From what I can tell, there were three reasons Ancients were excluded from apparel:
(1) Art
(2) Coding
(3) Thematic
Let's strike (3) off the list right now. Gameplay and story segregation, yo. If it doesn't fit with your personal lore for your ancient dragon to have a steampunk robot pet or something, don't put one on it, but pretending that there's a sacred cohesive lore that covers all the existing aesthetics items on the site and that putting anything but a skin on an ancient would violate it is pretty ridiculous. (Similarly the 'no apparel is what makes ancients special' argument. Then don't put it on your dragons, done.)
~
(2) seems daunting but doable; there are a ton of situations already on the site where if [X] condition applies to a dragon, they cannot do [Y]. Perhaps most similarly, all moderns can have standard gene scrolls applied to them, ancients can only have their designated breed scrolls applied to them...except for remove gene scrolls, and those items are really just '[Primary/Secondary/Tertiary] Gene: Basic' scrolls when you think about it.
So universal/nonfitted apparel could function exactly like those remove gene scrolls - it could be compatible with all dragons, unlike its more specific counterparts.
The coding would be work, but it would only need to be done once.
~
That only leaves (1), and imo it's the only one that's particularly important. Ancients were intended as more limited to A) relieve crunch pressure on the artists while B) still allowing users to see new breeds more than every five years or so. Great goals, and they should always keep fulfilling that role.
But when there are so many items that would require no art effort beyond copy/pasting an existing layer (seriously, check out, say, autumn leaves on several different modern poses in succession. There are a limited number of arrangements that were simply re-used multiple times. Do the same for the ancients, pick one, make sure there isn't anything covering the dragon's eye or otherwise looking weird, done), but would add so much richness in customization possibilities, it seems frustrating for that to be a barrier.
Now, the argument here is usually the 'give a mouse a cookie' one. "If you let people have simple apparel on ancients, they'll clamor for more and more complex stuff! It'll never stop!"
...and? That seems like a feature, not a bug - as long as the clamoring is polite, which should apply to anything.
I don't feel like choosing which apparel to make universal should be a one-off deal.
First stage should be emperor's new clothes and marva's cloak - 0 art involvement there, and useful for all the reasons people put those things on modern dragons (yes, including the former, it's great if you want to protect a dragon from sale or exaltation but no design items or familiars fit with your personal lore for it) - and the simplest possible stuff like flowerfalls and auras.
Then things like floaty pets, emblems, mouth flowers, etc can be worked on slowly in the background. And it can mostly done by average humans as opposed to Capital-A-Artists (my own talents fall short of stick figures, Artists are superhuman and should be worshipped as such, but even someone like lame little me can take an existing image and move/rotate it around in a box). The existing coding can be used to convert those items to universal apparel when the images are ready.
Perhaps even simple semi-fitted things (like very small jewelry/crowns/earrings - probably nothing on wings/legs to preserve flexibility for future ancient designs, but I'm pretty sure no FR dragon will ever be designed without a head) can become universal with time - especially going forward, because from what I understand (and it seems to make intuitive sense), adapting apprel to a new pose is easiest at the time the apparel is first being designed (iirc we were told that Obelisk apparel art was drawn alongside other breeds' for years' worth of releases before the breed was actually released, and I wouldn't be surprised if the next modern breed is already fully drawn and getting the same treatment now).
Ancients wearing pants and armor? Almost certainly never. But they could be a lot more dynamic and appealing than they are now with, from what I can tell, a disproportionally small amount of effort. From this user's perspective, putting said effort in that direction would do a lot more for my enjoyment than a whole new ancient breed would - I think the new gem ancient is pretty much a done deal, but maybe after that?
Because I'm bored and haven't stirred the 'Ancients should get non-fitted apparel' pot lately
(1) Art
(2) Coding
(3) Thematic
Let's strike (3) off the list right now. Gameplay and story segregation, yo. If it doesn't fit with your personal lore for your ancient dragon to have a steampunk robot pet or something, don't put one on it, but pretending that there's a sacred cohesive lore that covers all the existing aesthetics items on the site and that putting anything but a skin on an ancient would violate it is pretty ridiculous. (Similarly the 'no apparel is what makes ancients special' argument. Then don't put it on your dragons, done.)
~
(2) seems daunting but doable; there are a ton of situations already on the site where if [X] condition applies to a dragon, they cannot do [Y]. Perhaps most similarly, all moderns can have standard gene scrolls applied to them, ancients can only have their designated breed scrolls applied to them...except for remove gene scrolls, and those items are really just '[Primary/Secondary/Tertiary] Gene: Basic' scrolls when you think about it.
So universal/nonfitted apparel could function exactly like those remove gene scrolls - it could be compatible with all dragons, unlike its more specific counterparts.
The coding would be work, but it would only need to be done once.
~
That only leaves (1), and imo it's the only one that's particularly important. Ancients were intended as more limited to A) relieve crunch pressure on the artists while B) still allowing users to see new breeds more than every five years or so. Great goals, and they should always keep fulfilling that role.
But when there are so many items that would require no art effort beyond copy/pasting an existing layer (seriously, check out, say, autumn leaves on several different modern poses in succession. There are a limited number of arrangements that were simply re-used multiple times. Do the same for the ancients, pick one, make sure there isn't anything covering the dragon's eye or otherwise looking weird, done), but would add so much richness in customization possibilities, it seems frustrating for that to be a barrier.
Now, the argument here is usually the 'give a mouse a cookie' one. "If you let people have simple apparel on ancients, they'll clamor for more and more complex stuff! It'll never stop!"
...and? That seems like a feature, not a bug - as long as the clamoring is polite, which should apply to anything.
I don't feel like choosing which apparel to make universal should be a one-off deal.
First stage should be emperor's new clothes and marva's cloak - 0 art involvement there, and useful for all the reasons people put those things on modern dragons (yes, including the former, it's great if you want to protect a dragon from sale or exaltation but no design items or familiars fit with your personal lore for it) - and the simplest possible stuff like flowerfalls and auras.
Then things like floaty pets, emblems, mouth flowers, etc can be worked on slowly in the background. And it can mostly done by average humans as opposed to Capital-A-Artists (my own talents fall short of stick figures, Artists are superhuman and should be worshipped as such, but even someone like lame little me can take an existing image and move/rotate it around in a box). The existing coding can be used to convert those items to universal apparel when the images are ready.
Perhaps even simple semi-fitted things (like very small jewelry/crowns/earrings - probably nothing on wings/legs to preserve flexibility for future ancient designs, but I'm pretty sure no FR dragon will ever be designed without a head) can become universal with time - especially going forward, because from what I understand (and it seems to make intuitive sense), adapting apprel to a new pose is easiest at the time the apparel is first being designed (iirc we were told that Obelisk apparel art was drawn alongside other breeds' for years' worth of releases before the breed was actually released, and I wouldn't be surprised if the next modern breed is already fully drawn and getting the same treatment now).
Ancients wearing pants and armor? Almost certainly never. But they could be a lot more dynamic and appealing than they are now with, from what I can tell, a disproportionally small amount of effort. From this user's perspective, putting said effort in that direction would do a lot more for my enjoyment than a whole new ancient breed would - I think the new gem ancient is pretty much a done deal, but maybe after that?