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Can we get a backpeices update?

ROMANG.1903

By ROMANG.1903
in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

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Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

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Here's a current dev explaining in September 2018 why we won't get dyeable weapons(For the purposes of dyeing, backpacks count as weapons, as the same tech is used for both. That is, to make backs dyeable requires dyeable weapons.)

Linsey 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.
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)

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

And some from the new forums:

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MithranArkanere.8957

MithranArkanere.8957

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Any feature that is both a neat QoL change and has a chance to increase gem sales should receive attention.

How many people is not getting this or that back item or back+glider combo because it can't be dyed to match the wings?The only way to know is actually making backs dyeable.

I suspect it'll be worth the effort even if it requires having to make a completely new slot to replace the old back slot, and a process to upgrade old backs to be used in the new slot, kind of like when they reworked town clothes into outfits.

Even better, they should discard the backs as items with stats, and keep them only as skins you can equip in the outfit panel and dye in the dye panel.
Same for breathers, since there's no rune combnations with unique underwater versions for a different effect on the 6th slot, and it's a pain to get 7 runes instead 6 to have proper underwater gear.

Once reworked, since there would be stat points lost from backs (e.g.: 63,40,40 for ascended 3 attributes), the 5 trinkets would gain stats to compensate. The total amount for a full set of trinkets of the same rarity would remain the same as a full set+ back of the same rarity before the change.

The infusion slots from backs would be moved to accessories. Gifts of ascension would have their drop rates doubled and their costs in vendors halved, and accessories would get mystic forge recipes to infuse them and give them an extra infusion slot.

Old backs and breathers would still be salvageable to get materials, upgrades and to unlock their skins, but they would be no longer equipable, and there would be an NPC in LA to whom characters can talk to have their equipped backs and breathers removed and back in their inventory, like the NPC that unequipped town clothes when they did the change to outfits. This NPC would also give a free ascended kit for each back or breather recovered.

From then on, newly produced backs and breathers would be consumables that unlock the skin directly.

What about swimming infusions? They would be converted into an account bonus like account luck. Consuming them would add to an account-wide bar, and filling the bar completes each tier, up to a max of +30% account swimming speed. The tier 0 would cost just 1 infusion, and the total amount of infusions to max could be around 1500.

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ROMANG.1903

ROMANG.1903

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@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:Here's a current dev explaining in September 2018 why we won't get dyeable weapons(For the purposes of dyeing, backpacks count as weapons, as the same tech is used for both. That is, to make backs dyeable requires dyeable weapons.)

Linsey 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.
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.

...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

And some from the new forums:

That's what I suspected, thanks for answering.

Though, it is notable that an update on all existing weapons isn't necessary, just making new weapons dyable from now on would already be a great improvement. Also, I can see them struggle because of glider/backpeices combinations, which is a shame really. Why did they not take the effort of coding the game this way from the begining, I can't understand. Looking at it now, wouldn't it have been worth the effort?

And I am no programer, but wouldn't it be possible to bypass these limitations, by creating a new category of items to replace the old ones?For example, create a new backpeice item category, which would be coded like a new feature (like mounts and gliders), and in a way that makes it dyable. For any programing stuff, it would be treated like a completely different item than the old backpeices, except we wouldn't be able to equip both at the same time.And do the same for weapons, of course. Wouldn't that be doable and easyer than reprogramming existing items? Didn't they already sort-of do it when they reworked town clothes into outfits, and when they adapted White and Black Feathers Wings backpacks into gliders?

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Tanner Blackfeather.6509

Tanner Blackfeather.6509

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@ROMANG.1903 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:
(For the purposes of dyeing, backpacks count as weapons, as the same tech is used for both. That is, to make backs dyeable requires dyeable weapons.)

Linsey 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.
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.

...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

And some from the new forums:

That's what I suspected, thanks for answering.

Though, it is notable that an update on all existing weapons isn't necessary, just making new weapons dyable from now on would already be a great improvement. Also, I can see them struggle because of glider/backpeices combinations, which is a shame really. Why did they not take the effort of coding the game this way from the begining, I can't understand. Looking at it now, wouldn't it have been worth the effort?

From what's been said, any change would require the entire system be reworked, leading to having to redo the look on all existing weapons anyway.

I've imagined something like your proposed sollution as well, and expect it's possible from a technical standpoint but still too much work (and thus cost) to be justifiable.

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Illconceived Was Na.9781

Illconceived Was Na.9781

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@ROMANG.1903 said:

That's what I suspected, thanks for answering.You're welcome.

Though, it is notable that an update on all existing weapons isn't necessary,Per the devs:

  • The tech has to update entirely to update even a single weapon
  • Even those weapons that don't get dyes still have to be re-rendered to incorporate the new tech.

just making new weapons dyable from now on would already be a great improvement.Can't be done, without changing the tech.

Also, I can see them struggle because of glider/backpeices combinations, which is a shame really.That's probably the easiest bit, since some of the work is already done.

Why did they not take the effort of coding the game this way from the begining, I can't understand. Looking at it now, wouldn't it have been worth the effort?Like most things, it was a trade off. Without dyes, the game gains richer designs that take less time to produce (because they don't have to worry about dye channels and how dyes impact the non-dyeable elements). In effect, we get a lot more skins without dyes than we would with.

Is that the 'best' choice? Depends on whether you like to see more variety or more customization.Since I only like about 10% of the skins in any game, I like seeing more variety.

And I am no programer, but wouldn't it be possible to bypass these limitations, by creating a new category of items to replace the old ones?Yes... and no.Gliders are exactly that new type because their designs/animations have limited interaction with other designs/animations.

For example, create a new backpeice item category, which would be coded like a new feature (like mounts and gliders), and in a way that makes it dyable.In effect, that's what they'd do. But it still requires that all the old weapons (or backs) still work, so now they'd be maintaining two systems, instead of one.

For any programing stuff, it would be treated like a completely different item than the old backpeices, except we wouldn't be able to equip both at the same time.The problem with the shortcut is that we'd be able to dye either, meaning both need to work.

And do the same for weapons, of course. Wouldn't that be doable and easyer than reprogramming existing items?As described above, unfortunately no, it would probably be harder, not easier.

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Eloc Freidon.5692

Eloc Freidon.5692

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I read the reason as they made customization and coloring tied to the gear. Its somehow prevented by the Trading Post and having animated weapons. Weird they would tie animations to the weapons directly rather than attacks themselves. Lots of redundancy which is why its called spaghetti code. The kind of spaghetti that was intended.

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