Concern about the future of gear detail and dyeability

I've been meaning to make this post for a long time, but I keep thinking I should wait until I get some screenshots to support my case -- but if I keep waiting then I'll probably never get around to saying it at all.

Over the last couple of years there has been a focus on making the game's gear models more "high detail" but this seems to be coming at the cost of making things look awful when they are dyed, and I am concerned that the promised "graphics upgrade" is going to apply this approach to everything in the game.

The high detail gear either has shadows and undyeable scratches built into it, or (especially on metal) has textured parts that turn grey instead of taking on the surrounding colour when dyed.

It becomes impossible to colour-match things when using dye, because each piece has its own variety of pre-existing overlay that changes the colour.

And some pieces have been made effectively undyeable because they look so awful that it isn't worth it.

There also seems to be a puzzling attitude that every piece of metallic gear now needs to be super textured and scuffed and have little ripples and shapes across it. Plate armour and weapons are not necessarily like this at all. It doesn't make them look more realistic, but messy and ugly.

High detail also just displays more poorly -- on my TV screen at least. I don't know if it's better on higher display settings, but for me, all these newer sets often have an unpleasant "twinkling" effect as the screen cannot display the detail well. I have not had issues with this in other parts of the game. I am worried that this "upgrade" might turn out to be a serious downgrade that I cannot opt out of.


From memory, this trend has started in the patches for Shadowbringers, with the Deepshadow gear, and has continued for most endgame sets since then.

I much prefer the older, cleaner style of gear. I would love to just have that but slightly sharper textures and less pixelly.


Some particular examples of gear that looks poor, although there are many more:

- the new Heavensturn armour, particularly noticable on the sune-ate if you dye them a bright colour. This is meant to be brand new armour but it's scuffed and scratched.

- Exarchic gear with dyeable metal parts, eg. Exarchic Coat of Fending; Exarchic Mail of Maiming.

- Male Viera starting gear - all the pieces have permanent grey textures over them and you can't dye any of it to match other things.

- Radiant gear - anything with dyeable metal is awful.

Endwalker gear also seems to have a particular problem with choosing strange parts of the gear to dye or not dye or keep a particular highlight colour that is hard to work with.


To repeat, this is not an organised review of every piece of gear that has issues. It is a few specific examples amid an ongoing and widespread problem with recent gearsets.

To add more examples, there has also been an increase in metallic gear that, even if it doesn't suffer from random undyeable scratching, is never quite the colour it should be.

The fending gear for Edenmorn, Edenchoir, the new crafted Rinascita and even the Panthean gear from Aglaia have this problem, they're always either a lighter or darker colour when dyed the same as some of the older metal armor pieces.


We had the issue of metal armor suddenly turning into plastic when dyed since ARR but this is a more recent one.

1. I'm reminded of the Cryptlurker Caster robes when I read this post. The edge of the robe and sleeves is very weirdly frayed, and when I wanted it to be red for RDM the frayed part was a faded pink-grey that I really dislike. I suppose it's going for a sort of aesthetic, but I wish I had control over it. I can get the point of making armour detailed so that it doesn't look flat... but there's definitely a middle ground that should be achieved.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...1454/image.png

2. Similarly, while I understand metallic armour logically having a sheen to it, it sometimes appears as if any Dye is just the Metallic version of it being used. I wish the shade would be more flat - not necessarily entirely matte - so that the colours match and stand out. I remember this issue when dealing with my DRG outfit and using a couple High Allagan/Dreadwyrm pieces.

It also does not help that the dye themselves aren't the best either...

Worst example is probably the last halloween event outfit (clown), while it looks alright the chest piece refuses to abide by the colors you select for some reason. You chose red? no no no, you meant pink!

The new mog station fat cat costume dyes really ugly. The pants and socks look as if you’re trying to paint over a gray paper, I never use them unless I dye them black.

Aside from that I actually like the cryptlurker set, but I can’t stand how the panthean armour’s metal part turns gray no matter what I try to colour it.

Eso has a system where you can dye multiple parts of each armour so you’re not forced to one block of colour per piece.

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Originally Posted by SassyAssassin

The new mog station fat cat costume dyes really ugly. The pants and socks look as if you’re trying to paint over a gray paper, I never use them unless I dye them black.

Aside from that I actually like the cryptlurker set, but I can’t stand how the panthean armour’s metal part turns gray no matter what I try to colour it.

Eso has a system where you can dye multiple parts of each armour so you’re not forced to one block of colour per piece.

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There's a lot of mog station items I just avoid because of bad dyes. Krile's outfit would be an insta buy if I could dye the hood, lol. I think it just dyes the hair? I dunno. The system's been whack for awhile now.

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

There's a lot of mog station items I just avoid because of bad dyes. Krile's outfit would be an insta buy if I could dye the hood, lol. I think it just dyes the hair? I dunno. The system's been whack for awhile now.

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Krile's outfit is an odd exception because none of the FFXIV character costumes are dyeable, as a rule, but Krile has the unusual effect of having her hairstyle integrated into the hood because it wouldn't be able to behave like that if it was just a character hairstyle. (Compare other hoods that we can wear, which always integrate something covering the forehead to conceal the fact that it deactivates the hair model – and why white mages tend to look like nuns if a hood is included in the job gear.)

So anyway, they were never going to let Krile's hood be dyeable any more than the rest of the outfit, but made the hair dyeable so you can adapt it to make it match your character's hair colour at least approximately.

I would like to be able to dye multiple spots on my gear instead of just 1.

Yes please, They need to standardise alot of the texturing for armors with the graphics update.

Alot of armors don't mix with any others due to pointless extra layering.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Over the last couple of years there has been a focus on making the game's gear models more "high detail"

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as arr/npc_core glamour enjoyer i felt this :'D

A lot needs to be standardized but bicolour dyes would be nice too.

the day you can dye parts of the armor. sigh............

What I would personally like/love is more all classes sets to give better options for Mixing and Matching tbh. By this I mean being able to glam pieces outside of the class/job restrictions to open more freedom for glams.

I don't like how for some pieces it seems like the whole thing changes color. Metal armor with a gold trim and a blue cape? Now it's red armor with a pink trim and dark red cape. Just let me dye either the metal part or the cape, not the entire thing!

Then you got parts that mysteriously go metallic or leathery when they weren't originally, giving it a weird shine in one place.

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Originally Posted by hagare

the day you can dye parts of the armor. sigh............

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The dream.

As much as multiple dye channels would be nice, that isn't really relevant here – [edit from the future: and is now happening and is separate to this issue anyway.]

My concern in this thread is regarding what the devs are doing rather than something that would be nice for them to do, and that they are altering the direction of what gear is being put into the game in the current system, to the detriment rather than improvement of the system that currently exists.

I love many things about this game. The devs have done lots of things right. The dye system is not one of those things. In a good dye system, every piece that's dyed the same color should end up looking the same color, and material effects should be just enough to read as materials without actually changing the target color. Here, you can dye all twelve equipment slots the same color and end up with twelve different colors. It's one of the things I wish they would fix, but I really don't count on them ever fixing it because I don't think they understand how broken it is, or that it's even broken at all.

I genuienly think they should take some time to revisit all the gear pieces and update the dye so that white means the same shade of white no matter what gear piece you apply it to. Would also give them an excuse to add more dyes to the game.
That and please make all gear pieces dyable.

*makes long hair for races*
*makes ornate looking gear*
I hope you like clipping, there's gonna be a lot of it. ;A;

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

*makes long hair for races*
*makes ornate looking gear*
I hope you like clipping, there's gonna be a lot of it. ;A;

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It's happening even when there isn't any gear.

Endsinger's hair clips through itself, even on the cutscenes.

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Originally Posted by Midareyukki

It's happening even when there isn't any gear.

Endsinger's hair clips through itself, even on the cutscenes.

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A ton of bard bows when sheated clip through the quiver lol. Which is also why I would love an option to hide the quiver/mch lunchbox / ast card sleeve, etc.

If Paladins can use an invisible shield, which is even a more vital part of their arsenal, I can't see why those can't have that too.

Let's not derail the thread too much. While those are all valid requests they don't really have anything to do with gear increasingly dyeing poorly.

Technically a double post but let's add the new 24 alliance fending gear to the list of armor that dyes horribly, or in this case not at all.

I have been wishing for a simple pair of stiletto shoes that we can dye for 8 years.

like wtf SE??? :mad:

many issues with gear and dying as well that should be addressed! :mad:

I haven't made it into the alliance raid yet, but I am extremely disappointed with the new versions of the Labyrinth gearsets from PVP. We have waited years to get dyeable versions of these outfits, and they are dingy colours with minimal actual dyeability, or blotchy colouring where they do dye.

The High Allagan sets seem to have fared better on the colour scheme but they still have that over-textured look.

I am increasingly dreading that these supposedly "improved" textured versions are a precursor to the graphics update applying this texturing to all existing gear. If that happens, it is going to change so much of the existing look and feel of the game, and I'm concerned that it will ruin the joy I get from playing with glamours.

I also dislike the weird amount of detail/grit/creases on equipment that started sometime after ShB, all cloth have way too many fold creases and random patches of cloth attached everywhere now and it's driving me insane. The lastest alliance gear has pretty much everything I dislike about current gear design in xiv; 'detailed' textures that look awful up close, way too intricate patterns and details on everything, cloths draped all over, side capes, butt capes, FOLD CREASES, wear and tear, etc. And this complexity in design is making it harder to mix and match different pieces of gear because they clash so bad.

Here are some of my favorite gear sets They're not overly busy, don't look terrible up close, dye well and it's easy to mix with other pieces.
https://www.ffxivcollection.com/wp-c...83%BC-full.jpghttps://www.ffxivcollection.com/wp-c...83%BC-full.jpg

A huge fan of these but they are still no dyeable versions of them, I've been waiting for years.
https://www.ffxivcollection.com/wp-c...83%BC-full.jpg

ShB did have a few good sets, in particular the Voeburt set. It's one of the cleanest sets and I want to give whoever designed/modeled these all of my love.
https://www.ffxivcollection.com/wp-c...82%A2-full.jpg

Then there were the PvP allagan gear and warg sets from ShB, which I believe were from a design contest? The Warg sets are a bit more detailed but it's still simple enough to work, unfortunately it's not dyeable either.
https://www.ffxivcollection.com/wp-c...82%A2-full.jpg
I want more cleaner sets like these

(all pictures taken from https://www.ffxivcollection.com/)

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Originally Posted by Iscah

I haven't made it into the alliance raid yet, but I am extremely disappointed with the new versions of the Labyrinth gearsets from PVP. We have waited years to get dyeable versions of these outfits, and they are dingy colours with minimal actual dyeability, or blotchy colouring where they do dye.

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The alliance gear might be better for other jobs but the fending one specifically only dyes the cloth parts while the metal armor always stays a metallic grey that doesn't exist as dye for the player. This basically means you either wear the full set (how boring is that?) or none of your pieces match properly.

Lapis Manalis gear undyable, just like previous dungeon. Don't think they care anymore.

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Originally Posted by Meowdyj

Lapis Manalis gear undyable, just like previous dungeon. Don't think they care anymore.

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It's always been hit-and-miss whether dungeon gear is dyeable, so you can't read anything into what they did twice in a row. Still, it's extra disappointing that the Manalis sets don't dye because dyeable versions have already been created for the Facet sets.

Credit where it's due, though – somebody decided to swap in the Dravanian Tricorne so reaper can have it.

I wish I didn't have to be bumping this, but I just got the steampunk aristocrat Baronial set and once again it is covered in "high detail" scuffs and mud splatters. I just want gear that looks nice and not weathered.

i hate that they constantly release gear with non-dyable parts that are colors that dont match any dyes we have...

The baronial set is the biggest laughing stock. Brand new, just handed to you and they have dirt smudges and scratches all over it. Boots are probably the only piece of the set I'll use.

I really wish they would let us dye the secondary colors. There are so many pieces I don't use in my glams because I can only dye parts of it.

Bumping this up again because we've just had the Fan Fest presentation of them showing off their upgraded armour textures, going "look at the weathering! Look at the rust and battle damage!" ...and I'm just here dreading it, and wondering if anything will ever dye properly after this.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Bumping this up again because we've just had the Fan Fest presentation of them showing off their upgraded armour textures, going "look at the weathering! Look at the rust and battle damage!" ...and I'm just here dreading it, and wondering if anything will ever dye properly after this.

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While a lot of it looks good, I was wondering the exact SAME thing. I hope this doesn't mean things will continue to dye like crap. They saw the crowd's reaction to 2 dye slots, so I hope they don't mess it up. I feel like they desperately need to update the dye system in general. If I dye something red, I want it RED. I don't want it salmon pink or orange. It's frustrating.

This annoys me soooo much!

All I'm doing today is complaining about clown glamours but!!! The clown coat is so cute, I love the double neck ruff and the coat tails but it dyes horribly!! I want it BLACK not chalky grey!

The dye system is terrible. If I want 3 different pieces to match, I normally have to use 3 different shades of a color to get them to look close enough to the same shade.

Colors washing out or turning into a completely different color on half of an item also ruins a lot of looks that could otherwise have been great. Is that intentional or some screwed up color calculations?

Probably not entirely on topic, but hopefully not completely off-topic either? I love that they've been adding pieces that emulate hair, like the Yakaku Kamidome and Shishu Gozen Kanzashi, but unless your character happens to have a hair colour that's somewhat close to the available dyes it doesn't match, doesn't look like (your) hair, and completely defeats the purpose of it.

Maybe this is impossible but it'd be great if the undyed version automatically adapted to match your hair and you could still dye it if you wanted it to be another colour for whatever reason.

Just adding to this, since I got the new Gleaner outfit last night. Seems like the All Saints Clown coat from a couple years back in the way it dyes: very faded and “weathered.” Which is a shame, because I love the outfit other than that! Only a few dyes really show up nicely on it from each color palette… I’m using ink blue to give it a more dark denim feel.