Concern about the future of gear detail and dyeability

[Iscah]

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.

[Absurdity]

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.

[RobynDaBank]

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.



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.

[Jettinson]

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

[Corrupted]

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!

[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.

[JackHatchet]

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.

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.

[Iscah]

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.

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.

[VictorTheed]

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

[undull1]

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.