In the recent Q&A, the devs briefly discuss/dismiss that armor dyes could not work because the way armor is designed… too much detail, shading, etc.
Someone said things may look weird because simply adding a blue tinge or red tinge to existing gear may result in things not looking good.
I’m curious if an approach like BG3 could work, which also features highly detailed gear. A simple dye handles all the coloration. I don’t think anyone is asking for the power to change every feather on a Balak Taw chest piece. Nor do we need 40+ dye options like BG3. Starting with 4-8 would be fine… black, white, bronze, red, blue, green, gold… keeping them simple and within the art direction’s existing palette. If devs are worried about hot pink and neon green outcomes, obviously leave them out.
Additionally there are already color versions of some armor pieces within the game already, so there seems to be a workflow in place for achieving color variations for everything.
The ‘tiered’ rationale and ‘locking-looks-to-lore’ are both fine explanations I’m more than happy with. Though, it wouldn’t be immersion breaking to imagine that once a player picks up a piece of gear from any faction, they have the agency to re-dye it for themselves.
Another left-field thought I had: what about PVP? What happens if two groups of players have similarly kitted characters and the confusion that may bring? It’d be hectic and fun, but I was thinking about solutions.
Hypothetically, two teams with even one player matching someone on the other team could get confusing, especially with friendly fire. More extremely, what happens in an arena where all 8 players are wearing the same set of armor?
Bringing it back to dyes… one solution could be dying or colorizing armor kits… even just dark mode vs. light mode would help with clarity between players.
Wayfinders has the best dye system in the industry, you could even dye the emissive channels of weapons. And they used stylized design per the art direction of the legendary Joe Madureira.
