Fixes Coming to the Dye System

[Fire Attunement.9835]

Hello Tyrians, I have a message from Senior Gameplay Programmer Kyle Conroy about part of tomorrow's update!

 

Hey there – I’m Kyle Conroy, a Senior Gameplay Programmer. I’ve recently been working on cleaning up parts of the wardrobe system to be more consistent, and tomorrow’s patch contains a few fixes to the dye system that should significantly improve the reliability of it in the Hero Panel. I thought it would be good to cover in a little more detail what is being fixed, what potentially unwelcome behaviors remain, and why.
 
To start with, I’m going to define some terms and explain a bit how the whole thing works! What players see as “the dye tab” is actually several components working together to put colors onto the character preview that the Hero Panel displays:

• The Dye Page, where you select dyes, keeps track of what colors should be displayed in the boxes of the UI layer and tells other components when changes are made.
• The Dye Manager, a subsystem that keeps track of what dyes have been set in each channel in the Dye tab as well as what dyes are set on your gear in the game world.
• The Paper Doll, a subsystem that keeps track of equipped gear, outfits, and previewed skins, and the logic to update the character model with the appropriate skins.
• The Composite, the representation of the actual character model that you see, which stores information about the active skins, their colors, and any “override” colors set by the Dye system but not yet applied.

 
Most of the strange issues that have manifested as the composite showing the wrong dyes, or skins flickering, have been the result of communication failures between these layers in particular circumstances that result in stale data being used to modify the composite.  I have made several updates to how data is passed around that should eliminate this class of problems, and result in things generally working as you expect when making multiple changes and/or moving between the Wardrobe tab and the Dye tab.
 
However, this system has some hard limitations that would require a more substantial effort to update, and with End of Dragons around the corner we just don’t have the time it would take to correct these anytime soon. Specifically:
It is not currently possible to apply updates to your armor and outfit dyes at the same time.
You can only store pending dye changes to your glider or back slot at the same time, not both.
 
Outfits, gliders, and dyeable backpieces did not exist when the system was originally designed, and unfortunately there are design limitations with their addition to the existing system that would require a more substantial re-engineering to address. 
 
This has been a bit of a personal project for me, and one I’d love to revisit when we have more time! Keep up the awesome fashion in the meantime. 
 

[Poki.8235]

Fixes are always nice. I hope that the dye panel will get a bigger favourites list too.

 

And I'm sorry for mentioning this, but I'd also really like to see the Legendary backpacks and gliders be updated to be dyeable sometime too. I know this is beyond the scope of this specific project, but it reminded me of that...

Edited October 4, 2021 by Poki.8235

[nebezial.2781]

now if only someone took a few days and assembled dye channels for legendary backpacks XD

[Raizel.1839]

What about Legendary Heavy Armor (raids)?  

Years ago you admitted it had problems with how dyes apply (and it still has), will this patch fix this?

Edited October 4, 2021 by Raizel.1839

[Yuuki.4267]

Thank you for updating us and I hope to see in the future for some gliders + backpacks to be dyeable! 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Yuuki.4267

[Konig Des Todes.2086]

2 minutes ago, Raizel.1839 said:

What about Legendary Heavy Armor?  

Years ago you admitted it had problems with how dyes apply (and it still has them), will this patch fix this?

Different systems entirely, I imagine. One's an issue with the dye page and its subsystems, the other is an issue with the armor (perhaps its dye channels?).

[Touchme.1097]

The dye system is currently showing the wrong colours when using the same dye on the same armour weight (heavy, medium, light). Can you fix this by showing the same colour shade on all armour pieces?

For example when I use the celestial dye on my heavy helm it shows the colour white as it should be but after applying the same colour on my Warlord's gloves the same colour appears greyish. I would like all colours to have the same shade on all my armour pieces. I don't understand why the shades look different.

[hipnofagus.5619]

time for a new legendary dye that changes, like the alchemist weapons or maybe quickgold like juggernaut effect

[Wolfb.7025]

The thing I mostly want with the dye panel is being able to select a dye channel then hovering through the dye palette while the armor piece gets updated with whatever dye i'm hovering on.

Edited October 4, 2021 by Wolfb.7025

[mindcircus.1506]

While I appreciate the bug fixes immensely, more and more we are hearing phrases such as "with End of Dragons around the corner we just don’t have the time it would take to correct these anytime soon."

 

Isn't a paid expansion the kind of time to expand on features?

[XceptOne.9134]

Awesome to see cheers!

[Gerolux.5978]

Quote

11 minutes ago, Touchme.1097 said:

The dye system is currently showing the wrong colours when using the same dye on the same armour weight (heavy, medium, light). Can you fix this by showing the same colour shade on all armour pieces?

For example when I use the celestial dye on my heavy helm it shows the colour white as it should be but after applying the same colour on my Warlord's gloves the same colour appears greyish. I would like all colours to have the same shade on all my armour pieces. I don't understand why the shades look different.

 

this was intent in original design. the base reason is that colors in general act differently against different materials. So there is some variance in colors depending on the shade and material. You are going to need to find a different shade that is closer to what you want. So you may have Celestial on one piece and White on another just to have your armor look similar in shades.

[Zoser.7245]

With a bit of luck... Maybe... Someday... We will be able to change dyes in the legendary weapons. 🙏

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

16 minutes ago, Touchme.1097 said:

The dye system is currently showing the wrong colours when using the same dye on the same armour weight (heavy, medium, light). Can you fix this by showing the same colour shade on all armour pieces?

For example when I use the celestial dye on my heavy helm it shows the colour white as it should be but after applying the same colour on my Warlord's gloves the same colour appears greyish. I would like all colours to have the same shade on all my armour pieces. I don't understand why the shades look different.

Perhaps, the Greaves are not metal?  https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Celestial_Dye

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

8 minutes ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

While I appreciate the bug fixes immensely, more and more we are hearing phrases such as "with End of Dragons around the corner we just don’t have the time it would take to correct these anytime soon."

 

Isn't a paid expansion the kind of time to expand on features?

Did he not say it was a personal project? 

[ExReiuji.5874]

26 minutes ago, Zoser.7245 said:

With a bit of luck... Maybe... Someday... We will be able to change dyes in the legendary weapons. 🙏

Id like it the be any weapon dyable. Holosmiths royal free beam saber would be nice to recolor for example

[Randulf.7614]

Not sure I understood any of this, but I’m sure it’ll make sense in game and fixes/improvements are always welcomed. Although I’m not entirely sure what they are here

[Renske.6178]

1 hour ago, Poki.8235 said:

Fixes are always nice. I hope that the dye panel will get a bigger favourites list too.

 

And I'm sorry for mentioning this, but I'd also really like to see the Legendary backpacks and gliders be updated to be dyeable sometime too. I know this is beyond the scope of this specific project, but it reminded me of that...

Seconding the bigger favourites list! Especially with equipment/fashion templates I run in to the limit more often because I want to keep favourite alternate color schemes for multiple armor sets.

 

And maybe a title connected to unlocking all the core dyes? *___* I would love that so much!

 

In any case thank you for working on this, I spend a loooot of time fiddling around with dyes and armors (and the fact that dyes behave differently across materials is actually a huge plus for me, I love this behaviour) so looking forward to the more streamlined version. :D

[Omega.6801]

Thanks.

When will Legendary Armor be dyable like all the other armors? When will AP Armor get dye slots? When will backpieces be upgraded to be dyeable? Yes, I read the OP "substantial changes and so on", when will these substantial changes happen for some of theh hardest to get skins in the game and not just for the gemshop?

[kash.9213]

Maybe not totally on topic but it's adjacent and over due. Maybe fix the Medium, Triumphant Hero's Brigandine by making the light effect entirely the dye color because it's way to bright in the center where the tendrils come out of or give the effect it's own dye channel because right now you have to use a color that looks near black on the armor, cancelling out the awesome glow effect. 

You can delete this post if it's too off topic, but I've been at this for years and running out of patience. 

[Angesombre.4630]

I don't think it will happen but the old back, if we could dye them it would be wonderful.

[Razariel.5091]

So STILL can't dye weapons in GW2 like you can in GW1 then.

[Randulf.7614]

9 minutes ago, Razariel.5091 said:

So STILL can't dye weapons in GW2 like you can in GW1 then.

To be fair, they’ve been clear why that prob will never happen. 

[Plok.5873]

On 9/30/2021 at 11:36 PM, Fire Attunement.9835 said:

However, this system has some hard limitations that would require a more substantial effort to update, and with End of Dragons around the corner we just don’t have the time it would take to correct these anytime soon. 

I guess that storing the dyes per outfit falls under those hard limitations, doesn't it? Having to re-apply dyes after each switch disencourages using multiple outfits, and, by extension, buying many of them. 😉

[Xanadrine.4352]

I didnt even know there was a problem, the system has never bugged for me. My only complaint is you cant dye backs and many gliders. I wish they would work on that more than anything.