The Problems with pre-tinting costume pieces

More recently, we've been getting costume pieces that are pre-tinted, or pre-shaded in such a way that it has an effect on the hue and depth of tone of selected coloration. This prevents the mix-and-match of costume pieces which was the strength of the CoH costume creator.

Not only is pre-tinting making matching pieces difficult, it is now creating some very unappealing results. Take a look at what happens when Yellow is selected for the new Female Gunslinger Gloves in the first frame below:



It's now a hideous yellow green. Also note, that the secondary color has no effect (red was chosen). Also note that the actual design of the glove for a female gunslinger is a WTH moment. What is that? It's not a gunslinger glove. It's not a modified opera glove that saloon girls would wear. What the heck is that? It's pretty messed up in several ways.

But look at the shades of Yellow that show in the various gloves and sleeves in the costume creator. Even the newer hi-rez pieces can't keep a consistent shade of Yellow. And yes, the same Yellow swatch was chosen for all those pieces.


That pre-tinting limits choices can be seen in the Celestial Armor set below...



Note in the first panel, all the armor pieces match. They look like they are one suit of armor. Nice.

Note in the second panel that some pieces are highlighted while others are darkened for a two-tone effect. Nice.

Note in the third panel that all the pieces are darkened for an all-black suit of armor. Oh wait. There is no third panel because you can't darken all the pieces to black. The second panel has the darkest black chosen for all the pieces and yet some aren't near black at all. That's pre-tinting in action. Pre-tinted to never be black but only shades of silver. And even the pieces that can go black don't all have the same shade of black. The Chest Detail only comes close to black and doesn't match any of the other pieces, which is really bad design in action.


Listen, I understand the artists have a vision for a set for which pre-tinting gives an artsy effect that looks really good by itself. It really does look really good... by itself. But that same artsy effect is keeping pieces from one set work well with other sets. And that's a really really bad thing. Very few player costumes are all from the same set. We mix-and-match. Besides you wouldn't want us to have costumes made from one set because then all the players would look alike.

If you're going to continue to give us pre-tinted pieces, then at least also provide a second skin to these pieces that isn't pre-tinted so we can properly repurpose them for the costumes that we actually make in game and not for a theoretical set which is hardly ever made.

Which leads me to a point I've made over the years, and to my fellow players, I beg you to get on board and ask for this rather than fight over individual pieces. It is this principle....

For all costume pieces, provide a pre-determined set of textured skins (e.g., spandex/tight, cloth, leather, rubber, rough metal, high shine metal) so that mixing and matching can be done without any fuss.

I know that Noble Savage has dismissed this as too much rework. Well, guess what? The direction you're going is the opposite direction and it's pissing off the player base. If you used that principle two years ago and made that a consistent art direction, you wouldn't have the problems we have now.

I agree 100%. Pre-tinted costume pieces see MUCH less use on characters I create, and as I see more and more of them that come pre-tinted, I am MUCH less likely to buy future costume sets on the market.

Completely on board with this. The pre-tinting kind of makes me want my ten dollars back for the Steampunk pack. It just makes things ugly and hard to use.

I also agree with this complaint and haven't gotten the ambition to detail it out myself. Pre-tinting is horrible. Sure if you pick the same color swatch as the dev that drew it it'll look 10x better than any other swatch, but if you DON'T want that color chances are the piece will look like crap, and not match with anything .

Quote:

Originally Posted by JackofShadows Completely on board with this. The pre-tinting kind of makes me want my ten dollars back for the Steampunk pack. It just makes things ugly and hard to use.

Yeah Steampunk didn't fit any of my character themes(I personally hate retro/vintage/just-plain-old stuff) so I didn't buy it. I love the CCEs and victorian aura and got those with points, but after seeing how you pretty much can't change the color of ANY of the actual costume pieces thanks to the preview-before-purchase character creation screen I'm in no rush to pick it up to fill that completionist hole I have for now.

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Right there with you.

I dislike the pre-tinting, and I find I am actually choosing not to use some of the new pieces that I was previously excited about. Unless I am using them with other new pre-tinted pieces they make my costumes look haphazard.

I'm in favor of this as well. There needs to be a second skin option for Gunslinger, Celestial, and Steampunk items that has the same tinting as normal tights.

I've messed around with editing skins of character models on different games, and I know that it really wouldn't take much time out of their schedule, assuming they didn't toss all their pattern layouts and such in the recycle bin when they were done.

Agreed. Please stop with pre-tinting and please remove previous pre-tinted pieces.

I am 110% on board, in total agreement, starting to cry because now I know I'm not the only one frustrated with this!

I hardly ever use new pieces due to the fact I can never get them to mix and match that well. I think the Steampunk backpack is the worst example of this pre-tinting. It just looks awful.

+1
Giant, massive +1 with puppies, rainbows and kittens on top.

Pre-tinting is rapidly becoming the bane of my costume-making experience. I *want* to use the cool new pieces the art team is building... I really do. They're spiffy bits... But I often can't.

Because the tinting makes them look goofy with the rest of the outfit I'm trying to put together. That Celestial armor, for instance. I'm a little sad about how hard those pieces are to use.

I usually don't care about costumes all that much, but have to agree.

Agreed. It's ugly as hell, and it needs to stop.

I completely agree with this.

A small example, try to use light colors ont the steampunk boots or skirt... white and yellow specially look horrible.

I agree 100%...and WTH is up with the female gunslinger glove?

Agreed about 30-trillion percent here.

It's irritating as hell to be unable to use costume pieces in a universal fashion due to things like this.

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IMPO, Z_M's reasoning is unquestionable. Why we can't have uniformity on coloring our costume pieces, I'll never understand. It's bad enough that we still have variances between certain skin tones and costume colors such that there are visible seams between gloves and arms, but actually designing pieces to never match the color swatch, yet alone premium pieces people are buying with Paragon Points or Incarnate Merits, devalues the usefulness and creativity in using said pieces.

I'm all on board for a revamp to these pieces or adding likewise pieces with a different skin option that matches the color selected on the swatch.

Very much agree with the OP.

I wish they had one guy there who had the job of going back over the textures of old parts and:

1) Removed pre-tinting (or created an alternate untinted layer).
2) Made the increasingly ignored second color button do stuff. Its bad enough that all parts are limited to two selectable colors max, but when extremely complex pieces featuring both cloth and metal components allow just one color to be configured its just sort of ridiculous...

I'll chime in in support of this. I recently made a Steampunk character using the backpack and the pre-tinting was very frustrating. In particular I found it almost impossible to make it's color match the older Steampunk arm/glove pieces. I did, eventually, find a color combo that sort of matches but it's still noticeably different.

I'll agree with Zombie Man too. The Steampunk, Celestial, and Halloween sets are obvious examples.

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I agree.... I've scrapped concepts altogether because the costume didn't color the way I wanted it to.