Quote Originally Posted by Niwashi View Post
So once it's finally implemented, how would it impact features like gear sets or the armory chest?
[snip]
At this point I'd say the only people who know are the devs.
That being said there's a number of options used in other games*.

1)Overriding the appearance of one item with another, combining them
GW2 does this. You use a consumable item to combine two items, keeping the stats of one and the appearance of another.
It does save inventory space as the items are combined into one item and doesn't need more slots on the UI but it also has it's downsides. You have to repeat the process every time you replace a piece of gear or want to change to a different look for your current gear. You lose one of the items in the process and while you can use the resulting item to override the look of an upgrade you'd have to aquire the item with your desired look a second time if you wanted to use it in a second set (Say you have a cloth robe model you want to use for WHM and BLM. Using this system you'd fuse the robe with your WHM robe then go and get the same robe again to fuse with your BLM robe.).

2)Overriding the looks of an item with another, keeping both
WoW does this. You pay an amount of ingame currency to an NPC who overrides the look of an item you're wearing with one from your inventory/storage, you retain both items.
This doesn't need additional slots in the UI and is somewhat more flexible than option 1 but it also means you sacrifice storage space to keep vanity items around. When you replace an item you go back to the NPC and repeat the process.

3)Adding additional costume slots to the UI
Now there's various iterations of this system, I'll start with the most basic.
You have additional slots on your character page for each visible piece of equipment or a subpage that holds those slots to better organize things. You equip the items you want displayed over your actual equipment into these slots. Leave slots empty to display the item you're actually wearing.
You wouldn't need to reapply your looks every time you got an upgrade and having equipped your vanity items you wouldn't need storage for the ones you're wearing either. You'd still need storage for the vanity items you're not currently wearing though and with the restrictions they mentioned (you can't use items your class can't equip et al.) you'd have to carry more items around for when you switch classes.

Now there's a number of ways to expand upon this system. Personally, i like what Rift does [or did? Didn't play since the F2P transition]. They have a number of "wardrobe slots" where you can save a number of costumes to switch between. I think you started with 2 slots and were able to buy more for ingame currency. With all the items being "equipped" in the wardrobe they don't cut into valuable storage slots and switching looks is just a matter of pressing a button.

*Games mentioned are an example and didn't neccessarily invent the system.

So there you have it. Personally I hope we get option 3 with at least one costume slot per armorclass to avoid the worst of the storage nightmare. Asking for one per job is probably too much.