Post by JustVine on 2022-07-02 20:31:38
Finally got around to hearing the news on Steven's current approach for the dye system.
There is a lot of uncertainty here. So much so that I'm sort of shocked Steven even mentioned it without more clarity and I am now more confused than before the question was answered.
Here are assumptions I was making before this discussion thread was posted:
1. Given the way alpha channels and texture lighting models work, all colors are going to be effected by the material they are being dyed by. No matter what color you would have chosen you would simply already have a built in limit in terms of brightness, saturation, and underlying palette unless you explicitly overrode the texture all together.
2. That due to the complexity in modeling certain texture effects like feathers and fur, there would be hard limits on colors depending on the material in question.
3. That we would be limited in what spots on a given gear piece we were allowed to effect due to the above since sometimes it just simply won't look good or stylish.
Given the above three points I had always thought the compromise of 'limiting certain color pallets depending on the material was always the main way to clamp down on the 'rainbow effect' while still allowing for a lot of customization. I was ready and willing to make this compromise. I'm very well aware that certain colors on certain materials can be immersion breaking and as Pyreal aptly put 'there are too many asshats' for there to not be limits.
The route Steven SEEMS to be choosing is explicitly taking all of the implied limitations of 1, 2, and 3 above and adding an entire extra layer of authoritarian control on how 'mismatched' we can look in our style. This seems to imply that Steven is very much against customization if he doesn't agree with you and I had always assumed he was a pretty pro player agency in cosmetics kind of person.
Now personally I think 50% customization is tolerable. The fact that you can't do it piece by piece is absurd to me and totally restrictive, however. Even this I am willing to tolerate however.
The way the 30/20% channels were explained was really unclear nor was the intent behind the way this split in channels will work or how much control we will have relative to where the dye applies on the over all body and if there will be a way to mix and match the layers they are effecting.
I am also confused as to why that 50% of control is not implemented piece by piece. I don't always want to dye every part of my gear and I was already willing to accept material based pallet limitations so why do you feel the need to be this heavy handed? You are stopping me from NOT dying certain parts of my gear as much as you are restricting exactly where I can dye and I think that's kind of silly.
I also don't quite understand why you chose 2 dye channels rather than 3-5. From my understanding a lot of the restrictions people are calling for are built into the fundamentals of modeling in the first place. Is it that it's more work to create the dye mapping for pieces this way rather than doing it piece by piece?
My bigger problem is that 2 channels is just so completely low that I can't even do things like 'create a gradient of orange' to have my accents differ depending on what part of my body they are on and things like that. Not only that but some people just quite frankly have a completely unique take on color theory and have personal patterns that require more than two colors. I feel like 3-5 channels is more acceptable given how little control you are giving us over where this dying is happening. If you aren't even willing to budge that much on this good luck convincing more fashion oriented people you actually care about giving them freedom of customization.
Given how much total control Intrepid wants to have in how we look, I think it's also reasonable to say that we can assume my first 3 assumptions before this was announced are also still present and those are still restriction I feel are reasonable, but combined with the new announced restrictions it's just a really confusingly overwhelming number of limits. That being said I feel like you should definitely let cloth material on gear and outfits be more or less unrestricted in color pallet in exchange for keeping things like leather, metal, hide, and feathers 'realistic' and 'un-immersion breaking'.
I think given the pallet limitations explained above having some sort of control over the brightness on each individual piece is also a fairly reasonable thing to demand so we can at least make sure the colors match the over all piece rather than just being applied haphazardly. I don't even care if you limit how much brightness is allowed in this case, but we definitely need more control than this to make the dyes actually look stylish in symphony with our gear.
I am not happy at all to be clear, but I think the above critiques pose reasonable demands for compromise. This is over controlling to a point that I find completely distasteful and if you do not increase the number of dye channels, make some sort of piece by piece exclusion for the channels and control on brightness for each piece, and have a lower restriction on color pallet for cloth I simply won't buy cosmetics since Intrepid does not seem to value player agency to the minimum level I require before I support their cosmetics.
The real question is if the other side of the debate that drove you(Intrepid) to make this decision in the first place is okay with the compromise. If they aren't even willing to make any of the above compromises and Intrepid goes along with their opinion, then this whole system is a complete nonstarter in my eyes. If that happens then I definitely won't be spending any money on cosmetics since the game has gone to such far lengths to implement a system that does not appear to actually value my(and others') agency and freedom of expression when it comes to cosmetics.
In light of all this and a lack of clarification on cosmetic policies, I'll be closing my wallet until things are clarified. Which sucks since I was really hoping to get the beetle and scorpion, but oh well. That's just how things are right now.
Verra is a diverse and colorful world with glowing mushrooms. That's what I signed up for.
There is a lot of uncertainty here. So much so that I'm sort of shocked Steven even mentioned it without more clarity and I am now more confused than before the question was answered.
Here are assumptions I was making before this discussion thread was posted:
1. Given the way alpha channels and texture lighting models work, all colors are going to be effected by the material they are being dyed by. No matter what color you would have chosen you would simply already have a built in limit in terms of brightness, saturation, and underlying palette unless you explicitly overrode the texture all together.
2. That due to the complexity in modeling certain texture effects like feathers and fur, there would be hard limits on colors depending on the material in question.
3. That we would be limited in what spots on a given gear piece we were allowed to effect due to the above since sometimes it just simply won't look good or stylish.
Given the above three points I had always thought the compromise of 'limiting certain color pallets depending on the material was always the main way to clamp down on the 'rainbow effect' while still allowing for a lot of customization. I was ready and willing to make this compromise. I'm very well aware that certain colors on certain materials can be immersion breaking and as Pyreal aptly put 'there are too many asshats' for there to not be limits.
The route Steven SEEMS to be choosing is explicitly taking all of the implied limitations of 1, 2, and 3 above and adding an entire extra layer of authoritarian control on how 'mismatched' we can look in our style. This seems to imply that Steven is very much against customization if he doesn't agree with you and I had always assumed he was a pretty pro player agency in cosmetics kind of person.
Now personally I think 50% customization is tolerable. The fact that you can't do it piece by piece is absurd to me and totally restrictive, however. Even this I am willing to tolerate however.
The way the 30/20% channels were explained was really unclear nor was the intent behind the way this split in channels will work or how much control we will have relative to where the dye applies on the over all body and if there will be a way to mix and match the layers they are effecting.
I am also confused as to why that 50% of control is not implemented piece by piece. I don't always want to dye every part of my gear and I was already willing to accept material based pallet limitations so why do you feel the need to be this heavy handed? You are stopping me from NOT dying certain parts of my gear as much as you are restricting exactly where I can dye and I think that's kind of silly.
I also don't quite understand why you chose 2 dye channels rather than 3-5. From my understanding a lot of the restrictions people are calling for are built into the fundamentals of modeling in the first place. Is it that it's more work to create the dye mapping for pieces this way rather than doing it piece by piece?
My bigger problem is that 2 channels is just so completely low that I can't even do things like 'create a gradient of orange' to have my accents differ depending on what part of my body they are on and things like that. Not only that but some people just quite frankly have a completely unique take on color theory and have personal patterns that require more than two colors. I feel like 3-5 channels is more acceptable given how little control you are giving us over where this dying is happening. If you aren't even willing to budge that much on this good luck convincing more fashion oriented people you actually care about giving them freedom of customization.
Given how much total control Intrepid wants to have in how we look, I think it's also reasonable to say that we can assume my first 3 assumptions before this was announced are also still present and those are still restriction I feel are reasonable, but combined with the new announced restrictions it's just a really confusingly overwhelming number of limits. That being said I feel like you should definitely let cloth material on gear and outfits be more or less unrestricted in color pallet in exchange for keeping things like leather, metal, hide, and feathers 'realistic' and 'un-immersion breaking'.
I think given the pallet limitations explained above having some sort of control over the brightness on each individual piece is also a fairly reasonable thing to demand so we can at least make sure the colors match the over all piece rather than just being applied haphazardly. I don't even care if you limit how much brightness is allowed in this case, but we definitely need more control than this to make the dyes actually look stylish in symphony with our gear.
I am not happy at all to be clear, but I think the above critiques pose reasonable demands for compromise. This is over controlling to a point that I find completely distasteful and if you do not increase the number of dye channels, make some sort of piece by piece exclusion for the channels and control on brightness for each piece, and have a lower restriction on color pallet for cloth I simply won't buy cosmetics since Intrepid does not seem to value player agency to the minimum level I require before I support their cosmetics.
The real question is if the other side of the debate that drove you(Intrepid) to make this decision in the first place is okay with the compromise. If they aren't even willing to make any of the above compromises and Intrepid goes along with their opinion, then this whole system is a complete nonstarter in my eyes. If that happens then I definitely won't be spending any money on cosmetics since the game has gone to such far lengths to implement a system that does not appear to actually value my(and others') agency and freedom of expression when it comes to cosmetics.
In light of all this and a lack of clarification on cosmetic policies, I'll be closing my wallet until things are clarified. Which sucks since I was really hoping to get the beetle and scorpion, but oh well. That's just how things are right now.
Verra is a diverse and colorful world with glowing mushrooms. That's what I signed up for.