Weapon Dyeing

Even Eso is doing it now....

where should i throw my money to make it happen in GW2 the game that is ALL about customisation and skin grinding ?

Only if it's a couple of weapon sets specifically designed for that.Not current ones (actually scratch that they won't ever do that for current ones, because SAB, obsidian weapons, etc. Even the common weapon skins are just recolors - like bronze, iron, etc swords).

Here's a former dev explaining why we can't dye weapons and aren't likely to every be able to

...the decision to dye armor but not weapons was a design one (in the sense we chose to do it, not that there were insurmountable technical issues), and made pretty early.

• We wanted a much richer dye system for GW2 than we had in GW1.
• This would require some changes to the way that the source art was authored, which increased the complexity (and thus time) of doing so.
• That additional complexity pays off best for armor, which is more visible on-screen than weapons generally are,
• and so (I think) it was decided that we wouldn't bother authoring dye support into the weapon art.
• Eventually this decision would have led to code changes or optimization relying on that assumption, and we arrive at where we are today.

As with all things, it could be made possible to dye weapons with sufficient code and art resources sunk into it. But

it would be a nontrivial undertaking

(and probably a non-trivial patch download!) to

re-author all the existing source art with appropriate metadata for dye channels.

(text is verbatim; emphasis and bullet points are mine)

tl;dr It's only "possible" in a theoretical sense

• They decided long before launch that there wasn't enough bang for the buck (effort|time) to dye weapons.
• The existing game depends on that decision, so changing it would mean re-rendering every single weapon in the game (whether dyeable or not), plus additional QA to make sure weapons work properly with extra 'metadata'.

For what it's worth, a few of the past requests from the old forums

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Weapon-Dye/4662447
• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Weapon-dyes/3344528
• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dye-able-Weapons/5768082
• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Let-us-dye-weapons/4547784
• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Weapon-dye-Application/4818242
• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Weapons-back-Dye/5090753
• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dyes-for-weapons/5836961
• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Suggestion-Dye-Channels-on-Legendaries/6521161

There's only one weapon that I would consider dyeing, and it's for a cosplay character--especially since it was the inspiration for the cosplay in the first place.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Elegant_Fan_Focus_Skin

The difference is that in ESO it was purely an aesthetic choice by the developers - they were worried it would look silly if people could run around with pink swords, instead of the light-red ones that are the default for top tier weapons. It was always possible for them to add dye channels to the weapons, they just didn't want to do it because the look of the game is very important to them.

Whereas in GW2 as Ill-conceived said (or other the person he quoted) weapons are designed in a completely different way from armour and would have to be re-made from scratch to allow it.

They DON'T need to make ALL weapons dyeable just the Blacklion trading ones atleast you know those special skins....

Also you don't need to redesign weapons from SCRATCH...... All you need to do is add Dye channels to Existing models and change some codes here and there...You just need to tinker with the already existing models don't need to remake them fully lol thats not how creating modells work.... Would take some time tough to do it....

THE OTHER THING IS.... didn't they said many times back then that there WONT be any mounts in GW2 because reasons ? lolYet we are here with one of the most well designed and well animated even tough limited amount of mounts to date compared to any other MMOs with dye channels...loltake what they say with a grain of salt....

and an MMO that's whole endgame is designed around customisation and skins... its just silly to not have it....

@"Zoltreez.6435" said:They DON'T need to make ALL weapons dyeable just the Blacklion trading ones atleast you know those special skins....There's no way to make even a single weapon dyeable without changing the underlying system, which affects all the weapons. (See above.)

Also you don't need to redesign weapons from SCRATCH...... All you need to do is add Dye channels to Existing models and change some codes here and there...You just need to tinker with the already existing models don't need to remake them fully lol thats not how creating modells work.... Would take some time tough to do it...."All you need to do is add dye channels." Again, see above; that's a massive change to the underlying system which is set up to assume zero dye channels.

THE OTHER THING IS.... didn't they said many times back then that there WONT be any mounts in GW2 because reasons ? lolYet we are here with one of the most well designed and well animated even tough limited amount of mounts to date compared to any other MMOs with dye channels...loltake what they say with a grain of salt....Apparently, they had planned mounts ages ago, perhaps before launch. 'They' didn't say that there wouldn't be mounts; we assumed it because of the robust waypoint system.

and an MMO that's whole endgame is designed around customisation and skins... its just silly to not have it....Silly or not, at this point, it's a huge cost to implement it and a huge cost to design newer weapons that need to fit into the system.

@"Danikat.8537" said:weapons are designed in a completely different way from armourSo what? They could still implement an overlay system similar to how outfits work. No need to change anything about the core system. It might still take a while to get an "overlay version" of every weapon but it's still better solution then "never". The same goes for backpacks btw.

Just look at the sab weapons and youll know that dyeing weapons wont happen

It would be good if we could dye our weapons but of course only if the have enough panels to dye different parts like blade and shaft and all those.But i would also not mind if this never happens because i just pick a weapon i like and then i'm creating a fitting style. If it would always be a question of work and cost there wouldn't be any suggestions at all because every change does mean both of them in some way, so i think it's nothing wrong to dream about something and share this dream maybe even they get inspired by this.

Yeah it's awkward that ESO is getting weapon dyes and armor transmutation and then we're stuck with silly Outfits, oudated transmutation system, lack of new armor skins and fixed weapon colors... :( I'm still angry because in ESO they lock crafting storage behind monthly sub but they are catching up in fashion, haha.

Nah, it would look mostly horrible. People have really poor taste in this game..

Non trivial problems require non trivial solutions. Ignoring the issue forever is non trivial, but is NOT a solution...