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.
I’m curious if gear will come in additional ‘tiered’ versions. The Tallbear/Fellhorn armour you used as an example also exists as Gloamking, which is leather. Many basic designs seem to have a green, red, and gloam version. What’s next?
Spoilers
Some unreleased items are rather gaudy, like tools from radiantly green ore. Icons for some T4 house items also suggest a coherent colour theme. I really enjoy the current grounded visuals and red/green are my favourites, so I guess I’m just hoping for more of the same.
Gear colours also carry faction identity and tie the aesthetic together. I associate Knellap with bright yellow, The Red with the eponymous scarlet and so on. It may be a selfish view, but I’d enjoy players being more rewarded to dress in an in-world, coherent style rather than mixing. Not sure if any games currently have an ‘outfit ridiculousness rating’, but that could be a funny subsystem to game.
Perhaps transmog of an item to its various ‘tiers’ could be a way to implement dyeing (though I feel that gloamking and fellhorn should remain visually distinct, or transmog simply disabled, in any PvP setting due to being different weights). This way, the hand-crafted appearances can be maintained.
A slightly cheeky speculation is that colour variations are easier than completely new designs every tier, and dyes would remove that option – but I feel that this jab is not justified, as there is good variety and the gloam versions especially go beyond a mere palette swap.
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.
