Guild Wars 2

So…I just had to share my thoughts.

I JUST bought my newly gender switched female Sylvari the cultural Tier 3 medium armor. You all know, how you preview in the PvP locker, preview at the armor vendor and then finally decide to buy, right? Well I loved the look and decided that abyss dye would look perfect, after previewing that also. I decided to go with it in combination with a really bright, shiny looking contrast color.
I LOVED the look in the preview and now spent a bit over 70 gold…only to realize, that once I turned off my preview and awaited to see my awesome self in-game, I was sorely disappointed. The actual dye looks nothing like in does in the preview. Due to the leaves of the armor reflecting the light in a very weird way, my abyss black dye now looks brown-ish. And gone is the awesome contrast of the deep saturated black with the teal (and all other colors I tried as well)

I am VERY disappointed at this point. After so many tries of finding the right armor, buying gemstore armor and finally even a gender switch, I thought I had finally managed to make my character look good…WHY does the most expensive armor set available behave like this in-game? Seriously? When I pay that much gold, I honestly expect it to look like it promises to look

For what it’s worth, I actually think your character looks way better in game than in the preview. It matches her “skin” tone better.Then again, I seem to be weird in that I dislike abyss in anything but accents.

Not really the same complaint as you but…

I always thought it was wierd that since the sylvari have these glowing patches of skin everywhere that their racial armor would take this into effect and find ways to show it off. As I wear medium armor on my character I always thought it was strange that no armor set even attempts to show this (other than leather which looks less than satisfactory). It also bothers me that similarity between nightmare gear and sylvari cultural armor, It is pretty much sylvari racial armor for every race which is a disapointment. I am secretly hoping the entire set gets reworked though

I guess it just makes all that character customization on glow etc in vain because the only glowing patch I ever get to see is the hairstyle option glow and that is really sad because the character models look great, I just want armor to compliment it instead of cover it.

Urthona.3198:

For what it’s worth, I actually think your character looks way better in game than in the preview. It matches her “skin” tone better.Then again, I seem to be weird in that I dislike abyss in anything but accents.

Haha XD I usually totally agree with you! I am absolutely not one of those, that uses abyss on all their toons, just because it’s a ‘status’ dye etc. In fact this is my first abyss dyed character! BUT, for this character I am trying to achieve a very contrasty look and the very deep black with very bright contrast color is just what feels perfect for her for me <3

Anyway…I did notice, that the reflexes and lighting change a LOT in different places in the game. And the best is of course nighttime, when the armor starts to glow! I spend most of my time in dungeons and most of those are pretty dark/nighttime effects, so I think after getting used to it I will still be okay

Taym.8326:

Not really the same complaint as you but…

I always thought it was wierd that since the sylvari have these glowing patches of skin everywhere that their racial armor would take this into effect and find ways to show it off. As I wear medium armor on my character I always thought it was strange that no armor set even attempts to show this (other than leather which looks less than satisfactory). It also bothers me that similarity between nightmare gear and sylvari cultural armor, It is pretty much sylvari racial armor for every race which is a disapointment. I am secretly hoping the entire set gets reworked though

I guess it just makes all that character customization on glow etc in vain because the only glowing patch I ever get to see is the hairstyle option glow and that is really sad because the character models look great, I just want armor to compliment it instead of cover it.

I totally agree with this also! For light armor there are quite a few, that DO show off skin and therefor glow…but for medium armor, I am in the same position as you. SO SAD!!! Where is my pretty glow!? I have decided on a funky mushroom hat for this toons remake and am loving its uniqueness and light bulb-like glow though :P But yeah. Especially cultural armor really SHOULD show our glow MUCH more!

As for the TA armor set, I really don’t mind. Simply because I feel like it looks ugly on anything else than Sylvari. Kind of out of place. And therefor, whenever I see a non-Sylvari wearing TA armor, I don’t get jealous or upset, I feel a bit sorry for them, that they didn’t find a better look for themselves XP

I actually think your Sylvari looks good like that.

If it bothers you that much, try Midnight Ice as it’s usually the darkest black there is. Btw you can preview dyes and someone else said:

Just to mention it:
You can preview dyes on your current armor by
going to http://www.gw2spidy.com
searching for the dye you want (e.g. http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/20356)
click “link ingame”
paste the database code into the chat
right-click it and preview
I like to combine this with the wiki color palette (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dye#Colors), there you can browse the material/hue/rarity palettes available ingame, sometimes the code is even there.

Preview / equipment windows don’t have any lighting effects, its just showing you the basic model under neutral light.

In-game situations will almost always have lighting effects, so there are always going to be differences in how armor looks when you compare the preview to in-game. Some moreso than others, shiny surfaces will differ more than cloth for instance.

Never take the preview window as a perfect indicator of what you’re going to look like in-game, just a rough idea.

In your case in particular, the fact that the top of your head looks jet black on the preview screen and doesn’t in-game should have been a clue that the armor might behave similarly.

I agree with the people who have said that it looks better in-game than on the equipment screen, personally. Not nessicarily because of the color difference, but more because the lighting effects add more depth and I like that.

Firefly.5982:

So…I just had to share my thoughts.I LOVED the look in the preview and now spent a bit over 70 gold…only to realize, that once I turned off my preview and awaited to see my awesome self in-game, I was sorely disappointed. The actual dye looks nothing like in does in the preview. Due to the leaves of the armor reflecting the light in a very weird way, my abyss black dye now looks brown-ish. And gone is the awesome contrast of the deep saturated black with the teal (and all other colors I tried as well)

I’ve also recently bought t3 for my engineer and I’m also really dissapointed how bland it looks in game. On preview and character select screen it looks awesome but in-game it looks bleached. I’ve tried many diffrent and expensive dyes and unfortunately nothing matches.

Hey there,

As some one else already said you could try the midnight ice, i would like to add midnight fire will do aswell. As you can see i have t3 aswell… only i’m male so im not sure if the midnight fire/ ice will be as dark as on my character.

As you can see that black is black, although some parts are redish ( which i like very much ) You just have to find your collors, thats all There are very bright and very dark colors for this set as you can see in my picture below.

You did not waste any gold on this set if you ask me…. it’s one of the best in game!

You could also go for a white set with blue-ish color effect, i’ve seen it before… looks realy need on a females character! Good luck finding your colors!

Greets,

Gerle

Band-aid solution, but for what it’s worth.
Switch your shader option in the graphics setting to ‘low’.
Light reflecting off armor…gone!

you DO realize you’re dying leaves, right? if you wanted more true colors, get robes.

i have a similar scheme as you do, but my dark part is midnight yew, again going back to the part about using nature-themed colors and how it just WORKS with sylvari armor. the roots of the leaves can be whatever you choose. but the body of the leaves (the part that you and i have black) is very resistant to very divergent (from nature-themed) colors, red dyes come out brown, yellow dyes come out red, dark yellow-green comes out orange, etc.

if you wanna know more, send me a private message. i have done extensive dye research specifically only for sylvari T3 medium, but only for natural colors.

PS: agreed with ddoi, set your shaders to medium or low/off. when i set mine high, the armor looks like plastic. when set to medium, you still get shiny leaves in sunlight, but no sheen (like in Gerke’s screenshot)

Try Midnight ice, I use it my on sylvari culture armor
and it always a deep dark black.

Yep, Ive also noticed Midnight Ice is alot darker then abyss on sylvari armor. Ive got both dyes on my guardian

No glow on light male cultural sylvari armor makes me very sad.