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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
I completely agree with this comment.
I think all dyes should be in game found and crafted by players, consumed on use weather mixed to create other colors or just used. Allow players to be creative in their alchemy with such things vs just selecting from a color palette at will.
Some colors should also be harder to find/create. GW1 it was black but the market should not be flooded with every color.
Perhaps with seasons and varied zones some necessary colors require the proper plants to make and they only grow in certain areas at certain times.
As for how they're made? This is where you could really have some fun, give more creative expression to the player-base, and infuse a great mechanic into your alchemy profession all in one go.
When an alchemist makes dyes with herbs/roots/spices/etc, each one has a base color code. At the mixing station, the alchemist would get to choose what concentration they want to produce. The smallest concentration would produce the lightest tint, and these would be fairly inexpensive to produce. The highest concentration would produce the darkest shade, and these would be fairly expensive to produce, depending also, obviously, on the rarity of the herb.
Now, you likely couldn't have a different gatherable for every dye color in the game, so... You'd have to allow alchemists to mix their own dyes. Mixing various amounts of different herbs together would create blends of colors, with the saturation of either additive, again, being dependent on the amount of any herbs used in the recipe. Players must learn on their own how to create certain color combinations, encouraging experimentation, with a swatch of each color they create being added to a reference journal, able to be sorted by creation date or color spectrum, which updates as they go along.
This could create another avenue for legendary world boss loot, with some alchemists discovering legendary armor dyes craftable from concentrations of certain organ distillates, venoms, blood, floral clippings from a tree spirit, you name it. It could give them the choice of discovering a legendary potion or poison that could give their team a huge boost in battle, or the creation of a legendary dye that would sell for a ton of money - or be used to show off their own combat prowess!
These dyes wouldn't have to be limited to armor, either. They could be used on bolts of various cloth types and sold to furniture smiths for freehold furniture pieces, ship-builders for dying sails, anything customizable that you could think of.
As someone who frequently plays alchemist characters and loves visual art, I would be overjoyed to have access to this explorative opportunity. I believe it would lend a great deal of added immersion, add a long-term boost to the in-game economy, give alchemists a great immersive mechanic for their profession, and extend the incentives for hunting down world bosses for rare materials.
Thanks for seeking our input so diligently! Best of luck to you all.
I think in the modern world of gaming, more customization is required. Steven once said that he wants Ashes to be the most unique and customizable game out there to make every person able to enjoy the game and create things that are completely their own.
Dyes are the answer to that. Dyes give you the ability to have red, tan, gold, or whatever other color you want on your armor and weapons. It makes it unique and also allows for players to change gear colors to colors that fit them.
How far should the system go?
I believe that a few games have done a phenomenal job on dyes like ESO which had a wide variety of dyes that you could dye every piece of the armor with every piece having 3 dye channels.
Dyeing should be more than just changing the color on the cloth of a suit of armor, it should also be able to select the color of the metal, the furs, and the trims that go around.
Bring on the customization to allow us to change colors of things and truly be immersed in our own world.
The more options to dye different parts on a piece of gear the better.
ESO Example
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GW2 Example
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Full color or Limited?
There is arguments for both, on one hand I think neon colors are awful in fantasy settings but I also like the freedom of being able to select that.
Personally I enjoy the gritty colors but still having access to a full spectrum of colors but perhaps not having them so sparkly or bright.
Additional dye ideas
Mount gear dyeing. I think it would be cool to dye saddles, armor, and other things on mounts that are man made so it can match your armor.
Guild Dye schematics. Basically a guild can create a "Guild Dye Pack" that can be used on a set of armor and it will dye the armor/ gear in that guild dye pack color—-
i agree!!* - love 💕 you humans
Couple things, ESO had a fair dye system. I'd start there tbh. Any neon colors though is outright puke related. FFXIV also has a dye system...but it's really not that good as you can't pick what gets dyed, it only dyes a specific part on the piece...so it's very minuscule. However, again, ESO has a fair one that would be easy to implement ideas from, and if you or IS want references on that system @Vaknar feel free to shoot me a message about it.
Gathering:
-Herbalism- flowers and herbs for pigment bases
- Fishing- Maybe Squid Ink for some black?
-Mining- Different types of metals can be refined to cause different reactions for colors in dyes
Processing:
-Simple enough to process the aforementioned Raw Materials into components for specifically dye-related uses through the proper processing skills.
Crafting:
-Alchemy- an obvious choice for most, perhaps when dealing with more rare dye recipes?
-Scribe- Another choice could be scribes since they are likely already very familiar with inks, so why not dyes as well?
Applications of color customization:
-obviously gear a character can wear is a priority
-Pet and mount gear customization
-Freehold items
-Sails on boats/maybe even some simple flag customization that requires the correct dyes?
-Guild related items/gear
How is it not realistic that people want to express themselves with a very wide range of colors? Have you people seen medieval clothing?
Throughout history people have been trying to figure out ways to dye everything, not just cloth, but also leather and metal, to express themselves. Why shouldn't we be able to?
Just because it hurts someones aesthetic preferences out there, should we really restrict people's options to express themselves with shrill and wacky color combinations?
For me color identity is the most important aspect of character creation and i'd really like to have the full range of options.
Keep the colour range high, but the bounds of those colours just keep them in a range which should suit the general palette of Verra.
I don't have an opinion on Wheel or otherwise, but agree with the sentiment on having s few different dye channels to allow us to have good variance as I feel we will see alot more individuality in the world! Makes me think of Lost Ark where everyone just had the same gear when the game came out. That's an extreme example, but basically allowing people to wear the same armour set but have the potential to look vastly different.
I don't want to limit the color palette really, but it should fit the lighting in the area. I 100% want to be able to dye armor that glows in the underrealm, which is FULL of fluorescent colors anyway. I would actually consider it completely against the lore if we didn't get those neon/fluorescent options.
Each piece of gear should have its own separated color channels for each material like metal, leather, fabric, fur, feathers etc. It should also be separated color channels for details like patterns, buttons, straps, beads and other accessoaries etc.
Same hue should always behave and look the same when it's applied on the same type of material on every gear. That way people can mix and match their gear without having color disruption. It's really annoying when a color looks different on the fabric on the chest piece than on the fabric on the bottom piece.
If dyes are gonna be consumables and created by players, please take inspirations from natural dyes irl and let the pigments be gatherable from various types of plants, roots, bark, fungi, berries, animals, insects and minerals. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_dye
Also, i think all hues should be allowed, even the really vibrant ones since natural dyes can be really saturated and vibrant in reality.
But maybe keep it a bit realistic to the material, I'm not sure if metal could be actially dyed without coating it in paint or powder. Maybe metals could have their own dyes that is inspired from natural metal colors. I mean not only the color of copper, silver, gold, brass and so on but also changing the color by tempering and the look of different oxidation states.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempering_(metallurgy)
I would rather see too many options for colors than not enough, especially this early in the process.
Keep an open design space. It seems kind of severe to limit the range of dyable colors (even the weird ones!) in a high fantasy setting
A lot of hate on here against neon colors, I don't mind them. They can be great for accent contrast colors for gear sets.
Someone mentioned customization for mount equipment too, and I love the idea of getting the saddle or barding to match my gear colors.
One counter to my stance on full customization would be for pieces with natural elements. Maybe more specific pallets or color wheels for items with a lot of bone or wood in their appearance.
The one part of the system that was fun was unlocking dyes. The RNG chance at rare dyes made every click an exciting moment. Maybe something to consider?
I feel like the color range should be "curated with care" to create a range of colors consistent with the universe and amazing existing work the Intrepid Team has done.
Creativity and expression can exist within boundaries. You can always add but it is much more difficult a decision to remove stuff, so start on the conservative side.
Avoid:
What I want to avoid is the head to toe bubblegum characters of NW of the same hue regardless of their armor. It feels flat and breaks the impact of the art assets of the game.
Result:
I want each player that makes the same choice of gear to have a wide range of hues so they can look very different from one another. But I want those hues when rendered to be consistent with the world around them.
Like many have already said, GW2 has very good dyeing mechanism but AoC could go much further. I like how you can unlock different dyes in GW2 by cooking and this could work in AoC too. When you found or cooked a dye in GW2 you could add it into your color inventory and that color could be used any time and as many times as you wanted in dyeing your gear.
What comes to AoC's colors I prefer realistic looking colors. In my opinion there should be very large amount of different dye colors but the unrealistic ones shouldn't exist. I dislike bright neon colors especially in hair and I think that doesn't fit in AoC's realistic looking world. Legendary weapons and armors could possibly have little bit more unrealistic colors but that's because they are legendary items.
I agree with this. I think different materials should have different limitations on what color ranges they can be dyed. Leather and textiles are pretty versatile using liquid dyes, but other natural materials, metals, not so much.
Perhaps "metal dying" needs to be a heat treatment option or something for blacksmiths so that you can get different metal color ranges on a piece of gear after you craft it. Maybe you need to throw a certain mineral compound into the forge to produce different colors, so that it has a similar sort of cost to textile/leather dyes needing reagents to be produced. This could create another avenue for miners/smiths to make money, and perhaps balance the field of opportunity between them and the herbalists/alchemists. Herb/Alch characters get to sell dyes for cloth, leather, and wooden weapons. Mine/Smith characters get to sell compounds for mail, plate, and metal weapons.
Obviously, heat treating metal is a skilled process that only a blacksmith could do, not a product like a vial of dye that could be sold to the average consumer. So, maybe blacksmiths are able to produce and sell "work orders" which contain the pre-defined quantity of chemical compounds for the treatment process (unable, at that point, to be separated) and players are then able to use those work orders at a forge in order to have their metal gear colorized. Perhaps this is slightly immersion breaking if not every forge has an NPC manning it who could be the theoretical blacksmith to actually perform the work order, but I think most people wouldn't mind. Besides, I doubt most non-smiths will have forges on their freeholds, and I feel like any public forges players have access to should have an NPC hanging around them anyway. Perhaps they have to actually be interacted with in order to have the work order carried out. You place the gear and the work order into a couple of window slots, click accept, and get a nice sound effect as the NPC performs a brief animation while the newly colored gear is deposited back into your bag.
I know some people enjoy having the convenience of just opening up their character menu and swapping the color of their gear on the fly whenever they want, but I honestly find that to be kind of cheap and immersion breaking. It really cuts through the fourth wall and tells me I'm designing an avatar in a video game. If the point of a sandbox MMO is to encourage player freedom, exploration, experimentation, production, and trade, then gear customization sounds like a major opportunity to represent those core tenets.
Well after almost a decade of Warframe, I've gotten used to high customization. Express yourself, "fashionframe" is the true end-game, and they lean into it so hard that they have a tremendously successful player aesthetics pipeline through Steam (Tennogen) where players create new accessories, armor, and other stuff, which goes through lengthy approvals before deployment. Now they've pushed the bar further, recently releasing a new texturing type and suits that accommodate it, so I can set both the color AND texture of the different section of Voidshell gear. So sexy, and even though it only works on Voidshell items, this seems like the start of the future of the game's accessorization variance.
So now to Ashes. Yes. I like that there's the ability to affect sections of palettes at once, so we can do thematic changes but aren't painting each individual part to increase the draw calls and stuff. But with what we do get, I'd like more than just color as an option. So these would be the different material characteristics I'd like to be able to affect:
- Color. RGB, independent from everything else.
- Lightness/darkness. This would be about changing the brightness or darkness of a material, separate from RGB and other values. If a certain wooden shield has a darkened iron rim that I want to be brighter, not just a lighter tone, this is where that would be controlled.
- Surface texturing. Going from a smooth and polished metal to something more beaten up or corroded, using a rough-hewn wood vs clean and rectified planks, being able to use more clothy cloth or something like a thin skin/hide, potentially even changing things to a material that wouldn't go there--like changing metal bits on a Py'Rai armor to look wooden instead.
- Light absorption and scattering. Making parts of the attire shine more in the darkness, or parts that are more muted and dim in brighter light. That way, if you want to accentuate parts of the color and silhouette for dramatic effect (like darkened leather with red accents that seem to almost glow) it is able to be achieved. This can make some pretty creepy enemies, too!
- Shader effect. This would be fore much more fanciful gear, but the ability to have the shader show something different than what the armor would normally show. A cloak that looks like you're peering into a skybox of the cosmos, ice armor where there's detailed definition beneath an inch-thick sheet of crystal clear ice, prism-like spectrums swirling around across a surface, etc.
I could see it being a "pick two" system, where you can pick any of these two effect types to apply, so gear isn't tooo dramatically different from the base versions, which is more of a technical consideration. Alternatively, what variations are available, and how many a player can put on, could be another aspect of the crafting system, where "material kits" are created by specialists, and those material kits are expended on use by crafters who are applying those materials to the item they are crafting.
Different shaders for metals & cloth
No fluorescents please, as they interfere with spell effects, buffs, weapon glows & other important visual clues.
Blue is the rarest colour in nature and yet "realistic" fantasy games continue to produce hundreds of different shades of blue for people to use and yet I am always limited to the most not pink actually "red salmon" shade.
You don't have to like pink but players saying they don't want to see anyone running around in pink gear because it's "unrealistic and immersion breaking" are completely ignoring it's one of the most common pigments in nature. Flowers, Fruits, & Animals are unabashedly pink!
If my wizard robes can't be hot pink then your rogue leathers definitely aren't being midnight blue >:(
but seriously I'm on my hands and knees begging for colour variety. A colour wheel would be good.
No neon or blindingly solid colors though, Gotta keep some form of realism to things.
One other thing kinda related, I'm red/green color blind.. so please, please make it so that we can change the colors of important things to ones we can see. E.g. when ESO first came out the poison circles on the ground were red and the healing green.. which I could not tell the difference between so I would die to mechanics all the time due to standing in the wrong circle.
Oh thought of another thing.. I also like that when you first start adventuring.. you are poor and can't afford nice things... so having dull.. beat up looking armor makes sense...then as you level up earn more cash you can afford the flashy things.. brighter Gold or Silver.. etc... brighter sparkling jewelry...
Side note: it would be nice if you could set a costume for when you are in a city vs. when you are out in the country... the idea being when you reach a city you change into civilian cloths then when you leave a city you put on your armor..
Thanks
Adjusting the color palette of one's gear.
Opinion No 1 )
Since there is magic in the world of Verra - the options of coloring should be unlimited, with lots of details that can be colored.
Opinion No 2)
There should not be toxic colors in this world, the colors should be cohesive with the world and the material they are used on. A wooden shield can be colored/tinted, but it should be always visible that it is a wooden shield.
Opinion No 3)
It's fun to experiment with colors and have to opportunity to color one's gear, the color palette should be limited to the world - if it's not represented anywhere in the world of Terra it should not be possible to use in color the gear.
Opinion No 4)
Depending on what is used to achieve the color should determent the durability and vibrancy of the color.
If armor is colored using magic instead of alchemical dyes, then it wouldn't make sense for the color to stay on permanently, it should only stay until the magic fades and then revert back to its natural color. Or there can be an ongoing mana resource cost to keep the color active.
If the item is colored by natural means ( using what Verra has to offer) through alchemy the color should be permanent/semi-permanent.
It should also be affected by what type of material is colored. One can easily color a cloth but will struggle to even tint wood and won't be able to color metal at all using plants.
It can also play into different professions - a wordsmith is probably the one you shoud go to to color your wooden shield.