RizelstarThough I’m sure you’re correct but I would like to hear something from an A-Net staff member or engineer, cause I think it’s all about the money, but I can see it being an engine issue.
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
Mo MoI know everything takes time and work, but I also agree with you that as players we would both love dyeable back items. If you have any voice in the company, maybe you could suggest that most of the current back items are just fine and wouldn’t need dye channels. Ya’ll don’t need to do more work than necessary just for the sake of old back items.
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.
I vote for the workaround as it would: a) avoid tampering with the core coding of the game, b) more easier to find a bug, should it occur. The idea I have in mind, would be simply to put in a new slot – let’s call it “Back-Pack Glider” – slot. You can equip a back-pack strap in this slot and transmute it to the Shining Blade back-pack, except work has been done with the dye channels for this specific skin. This new slot, when enabled to be displayed, will automatically disable / toggle-off the display of the normal, back piece slot equipment.
Basically, just as gliders were added, we use the same principle for back-pieces that can have dyes, where they have their own slot and should just auto-disable the display of the normal back piece slot when the player chooses to display the dye-enabled back-pack, eg Shining Blade!
No idea on the amount of resources it will require, but I think this approach is better rather than dabbling with the old codes.