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Best and Worst armor design in RPGs. -- Please use spoiler tags for large images or strings of them

Cryomancer

Arcane
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One of my favorite armor sets from RPGs is Faraam set from DS2.
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New World, a mmo from Amazon also seems to have his fair share of great armor.

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Greedfall also has a lot of cool armors. Gothic 2 paladin armor is great too. But RPGs also has the fair share of "carnavalesque" armor. I just don't get. Why??? Diablo 2 had good armor design. Diablo 3 armor is just too retarded. Looks more like something that I expect to see in a Carnival in Hell de Janeiro than a proper armor. And Diablo 3 follow the worst possible bastardization of stats in RPGs. "You are what you wear", everyone has the same muscle mass and IQ and the unique way to become stronger or more intelligent is by finding a piece of gear which is AWFUL.

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Seriously. Look to D2 armor. Looks interesting

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And compare with D3

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Other type of armor which I hate with passion is chainmail bikini. Feminists say that it is made to appeal to "male gaze", to "male power fantasy" and other BS like that. There is nothing wrong with appealing to male sexual desires. The problem is that bikini armor is not a "efficient" way to do that. Give me a naked succucbus pet like on Age of Conan. Give me a servant like Heather Poe from VtMB, allow me to own a brothel like on fable. That is much better than seeing a half naked woman getting hurt in the battlefield.
 

Shaki

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There is nothing wrong with appealing to male sexual desires. The problem is that bikini armor is not a "efficient" way to do that. Give me a naked succucbus pet like on Age of Conan. Give me a servant like Heather Poe from VtMB, allow me to own a brothel like on fable. That is much better than seeing a half naked woman getting hurt in the battlefield.

What if I only get off on seeing half-naked women getting hurt?
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
WoW ruined armor design.

Giant fuckhueg pauldrons everywhere.
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Ugly as fuck!

I do like chainmail bikinis and other sexy armors though. What can I say, they're hot! Especially when combined with cute sandals that show the toes :M
But for your regular fighter types that aren't amazonian bitches, I like believable and practical armor styles. Stuff that looks like it actually protects you and doesn't have any bullshit parts that just get in the way, like massive pauldrons or other bullshit.

As a game set in the actual middle ages, Kingdom Come Deliverance had great armor:
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Exanima has great medieval armor too, and it's layered!
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ferratilis

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Good one OP, Faraam set is so synonymous with Dark Souls for me. I almost bought a small figure of it to put on my desk, but decided to spend the money on more useful things.

I'd also add the Black Knight set:
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Shadenuat

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it's interesting that Diablo 1 has literally samurai armor in it, and seems like many of its stuff was sketched as quite pure fantasy, but in the game it all looks super sweet. I once used cloak picture from Diablo 1 as little picture for playes to buy as cloak in shop and everyone just bought one because they liked how it looked.
 

laclongquan

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Since I play mostly female PC with nearly nekkid state, I dont see the need for this question.

Sure, Fallout 3/FNV has best armor as hulking suits of power armors. Well guess what? Not wearing any.

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines also has different armors/clothes for different races. Well guess what? You can use a coding line to lead that race to using another race's clothes look. Thus a ghoul (if I bother to play uglies in the sewers) can look like a crazy.
 

Ulysa

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I love the chitin armor in Morrowind. It just makes sense, chitin (from silt striders I guess) is a natural strong as fuck molecule that makes arthropod exoskeleton super resistant.
 

Cryomancer

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I love the chitin armor in Morrowind. It just makes sense, chitin (from silt striders I guess) is a natural strong as fuck molecule that makes arthropod exoskeleton super resistant.

Yep. A light commonly available material being used in armor is more interesting than the "dragonscale" armor in skyrim.

For futuristic games, I like Power armor and NCR armor on FNV. And I don't like NCR.

Good one OP, Faraam set is so synonymous with Dark Souls for me. I

Yep. I use mostly Faraam set. IS not the best armor, but who cares? It is gorgeous.
 
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The funny thing is, all game devs have to do in this regard is go to historical museums or look drawings up online of historical armor. Considering how many places and times had their own distinctive armor, you can get ideas for a ton of different set ups, and since they are from history, they will all be functional, relatively good looking (looking good was important for soldier pride and morale) and way, way, waaay less dumb than the average video game armor:

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oscar

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NZ
Darklands had a great paper doll. Captured the weight and imposing nature of armour well.

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Daggerfall had quite neat designs as well that were fantastical but still look fairly plausible. Looks like the front cover of a 70s-90s fantasy book (in a good way).

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Battlespire was nice too. Until Oblivion TES in general had top notch art direction.

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Gargaune

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As others have said, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is king.

Though Mount & Blade: Warband was the true bellwether of the current trend of depicting medieval armor accurately in gaming.

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Guild Wars 2 was mostly awful, but I liked the Dark Templar Armor alright, albeit dyed differently. Shame about the spiked arms and legs though.

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Not exactly accurate but I quite like the sprites in Diablo and to a lesser extent Diablo II, as well as Baldur's Gate/ Icewind Dale's before the paperdolls were ruined in Heart of Winter.

Worst: The witcher(1)

It was just the collection of three leather jackets unfortunately. The npc armor design was very pleasing.

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Ghulgothas

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WoW-styled Pauldroncore is a plague. I blame them entirely for leading character design in fantasy RPGs down a dark path they've yet to recover from. Oblivion's refusal to hire an actual concept artist to actually design shit for them remains one of that games biggest mistakes.
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But this isn't strictly about fantasy armor, is it?
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And absolutely pleb choices I know, but there's a reason they plastered these fuckers on all their box art.
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Silverfish

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It's a meme at this point, but I've always been high on Dark Souls' Elite Knight armor.

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On the flipside, Skyrim's got some of the most fucked design I've ever seen.

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