Wait the new DNC gear includes a free breast reduction surgery?

There isn’t really another option, at least not for MMOs.

The alternative is having all of your clothing simply overlay on top of the nude base mesh, which isn’t really viable since all of those base mesh polygons will still exist under the mesh, and when you have a ton of players on screen, that can eat up a lot of your poly budget. Polys generally don’t matter as much for single player and console games because you can more easily control the amount of polys on-screen, but MMOs have to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, so by using mesh swapping where you can delete unnecessary polygons underneath clothing and armor meshes, you alleviate a lot of overhead for lower-end systems to make the game look better for everyone. You can then spend the extra overhead on fancy bells and whistles like bone dynamics for things like capes, hair, and breast physics, among other things.

TL;DR - mesh swapping is just more efficient for performance than simply stacking your meshes on top of each other. No matter what method you use, your ability to design armors will still be limited based on your item slots and how your proxy meshes are set up to avoid clipping (things like gloves with long-sleeved shirts, etc)

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