Just a single dye channel on BL weapons would be AWESOME.

One dye channel.Even if it were just a sliver of light or a pattern accent would make Black Lion skins so much more desirable.

Crimson Lion Greatsword Skin is a great looking skin but just so very plain.

The probable content drought caused by changing weapon mechanics would not be awesome, unfortunately.

Crimson Lion Greatsword Skin is a great looking skin but just so very plain.

You’re kidding right? This is not plain.

As for putting in Dye channels they’ve already said it’s not going to happen.

LinseyMurdockIt's really not about the existing weapons, it's about the tech to do the dye system on weapons itself being incompatible with the tech we built the game on in order to have a trading post, animating weapons, etc.......(Snip) A fundamental decision made nearly a decade ago, not a decision that is being continuously made and we just keep choosing no dye on weapons. It's the kind of decision you make at such a fundamental level that you don't get to change your mind a decade later and undo it. That's why it isn't even a topic of conversation here......All those ascended weapons in different colors also have geometry differences. We have never done simple color shifts. The team that works on weapons has a rule against it.

I was admiring the artwork of the weapon, but it IS drab.

BTW, we were NEVER gonna have in-game mounts. Achievements would NEVER be made easier to obtain.

Past behavior does not predict the future, despite the beliefs of gamblers everywhere.

@"keenedge.9675" said:I was admiring the artwork of the weapon, but it IS drab.

BTW, we were NEVER gonna have in-game mounts. Achievements would NEVER be made easier to obtain.

Past behavior does not predict the future, despite the beliefs of gamblers everywhere.

Mounts were never ruled out. In fact mounts were always on the table. And devs said this at launch and confirmed it again during the video on mount development. This was a feature they wanted to do right and when it made sense to add it as something a bit different.

Weapon dyeing however, is fully off the table and is nothing to do with past behaviour.. It is extremely rare they come out and say "no, never". This is one of those times

@keenedge.9675 said:I was admiring the artwork of the weapon, but it IS drab.

BTW, we were NEVER gonna have in-game mounts. Achievements would NEVER be made easier to obtain.

Past behavior does not predict the future, despite the beliefs of gamblers everywhere.

Reread this part.

the tech to do the dye system on weapons itself being incompatible with the tech we built the game on in order to have a trading post, animating weapons, et

Incompatible means it’s not going to happen, at least not without redoing core aspects of the game, which is highly unlikely as the quote explained.

And as for mounts, they said not at launch but maybe mounts later.

Achievements would NEVER be made easier to obtain.

I have no idea where you got that. They’ve always had achievements that were easy to get and some that were made easier if they were harder than they planned.

@keenedge.9675 said:I was admiring the artwork of the weapon, but it IS drab.

BTW, we were NEVER gonna have in-game mounts. Achievements would NEVER be made easier to obtain.

Past behavior does not predict the future, despite the beliefs of gamblers everywhere.

Mounts were a completely new mechanic that could essentially just be stapled onto the existing product. With the ability to dye weapons you're talking about an existing framework that has been in the game since launch. As it says in the previous dev quote they unfortunately can't just reverse the decision, it's a permanent thing

@keenedge.9675 said:Past behavior does not predict the future, despite the beliefs of gamblers everywhere.That's entirely moot from the standpoint of wondering if we'll ever be able to dye weapons in the game. The dev quoted above isn't concerned with behavior; she described technological incapability. To dye a single weapon would require completely changing code that is used to display any weapon; there simply is never going to be enough of a reason to spend that kind of energy, especially not because a few people think a design of a set is too plain for their taste.

PS It turns out that past behavior is a very good predictor of future behavior for individuals and groups; it's a terrible predictor of random events, which is what gamblers have to worry about.

@"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

Crimson Lion Greatsword Skin is a great looking skin but just so very plain.

You know, for a GW2 "style" sword, that is pretty "plain", I mean no glowing butterflies orbiting the character, no super glowing discolights, etc. Now compared to just about any other game ? It's definitively more on the ornamental wall mounted kind of sword that you'd find in a kings hall.

I've just come to the conclusion that "GW2 Style" is essentially about making everything look over the top "shiny/sparkly", which is probably why I still use 90% skins from drops from under level 50 or so, it's the only stuff that looks somewhat "normal" in this game.

Regarding the topic, as others have said, we're not going to see dyeing for weapons, it would require too much work essentially redesigning large parts of the engine, possibly remaking the entire thing. Technical limitations are just that, full stops, unless you're willing to basically remake parts or whole part of the game from scratch.

(and to be honest, I'm kind of glad for that, because no matter how innocent it might seem, I'm sure there are plenty of players that would use it to color their weapons in new and obscene ways that would make my eves bleed....)

@"joneirikb.7506" said:Regarding the topic, as others have said, we're not going to see dyeing for weapons, it would require too much work essentially redesigning large parts of the engine, possibly remaking the entire thing. Technical limitations are just that, full stops, unless you're willing to basically remake parts or whole part of the game from scratch.

I highly doubt that this is true. If we can make any guess about how much work this would be by by judging how it's done in other game engines, then we would've to say that this would be a very minor change in the game engine to add weapon dye channles. (since the game already has this code for other items and supports the basics already)

But this small change would still render much of the work done on pretty much any weapons that already exist useless. Problem is not engine changes, problem is making engine changes that are incompatible with the content already existing.

Also, again, that's typical Anet thinking. They're so narrow minded sometimes. If you can't make changes to the engine to give all - current and future - weapons dye channels, then why don't you write new, seperate code, that supports dye channels and use that for every new weapon you make? While the legacy code and weapoms remain the same?

Of course weapon dye channels are possible. They're just not possible in the way they want to maintain one part of code responsible for all weapons and without redoing every weapon in the game. Yes this would be indeed impossible and qualify as a "technical limitation" lol

In the absence of weapons that can be dyed we need a LOT more skin options imo. It's very hard to match a weapon to a 'look' you've designed, particularly when colours clash. As things stand, I find if I want my toon to look any good, I pretty much have to pick the weapon first and build around that. It's not great for Fashion Wars.

@Adenin.5973 said:

@"joneirikb.7506" said:we're not going to see dyeing for weapons, it would require too much work essentially redesigning large parts of the engine, possibly remaking the entire thing. Technical limitations are just that, full stops, unless you're willing to basically remake parts or whole part of the game from scratch.

How many developers have to state or restate that it's true before you merely doubt it instead of highly doubt it? How many before you start to consider the possibility that the devs know more about how the game is coded than we do?

In building any game, the devs make compromises between various benefits (colors, effects, physics, inventory management, variety of skins, ...) and costs (maintenance costs, design costs, compatibility costs, expandability, ...). Some choices made early in the design of a game lock in future choices, some might, and some don't. In this case, ANet decided to code out even the possibility of dyeing to offer the other benefits... and keep costs manageable. We can agree with their choice or not. What we don't get to choose is whether they made that choice or not.

As much as I would like weapon dyes, fingers crossed for backpack dyes first. :P (Also not likely, unfortunately.)

@Rauderi.8706 said:As much as I would like weapon dyes, fingers crossed for backpack dyes first. :P (Also not likely, unfortunately.)

According to the devs, the two go together; the same design decision that keeps weapons from dyeability also keeps back items from it (or vice versa, from your point of view).

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Adenin.5973 said:

@"joneirikb.7506" said:we're not going to see dyeing for weapons, it would require too much work essentially redesigning large parts of the engine, possibly remaking the entire thing. Technical limitations are just that, full stops, unless you're willing to basically remake parts or whole part of the game from scratch.

Because even anets engine doesn't exist outside of the known laws of physics. Therefore logic applies to it.

Again, nothing is stopping them from adding separate code to give new weapons with dye channels, let the legacy code in for the legacy weapons. If you want to tell me that Anet is incapable because of technical limitations then pls give me now a dev quote that specifically says that. "We can't write code to add a dye channel to a new type of item".

Give me exactly this quote and I'll shut up forever about it.

You've heard a dev talking in a non specific way that there are technical limitations with getting dye channels in for the weapons. That's entirely different to the specific approach I've made here.

@"Adenin.5973" said:Because even anets engine doesn't exist outside of the known laws of physics. Therefore logic applies to it.Logic is why the devs have said it can't happen.

Again, nothing is stopping them from adding separate code to give new weapons with dye channels, let the legacy code in for the legacy weapons.That's what the devs are saying. To allow the game to display new weapons using your proposed separate code requires rewriting other parts of the game that would allow us to see those differences.

"We can't write code to add a dye channel to a new type of item".That's a non-sequitur. Gliders have dye channels, even the ones that look identical to backpacks. Outfits are new to the game and have dye channels. Adding a new item to the game with dye channels isn't the issue. The issue is being able to display such dyes if the item serves as a skin for weapons. Other systems depend on the assumption that weapons don't have dye channels.

If you want to tell me that Anet is incapable because of technical limitations then pls give me now a dev quote that specifically says that.See above. And below. Here's her explaining why there aren't any work-arounds (sourced below):

"Yes, we can create technology to allow us to do things we could not have previously done but I don't see this being one of those things. In fact, we have probably even crossed the line of it being possible with all the crazy stuff we have done on weapons since ship. That is not even assessing the gross amount of work that would be required to update the hundreds of existing weapon skins, and that alone would probably make such a project out of scope."

Give me exactly this quote and I'll shut up forever about it.We have the quote; you've chosen not to accept it addresses your suggestion.

You've heard a dev talking in a non specific way that there are technical limitations with getting dye channels in for the weapons. That's entirely different to the specific approach I've made here.If you don't accept that Linsey Murdoch has wanted to add dye channels, considered all the work-arounds that they and we have made, and still concluded that it's not happening in GW3, that's on you. It's not "entirely different."

Here's a current dev explaining in September 2018 why we won't get dyeable weaponsLinsey Murdock wrote:There are trade offs we had to make in order to have a trading post and in order to further our technology on weapons themselves (like crazy animating stuff). We made that choice years before GW2 shipped. Along with cutting variable stats and GW1 style customization. Dyeable weapons is not even a topic of conversation, let alone being on the table. Yes, we can create technology to allow us to do things we could not have previously done but I don't see this being one of those things. In fact, we have probably even crossed the line of it being possible with all the crazy stuff we have done on weapons since ship. That is not even assessing the gross amount of work that would be required to update the hundreds of existing weapon skins, and that alone would probably make such a project out of scope.

[Q] I don't even want that all existing weapons are getting updated - More like just some new weapons, but it seems even that won't be really possible then I guess.

A

It's really not about the existing weapons, it's about the tech to do the dye system on weapons itself being incompatible with the tech we built the game on in order to have a trading post, animating weapons, etc.

And

A fundamental decision made nearly a decade ago, not a decision that is being continuously made and we just keep choosing no dye on weapons. It's the kind of decision you make at such a fundamental level that you don't get to change your mind a decade later and undo it. That's why it isn't even a topic of conversation here.

And finally

All those ascended weapons in different colors also have geometry differences. We have never done simple color shifts. The team that works on weapons has a rule against it.

Here's a former dev explaining why we can't dye weapons and aren't likely to ever 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)

Old dev quotes talking about dyeing weapons and backpacks.

jpetrie ANetI can't give you specifics or anything (they'd be very tedious to compute even if I still had access to the code), but GW2's codebase is very much an evolution of the codebase used for GW1. We did not start over, or anything crazy, but nor did we use the GW1 code unchanged.

Huge chunks of gameplay code were added, removed, or refactored so heavily as to be effectively-new (even things you might think would be the same, like inventory). The core rendering and networking capabilities had some significant reworking to support new features, but a lot of the fundamentals remained the same. The very low-level stuff, such as the classes we use to manage collections of data, do math, sort things... those didn't change much and some files might even be identical to the ones in GW1, except maybe for some copyright or header date changes.Essentially if you view the code as a vertical stack of functionality, with very-game-specific gameplay code at the top and generic data structure/algorithm stuff at the bottom, the closer something is to the top the more likely it experienced significant tweaking at some point during GW2's development.

To address the specific topic of this thread (dying stuff)... what I recall (so I might be wrong) is that 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.(Please keep in mind that all of this is from memory from a long time ago, so I may be forgetting/misremembering/et cetera some things.)

.

Tidgepot.3285If you need citation, then look no further. I'm the dev who concepted this glider! Granted, I'm an artist so I couldn't give you the full technical rundown like Josh Petrie, but I do handle our engine daily.

Whether or not the equipment takes damage or not has no bearing on how the engine separates items. The engine sees armor as what is called a composite, it sees things attached to your characters like weapons and backpieces as items, and it sees gliders as a sort of middleground item/effect. Our file structure separates gliders as items, but because of how they pop into view, layer, and more easily allow for dyes it makes sense to basically treat them as effects. Now I'm not positive on this, but I'm going to hazard a guess that if we decided to make gliders as items, we'd have to retroactively alter the system in a way that would allow for weapons/backpieces to be dyed.

On its face doing this sounds like a great idea, since this is what fans want. As a fellow player I'd like this as well, but unfortunately our systems were not designed with this in mind. Not only would we have to go back and code each item so it can have dye channels/sufficient UI and prepare for the veritable bugfest that would ensue from altering a system that has years of work built on top of it, but we'd also have to retexture these items. Why? Our dye system is balanced around a red base color which has an impact on how every other color will appear when a channel shifts to it. Anyone who has played with dodging/burning in photoshop will know that red has some strange properties when it comes to shifts in values. Many dyes would have blown out/dull/oddly saturated textures as a result.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. There's SO much more to the process that I don't have a firm grasp on.

The devs here are gamers and we love what we do. We want fans to get excited about what we make because we're fans, too. However, we have players clamoring for every fix/feature under the sun so we have to do a ton of prioritizing. Game development is never plain and simple.

.

Ashe Lewis.9815

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

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.

Ashe Lewis.9815Maybe(?) 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.

So there we have a dev saying essentially that adding a new item type, not replacing the old weapon + its legacy code is not included by all the previous talk about "technical limitations" .

Which was exactly what I said I wanted them to do.

Because if you read what they were talking about you realize that it's about replacing the code that manages weapons. Which I exactly want them not to do.

Is it at the end of the day work? Yeah. But ppl spend hard earned $$ on these weapons. Some of them cost like half of the price of an expac. Ppl can expect that there was hard work associated with creating these items for that price.

Will we ever see this happen though? Of course not.

Previous posted Dev quote: It's really not about the existing weapons, it's about the tech to do the dye system on weapons itself being incompatible with the tech we built the game on in order to have a trading post, animating weapons, etc.

@"Adenin.5973" said:

Ashe Lewis.9815

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.

In case you missed it in that dev quote.

I’m just an artist so I’ll elaborate on what I understand as best as I can, but I’m no engineer.

So his quote is only discussing the problems and the amount of work that he knows of as an artist. The other quote where they said it was incompatible with other core tech is from a dev who worked on the code.

If the other dev says that the tech for dyeing weapons is incompatible with the tech for the trading post and other core features of the game then that means it’s not going to happen, no matter how much you might think it should because people spend money and got what they paid for.

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:Previous posted Dev quote: It's really not about the existing weapons, it's about the tech to do the dye system on weapons itself being incompatible with the tech we built the game on in order to have a trading post, animating weapons, etc.

Being an engineer means finding solutions to unsolved poroblems.

Again, why is everyone so narrowminded these days? Think just one bit outside of the box.

Look at what WoW did for example in their last expac with Legion artifact weaponm skins. They weren't even treated as weapons or real items, at least in terms of the already existing transmog system. They just put another system on top or besides the already existing one.

This allowed them to do stuff with them that they previously couldn't do, like changing the appearance of the druid forms,unlocking specific colors and appearances for one and the same weapon, which isn't possible with how their system usually is set up for the item ids etc.

Telling me that there's no solution whatsoever in the world to add a new system that gives the player a weapon identical item with a dye channel is something I simply wont accept when you tell me it's because you're hitting a wall because of technical limitations.

No, there is no hard wall for this. There are a million ways you can try to achieve this ingame. Stop being so stubborn and stop fixating on the one solution where you want to have on single part of code for all weapons in the game without replacing anything besides this code. Yes, that's maybe not achievable.

Stop fixating on putting them into the TP, they should be exalted anyways or treated as an base weapon upgrade, so it gets a dye channel from exotic -> exalted or whatever.

Tell me that this is not a t all any priority, that it is too much work, that your code is badly written, that you have no idea how to change it. Okay, that's it then.

And once again, all dev quotes so far, except that one designer at the end of his post, revolved around getting tech in to add dye channels to all weapons, new ones and thoise already in game, of course this will not happen.

The wall is money and manpower.

WoW has 10 times the manpower of Guild Wars 2, and likely 10 times the budget, so there really isn't a valid comparison.I'm not sure why you want to argue with the Devs, or call them stubborn; they've explained why it won't happen; seems a bit like tilting at windmills.Even if the Devs decided to take on this project, I'm guessing the playerbase would not be happy with the decision to have to wait a year, two years, more, for any kind of meaningful content release, aka another content drought. It just doesn't seem worth it, and it could harm the game irreparably.

Still, good luck on convincing them.

@"Adenin.5973" said:

Ashe Lewis.9815

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.