Greetings, glorious testers!
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest news on Alpha Two.
Check out general Announcements here to see the latest news on Ashes of Creation & Intrepid Studios.
To get the quickest updates regarding Alpha Two, connect your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
90% of MMO's for me is aesthetics. If I'm killing stuff, I want to look glorious doing it.
As an example, I feel like Warframe had a good way of customising colors, but I feel like that only worked due to it being sci-fi..
So for ashes, I like to be able to dye non-natural things, like someone mentioned a neon green wooden shield.. Maybe keep the wood, wooden.. But be able to change the metal skirting of the shield to neon green if desired..
My stance on aura's, spell effects, any emissive elements on weapons should definitely be 100% pickable.
Give backers things like shifting Chromatic colors! Opal armour dye would be cool 😎
How do you feel about dying your gear?
Dying gear I feel is essential especially for end game customization to add diversity. Pulling from the recent experiences in Lost Ark, it was TERRIBLE to see the same classes all wearing the same thing. This is definitely a must, and it would even be able to add to the game economy and even trade skills.
How far would you like the system to go?
I would say dive as far as possible. Make this system, like anything else, things for people to work towards. It would be amazing to have some (SOME) of the super cool ones locked behind achievements that are obtainable strictly in game. EG Not dying on a hard boss unlocks a certain pattern or recipe.
Obtaining dye from a vendor is outright boring, though fun for a quick change, however I feel like the over all message here for the game is that your actions matter. Having said that, I would say that you would need to go out and farm certain materials (that complement the trade skill systems) and as either a by product of crafting or a direct result of it intentionally, would be to make pigments used for the dye etc. and those pigments will be needed to form out the desired color. To make this even more hyper complex, upon making a pigment you could have a quality of the pigment and when combined with another pigment, could determine the depth of the range of colors you get as a result for the dye you want. You could even go as far as making this its own subsection of a trade skill with skill procs for better dye etc. I know it sounds complex, but hear me out, Cosmetics and how you look end game is a HUGE drive for players. End game is where players want to be, and spend most of their time, so to me, this should be something we work and earn. Having said that this can also combine in with the economy, say you want a certain radical color. For this example, lets say shiny gold and a vibrant royal purple. These would be rare/high quality pigments needed and could also drive the market and give players something to go after, whether it is as a crafter or a buyer. To make this look nice and pretty in game, the 'dye menu' could display a chart of 'preset' colors and what constitutes these colors, or even a wheel and what pigments you will need to form the hex OR you can just have a large set of diverse colors, just something so it is user friendly and easily communicates what is needed and what players will have to do to bridge that risk reward and over complex bridge. This would be the extreme example of the dive, and can be shortened or reduced as the devs see fit / best for their audience. I just personally hate it when you have to play RNG for years to get the drop you want, but it also sucks when you can just throw gold at something and rub it on yourself. I also feel that this complexity will force players to make meaningful choices and not a trolling set. The big issue I see with this would be limiting certain colors with certain clothes or hyper customizations such as uploading a picture to the gear. I hate to think like this, but lets be real, its the internet, someone will make nazi colors / images and such, which brings me to the next question below, however want to round out this first.
I would say to limit any upload image option, and instead, opt it for depth of gear and what you can customize on that gear. have color applications and maybe even patterns, multiple times per gear. EG - your helmet, the metal color, the trim color, the flair color, any fabric color (my mind was thinking about a spartan helmet here). I also do not want to limit creativity, for it would be cool to have some range of cosplay potential in game too, but that is the inner nerd in me. Would love to see a naruto fighting a bruce less or even a goku, which also brings to the next question below too.
A guild sigil or even obtainable in game sigils from achievement or story would be cool too. I can see reusing the character creator tattoo skin for this useful, however I am also getting call of duty flash backs from player cards where people would use shapes to make pictures, though awesome, we are on the internet, and people (typically) always pick funny over intentional.
I would also like the ability to save the color options to gear in a preset menu for what I picked. Say I had a PVP set that I wanted to do camo on, but a PVE set I wanted to cosplay in, I would like to be able to switch between those, especially if i earned them. Arguably this would not be realistic, but I dont see the point of 'extra tasks' to redo something that you earn, unless we go the vendor purchase dye option here. Lets say that a guild has a set they want to wear to war with another guild, it would be nice to also have that as an option to switch too, or if your guild runs the town, you want to be noticed, this could also open other game play avenues.
A shareable option for the preset would be nice, like for "Guild Uniform Color" that the guild could make and we could all use so it is uniform and not guessing colors etc. The shareable option would also be awesome to have included into an armory like system or even have a preset option that allows for sharing in our AoC.com account.
I also really would like for the founders skins and any skin for that matter, be able to be customizable too.
Another random thought here, which would be big brained, allow players to do camo for certain regions for tactical PVP encounters. I see a bunch of Ghillie Sniper Mages hiding in the bushes while the guild has some tank wandering in the open as bait and such.
Do you prefer a full-color range that allows for some odd color combinations, or a more limited one that preserves visual fidelity and realism?
The purist in me, wants to scream KEEP IT VISUALLY FIDELITY AND REALISTIC, cause I know the work you all put in to this, and want to keep that immersion there. As I have wrote above, cosplays would be great to have a hat tip to in game, however this has reduced limitations, and I can also see Ronald McDonalds fighting Waldos (which would be great too, but visually off putting). As far as the odd colors go, it can pan into the RP element of it, and maybe limit them to their guild, and make the choices that a guild picks for colors super important, and those 'odd' colors can be 'guild colors' and a guild could never change their colors. Having said that I can still see some potential for error here. This could easily bleed into the options for people to do stupid stuff too, which will open another question of regulating/warning/suspending/banning people. The first thought and easiest fix I can think of is that if the studio is aware of a person with a nazi esk or skin/nude color like clothing, that character could be isolated, and not allowed to log in OR dye could be wiped away and set back to a un dyed look. The account would get strikes on it before actions are taken etc, again a different conversation but still important to link to, for we all know it will happen.
Having said all of that, I would say that the best option here would be to offer a wide variety of colors and hues with the limitations to the spectrum, and maybe even limit the custom option to a guild color option etc.
TLDR: Closing thoughts on this:
Go super in depth, that you all see fit, the more we can work towards end game the better, but make it earnable, and not RNG-able. The catch 22 is that the further in depth we go, the more explanation we will need for more casual players.
I love the idea of seeing random cosplays fighting each other in game, however it will destroy the fidelity visually. I can already see someone running around in full bright pink everything.
Without limits, we open the possibility for those to chose... inappropriate options.
If limited, a wide range or colors and hues would be nice.
Definitely do not allow custom picture uploads for gear.
Pre think of a contingency plan for anyone who wants to use this system inappropriately.
I leave my trust in Intrepid to make the decision of what is too much for them to worry about policing and drawing the line there and build up on it.
I so love both of those suggestions.
Color selections.
I feel the available colors should be limited to what maintains the style of the game, so no neon colors for sure. In order to keep the color options high still, could be to differentiate on the power of the color based on material. So for instance fabric can be quite strong in color, as it would be easy to do in "reality". Leather would be a medium level and metal would be more tinted than actually colored.
Customization options. I feel it should be probably something like 2 or 3 different colors per piece of equipment. So for a sword for instance, the blade could be one color, the hilt another. And for a studded leather armor, the base leather could be one color, the studs another and straps a third. More than this I feel will make it less usefull cause it takes too much work with too little impact. The area's of color need a certain size to really make an impact. Take a look at "Asherons call" from back in the days. It was so incredibly impactfull with what was actually quite simple.
UV Map Colouring. (Similar to 3D-Modeling)
Basically, you could let players enter some kind of 'Colouring Mode'.
In that Mode they can select a piece of gear.
When a gear piece is selected, its UV Map shows up in the main window.
The PENCIL-Tool is gonna be selected by default and the default colour is black. You should be able to switch colours from a colour palette. I do agree with the saying that neon colours shouldn't be a thing but wanting it limited like this leads to two problems. Problem 1 is that you won't be able to choose from the full colour palette of RGB, means if want a specific tone, you probably won't get it. That leads to problem number 2. Devs have to make decisions on which colours they are going to provide in the Colouring Mode. Let it be 8 tones of blues, 8 tones of reds, 8 tones of greens, etc. People might still complain.
Anyways.
Having basic tools like FILL, PENCIL, DELETE, etc. gives artistic players enough freedom to let their fantasy flow. It also means that you can have custom strokes, you can actually paint on your clothing/gear. Technically it will make it possible to get even more detail into gear pieces and the overall appearance of a character. Thinking about that, having the PENCIL-Tool selected it should be like a 'Free Drawing' and having the FILL-Tool selected it should work just like "Oh, I have a studded belt. I want to colour every rivet different. Oh theres a FILL-Tool. I select colour. I click on rivet. Rivet changes colour. Pog!"
Another way to simulate customization onto gear would be crafting. E.G. you could embroider beautiful things. For gear out of different materials you could have different craftsman skills to use more advanced techniques for better results.
As for the colours, I think that special animated or glowing colours should exist but be extremely hard to acquire so that they would only be used on the players very best items.
It adds allot in roleplaying components. You can even evolve certain quests around this idea.
Making you look like you've just had a rough battle, comming back to retrieve the reward of your quest.
Though I wouldnt make it as a permanent thing but rather a toggle function.
Walking through the rain when completely soaking wet for example. That could also be a toggle feature.
If not an automatic feature that happens when it starts raining.
I'm just thinking out loud here. So many promising things are already there. I just want to offer my ideas that they might lead to even better ideas on the devs part
I consider this a required key feature for any MMO I play. It's one of the features I actually look at before jumping into a new MMO.
How far would you like the system to go?
Every scrap and bit of a piece of armor or weapon that is worn by a player, companion, or mount should be dyeable. I prefer systems that use separate dye channels to simplify the process and provide some consistency across the character like ESO/GW2. Nothing is more infuriating than undyeable bits though, please don't design armor with garish gold rivets that can't be dyed. This is one of my top complaints with ESO.
Do you prefer a full-color range that allows for some odd color combinations, or a more limited one that preserves visual fidelity and realism?
I'd actually prefer to see a combination here. I've always wanted to see separate palettes for each material type. So each item should have a dye channel for leather, metal, wood, linen, canvas, liquid, glass, etc. Some could have multiple channels per material if appropriate. Then dyes/paints/stains could be limited to the appropriate material. Bright colors are appropriate for some material types like linen, maybe even some 'glowy' colors would be appropriate for magic-infused bits, orbs, liquids, etc. Then metal parts are limited to more realistic metallic colors, wooden bits to wood stains, and so on. This is the system I've always wanted as I don't love garish, unrealistic colors that feel out of place, but they do make sense for some pieces of fantasy armor (just not every dye channel).
Thanks for taking the time to solicit community feedback on this topic!
Dazu kann ich nur soviel sagen, dass mir die Farben eigentlich egal sind, weil ich farbenblind (rot/grün) bin.
Fragt mal meine Frau nach meinem Dressing :-) - ich trage generell nur schwarz.
Ich hoffe dass solche User ebenfalls in AOC berücksichtigt werden.
But then the risk of the clowns that Steven talked about will be common.
it is just that if i want to have my gear be white, black and gold i want to have the freedome to look that way but then if i change my mind i want to change to blue, dark blue and gray i want to be able to change these colours.
Exactly what NiKr said above... want to kill this game early? Allow neon pink "warriors" with names like Ilikebigboobs running around. If this cannot be done, maybe consider a stricter ruleset with naming / color fidelity on RP servers (something I will be very much hoping for). Definitely vote for: limited color pallets that preserves visual fidelity and realism. Thank you all... so excited to continue seeing this game develop
There needs to be some major limitations in the systems, Intrepid have a vision to make things look more immersive in the game, and that can be accomplished by setting limitations per gearpiece.
What I mean is, if the gearpiece is a certain kind of material, such as leather, and from a certain area. To maintain immersion and lore, that gearpiece is limited to a certain color pallet to dye.
So if I want to wear a dark blue cape, then I need to find a drop or find a crafter that can make the item with blue available. If I want to wear some crazy neon rainbow colored thing, thats going to be on cloth, it wont make sense to be on metals.
Beyond that, think of my inventory please intrepid. Any dye I collect should not clog up my bank space, they should get stacked neatly in a transmog system, for me if I want to put them there. Maybe I dont need 30 bloodstained red dye right now, but you know someday I might have an idea to use them, and I will want to keep them available just for that.
Inventory and Transmog/Dye systems should be closely tied together, and designed forward thinking and very scalable so to not cause a headache to players and be easy for developers to scale up or expand over time, it is something we use daily, hourly, many times without thinking about it, the single biggest quality of life factor we can ask for is right here.
As such, dyes must be unlocked only once and have infinite uses.
Gears should also have multiple slots for dyes.
I dont agree with this. I think dyes being a crafted resource, helps the game economy. I think when "dying" gear it should open a "doll" of your character and allow you to veiw all the options without aplying dye, but having cheaper things the high level and low lever players may want just helps the economy overall
I don't agree that dyes should be infinite. You should have to make the dye each time just like any other component