Guild Wars 2

Hi, I would like you guys to think about implementing the option to change up the colors on the legendary back items the way gliders and armor have this option.

I really like my legendary back item Ad Infinitum but the color’s are very hard to combine with other’s. Having the option to color the back item’s base colors gives more variation and inspires creativity.

I really hope you will consider this.

Thanks!

By the way, if anyone else also thinks this is a good idea, you are allowed to say so

I’ll post what they’ve already said about dyeing backpacks.

Tidgepot.3285:

Substance E.

Back items also take damage like armor and thus are not the same thing as accessories or weapons. They never got dye channels likely for the same reason that we only had the guild backpack at launch, it was never finished.
Backpacks will remain un-dyable so Anet can sell black and white wing sets. Plain and simple.

If you need citation, then look no further. I’m the dev who concepted this glider! Granted, I’m an artist so I couldn’t give you the full technical rundown like Josh Petrie, but I do handle our engine daily.

Whether or not the equipment takes damage or not has no bearing on how the engine separates items. The engine sees armor as what is called a composite, it sees things attached to your characters like weapons and backpieces as items, and it sees gliders as a sort of middleground item/effect. Our file structure separates gliders as items, but because of how they pop into view, layer, and more easily allow for dyes it makes sense to basically treat them as effects. Now I’m not positive on this, but I’m going to hazard a guess that if we decided to make gliders as items, we’d have to retroactively alter the system in a way that would allow for weapons/backpieces to be dyed.

On its face doing this sounds like a great idea, since this is what fans want. As a fellow player I’d like this as well, but unfortunately our systems were not designed with this in mind. Not only would we have to go back and code each item so it can have dye channels/sufficient UI and prepare for the veritable bugfest that would ensue from altering a system that has years of work built on top of it, but we’d also have to retexture these items. Why? Our dye system is balanced around a red base color which has an impact on how every other color will appear when a channel shifts to it. Anyone who has played with dodging/burning in photoshop will know that red has some strange properties when it comes to shifts in values. Many dyes would have blown out/dull/oddly saturated textures as a result.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s SO much more to the process that I don’t have a firm grasp on.

The devs here are gamers and we love what we do. We want fans to get excited about what we make because we’re fans, too. However, we have players clamoring for every fix/feature under the sun so we have to do a ton of prioritizing. Game development is never plain and simple.

Edit: Thanks Aikawa! I designed it but Chelsea M. modeled it. She’s a rockstar!

Ashe Lewis.9815:

I rarely post on the forums so I just had my account upgraded to a developer one. So Tidgepot is indeed a dev because I’m Tidgepot! My posts earlier in this thread still stand. I’m sorry about the confusion :P

Like I said before, I’m just an artist so I’ll elaborate on what I understand as best as I can, but I’m no engineer.

This sounds like a it could be good idea, but it doesn’t sidestep the issue of categorization and what certain types of assets can do. The older assets would still be affected. We’d still encounter a ton of programing challenges and bugs from altering a core mechanic of the game and the years of code built on top of it. Every player and many npcs use items, so the wrong bug slipping through can have a major impact on everyone in the game. Not to mention finding that bug could be like searching for a needle in a haystack because of how fundamental this part of our system is. We’d still probably end up having to re-author and retexture all old items (which would take a ton of resources) and even if we did do that, more players may end up upset by the minor texture changes to their current gear than those who can’t dye backpacks.

Maybe(?) a workaround could be a new asset type, but our engine is old and finicky— it would certainly take a lot resources to teach it to parse through something so fundamental.

Anet has repeatedly said that there is no realistic way for them to make backpacks dyable, unfortunately.
Edit: D’oh! Ninja’d!

So that is basically saying that their current people don’t know how to do it and they need more talented people that do know how to do it?

No realistic way to make it possible to change a color of an item… really? If such a basic thing cannot be done then there is so much wrong with the game technically I cannot even begin to say how weird that is. If that is actually the case it is a giant miracle that they even where capable to create the game in the first place, so I just refuse to believe those speculations. Seriously!

MisterOiZo.4359:

So that is basically saying that their current people don’t know how to do it and they need more talented people that do know how to do it?

No realistic way to make it possible to change a color of an item… really? If such a basic thing cannot be done then there is so much wrong with the game technically I cannot even begin to say how weird that is. If that is actually the case it is a giant miracle that they even where capable to create the game in the first place, so I just refuse to believe those speculations. Seriously!

No, they said it isnt a basic thing. They would have to completely redesign gliders. you dont just type a line in the code that says “make gliders dyeable”. They know how to do it, it would take a lot of work and recategorizing items and completely remaking items.

Making gliders dyable would be sort of like making instance nodes dyable. you would have to completely remake the entire function of the item and how the game treats it.

Frenchtoastersticks.8061:

No, they said it isn’t a basic thing. They would have to completely redesign gliders. you don’t just type a line in the code that says “make gliders dyeable”. They know how to do it, it would take a lot of work and recategorizing items and completely remaking items.

While I agree that it’s a lot of work, I think there comes a point where they have to stop going after the easy stuff and address the harder improvements. Are we at that point? I’m not sure, but dyeable gliders and undyeable backpacks moved us a lot closer to it.

Being able to dye things like backpacks and weapons would be a huge plus in character customization. It’s something they should be working on constantly. Not top priority, but never so far down the list that there’s not a team working on it. New items should be designed with it in mind, so they don’t simply add to the work that will need to be done when they decide to do it.

WILL they do it? I doubt it. ANet seems to prefer to move on to new ideas rather than to fix and refine old ones.

Palador.2170:

Frenchtoastersticks.8061:

No, they said it isn’t a basic thing. They would have to completely redesign gliders. you don’t just type a line in the code that says “make gliders dyeable”. They know how to do it, it would take a lot of work and recategorizing items and completely remaking items.

While I agree that it’s a lot of work, I think there comes a point where they have to stop going after the easy stuff and address the harder improvements. Are we at that point? I’m not sure, but dyeable gliders and undyeable backpacks moved us a lot closer to it.

Being able to dye things like backpacks and weapons would be a huge plus in character customization. It’s something they should be working on constantly. Not top priority, but never so far down the list that there’s not a team working on it. New items should be designed with it in mind, so they don’t simply add to the work that will need to be done when they decide to do it.

WILL they do it? I doubt it. ANet seems to prefer to move on to new ideas rather than to fix and refine old ones.

I dont disagree that they should look into redesigning some parts of the game that are preventing them from advancing customization and quality of life. I’ve even said it in several other threads. However I was responding to “So that is basically saying that their current people don’t know how to do it and they need more talented people that do know how to do it?” which is just unfair to anet and showed an obvious lack of comprehension or unwillingness to read anets statement.

Anet has certaintly dug themselves into kitten with some of their base design choices. but to say “they dont know how to do it and need to hire new staff” is not the same as “maybe they should evaluate the cost and gains from redesigning some things to make their workloads easier and players happier in the long run”

with all this reading in the end is like

they are just lazy and dont want to spend time and resources in doing it because it is a lot of work even when they already have the ’’base’’ not going to make new lines they are going to modify

they could like to stop adding some wings and just start that, if that was started like…when players asked it woudlve done long time ago, there is resources and time, time will always be there, resources are always coming, just apparently was is left to add is the will to do it

They’re struggling to keep game production going.
They aren’t skilled enough to modify old systems.
Nor can they strip the old systems out since they’re understaffed.
They’re almost a year and a half late still on hot content such as legendary armour so they can’t take on many new projects.
A lot of designed content is removed due to player dislike, cannons in wvw, hot map reworks etc.
Pvp leagues struggling to keep quarterly reports looking good enough to publish.
Old style classes can’t be balanced into the new elite content.

Simply put they no longer have what it takes to edit core systems.

JemL.3501:

with all this reading in the end is like

they are just lazy and dont want to spend time and resources in doing it because it is a lot of work even when they already have the ’’base’’ not going to make new lines they are going to modify

they could like to stop adding some wings and just start that, if that was started like…when players asked it woudlve done long time ago, there is resources and time, time will always be there, resources are always coming, just apparently was is left to add is the will to do it

You misunderstood if you think that they are being lazy or if you think that stopping the design of new wings is going to free up anywhere close to enough resources to tackle this.

Read the developer quote again. They are saying to make even this small change, they have two choices: redesign their modeling/display from the ground up to enable the type of flexibility we (and they) would like for the current game or kludge the code to allow this, introducing a kitten-storm [sic] of predictable bugs and another storm & a half of unpredictable ones.

That would mean diverting resources from everything else they are working on, including new designs, new stories (e.g. Living World), and the next expansion. Instead of choosing to work hard on something that has a limited value to lots of people, they are choosing to continue to work on the things that have great value to even more people.

Gwaihir.1745:

They’re struggling to keep game production going.
They aren’t skilled enough to modify old systems.
Nor can they strip the old systems out since they’re understaffed.
They’re almost a year and a half late still on hot content such as legendary armour so they can’t take on many new projects.
A lot of designed content is removed due to player dislike, cannons in wvw, hot map reworks etc.
Pvp leagues struggling to keep quarterly reports looking good enough to publish.
Old style classes can’t be balanced into the new elite content.

Simply put they no longer have what it takes to edit core systems.

Gotta add my two cents here as i program for hobby, so just speaking on what I know.

It’s not that they don’t have what it takes to edit core systems. It’s the simple fact make a change to a core systems will cause monumental changes to the games’ code, sure they could slap the line in saying, make so and so dye-able, but what happens to other parts of the game? What all could that line of code break, what glitches could it cause, what exploits could it open up. Making backpacks dye-able vs having something seriously go wrong is what Anet is trying to get across to you, it’s not feasible for it to happen.

For one as stated they don’t know what will happen, this is not developer laziness, this isn’t any other excuse you can cook up. They simply do not know what the fuzzy bunny will happen when they make the change, there for to the ones calling the shots at Anet, it’s not a possibility due to constraints on time vs cost. The more they work on making this one feature, the less time they have to do other simpler QoL changes. I could sit here and whine all day, we don’t have true black dyes, but is it worth the time to create such a thing for the demand of one? No, it’s not, it’s the same situation here, I personally have never had any issues making color ensembles with backpacks.

It’s a staple of any software producing company to always retain people with knowledge of the code or contract them to train others before leaving.

Programs should be written with high modularity, allowing for a change to be made to one file independent of the program as a whole. It’s when this rule is disregarded that situations like this appear in games.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’ll post what they’ve already said about dyeing backpacks.

Tidgepot.3285:

Substance E.

Back items also take damage like armor and thus are not the same thing as accessories or weapons. They never got dye channels likely for the same reason that we only had the guild backpack at launch, it was never finished.
Backpacks will remain un-dyable so Anet can sell black and white wing sets. Plain and simple.

If you need citation, then look no further. I’m the dev who concepted this glider! Granted, I’m an artist so I couldn’t give you the full technical rundown like Josh Petrie, but I do handle our engine daily.

Whether or not the equipment takes damage or not has no bearing on how the engine separates items. The engine sees armor as what is called a composite, it sees things attached to your characters like weapons and backpieces as items, and it sees gliders as a sort of middleground item/effect. Our file structure separates gliders as items, but because of how they pop into view, layer, and more easily allow for dyes it makes sense to basically treat them as effects. Now I’m not positive on this, but I’m going to hazard a guess that if we decided to make gliders as items, we’d have to retroactively alter the system in a way that would allow for weapons/backpieces to be dyed.

On its face doing this sounds like a great idea, since this is what fans want. As a fellow player I’d like this as well, but unfortunately our systems were not designed with this in mind. Not only would we have to go back and code each item so it can have dye channels/sufficient UI and prepare for the veritable bugfest that would ensue from altering a system that has years of work built on top of it, but we’d also have to retexture these items. Why? Our dye system is balanced around a red base color which has an impact on how every other color will appear when a channel shifts to it. Anyone who has played with dodging/burning in photoshop will know that red has some strange properties when it comes to shifts in values. Many dyes would have blown out/dull/oddly saturated textures as a result.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s SO much more to the process that I don’t have a firm grasp on.

The devs here are gamers and we love what we do. We want fans to get excited about what we make because we’re fans, too. However, we have players clamoring for every fix/feature under the sun so we have to do a ton of prioritizing. Game development is never plain and simple.

Edit: Thanks Aikawa! I designed it but Chelsea M. modeled it. She’s a rockstar!

---

Ashe Lewis.9815:

I rarely post on the forums so I just had my account upgraded to a developer one. So Tidgepot is indeed a dev because I’m Tidgepot! My posts earlier in this thread still stand. I’m sorry about the confusion :P

Like I said before, I’m just an artist so I’ll elaborate on what I understand as best as I can, but I’m no engineer.

This sounds like a it could be good idea, but it doesn’t sidestep the issue of categorization and what certain types of assets can do. The older assets would still be affected. We’d still encounter a ton of programing challenges and bugs from altering a core mechanic of the game and the years of code built on top of it. Every player and many npcs use items, so the wrong bug slipping through can have a major impact on everyone in the game. Not to mention finding that bug could be like searching for a needle in a haystack because of how fundamental this part of our system is. We’d still probably end up having to re-author and retexture all old items (which would take a ton of resources) and even if we did do that, more players may end up upset by the minor texture changes to their current gear than those who can’t dye backpacks.

Maybe(?) a workaround could be a new asset type, but our engine is old and finicky— it would certainly take a lot resources to teach it to parse through something so fundamental.

TL:DR

The system in place was made so we can milk the living dookie out of undyeable items (same reason we make outfits instead of armor sets). We will exploit every resource available to take your money. Period

The entitlement. This isn’t even quality of life, it’s just I want the blue one instead of the green one. I love the quality of life that they are currently focused on, which is putting more things into material storage. Calling them lazy is just so bad.

Who care about bugs, I want to be green.

sorry but everything said and that wall of text from them is like a bunch of excuses when in reality

‘’can be done, but it requires time, effort and resources, we are lazy and dont want to spend a dime on it, so we will only bring new content that our new system let us to create, the wings are easy so we are going to spam it, we could too made new lins with the new system so the new gliders and backpacks have dyes but wedidnt, thanks for your attention sorry and let the wings begin’’

what they dont know is i dont like red colors, but imagine if that fire backpack was able to change colors, i woudlve bough it and changed it

thanks for your attention and bye, apparently a dragonite spawned in a plaza and i need a better one because the one i have has ivs of 50% with 2.3k cp

JemL.3501:

sorry but everything said and that wall of text from them is like a bunch of excuses when in reality

‘’can be done, but it requires time, effort and resources, we are lazy and dont want to spend a dime on it, so we will only bring new content that our new system let us to create, the wings are easy so we are going to spam it, we could too made new lins with the new system so the new gliders and backpacks have dyes but wedidnt, thanks for your attention sorry and let the wings begin’’

what they dont know is i dont like red colors, but imagine if that fire backpack was able to change colors, i woudlve bough it and changed it

thanks for your attention and bye, apparently a dragonite spawned in a plaza and i need a better one because the one i have has ivs of 50% with 2.3k cp

You like fire but don’t like red? You being serious here? Golly miss molly, even if you dye the backpack guess what? The fire is still going to be RED. Are you to sit here and expect Anet to bend over backwards to please you? No, it was your decision to buy the game, it was your decision to purchase things in the gem shop. You should be thankful that GW2 even has a dye system for wearable gear, most games it’s cookie cutter, everyone gets the same style same colors, heck some games classes are totally cookie cutter to where it’s one specific character model to the class and no changes to it.

As I stated in my previous post, as you layer more and more code over top of previously existing code, it becomes harder and harder to edit old code. Sure they could edit it just to please you, but ask yourself this, what happens if they make this change to please you, and patch your game you log in and….OH MY GOSH MY CHARACTERS GONE, what then?

At the very best, Anet could give us predefined color palettes to choose from for a back item, which that just calls for making a new textures of that item, most games take the original texture and just hue warp it, to create the “common” colors people might want. But I guess that wouldn’t please you either right? You’d rather the game come crumbling down for everyone, just so you can have the one option you want, then to let the game stand as is, as it’s been for quite some time now with no complaints of this sort.

Look, there is so much focus on new gemstore items, the roof is basically nowhere to be found in that regard in the last years almost every month a new outfit released and there are now more backpacks and gliders anyone would ever be able to wear but somehow it is “too complicated” to make a color option on a LEGENDARY item?

Might as well come clean about it: Dear players, we are able to make it possible but we won’t since the resources we need to do that generate 10 times more making new gemstore stuff, so please just buy that instead, it’s awesome.

Dear MisterOiZo, the people who have legendaries aren’t the majority of people that play guild wars 2, we’re the minority. The gemstore team that is responsible for making new stuff no matter what. Saying they’re the reason core system re coding isn’t happening doesn’t make sense. An example of what changing anything might do would be those odd caves and houses in core Tyria that became bright as the sun for awhile.

The change to add dye channels would be nice, but it’s not realistic to ask for with them working so hard to put out content we enjoy right now. If it creates a huge bug, which is common for changing a core system, they have to work non stop to fix it. They just can’t have a bug sitting there, and if it happens after they implement it then there is no magic switch to go back to the way things were.

MisterOiZo.4359:

Might as well come clean about it: Dear players, we are able to make it possible but we won’t since the resources we need to do that generate 10 times more making new gemstore stuff, so please just buy that instead, it’s awesome.

The team working on gem shop items is a lot smaller than the group they’d need to change the mechanics underlying how back items and weapons are colored.