I’ve been torn on whether to reply to you, but let’s give a shot and see how it goes.
It’s only fair to start by addressing why I’ve been holding off. The very first sentence of this thread said, “This thread is not a discussion about … game mechanics.” So what did you write? 7 paragraphs about game mechanics. I mean… it should be obvious that replying with the exact thing that was expressly excluded from the discussion is, at best, patronizing, and frankly a bit insulting. I took pains to make it clear to everyone that I was looking for “artistic advice” to make up for the failings of the color system, not a technical discussion of why these failings exist.
Having said that, in your posting history you always seem to write/discuss/argue in good faith. I get the sense that, even when you’re talking down to people, that’s not your intent. However misguided your post was I think you wrote it in good faith, and that counts for something.
So… since the core aspect of this discussion is, for all practical purposes, completed, it’s time to move on.
I’m going to go ahead and engage with your post and talk about the underlying mechanics. From here on in, I’m not arguing or debating with you, or against you. I will be quoting you, because some of the things you said are helpful in making my case, but I want to make sure there’s no confusion or ambiguity, nothing that follows is me taking issue with you in any way, I’m just moving on to discussing the mechanics of coloring in Conan. Really who I’m arguing with is FunCom, I’m just using your explanation as a good basis for explaining to FunCom why I think their system fails to meet the desires of most players.
The core of the problem is that “the dye system isn’t a true dye system”, that fact is what makes it unenjoyable for so many players. I won’t say it’s “most” players, because in survival games many people (especially on the PvP side of the game) mostly care about coloring their armor as camouflage or simply don’t care about it at all. But for the portion of the player base that wants to take advantage of coloring their armor and the armor of their thralls (and again, I don’t know that that percentage is, but we know this demographic exists in the game), the coloring system is pretty bad.
Even among people who enjoy coloring stuff in games, they don’t want the coloring system to be a non-stop puzzle game that requires them to delve into the details of how colors and textures work. What people want to know is that “blue is blue” and “orange is orange” no matter what they put it on.
While it’s obvious that the game developer needs to have a sophisticated and nuanced palette for coloring all of the objects, NPC’s, etc. in the game most players don’t need or want that for their own uses. What they want is for the coloring system to be intuitive and easy to use. They respect complexity for the developer’s creations but want simplicity for their own. There are a few exceptions to this idea, for example @Barnes who, by his own description, likes to “nerd out” with the coloring system. But by and large people want a coloring system to be intuitive, obvious and easy to understand.
Relying on the very basics of color theory there are about 16 colors that matter to the large majority of players (and by “players” I’m referring specifically to the percentage of players that cares about color in the first place, my use of “players” excludes anyone who has no interest in coloring regardless of what system is used).
The colors that matter are the 3 primary colors, 3 secondary colors, 6 tertiary colors, black, white, brown and (maybe) tan, for a total of about 16 colors. The fact that we have 81 dyes in the game is painfully superfluous to most players, a problem that’s made even worse by the fact that most of them don’t work the way the average player wants them to.
What players want is for the game developer to take into account the fact that, “Because of different material types and textures, these items will look different” and to create a color system that overcomes the issues of types and textures and provides the player with a consistent look & feel no matter what they are coloring. If a person is staining some wood, dying some fabric or coloring some leather in real life they understand that these are important considerations. But in a game they want the game to take care of those problems for them.
Considering that this is only needed for about 16 colors, it wouldn’t be that big of a number. The fact that we already have colors in the game that work like this demonstrates that it’s not a problem. Colors like “Deep Sea Green”, “Blighted Green”, “Sky Blue” are remarkably consistent across most materials (and of course the “Full” colors), so it’s pretty obvious that making colors behave this way is not unduly burdensome for the game (nor for the filesize of the game).
If the game implemented the 12 colors of just the basic, simple version of the color wheel plus the other 4 colors listed(and gave them all obvious, intuitive names) that would meet the needs of the large majority of players who want to use the color system and it would not cause any real problems, file size or otherwise.
Instead, we have a coloring system that’s inconsistent, undependable and alienates a lot of people who would like to enjoy it but find it pointlessly complicated and uncooperative. Sentiments like “It’s just so apparently random whether something will take dye” are the norm when people try to play around with color. Instead of a color system that enhances the game experience of players, we have a color system that irritates and alienates most of them.
