Where did "Color Match" go?

[LizardSF]

They took it out because BioWare thinks players can't tell they are getting more powerful gear unless they look like they were dressed by Bozo the Clown.

 

My progress is determined entirely by if I have shoulder pads you can land a Star Destroyer on!

 

(On a serious note, I'm trying to figure out why anyone would pursue any gear but Orange+Mods... find something you like and constantly keep it up date with mods. Mods are cheap with commendations and you can trivially keep the bulk of your gear at blue level, at least. As a player, I like that your looks are divorced from your power, but from a design perspective, I think it throws sand in the gears of the Skinner box, if you don't mind me mixing metaphors.)

[LizardSF]

So they preempt player outrage by removing it completely. Genius.

 

What percentage of current players were in the beta before it was removed in the first place?

 

Those are the ones who will be "outraged", and only some percentage of them.

[LizardSF]

Speculation appropos of nothing... I wonder if they could allow crafters to "apply skin" to items dropped, so you could find some butt-ugly boots with great stats, then find an armorer to give it the correct appearance for you. A good way to get crafters more things to do and increase the social aspect of crafting, since you'd need to find/meet customers in fleet, cities, etc.

[DashHorizonis]

My SI was pretty goofy looking for awhile there. Red gauntlets, purple chest piece, black skirt...thing, white boots. Oh how I wanted the unify to chest then.

[Dezzi]

What percentage of current players were in the beta before it was removed in the first place?

 

Those are the ones who will be "outraged", and only some percentage of them.

 

Those are numbers I just don't have, but neither do you. For an anecdotal answer, the thread dealing with this issue in the general testing forums was extremely long. The decision to remove the feature was universally panned, under the impression that it was done because the developers wanted to test our response to not having the system in place--as mentioned before.

 

Had the issue been left at that, I wouldn't be here defending the backlash as staunchly as I am (this is just one of those issues that really gets to me). But the developers insisted on re-framing their decision as one brought on by a perceived lack of armor progression despite the original response claiming otherwise. I will grant that Georg could have simply been vague in his original response, but I can only go by what he said, not what he may or may not have intended.

 

I guess I'm bothered not by the decision to remove the feature itself, but by the backpedaling and foot-dragging they've done since.

 

With color matching enabled, I never once felt as if my armor wasn't progressing during beta. But I did feel like my armor looked good. As it is now, I still don't feel like I'm losing progression, but I certainly don't match.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Dezzi

[Quip]

It was trashed in favour of the default "Dress Like a Clown" setting.

[DJJAZZY]

That feature would be great. My trooper currently looks like a rainbow bright power ranger.

[Dezzi]

That feature would be great. My trooper currently looks like a rainbow bright power ranger.

 

Troopers suffer from this the most, I think. Which is a shame because they have some of the coolest looking sets.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Dezzi

[thewyvern]

I would not be surprised if this issue was related to textures and atlassing (as in, high res texture issue and why it was removed), as having different color schemes for every gear multiplies the amount of textures to insane levels.

[Seraphynn]

Getting a set of matching gear is easier for some classes than others. I have eight characters ranging from level 1 to level 49. My BH by far looked the worst. I have a nice matching set for him now but he looked like a homeless clown for most of the time.

 

They really need to get gear under control... Some of it just looks terrible.

 

I have to agree. I too have 8 chars and my trooper is far the hardest to get anything for. I look for new pants etc but nothing matches her chest plate and looks correct. She is a level 37 now and still looks a mess.

 

I hope they reintroduce this soon.

[Dezzi]

I would not be surprised if this issue was related to textures and atlassing (as in, high res texture issue and why it was removed), as having different color schemes for every gear multiplies the amount of textures to insane levels.

 

Y'know, I hadn't thought of that...

[Templeman]

it was never in the live version of the game, it was taken out before beta ended. Their specific reason was because the system made all the armor look the same and made players feel that they were not progressing gear wise through the lvl'ing proccess, not saying it was a good excuse or not but no conspiracy theory needs to come out of it regardless. There is a Dev article or post about this somewhere if you want to search for it.

Looking like a clown with red boots, purple robes, and a yellow hat was not the correct answer.

 

The correct answer was to have a more diverse armor skin selection in the first place.

They should reinstate the color match and make skin selection I higher priority... no one is buying the whole "but this one is kinda more blue so it is different" line of thought anyway.

[Hammerreborn]

If this thread is up near the front page when I get home I'll link to the original post (I bookmarked it for some reason or another).

 

It's also the same dev post that said that the removed the ability to remove the armorings from tier/pvp gear so that oranges didn't become overpowered by farming the first bosses in Ops (cause clearly that would be the quickest way to get full epic gear rather than doing the entire thing seeing EV is so facerollingly simple)

 

Flash forward two months and they're allowing it again to make crafting "better". I bet that the color matching, whenever it's finally implemented, is going to be the exact same thing it was in beta too.

 

The cynic in me thinks that the removed that stuff in beta just so they could release it as a patch to get all the sheep to keep their subs. Hey look, they made crafting not suck! Bioware/EA listened!

[grania]

I miss it so much. I was absolutely delighted the first time I clicked that box after hearing the chatter on Korriban about it, first day of (my) beta.

 

I remember that dev post vaguely, I remember it saying something about it "having the perverse effect of making players believe there was little variety in armor" or some such, I dunno. I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now.

[Mikeni]

What gives players the impression that there is a lack of variety in the armor isn't the color matching system, it's the ACTUAL lack of variety in the armor.

 

There's only so many styles of armor/clothing you can make in a game before you end up taking the Blizzard route and turning endgame armor into a Las Vegas entertainment production.

 

They should have just left the color system in.

 

IMO they should implement a system like LOTRO had, where you have a social gear slot that you can choose to override the looks of the actual armor you're wearing. That coupled with some sort of dying system would fix the problem entirely.

 

I don't see why they feel the need to brainstorm some new and never been done before approach while people are already playing the game dressed like clowns.

[Dezzi]

What gives players the impression that there is a lack of variety in the armor isn't the color matching system, it's the ACTUAL lack of variety in the armor.

 

There's only so many styles of armor/clothing you can make in a game before you end up taking the Blizzard route and turning endgame armor into a Las Vegas entertainment production.

 

They should have just left the color system in.

 

IMO they should implement a system like LOTRO had, where you have a social gear slot that you can choose to override the looks of the actual armor you're wearing. That coupled with some sort of dying system would fix the problem entirely.

 

I don't see why they feel the need to brainstorm some new and never been done before approach while people are already playing the game dressed like clowns.

 

Conspiracy: Because they're trying to cover up a boneheaded decision by re-framing said decision as a technical/community issue.

[LizardSF]

 

I don't see why they feel the need to brainstorm some new and never been done before approach while people are already playing the game dressed like clowns.

 

Because if they copy someone else's working and time-tested system, people will whine about the lack of innovation.

[ThePirateMD]

non color match = you play (and pay) longer to get the right gear

[Warlyx]

yeah , i got a full set of armor but BOOTS (and belt /braces that dont exist because BW removed gear)

 

I CANT FIND boots that match the set for the life of me.......

 

why remove GOOD IDEAS?

 

looks like BW removed lots of things going live

[LizardSF]

non color match = you play (and pay) longer to get the right gear

 

So.... you're saying you think there's people out there whose goal is to get matching armor, and, when they get the matching armor, they quit... and Bioware knows this and engineers their game systems around making it harder for people to "win" by finding all the matching armor pieces?

 

You, ah, really think that? That is something you're saying without some kind of ironic intent?

 

Do you do that?

 

Do you log in, and say, "Boy, I hate this game. I hate the quests. I hate the combat. I hate the voice acting. I hate the background. But, damn it, I just CAN'T cancel my subscription until my boots match my chest plate!"

 

I mean... isn't the point of getting armor to make it possible to access more content? There's no reason anyone would care about their armor -- matching or not -- unless they intended to keep playing the game. Thus, the idea that "People will keep playing longer if their armor doesn't match!" is, if not the stupidest idea I've ever heard this week (this being the political primary season, there's a high bar), but it's somewhere up there.

 

Really. Step back a moment, think about what you just said. "Bioware wants to keep people who would otherwise quit the game and stop playing to KEEP playing, and the way they do this is by making it harder for those people to get armor with the right color. That is, the armor they'll never wear or see again, if they quit as soon as they get it, which is sort of required for this theory to work."

 

(PS: From Bioware's perspective, the perfect customer is one who never logs in but also never cancels their account. So, it might make sense for them to try to get people to be bored enough to not log in and play, but hopeful enough of new content that they don't get around to cancelling. Please reverse-engineer your conspiracy theories from that. Thank you.)

[Zannis]

They removed it because 'it made players feel as though their gear progression felt less meaningful', which makes no sense since wearing Orange gear puts you in the same situation of your gear appearing to be the same the entire time you level.

 

They also plan on putting a better feature in game. Great. Why remove the old feature? Keep it in game until the new features are ready to roll out.

 

It makes me sad, because my Agent looked awesome while leveling. I chose which Orange gear to wear, and I maintained it all the way through. Now, I'm at 50, and I have a mix of Purples that I have to wear due to mod restrictions. The end result is that I now look like a clown until I complete an entire Tier set.

 

There is something wrong when a player's reward for hitting level 50 is the loss of their choice in style.

Edited February 3, 2012 by Zannis

[Jerudo]

I believe that BioWare will find a way to re-implement the system, because I believe them at their word. We will just have to wait to see when that will be, because as they said in this post (http://www.swtor.com/blog/why-unify-color-chest-piece-gone-and-whats-next), and based on your responses, it was a very popular feature.

 

But for those of you who think we can get by without a matching color system, by just playing more to get the full armor set, you aren't realizing that some armor sets are not complete.

 

For example: Boarding Party and The Foundry drop Orange Head, Chest, and Glove pieces. While there is a set of BH specific greaves, they are blue. So the armor set for those two flashpoints is incomplete.

 

Hell, I keep my T1-5A Imperial Security Body Armor, the BH chestpiece from The Foundry, on Torian because his default pants, black with a bright yellow line running down the side, match the white and bright yellow chestpiece better than anything I can find for my character.

 

I'm excited to see BioWare's future implementation of a new Color Match system, I just hope it happens sooner rather than later.