Merit Vendors are hideous.

The color combos and general costume really just turn my stomach whenever I see them. I suggest having some kind of costume contest on the Test server where people show up in what they think a good merit vendor costume would be, then you either let them redesign the Merit Vendors, OR (and more likely) have the developers use that as a template to redo the Vendor designs. I think it would fix an eyesore and be a good chance to let the community have a say in what a small part of the game looks like.

P.S. I'm not the only one who finds the Vendors ugly, am I?
P.P.S. I already posted this on the Suggestions Forums, but thought I would repost it here to get a better response. Curious to see how other people think about this.

They are not *bad* designs - they range from generic "picked a costume set, did some tweaks, done" to actually pretty good - it's just that nothing looks good in maroon and yellow. And for some reason maroon and yellow are the "SG colors" for the Merit Vendor factions.

I always thought they were supposed to be maroon and gold. Sounds like a good time to add gold to the CC. The costumes them selves I thought were ok. A little uninspired but not bad.

Some people like maroon and yellow. Some people don't. So naturally you are going to get people who agree with your taste and some who disagree.

I like Dante's analysis. All the villains should mug the merit vendors for their recipes.

I tend to think that costumes of NPCs need to be more distinctive than to be "good" - the latter is a lot more subjective than the first in this case I reckon.

In that, their colours have achieved the objective and the costumes themselves are pretty varied from plain to cool IMO.

I totally agree with Dante that they need some credible lore attached to them though

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

-sigh-

Just kill them, and be done with it.

An open letter to NCsoft

Not only are the merit vendors ugly, I also question the sheer number of them. Why are there multiple in some zones? Heck, why are they in every zone?

My husband and I joke that the Merit Vendors are actually part of the Arizona State University supergroup, the Sun Devils.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Isn't calling out NPCs on their horrible outfits Equation's job?

I too think most of the merit vendors are fugly. There are one or two that I think look OK, mostly because they have most of a full set of some thematic pieces. But most of them look very much like someone hit "random" in the CC, having pieces that have no thematic or textural relation to one another on various parts of their body.

I can deal with the color scheme, though I don't find it especially attractive. But the lack of component coordination is pretty ridiculous.

One of the things I think is bad about it is that the Merit Vendors are one of the most intrusive examples of something game mechanical seeping unexplained into the game environment I can think of. Even if it is a thin veneer of lore, WW and the BM both have a backstory, as do the crafting tables in the universities, and even the "bin of stuff" in Fort Trident or for Cerberus. But no one and nothing explains the Merit Vendors. They just showed up, unexplained (in a lore sense) all over Paragon and the RI. For them to be ugly on top of it just makes them feel, overall, like someone didn't care and/or was rushed to get them in.

And that bugs me.

I agree that a story or something explaining them would be great. It did always bug me that these ugly people with their bad color schemes just appeared there one day. Maybe we can get a backstory with some much better costumes in the future.

Just put them all in AE. Dr. Aeon can't dress himself, so why should his employees be any better?

I think they look ok - they're easy to spot

Merit vendors? Bah! It's that Tina? chick in the VIP room that's ugly. So she gets some makeover and STILL doesn't fit in the theme of the Tiki room at all. She looks like she belongs in another las vegas style hotel area not a Tiki - Polynesian themed area! She should look more like Hequat or something.

Granded her makeover is better looking then she was but she still doesn't fit the room's theme at all.

It's not much, but here's my before-and-after attempt. New costume based on the idea that these guys are vendors, and the game provides no heroic background for them whatsoever.