptions that the belt has.

1.) It costs more tokens than other drops on the same raid floor, because it's left side.
2.) It's the only left side item not visible.
3.) It's basically an accessory, but with a primary stat on it.

[Sakuraluna]

I don’t see it happening but I do like the ideas behind some of the icon designs.

[MsQi]

I wasn't around in 1.0 but belts are a graphical nightmare (I'm look'n at you SWTOR!), especially if you what them to show over everything. It seems they opted to design belts into many tops rather than have them separate pieces that might not work. I don't imagine it would be too difficult to have visible belts they only show if you are wearing relatively simple clothing but would be hidden by more intricate tops.

[Vstarstruck]

It's not so much the servers I was thinking, just the way the glamour system handles their categories of items. Select "cast glamour" on your hat, and it will only give you a list of headgear as options. Therefore if you could cast a glamour on your belt, it would probably only give you the option of items categorised as belts.

Therefore, it seems likely to me that if they did implement a "belt slot as general glamour" they would have to recategorise or recreate items from other categories to exist in the system as "belts" (even though they appear as other items entirely) just so the glamour system could detect them as options for that slot.

It would take a lot more effort then you think, because belts DO exist in this game as is. (like my last post explained) it was a 1.0 >2.0 change and from what i know thus far, SE never touched core coding changes like that. Basically you have to remove all the belts in the game that are attached to shirts and be replaced by this predetermined list.

For the other things like glasses + hat etc, it is something I like to see, but I joked with your final line. SE states a lot "server limitations" so I said way SE acts it is unlikely the servers could not handle it because they act like a sneeze will overload them.

[Nihility]

we only have a belt slot at all because of a 1.0 holdover.
They were horrid in 1.0 too, every chest piece had this long blank nothing space where the belts were meant to cover and everyone wore belts so it was this omnipresent thing on literally everyone.
It was bad times and gear looks a lot better without having to consider them.
And since pretty much every new piece of gear since 2.0 was designed with no belt in mind and most of the 1.x gear was redesigned to no longer consider belts it would be a hell of an undertaking to put back in something that was generally hated when it was available

glasses is a similar thing. We already have a lot of glasses to use as glamours and we even have several real headgears that are glasses or goggles
to make glasses what is basically a new slot they would have to remove all the head slot glasses and go through every existing headgear and alter them to accommodate the chance of glasses being used with them
It's just asking for an unreasonable amount for the extreme minority that want glasses+hat at same time

[BillyKaplan]

Belts would be too much of a hassle, I agree. As for the head-gear thing, what I'd like to see is a reverse /visor. Oftentimes the thing that gets removed by that command is what I wanted while what's left is what I don't care for. But they obviously have the technology to make that separation because /visor exists in the first place, so just give us the option to flip the visibility.

[Lusavari]

As much as I do miss having 1.0's visible belts, it was a necessary change for the game that was ultimately for the better, as having a visible belt appearance restricted gear design greatly in 1.0, in that each body and leg piece needed to be designed with every belt design in mind to avoid clipping, and, well, given we're seeing complaints here in ARR now about clipping issues with weapons and miqo'te/au ra tails and ears/horns in the latest 'flashy' gear, this is clearly something SE are never going to go back to.

It's the price that had to be paid for more elaborate gear design.

This largely captures the case. It was done as an artistic decision to expand the variety of designs available. However, some of the belts are actually visible, just not in the way you think. The design of the sigmascape belt for instance shows up in one of the armor sets. It's either the tank set or the Dragoon set, but it is there. However, you just can't set the belts to show at will.

[Rhysati]

There's literally no way to add belts in to the game at this point. In order to have belts on clothing, everything would have to be designed for them and it would massively restrict what kind of clothing and armor designs they can do. Otherwise, there would be massive clipping issues with the clothing for every single belt out there.

WoW gets away with this by making every outfit have a skin-tight clothing model that doesn't move around the waist. When they did have something more lose like a guild tabard, it had a bar missing around it that was specifically put there for the belt to cover.

Having belts incorporated as part of a design is feasible, but attaching it after the fact? Nuh uh. It's the same reason that on some outfits necklaces can't be worn or how sometimes gloves/boots will go over clothing and sometimes under. It's all to prevent clipping and there's no way to change it and still have the game look nice.

[Felis]

no, it had to do with limitations with putting belts in the new game, like how to I explain this correctly..

They said something along the lines it was too hard graphically to show all the belts with the different armor, so all belts where added to shirts. (You can clearly see that on some more then others, like the sailor shirt)

So unlikely going to happen, it was one of the 1.0> 2.0 changes (neglecting the fact you do have "visible belts", they attached them to the body armor looks)

They say that visible different belts limit the gear design, so they make the belts invisible and add the belt graphic to the gear design. It skip the process to check the body gear graphic with every belt ingame.

[KisaiTenshi]

I’d like them to get creative and make it a “bonus” slot you could use to glamour an extra item onto your character - glasses as suggested above, novelty items like wings, wearing tights under skirts...

The only issue is, could the system handle it? Generally we can only glamour items of the same type - headgear into other headgear and so on. Could they make the belt slot accept other items from other categories, or would they have to make a second version of every pair of glasses in the game that are classified as waist items?

If they can make level 1 costume gear, they can absolutely do it. All they need to do is make that level 1 "special effect" gear glamour over the belt slot. Also the glamour dresser will apparently let you drop things into the belt slot, but the item is just gone after.

The reason we haven't seen this thus far is that there would be no way of "turning off" that gear slot if the effect got annoying. In another game, the "special effect" slot was basically a mount, eg you walk at normal speed/fly-at-mount-speed for wings. So you would get conflicts if the special effect let you do something that other players can not do.

Like, the game really has no reason not to do the "wings as a mount" type of effect, as long as they are flying, and it limits combat. But if an effect was only available by being glamoured over the belt slot, it has to function even during combat. So adding anything like decorative wings would not be able to make the player fly, at best they would sparkle, or enable a different move set that takes into account the decoration, but that still requires as much work as adding another emote.

One way of resolving both (at least for something that would make the character fly) would be to have a "wings" effect glamoured over the belt slot, but to actually fly requires summoning a specific invisible mount that makes your character fly (a la superman) and if you don't have the wings, well it just comes off as superman.