New World is shedding some light on the skin design process in the latest Forged in Aeternum discussion. Noting that fashion is often called, ‘the MMO endgame’ and why that’s relevant, the team talks about how they craft new skins based on game content and player feedback.
With the new seasonal model and passes coming up, as well as leaderboard reward skins and Transmog coming this summer, this is a timely video and devblog duo.
Different games have their own design philosophies, and for the New World team, their choice to have a historically-inspired with a supernatural twist approach to Aeternum means that the skins created for the game need to feel like they belong to this world. This means taking into account particular materials, time periods, and cultures as research in the process of designing what we eventually see in drops or the store.
When it comes to the cultural and historical influences, the process of adapting them to Aeternum and why it looks and feels the way it does, is a big part of the earlier process. “Trying to put the Aeternum twist” on outfits to make them feel like they fit as made by some people in the world.
When it comes to the community, and different players, customization goals mean different things. The team goes into this, which also means working to create different styles to have a certain variety. Though some will pick and choose pieces, regardless of a set being released as a whole,so when the team is designing armor and skins, they need to be sure mismatched pieces will fit other sets without a lot of clipping.
In new content, they can’t talk about, but hint that there will be some dark and gritty designs to come. To follow this, the Silent Death armor set comes up as something they can currently talk about.
The coordinating devblog thus goes into the basic design approach and walks us through the creation of the Silent Death armor sets, with their gothic and anatomical inspirations,turned into something fitting dark fantasy.
