Guild Wars 2

Before and after of my necro’s T1 armor. The headpiece actually had a dye channel removed, but at least the issue with the dangling gem appears to be gone. It used to not move with my characters’s head turning, always staying locked in the same position as if it were completely unattached. I’m glad that was fixed, but the rest of this should be reverted.

At least give me a fourth dye channel that is dedicated to the glowing spots. I would like to match the glow, and only the glow, to my character’s skin glow. Not being able to change the glow without altering large portions of the armor is just not acceptable, in my opinion.

edit: Those screenshots don’t even do justice to the amount of changes to the textures. The color shifts are obvious, but the entire set looks washed out in many lighting conditions, and the texture looks very low quality and lacking in detail

As far as I am concerned, this update has destroyed my character’s armor and I no longer want to wear it. But I’m also not inclined to replace it, or anything else I have, because I don’t know what future changes might destroy that, as well.

The previous changes to legendary weapons made me glad that I do not have one, and assured that will not be getting one. I’m very disappointed to see that this treatment is now spreading to other aesthetics within the game.

Anyone else notice colors on there character changing during some of these patches? I found it annoying that two of my characters had these sort of dull/rust colors that suddenly were bright orange/red. Now this update made it where my Sylvari had this pretty dark blue eyes seem like there black and scary looking!
Others opinions and mishaps?

What I hate about the new changes on my female medium t3 is that the part which glows on the chest looks beautiful at day, but when it starts glowing, the greenish colour glows so bright it gets blueish, and toning down glow intensity apparently doesn’t affect armors.

Second thing is that the boots that are coloured the same way as the chest, makes the boots look like perma glow versio of the chest. Why not make the same dye affect the boots the same way as the chest (darker at day and glowing brightly at night, instead of this perma brightness)?

Third and last thing, if this change was to make glow controllable, then why is the t3 pants glow still determined by the pants colour. If I want a blueish glow, I need to have blue pants, which don’t fit the look. The pants weren’t changed in any way.

I spent ages getting my dyes right and was really happy with them, now it’s horrible and I can’t fix it or restore it to how I had it before -_-

Can I have the option to not use this new system?

Kristen Perry.5260:

Hi everyone,

~snip~

This currently affects Medium Tier 2 (legs will be re-addressed for better glow and dye alignment, sorry about that, it got past me) and Tier 3, Light Tier 1 (female only), and Light Tier 3. The other weights and tiers will be assessed for a similar pass to give glow or upgrade glow results when possible.

I have a sylvari necro and a sylvari warrior, both alt’s, underlevelled and without any cultural armour yet.

Thanks for making my mind up for me which one I choose to give the cultural armour set to (the one that’s unaffected, the warrior).

As an aside, could it be possible for you to give us maybe a heads-up of what you’re doing to a character’s armour BEFORE it gets implemented, so we can have a preview and perhaps maybe even a vote on it? Or if not then perhaps a way to have the character’s armour reverted to pre-patch.

I know you took the time to upload how you do Sylvari hairstyles on a YT vid, and that was appreciated… but could we please get something similar for stuff that’s coming up that maybe we could have a say in?

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Thanks for making my mind up for me which one I choose to give the cultural armour set to (the one that’s unaffected, the warrior).

The warrior/heavy hasn’t been changed yet. Her post does state that the other armors will be “assessed for a similar pass”, meaning that these changes are planned for additional sets.

First, thanks that you are still working on existing armors.
But to be honest I hate the change, I loved my Sylvari Medium T3 armor before (and since I am always broke it took me some time to get it ), but now the colours are just a mess and my carefull testing with all the colour combinations through the auction house were all for nothing. So while I appreciate that you are doing work some players wanted, I hate it and want my old colours back.

My Sylvari thief used to be completely dark and has absolutely no glow. Why would Anet make a change so that even if I put black dye or Midnight fire or Abyss in all of the slots, I still glow like a light bulb?
No matter what the explanation is, give us the option to turn off the glow all together.
I shouldn’t have to look at gray leaves that glow white if I dye it with BLACK DYE.

Kristen Perry.5260:

Hi everyone,

Well it looks like my release notes weren’t added to explain this, so I’ll try to allay the confusion. Yes, some of the cultural armor has gone through some major updates. Folks have been vehemently requesting that the cultural armors glow, and they have been confused at the old glows that were there. This confusion was because a lot of the dye-to-skin blends on stems would glow the skin color, but not their chosen glow color.

In updating the armors, this comes with particular considerations. The armor glows are not on the same system as the body glow, so they will only glow the color of the area dyed. Armor glow also does not play well with alpha, so I have to avoid any alpha edges. The problem with this is most of those areas that look good glowing are also some of the areas that blend to skin. Armor glow also negates specularity.

So. What this means for you is, to add your glow, I reworked the dye channels to give you the largest choice and control possible over the glow. The areas that glow are now selectable for you. Some of the textures are also better balanced to give you more consistent results… you won’t have to guess what color you need to find to make the red feel red, for example. It will just work.

This currently affects Medium Tier 2 (legs will be re-addressed for better glow and dye alignment, sorry about that, it got past me) and Tier 3, Light Tier 1 (female only), and Light Tier 3. The other weights and tiers will be assessed for a similar pass to give glow or upgrade glow results when possible.

I’ve been hearing your cries to get more glow on the sylvari and am doing my best to give you more control over your character customization.

You should give an option to turn it off, not give everyone a glow no matter what. Even “black” dye in the glow slot on the armor gives me white. IMHO and with all do respect for you and my favorite game, this is clearly not a complete and fully thought over change. I can take off glow on my base character but not the Sylvari’s grown leaves? Fix please.

Inspired.6730:

Okay, this doesn’t affect me; however, I find it necessary to comment.

Other than obvious bug fixes, existing armors and even weapons should never be changed. Spend your time designing new things and leave the existing alone. People who like them use them and people who don’t, don’t.

It’s quite scary if we need to pay attention to every suggestion or request made by anyone because some designer might listen to and use that as an excuse to change something we like.

Again, this needs repeating, if we’re using something it is because we like the way it looks so please leave it alone. And, if you see a demand for a changed version, then make a new one that’s a variation of it.

^^^ This.

Ultimately turning something that your players made a point to pick out and spend resources on into something that they did not choose for themselves is a bad idea.

The change did something really strange with the shadows, when I zoom in on my medium T3 Sylvari armor, its like blobs of shawods dance over it like mad, its looking really bad

While I appreciate the efforts to listen to people and work on improving existing armour sets, do you not feel that resources and time would be far better spent fixing the appalling clipping issues that have been in the game since launch?

Rather depressingly, a huge number of armour sets across all genders, weights and classes have some sort of problem with various body parts clipping through the armour. The worst offender is Charr armour. Finding an armour set that does not clip with SOMETHING on my Charr is nigh on impossible. If it’s not the tail, it’s the horns getting sliced off by helms. If it’s not the horns getting sliced off, it’s sure to be some other annoying little mistake. The fact that our T3 Light Cultural has a SOLID SKIRT befuddles the mind quite frankly. I’d be willing to put up with the tail clipping in existing armours if it wasn’t for the fact that you are still giving us new armour skins where the tail clips. Your latest Gem store light armour skin (Trickster) for example. The skirt clips with the tail on Charr. Surpise, surprise. You’ve been told by players several times how much we hate the tail clipping, why are you still churning out armour with this problem?

It’s really not just Charr though. I have a max body shape female Norn Mesmer. Most of the light armours clip through her thighs at the front. At the back, it clips through itself so there is a patch of armour under layer peeping through the top layer rhythmically as she breathes. My female human Engineer? Boots clip through trenchcoats a lot of the time, and I had to reduce her hip size because it was distorting the shape of armour. And I know there’s other problems, that I’ve heard from other people, but I can’t confirm for myself as I don’t own every race, class and gender combo.

So why, I politely ask, would your first priority be to “fix” a “problem” with Sylvari cultural that didn’t even exist in the first place. You’ve clearly upset a lot of players with this change. I have a male Sylvari Warrior, so I’m fortunate not to have been affected by this “fix” yet, but I can foresee major issues occurring with my T2/Twilight Arbor combo I have on him. I already have enough trouble dying the combo to blend with each other as it is.

I’ve already said enough about how confused I am by your prioritising, Anet. And I do respect that you are trying your best to give us improved content here, so instead of complaining I’m going to give a suggestion now. In future, instead of introducing stuff like this in stealth patches, why not make a post on the forums proposing your planned changes? Tell us what you plan to do, give us a preview picture of what the changes look like, and then let us say yea or neigh. Take on board what the players say, and if people don’t like it keep the content the way it is, or go back and work on it more until they do. If people do like it, go ahead and plomp it in game.

Stuff like this happens because there is virtually no communication between developers/artists and their customers. Give us polls, previews, public test servers so we could see what you are planning to do and then give you constructive feedback instead of just suddenly putting something in the game which turns out to be worse than it was before.

The reason why you didn’t see any feedback on the looks of the old armors was because people didn’t see anything to complain about and were happily playing the game. Only the very small minority come to the forums asking for changes.

As a big fan of the sylvari armors, looking at some of the before- and after-pictures, I hope and pray this change will not reach my warrior’s T2 set. I love the rich detailed textures and specular highlights on it, and would hate to lose them to even more glow.

I have not looked at my light T2 wearing mesmer since the patch, but I am dreading it. When I first got that armor, I played around literally for hours with all colors, being indeed mesmerized by the beautiful variations some colors created. Please don’t tell me most of that is suddenly gone, only to add glow

Hmm, took yesterday off from the game so a bit surprised here.

I’m looking all over for anyone posting male Medium T2 (to compare my Engi), but not found one yet. I’ll have to wait until I get home then before making a final comment.

On initial looks, however, the Tier 3’s loss of specular maps certainly has made me even more wary of going near it (didn’t like the original ‘slickness,’ but like the loss of depth even less). Thankfully the cost is what really put me off, since I figured any major changes (like this one actually) would have me as annoyed as the others here…

Also, while I do see an effort in some of the screenshots to counteract this (by adding additional dye regions), in some of the cases its not working, or has completely changed the final look in the process.

As for my Engi, however, I will cope. I only display chest, leggings, and boots on him, so its not going to be completely breaking. I hope.

Kristen Perry.5260:

This currently affects Medium Tier 2 (legs will be re-addressed for better glow and dye alignment, sorry about that, it got past me) and Tier 3, Light Tier 1 (female only), and Light Tier 3. The other weights and tiers will be assessed for a similar pass to give glow or upgrade glow results when possible.

I’ve been hearing your cries to get more glow on the sylvari and am doing my best to give you more control over your character customization.

I appreciate your efford but I cannot appreciate the result. Fortunately my favourite armor light Tier 2 hasn’t got changed yet but what I saw from the other tiers makes me pretty worried.

But what bothers me even more is the last sentence because it addresses a general problem for me. I am pretty sure you didn’t hear me cry just because I had no reason to complain until now. So what does this mean in general? Am I supposed to lurk the forum 24/7 just in case some players come up with an idea about what they would like to get changed? Am I supposed to post in every thread that I like several things the way they are just not to get them changed for the worse considering my wishes?

Edit: This is in no way ment as a complaint about your work in general but as a general issue concerning the communication between developers and community.

I mean it’s just some armor parts and some might say that my post is over dramatising the issue and that it’s just a minor problem but so where the glow requests to begin with.

My Sylvari Mesmer is totally sad.
Dyeing light T3 has always been really hard if you like bright colours.
Most bright colors look dark or washed out and colorless.
The really expensive rare gemshop colors come close to “normal” but are not great at all.

Light T3 had no real glow and was bad, now it is even worse >:-{

Added a Before and After Pic.

As I have not seen a response yet, I was wondering if any of the people looking at/posting on this thread are also the ones who were originally asking for more glow and the ability to change it. If so, what are your feelings to the change?

This isn’t to curse them down or something, I’m just genuinely curious about how the people who wanted this change are feeling about it. Do you think Anet did the right thing, is it satisfactory to what you were asking for? What else would you suggest, if anything, to make it more to like your original intent?

An answer to questions like these from the people who wanted the change would seem to be the best possible feedback for Anet staff.

I recall reading some of the posts about wanting the change, albeit a long time ago, and they mostly talked about being able to control the glow colour solely. Not the dye around the glow as well. Nowhere did I see them asking for the textures to be smoothed out or other things that may have been changed (unless it was a bug). However, do correct me if I’m wrong.

I really love the idea of all the Sylvari armors glowing. I even really love the idea of the TA armor glowing when my sylvari wears it (because I’m thinking about getting him a few pieces of it at some point). When I first read about this update I was really excited.

After seeing so many screenshots in this thread, I’m scared. My sylvari wears T1 and T2 heavy armor and I spent hours dying it so that the glow would look just so at night and the armor would still look the way I wanted it during the day. My T1 pieces glow blue and are dyed to match the glow of my sylvari’s body, but the T2 pieces glow white. As it stands, I don’t think I can modify the glow color of my T2 armor. But I also kind of really love how it looks. I see a lot of the gradient and texture that really makes the sylvari armors pop being drained after the update. I don’t want this to happen to my sylvari :/

Also, I know it’s been mentioned elsewhere, but my Sylvari now has jet black eyes after the most recent update. Was something done to the sylvari base colors as a part of this change? Was this accidental/unintended? Is it a bug that’s going to be fixed? Because my main character now looks like a soulless husk. Which is upsetting enough but now I’m scared it’s only a matter of time before his beautiful armor gets ruined too.

This is excellent work. Ive read posts on this upcoming change in the sylvari section where they explained exactly how hard it is to make this kind of update and the flat-out truth is that you ought to be grateful. They put in a lot of work to make the sylvari glow work and it should be appreciated. I know we’re all very sorry that YOUR special combination of dyes that was just PERFECT before no longer looks the same. But I’m afraid youre just gonna have to find something else that works….

And another thing: this kind of update took several months to get released since its inception, if you try and make them rework it again: not only will you not see it for quite a while, but you might like it less. Not to mention the fact that many of us like myself really like the changes.

Bottom line: Bite the bullet and get used to the change. There are new combinations to explore and ONE of them will meet your needs. Thank anet for responding to our cries for this change and make it work.

I really appreciate the effort but i’m sorry to say i really dislike the results.
I liked the armor i bought but it’s ugly now in comparison in my eyes.
Please revert the changes or make them optionals, and in the future remember to add options, not to change what people already have taking away what they liked.
I’m sure you are working to gives us something we like but this time i think you missed the target.
I hurts me to whatch my main now, i will miss my t3 medium armor but i’m not wearing it anymore.

Nightingale.9714:

This is excellent work. Ive read posts on this upcoming change in the sylvari section where they explained exactly how hard it is to make this kind of update and the flat-out truth is that you ought to be grateful. They put in a lot of work to make the sylvari glow work and it should be appreciated. I know we’re all very sorry that YOUR special combination of dyes that was just PERFECT before no longer looks the same. But I’m afraid youre just gonna have to find something else that works….

And another thing: this kind of update took several months to get released since its inception, if you try and make them rework it again: not only will you not see it for quite a while, but you might like it less. Not to mention the fact that many of us like myself really like the changes.

Bottom line: Bite the bullet and get used to the change. There are new combinations to explore and ONE of them will meet your needs. Thank anet for responding to our cries for this change and make it work.

Do you also take your car to a dealership for routine oil change only to find out that they also changed the engine to an electric motor and painted the car puke green to show off it’s eco-friendliness and then just say: “Oh well I guess this is better for my tastes.”

The thing is that they never should change stuff that has been untouched for 14 months without any communication. I bought my t3 armor knowing that it’d look exactly like that, I bought the dyes knowing they would work like that with the armor hell I even bought multiple makeover kits to make my character just perfect for my tastes. And now all that gold and gems are worthless to me since I can’t get the same look that I’ve been perfecting for the past year.

Taku.6352:

Do you also take your car to a dealership for routine oil change only to find out that they also changed the engine to an electric motor and painted the car puke green to show off it’s eco-friendliness and then just say: “Oh well I guess this is better for my tastes.”

Well if I get a free upgrade like the armor changes I wouldn´t say no xD

Nightingale.9714:

Bottom line: Bite the bullet and get used to the change. There are new combinations to explore and ONE of them will meet your needs. Thank anet for responding to our cries for this change and make it work.

So why didn’t you guys just bite the bullet and got used to what was, huh? So here is “my cry”: at least keep the rest as it is! So what now?

Nightingale.9714:

This is excellent work. Ive read posts on this upcoming change in the sylvari section where they explained exactly how hard it is to make this kind of update and the flat-out truth is that you ought to be grateful. They put in a lot of work to make the sylvari glow work and it should be appreciated. I know we’re all very sorry that YOUR special combination of dyes that was just PERFECT before no longer looks the same. But I’m afraid youre just gonna have to find something else that works….

And another thing: this kind of update took several months to get released since its inception, if you try and make them rework it again: not only will you not see it for quite a while, but you might like it less. Not to mention the fact that many of us like myself really like the changes.

Bottom line: Bite the bullet and get used to the change. There are new combinations to explore and ONE of them will meet your needs. Thank anet for responding to our cries for this change and make it work.

You know, the vast majority of negative feedback in this thread has been extremely respectful to Kristen, particularly recognising that she has always been really engaged with the sylvari-fan community and regularly responds to ideas and concerns in the sylvari forum in person. She’s awesome and I’ve always loved her sylvari work . . . but I still think this particular change is a negative one.

It really doesn’t do you any favours to come in here demeaning everyone providing their honest feedback just because you personally like the change.

EDIT: Just to add, reverting to previous versions of software does not generally take the same amount of time as it took to build the updates, providing version control has been effectively employed.

Nightingale.9714:

This is excellent work. Ive read posts on this upcoming change in the sylvari section where they explained exactly how hard it is to make this kind of update and the flat-out truth is that you ought to be grateful. They put in a lot of work to make the sylvari glow work and it should be appreciated. I know we’re all very sorry that YOUR special combination of dyes that was just PERFECT before no longer looks the same. But I’m afraid youre just gonna have to find something else that works….

And another thing: this kind of update took several months to get released since its inception, if you try and make them rework it again: not only will you not see it for quite a while, but you might like it less. Not to mention the fact that many of us like myself really like the changes.

Bottom line: Bite the bullet and get used to the change. There are new combinations to explore and ONE of them will meet your needs. Thank anet for responding to our cries for this change and make it work.

And because the minority likes it, it is fine to keep? Then why didn’t you “bite the bullet” before and get you look. Maybe you simply couldn’t… lack of creativity or such?

Bottom line: Then needs of the many outweight the needs of the few. ArenaNet, please! Bring us back the great looking, nicely textured and cell shaded armors! Bring us back what we love! None of us is happy now and we dread every minute playing with our favorite toon now that we feel powerless! Many of us can even quit for some time because of this and you know it! PLEASE, DO REVERT IT! PLEASE!

to be fair, there was rather a prominent cry from the Sylvari community to make the glow more uniform: i.e. either have all Sylvari cultural armor glow or clearly mark which ones do and which ones don’t. Go check, there are several threads about it over the past few weeks/months.

As for the textures, yes please, bring them back?

To be fair, I’m glad they listen to our voice. But I hope they find a solution that won’t remove the details/texture from the armor. I’m using the one of the darkest dyes(midnight fire) on mine, yet some angle due to light, it will turn gray.

If there was any discussion the I bet that no one wanted to sacrifice any textures just for the glow that can be seen only at night. Should we have been informed about this change and how these armors look in advance we would have said: “No, we don’t want that!” However, due to the lack of such information we have just been forced to appreciate the result, which we cannot! No matter how little (yes little instead of big) the group of people actually liking the change (dunno why) is!

For what it is worth. I love the change. My armor looks even more amazing now.

Another unhappy sylvari player here. My t2 and t3 combo on my necro used to be one of my most loved armor sets on him, as it had amazing color depth. As you can see in the attached before and after, that’s not the case anymore. It looks even worse when he’s glowing; since he’s almost solidly black, the white glow just ruins the color scheme completely.

I’m glad that Anet finally gave the sylvari players some attention, but I’m strongly in favor of rolling this change back. At this rate I’d probably pay real money to revert my t3 pieces back to the old ones, although seeing as it’s a change I never asked for, that’d be rather silly. I’d much rather Anet fix the ridiculous ballooning effect on sylvari characters (see: HotW leggings on a sylvari male VS HotW leggings on a human male), and just leave our cultural armor alone.

The idea of giving more glow options was good in spirit, but the execution caused more trouble than it was worth, I feel. I’m not sure that we’ll actually get the changes rolled back, but I’ll be ridiculously happy if they do.

The main problem I see is with the T3 gloves (light). A dye channel was completely removed. Can this be reverted at least?

I’d also like to add that as well as destroying my Necro Sylvari look with this change you have also changed both my Sylvari characters eyes to jet black when they had been a very light green.

Can I please have back the Sylvari characters that I rolled, clothed and dyed or an option to do so because it’s not a nice feeling to have my main toon suddenly change so drastically in appearance from something I had no choice in.

ANet imagine if someone spray painted your car and blacked out the headlights while you slept, would you be happy?

Here’s a pic of my alt. Sylvari thief who was dyed a medium green. Now with the severe loss of detail means she looks almost black. Revert please.

Followedbyrocks.8751:

While I appreciate the efforts to listen to people and work on improving existing armour sets, do you not feel that resources and time would be far better spent fixing the appalling clipping issues that have been in the game since launch?

Rather depressingly, a huge number of armour sets across all genders, weights and classes have some sort of problem with various body parts clipping through the armour. The worst offender is Charr armour. Finding an armour set that does not clip with SOMETHING on my Charr is nigh on impossible. If it’s not the tail, it’s the horns getting sliced off by helms. If it’s not the horns getting sliced off, it’s sure to be some other annoying little mistake. The fact that our T3 Light Cultural has a SOLID SKIRT befuddles the mind quite frankly. I’d be willing to put up with the tail clipping in existing armours if it wasn’t for the fact that you are still giving us new armour skins where the tail clips. Your latest Gem store light armour skin (Trickster) for example. The skirt clips with the tail on Charr. Surpise, surprise. You’ve been told by players several times how much we hate the tail clipping, why are you still churning out armour with this problem?

It’s really not just Charr though. I have a max body shape female Norn Mesmer. Most of the light armours clip through her thighs at the front. At the back, it clips through itself so there is a patch of armour under layer peeping through the top layer rhythmically as she breathes. My female human Engineer? Boots clip through trenchcoats a lot of the time, and I had to reduce her hip size because it was distorting the shape of armour. And I know there’s other problems, that I’ve heard from other people, but I can’t confirm for myself as I don’t own every race, class and gender combo.

So why, I politely ask, would your first priority be to “fix” a “problem” with Sylvari cultural that didn’t even exist in the first place. You’ve clearly upset a lot of players with this change. I have a male Sylvari Warrior, so I’m fortunate not to have been affected by this “fix” yet, but I can foresee major issues occurring with my T2/Twilight Arbor combo I have on him. I already have enough trouble dying the combo to blend with each other as it is.

I’ve already said enough about how confused I am by your prioritising, Anet. And I do respect that you are trying your best to give us improved content here, so instead of complaining I’m going to give a suggestion now. In future, instead of introducing stuff like this in stealth patches, why not make a post on the forums proposing your planned changes? Tell us what you plan to do, give us a preview picture of what the changes look like, and then let us say yea or neigh. Take on board what the players say, and if people don’t like it keep the content the way it is, or go back and work on it more until they do. If people do like it, go ahead and plomp it in game.

^^^ This.

I really adored the gradient, texture and ‘waxy’ look to the sylvari armour previously… it was really convincing as plant armour for plant people! Now it’s so bright it just looks cartoony and garish. I don’t like it, and I’d rather it just be reverted. Glow -would- be nice, but if it’s at this cost, I’ll keep on keepin’ on with the non-glowing armour I’ve got already…

I like changes. Thank you arena.net <3

Part of what exacerbates the issue for me is that I don’t normally run on high-end settings. The original armor looked good—really good—on low-end settings due to the specular map. Now, unless I have the graphic settings cranked up, my toons look more like they’re wearing a paint-by-number filled in on Paint.

And the glow? Yeah I don’t even see the thing that was supposed to make this worth the switch.

EDIT: I have to run shaders at a medium or higher setting to get any benefit from the change. Which is a net loss of almost 10 FPS for me.

I’ve looked at the “Glow Compendium” thread in the sylvari subforum. There’s ONE PAGE of comments looking for more glow. Many of the comments are those like myself who didn’t want the changes.

I fail to see how this is substantive enough justification for changing a flippin’ expensive armor skin. The overwhelming response has thus far been negative, and, to be sure, borderline enraged.

This must, must be reverted. Provide an option, sure. Create a new skin, sure. But revert the changes.

I’m for regaining the texture and colour blending we had pre-patch. It might not have been entirely accurate to the dye colours but it was certainly fun to play with and customize.

The colourable glows in and of themselves are amazing though, so excited to get some pieces now that there won’t be that weirdly contrasting white to my sets

ooo I totally see the missing gloss. I think the brighter color change is nice. but that gloss, you gotta have that. It makes the sylvari look more plant like with the cultural armor.

I was shocked when I saw my armors too. But a little time spent re-dying made them look even better than before, and now they have a much more prominent glow effect.

Now if only they would fix truly BROKEN armors! (Clipping, oversized shoulders floating in midair, dye channels missing, colors locked out and replaced by another color, etc.)

I knew there was something wrong with my armor color!! (T3 male sylvari medium)

Not cool anet, not cool at all… How dare you retouch a work of art!? Tsk!

While I do appreciate that attention has been focused on Sylvari, I am quite saddened by the results as I feel the change removes a lot of the Sylvari look. I loved the waxy, plant-like appearance of the specular map— the texture you removed to make room for this change was the entire reason I bought this armour in the first place. Yes, the dyes worked on it differently than other materials, but we have had over a year to get used to it (it never bothered me in the first place, either; just as cloth dyes differently from metal, plant armour dyed differently from the rest) and pick our dyes accordingly. This is way, way too late in the game to make such a big change to armour this expensive.

I have included a before and after look of my mesmer, and as you can see, before it looked like he was wearing leaves. Now, not so much. All the subtle blending and hues melting into each other is gone and the colours are left looking flat and garish. It alters the appearance of the armour way, way too much. Without the texture, it no longer looks like leaves, which I felt was the entire point of Sylvari culturals. The different tiers no longer match each other, either, with some of them keeping the waxy look— I suppose this indicates that you are going to change all the culturals to look as flat like this? Please, no.

Please, please reconsider, you are removing too much of what made Sylvari culturals so unique and beautiful. Please give us the option to use the old version of the culturals for those of us who prefer the leaf texture over the stronger glow. The set I bought is not the set I have, now, and not the one I want.

In addition, I am bothered by how light female T3 top now has a breast glow when the male version does not.

i spent two total makeover kits and quite some gold a few weeks ago in order to tweak and match my characters armor colors, hair color, glow color and weapon. it was exactly the way i wanted it to be and i loved it. now its all turned up side down. … ;( i spent two total makeover kits for nothing… this is not fair… :/ now if i want the glow of my armor to fit the glow of my character i have to dye my armor in an ugly greenish dark-yellow (honey) … and i can’t even change my characters glow anymore… i want my makeover kits back D;

Any chance that y’all will be updating the TA armor sets with a glow? I would like that.

Combination NC.9813:

While I do appreciate that attention has been focused on Sylvari, I am quite saddened by the results as I feel the change removes a lot of the Sylvari look. I loved the waxy, plant-like appearance of the specular map— the texture you removed to make room for this change was the entire reason I bought this armour in the first place. Yes, the dyes worked on it differently than other materials, but we have had over a year to get used to it (it never bothered me in the first place, either; just as cloth dyes differently from metal, plant armour dyed differently from the rest) and pick our dyes accordingly. This is way, way too late in the game to make such a big change to armour this expensive.

I have included a before and after look of my mesmer, and as you can see, before it looked like he was wearing leaves. Now, not so much. All the subtle blending and hues melting into each other is gone and the colours are left looking flat and garish. It alters the appearance of the armour way, way too much. Without the texture, it no longer looks like leaves, which I felt was the entire point of Sylvari culturals. The different tiers no longer match each other, either, with some of them keeping the waxy look— I suppose this indicates that you are going to change all the culturals to look as flat like this? Please, no.

Please, please reconsider, you are removing too much of what made Sylvari culturals so unique and beautiful. Please give us the option to use the old version of the culturals for those of us who prefer the leaf texture over the stronger glow. The set I bought is not the set I have, now, and not the one I want.

In addition, I am bothered by how light female T3 top now has a breast glow when the male version does not.

This perfectly sums up how I feel about this change. The Sylvari cultural armour used to be vibrant and rich in texture, now it’s flat and dull and not at all the look I invested in for. I dread to think what my guardian I’ve clad in T3 heavy but a week ago will look like once those armours are changed as well.

It’s also rather disappointing that such a drastic change would be implemented without prior feedback from the players, especially during these days of collaborative development. It’s further disappointing that Anet has stated times and again that vocal minority on the forums is not representation of the playerbase’s desires, yet it’s the very same minority that was listened to this time without any care for what the majority thinks.

whenfirecomes.7963:

It’s also rather disappointing that such a drastic change would be implemented without prior feedback from the players, especially during these days of collaborative development. It’s further disappointing that Anet has stated times and again that vocal minority on the forums is not representation of the playerbase’s desires, yet it’s the very same minority that was listened to this time without any care for what the majority thinks.

They’ll listen when it’s something that can add more grind (player retention in their view) or gem store sales. I imagine that some of us that are unhappy with these armor changes might be looking to replace it, which likely means needing transmutation crystals. Or others that like the change might buy new cultural armor, which means more transmutation crystal sales.

Something popular among the players that actually reduces some grind (like the much-requested account-based wvw ranks) will get pushed aside with the “vocal minority” label. When that “vocal minority” wants something they see a way to profit from, it becomes “listening to a large number of our players”

The reality of this, for me at least. I’m not wasting even more money on transmutations or taking the effort to get costly cosmetics that might be “improved” next week. I was happy that the new light armor skin in the gemstore was Marjory’s armor, and I was actually thinking about getting it…until I saw what they’ve done to my necro. I have no reason to believe that the items I like now will remain items that I like, and I simply can’t justify spending money (real or ingame) on them with that lingering possibility of it being ruined.

Hi, sure some of you like the change, cause it looks good at you.
But I can only say it destroys my look. Everything I need to change. The structure of the colors I used, looks completely different now. For me it looked perfect before, I used 2 complete makeovers, bought Molten and Flame dye and spend hours in creation to get her into this. Now she is looking creepy orange -.- from instant without any warning… I’m afraid what comes next?
So I want the old color system back, I even would pay for, to get her into the old one…
If you check the attachments you will see. Sure its no great quality, but you see whats changed.

I also thx to you AN for this change!
My sylvari now looks worst and ugliest than ever before. Many hours and gold for dyes was just a waste of time and in-game money. Brilliant effect is now gone…
I expect to turn it back! Maybe you should graphic option “Use old sylvari appearance”.
For that moment all my sylvari look horrible (T2 thief, T3 ranger, T3 necro).
I am really disapointed.

let me ad here that i do like the changes… i just wish i wouldn’t have had spent two makeover kits and gold on… well… nothing… cause tweaking the appearance of my character, i have to start over now… :/ Kristen, i think a lot of us do really appreciate your work! (i for one prefer the new variant, saturation and glow <3! ) it’s just that it broke our character setup… and looks ARE costly… hope you can understand our disappointment in that matter.

I’ve noticed that greens like Emerald for example, used to be a very dark green with amazing depth and contrast, it now has become on my T3 medium- a light, almost pale green color with no depth and almost looks blurry. I think the only colors that benefited from this patch are blacks, blues, whites, and some reds (regarding T3 medium).

Be vocal should you not like the change! (If, by an unknown reason to me, you like…then explain… I want to know cause its a mystery to me)

We still plead to change it back!