Guild Wars 2

For me, it most definitely is. You would think that when you preview a piece of armor or perhaps a weapon or two, that everything would turn out exactly as it shows… right? Well, in this case, things can look quite the opposite.

Take the outfit of my elementalist below, for example. I was trying to make the colours work perfectly with the zodiac chest, and in the preview, it did look perfect – to me anyway (especially with the ‘sky’ dye I bought specifically for it), but then reality hits you like a ton of bricks when you see the final outcome. Heck, the one on the right looks almost green, not blue. What is with that?

First you think, ok, maybe it’s just the lighting, so you adjust the graphics. Nothing. Ok, maybe I’m in the shade, so you go into the sunniest location/direction. Still looks the same. By then you’re thinking, ‘well, I’ve exhausted all my options – the interface is just downright misleading’.

Am I the only one here? Have you guys experienced something that looks 100% perfect in the preview and you’re really happy with the look of your character, only to find out it looks completely different when it comes to the final outcome?

Edit: 1st picture is in Edge of The Mists with the comparison of the preview vs. the actual appearance. The 2nd Picture is my character at Divinity’s Reach at night time with front and back views of the actual appearance. HUGE difference.

Turns out it is a combination of the lighting, material of armor, area you’re in, AND time of day. Quite annoying really :-/

Your not alone. I noticed this a while ago when I was trying to make the boots of the female Phoenix set look like a pair of thights. Out of the preview, it turns into some ugly green-yellow-brownish colour. I believe it really has something to do with the lighting.

Edit…. there’s also several materials listed under dyes, Vibrant, Natural Leather, Natural Metallic. Perhaps the latter are more true to their colour where as vibrant tend to react to lightning effects?

Yeah, dyes do also change a bit according to what material they’re on. So if you use a metallic dye on a leather-based piece of armor, then it’s going to look different (sort of like irl). That sometimes shows up as obvious in the preview, but not always, for me. And in general, I do think the lighting does have an effect.

Go into a birght room and turn on a light bulb. Now make a painting of it. It will probably be pretty white on the painting. After you are done, it looks pretty similiar to what the light bulb looks like. So invite some friends to show them your painting. They arrive in the evening to look at it – but just when you turned on the bulb again, the painting seems to be too dark compared to the bulb.

TL;DR: There are glowing and not glowing armor pieces. Glowing ones allways look the same, the not glowing ones will adapt to the natural light around them. The zodiac chest is also glowing, but at sunset the yellow sky + blue armor = green effect. The staff of the golden beauty also glows, that’s why it looks allways the same. The armor is covered in the darkness of the night.

The preview allways shows in a “bright room”.

It sometimes is annoying since indeed Vibrant, Leather and Metallic stuff is differently affected by the light. That’s why my engi armor will never allways be the same red as my metallic back piece. Just sometimes

Working as intended. Try to dye same materials with same colors for better results.

No more misleading than the lighting in jewelry stores emphasizing the glitter and shimmer of a diamond while that same diamond will look comparatively underwhelming in the poor lighting of your garage.

Doesn’t this entirely comes down to the different lightning at different locations?

The Preview window has a fairly bright and natural light. If you go to Queensdale during the day, it should look the same I think.

As previous answers already showed one dye on different armor parts may look different. I had the same problem especially in darker areas. Only chance to minimize the different shade is by using a brighter dye-type on “dark” armor parts. This helped me a bit.

I have the same problem with one of the new hairstyles from the total makeover kit.
If you apply a base accessory colour, say ‘antique gold’, then try to colour match the same base colour on regular armour, it doesn’t match at all – i tried with several colours but got the same result.
In the end i opted for a ‘close as’ but surely you’d expect some kind of uniformity?

I’ve noticed my armor color looks entirely different in different maps. There was a twitch stream about the color they use for the ‘ambient’ air, once. Very interesting. So, indeed, the lighting can make a huge difference on what the dyes on your armor looks like.

This also happened in GW1, as well, so I would always check out my armor dyes in the Crystal Desert where the light seemed brightest. =)

It is the lighting, yes. And the lighting in the preview and the makeover kit affects the materials in a really prominent way and creates a very obvious bluish sheen that I’ve never actually seen replicated perfectly anywhere in the live game itself.

It’s cost me several gold in dye mistakes, and I had to totally remake a character once due to the lighting in the character creator causing me to totally misinterpret some colors. I wish the lighting was made a bit more neutral, but eh, what’re you gonna do? I suspect this is a feature that will be around forever.

It’s just as misleading as comparing catalog photos with the item in your hand. The equipment preview will show you how the item looks like under a perfectly neutral white light, and it’s expected that will look differently under different light. Even more if you take into account that the different materials react differently to the light (cloth, leather, metal, leaves, fur…) and that even within the same material you can have different finishes as well (metal, for example, can be matte, glossy, shiny, and so on). To be honest I don’t really see a way to fix it unless there was a way to let you control the lighting condition (position, color, intensity and so on) of the lights in the preview window, which would make it waay too complicated IMHO.

The armor you’re previewing, BTW, would be (IMHO) fairly close to a worst case scenario when it comes to armor lighting, considering that the zodiac armor has portions that are self lighted (something very few other armors have) and others that are completely mate, there’s no real way to match both across all different enviromental lighting set ups out there, if you match it using the preview window they’ll look darket on any area that isn’t fully lit, if you match it in darket areas it’ll look lighter in brighter areas and so on.

Armor looks different in different light settings, so of course your armor will look different from the preview if you’re in a different light setting than what the preview has.

My armor looks completely different depending on zone and time, especially if you are Sylvari. Take your character to Shiverpeaks then to the Grove. That’s just how it is. The dyes are just different in different lighting/atmosphere.

Hmmm I just logged onto my ele who I left in Divinity’s Reach and you guys are right, he looks completely different. This is at night time and the preview is almost identical to the pictures of my ele here in Divinity’s Reach – although the back is a bit off, but the front looks quite good. Just wish it was like this EVERYWHERE :-( It’s inconsistent and extremely annoying. Wish Anet would change it so the preview is consistent with the actual appearance no matter what the situation is.

Below is what I wish my character looked like EVERYWHERE :-( a bit brighter perhaps though, like it is in the preview. Then it would be perfect.