Greetings & Well Met!

Allow myself to introduce… myself. I’m Enjinir. I have a long history with MMOs, including Everquest (since Classic), Everquest II, Dark Age of Camelot, City of Heroes/Villains, World of Warcraft, Rift, Tera, Final Fantasy XI, DC Universe Online, Neverwinter and now, Elder Scrolls Online. I’m not a power player at the moment, as I’m working my way through college, but MMOs have been a huge part of my life (Since I was 11!) and they have shaped me as much as I’m sure they've shaped all or many of you.

To me, one of the coolest aspects about a game is the idea of crafting. Being able to venture out into the world and traverse different areas and slay beasts to gather the materials that you need. Searching for and learning all sorts of new recipes and equipment patterns. Growing as a crafter and improving your skill in order to be able to make even better and more visually impressive gear. Selling your wares for profit in the marketplace and being able to custom craft a suit of gear or a pair of weapons for a player at their request. These aspects are what can make it such a fun and rewarding process to me. I really love a lot of what ESO has done with their crafting system. It’s challenging in that you’re balancing motif rarity, many different components that each add something different, a paced leveling speed, long trait research times, etc. You can’t just buy your way to the top, it takes time and energy, but it doesn't really feel like a grind, and achieving max level with all traits will be a celebratory day.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, though. The most negative feeling I've had in crafting in ESO has been that of, when you craft a new set of gear, you go to put it on and it’s… okay. A lot of the armor skins and color themes are really, really boring and painfully plain. I’m not looking for ultra-fantasy or JRPG stuff, but man, some of these skins are truly underwhelming. That said, I’m extremely excited about the dyeing system, and am eager to give it a try so that I can really make the most of crafted gear in ESO, and perhaps make some of the more bland styles more appealing by pulling out certain details. However, a lot of backlash has come of the lone simple screenshot that was attached to the ‘Road Ahead’ post, and I’d like to take some time to address some of the issues brought up, talk on some topics of discussion, and even suggest a solution/mechanic for the system.

The Dye System

Realism
Just a quick note on this: I keep seeing the aspect of “keeping the colors realistic and/or reasonable” being stressed. I’m not sure I necessarily agree with this point. Our pre-supposed suspension of disbelief allows us to accept that we can cast fireballs, resurrect the dead, and mythical creatures exist in the wild that are a veritable rainbow of colors. However, the common argument against vibrant dying is that it would be UNREALISTIC for plate armor to be bright pink. As much as I personally wouldn't care to see it, nor would I want to do it to my gear, I can’t see how in a world of magic and mysticism that one can honestly say that there is NO WAY someone could have figured out how to make metal a brighter shade of the visible spectrum. Maybe the solution would be transparency levels, where you never get close to a 100% tint. More like 20/40/60%, that way the original color of the armor can dull down some of the more “eye-catching” colors while maintaining a lore aspect that the original materials are still present.

Acquirement
Everyone also seems to be arguing about how the dye options should be acquired or obtained in the game. Let me give my two cents on a few of the suggested options:

1. Crafting the dyes with new components

No. Please, no. My inventory as a crafter is already extremely inundated with crafting components for Provisioning, Alchemy, Enchanting, Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Clothworking, and Woodworking, I just can’t do anymore. I already have to use mules to hold onto stuff and I’m spending all of my gold on inventory slots in order to simply play the game. Tossing new components onto this pile would be the straw that broke the already-crippled camel’s back.

2. Crafting the dyes with existing components

Someone on the forums suggested that we already have the components to make dyes from the other crafts, and we could even make crafting dyes rely on the other crafts. I really hope this doesn't happen. First and foremost, as a crafter, I LOVE how each component has a very specific purpose. The inventory space doesn't make this a nice feature; however the functionality of it is so beautiful. If I get a component I know exactly what I want to use it for, and the system doesn't make me sacrifice one trade for another. Making alchemical waters be required for “dyecrafting,” for example, would mean that between the two, I’d have to spread my waters out or choose one or the other to level. This doesn't seem like a very good idea to me.

3. Looting the dyes from world drops (Thus also buying them from other players)

This seems like it would be broken as well. We already saw what’s happened with Motifs, and I don’t want to see ANOTHER functional part of crafting go that route. Also, considering there is no auction house and the Guild Stores are paltry at best, buying them from other players will be just as painful as everything else, especially if it’s done the way Motifs were to begin with (and still kind of are).

4. Purchasing the dyes from an in game vendor for varying levels of gold

I don’t think I’m alone in my thought that the LAST thing this game needs is yet another massive gold sink. Respeccing, repairing, buying inventory space, and buying and upgrading horses are just a few of the gold-sink mechanics that make gold almost a hindrance in being able to play the game. I would cringe as a semi-casual player to see character personalization go that way as well.

5. Receiving tiers of dyes at particular levels/VRs

Not really a bad idea, but it takes a lot of the flavor out of a really interesting new system. We’re all leveling anyways, so dyes would just be a little addition that you get for the progression you are ALREADY DOING. I’m a slower leveler to start, so for me, this would make me want to rush through content. For those who are already power-leveling to max VR, the dyes would just be an afterthought that they didn't really have to do anything for.

6. Tying specific colors to specific achievements

While this is the most hotly contested of the posted possibilities, I think this is my favorite. By no means do I want to see it as it’s worded. I don’t want to have to run a specific max level piece of content to unlock “Black.” That’s not particularly fair to all styles of player. However, let’s think about the general idea of tying dye colors to achievements for a second.

First, this is a living, ongoing game. The idea of you wanting to keep playing is based in progression. Tying dyes to leveling doesn't add anything content-wise. You’re going to play the content you were already going to play and get the dyes. Tying dyes to achievements DOES add to content, as in order to get the dyes you want you might go back and experience something you may have skipped in your leveling process, or give you more reason to quest through the alternate factions during your VRs, or anything otherwise. You get a reward for playing content you haven’t done yet. Sounds like a perfect addition.

One of the arguments against this that I saw on the forums was that “Cosmetic features should not be rare.” Well, I hate to tell you, but they already are. To craft better looking gear, you have to skill up your crafting. This takes time and effort that not everybody invests, increasing the “rarity,” so to speak. Higher level dropped gear often looks better than the lower level items, thus meaning that to get it you must invest time toward leveling and getting it to drop, or earning and investing overflow gold. This means it is harder to get. Improvements make the gear look “better,” but you have to have higher rarity oils and such to do this (or gold, again). Handing out every part of a system, cosmetic or not, provides no PROGRESSION, which is the one true death for an ever-existing game like an MMORPG.

Achievements also make sense from a roleplaying aspect. Our drops represent our characters' relative luck. Our level represents our strength. Our gold represents our worth. Our achievements represent our worldliness, legend, and social status. Historically, the more vibrant colors of equipment were used by royalty, those of legendary stature, and those of high societal regard, to separate themselves from the pack. This makes perfect sense to me.

I do agree, however, that SPECIFIC achievements SHOULD NOT yield a SPECIFIC, correlated, exclusive color.

My suggested solution:

Now, I know a lot of people like to complain or naysay on these forums without offering a solution. I am not one of those people. I have an idea, and I think it’s one that would work far better than any of the proposed systems, both for us as players and for Zenimax as an MMO developer.

Rather than tying specific colors to specific achievements, ACHIEVEMENT POINTS should unlock DYE OPTIONS. The more points you have, the more dye options you obtain. When you obtain, let’s say, 25 achievement points, you get a dye option. When you obtain a dye option, you get to select one color out of all of the available colors, and it’s yours, period. This removes the subjectivity that would be placed on a specific color by the developers assigning it to a harder/easier achievement. This also removes the accessibility problem put forth by some other options. A lot of these achievements are varied in nature, so all manner of players would be able to unlock a fair deal of dyes from playing the game their way. However, the completionists, or those who want a really varied dyeing palette, will be prompted to play some content they wouldn't have normally to collect more dye options.

I don’t know how many colors they have planned for the system, but from the screenshot we can see 107 and I doubt that’s all of them considering that we don’t even see reds or greens, for example. I’m only level 33 on my character as of this writing and I already have 600-some-odd points. If 25 points got you one dye option, I would have around 24. Not an amazing amount by any means, but I also am lower level with not a lot of achievements. This is enough for me to design a palette that I like and can work with at a low level (read: accessible), but it’s not crazy varied or customize-able, so I would want to seek out all of those achievements to allow me a more flexible dye system (read: progression and new goals).

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Let me know what you think below. I have some other input about different crafting mechanics and ideas, but I’ll save those for some later posts. Hopefully I didn't bore you to death with the long post!