My Conqueror is wearing full Vindicator armor which has metalplates attached
on certain areas on leather armor, and it is clearly obvious that it’s metal plating
when looking at the “shine” on the login screen, where the plating looks like copper or brass
due to the color. clicky
However… in game, the metal plates looks more like extra thick layers of leather
because the metallic shine is completely gone, despite me running the game in max settings
with a 1060GTX.
It’s the lighting. The light sources in this game can make armor look very different, especially dungeon light sources often have very special effects on armors and often look better. It probably has to do with performance balancing, open world areas can’t handle many of these high quality light sources while the small dungeons on the other hand can.
Also, many of the “newer areas”, such as Dragons Spine or Khitai use these in the open world areas as well since they were built with the new engine update from 2011 (or so), that’s also why most of these areas have much higher details in textures and overall density of plants, clutter, NPCs etc.
The login screen most likely uses such a dungeon light source since you can find similar ones in the Jade Citadel, Fort Ardashir, the Monastery and in many other dungeons.