Customize Existing Armor
Trying to address some concerns...

I have seen two main objections so far:

1. I need to know about their armor as this is a PvP game. I may want to attack or steal.

2. Armor should be boring and repetitive so characters have a reason to wear clothes.

I will start right off by saying that I think number 2 is negligible. Armor already comes with downsides that make wearing it a tradeoff. And if the stat penalties and increased weight aren't enough already to make the choice feel like a bit of a tradeoff, adjust those penalties a little. I personally think, however, that they are pretty solid already.

I can sympathize more with number 1 but I think it can be overcome. Accommodated. And that is what I'm going to try and do here. I think it could actually be taken further in a lot of ways but the basic idea is to tag the armor so it IS identifiable.

I did write up a several page long, detailed document on how this could be done on a grad scale but decided to try and pare it all down to something slightly more manageable.

The base idea is to:

- Assign all existing armors a 'material type' property.

This should be fairly consistent across lines. For example, most Du-Wear might be of the "BashGard Combat Leather" material type.

- Append the material type to Armor @worn and @describe messages.

Maybe just an extra sentence like, "This piece of armor seems to be primarily made of %material." Resulting in something like "This piece of armor seems to be primarily made of BashGard Combat Leather."

- Allow PCs with the right stats/skills modify certain messages on armor.

Just the cosmetic bits like the name, @worn, @describe, @wear, @owear, @remove, @oremove and so on. This lets the player make that custom armor. But since the @wear and @describe messages on all armor get a sentence tagged on mentioning the material, it's clear that it IS armor and with a little IC knowledge you have an idea of what that armor is capable of.

One could also make the higher end armors harder to modify, providing a reason to raise these stats/skills as much as one would raise combat skills/stats.

That's the bulk of it.

As the game will already mention that someone's clothing looks 'armored', players have several levels of 'tells'. Just looking at a person will tell you as much about their custom armor as they can currently tell with stock armor.

No additional items need to be added to the game (though they can be if desired) and few mechanics need to be added. Further, if desired, this could be extended to other items.

Of course, I freely admit that this is a very fresh idea for me so there may be down sides I don't see yet. Regardless, I am a big fan of cyberpunk style and would love to see more of it. I'd love it if we could adjust the game's dials to that sporting your own style isn't as much of a mechanical loss.

a) even if you kept the item name of the armor the same, and I can use glance in this case to see what you're wearing, people tend to go overboard with custom descriptions sometimes. This is a style choice, yes, but I think when it comes to PvP I don't necessarily want to read paragraphs upon paragraphs of descriptions on armor.

b) some armor sets simply don't allow for a lot of customization ICly. it doesn't make sense to extensively modify Xo3/Xo5 for example. You can make SOME differences, sure, but then we'd need staff oversight on all of this to ensure that no one's going overboard and that the customizations made are in theme and make sense ICly. The staff are already overworked, I'm not sure if putting this on their shoulders is a good idea.

c) It'd affect the second-hand armor economy. If I kill someone for their armor and it's customized, what am I going to do? I can't wear it unless I want to make it obvious it was me. If this idea also comes with the suggestion that you could always re-modify an armor, then I don't see custom armor being a sustainable thing because people will vat each other, re-customize their armor to something else or default, then finally wear or sell it. Fixers will have a more difficult time buying/selling second-hand armors if they come with strings, or if they look a certain style. If it's meant to be non-reversible, then we're going to run out of non-customized armor sets and then we'll run into the issue of people going after those who're wearing their previously owned sleek custom armor.

I think there are way too many issues that come with any kind of armor customization that's just way too much work for what it gives in return.

Please, go wild on your aesthetics!

I'm very big on customization so I don't mind your idea at all, especially if there was a way to do a secondary customization by hiring the right person and using the right equipment after acquiring secondhand. But I just wanted to add in to not forget the sticker system and for more people to make use of that as well.

Maybe more people would be enthusiastic about customized armor if they realized how unique a piece of armor could get with stickers.

I think this could be solved fairly easily by requiring every armored item to have the word "armored" (or a similar word) to be in the name of the item, it's description, and it's worn message. There are already similar restrictions like this placed on tailored clothing, so I don't think it's unreasonable.

But from past discussions, my understanding is that the reason this isn't an option is because Slither felt it would increase the amount of loaded data by too much.