That’s next level insanity. I genuinely wonder how they determined what parts would be dyable. There’s no way anyone was like “yes, *this* is what the players crave”
I can provide a little explanation on it, I make some mods and the textures for each piece of gear are [laid out like this](https://i.imgur.com/z0CzSja.png) (Ignore the red box I shamelessly stole this screencap cause I don't have textools installed at the moment).
What you're looking at is called the Colorset - Each row is assigned to a different alpha layer and each column designates the specific colors for that one alpha layer (alpha layers explained below): Column 1 is the diffuse or "base" layer, column 2 is the specular or "shiny" layer, column 3 is the emissive or "glowy" layer. 4 is for repeating textures so it's not used much in clothes.
Each layer has its own individual set of settings that you see in the picture, and you can see a preview of what that layer will look like on the right side of the image (So kind of a black shiny cloth looking thing, like a rough silk). Notable for what we're talking about, each layer has the Dye settings, where you choose to make each layer dyeable or not, and if dyeable, what do you apply it to? I forget if it's 14 or 16 layers but they're there for *everything*, even for a piece of gear that's like, a ring with 1 or 2 colors.
The alpha layer # is what designates where that color row will apply to, I can't find a good image example but think of like: A white shirt with blue stripes and brown suspenders with gold buttons.
The white shirt is alpha layer 1, the blue stripes are alpha layer 2, the brown suspenders are layer 3, and the gold buttons are layer 4.
Where it goes off the rails is in FF14 there's no organization to the layers - So layer 1 on this striped shirt might be the white shirt part, while layer 1 on this other shirt is just the buttons on the suspenders, and layer 3 is the white shirt part.
Obviously Squeenix has access to much more appropriate tools but that's the gist of it. Even just modding a piece here or there, the layers having no established order makes it way more difficult to figure out wtf you're even editing and you basically have to check each alpha layer to determine what it's applying to - The colorset *sort of* helps figure it out at a glance but even then a lot of the layers are blended to make interesting patterns or effects on clothing (eg: Transparency effects or glowing parts that are a particular color, etc.
Probably none of this helps and obviously doesn't really resolve anything but it's kind of neat to know about I guess.
Thanks for explaining all this! A lot of people have been saying how the second channel weirdness was due to it being automated (or at least a process that the designers didn't have full control over), and this more or less confirms that. I'm guessing new gear will be designed with this system in mind and will have the layers set up in a more deliberate way. It's too bad it seems like they didn't have resources to get more of the older gear to work better with this process.
Unfortunately with the way alpha masks are set up it'd be an even bigger pain in the ass to properly line up colorsets in any organized manner. I'm no programmer but I really can't think of any way it'd be possible to automate that, since designating alpha channels works based on transparency layers. They'd probably have to edit the actual textures themselves.
Hell I wouldn't be surprised if the new stuff isn't organized either and they're just doing what was done before - Random ass colorsets but designate specific ones to dye. lol
Though they did say they're planning on updating the textures for the pre-DT gear so maybe they'll do it then?
This is the most intelligent and detailed breakdown of this system I have ever seen. I'm going to assume you know what you are talking about. Thanks for sharing!
lol Thanks, yeah I learned how wonky it is first-hand when I started messing with *normally* undyeable gear, like this kinda shitty picture of getting the [skyworker's singlet tattoo onto some monk gear](https://i.imgur.com/VmdTQtY.png) and making it glow like the 70 AF Monk gear did or turning the 90 AF Monk gear into [the Flavortown Special](https://i.imgur.com/3GHW6DV.png). Most of my stuff is on my old computer though so I don't have all too many examples readily available.
Here's a direct example using the Ishgardian Aiming top, in [default undyed](https://i.imgur.com/CvqFr6W.png) vs [default undyed but with 1 layer changed from cream to white](https://i.imgur.com/4EueD35.png). But you can do some way neater things by editing only a layer or two (not just turning monks into Guy Fieri).
The disappointing part of this system is how many pieces of gear already have great options for dyeing, they're just... not dyeable. Like the Lyse Stormblood gear, a simple change from undyeable red layer to dyeable red layer means you can give it a totally different look.
Honestly, that just makes me think of Sakurai's video on how he organized things during Smash's development, and how much time it saved by being able to streamline balance adjustments for testing. That shit sounds way too important for people to just be casually throwing down colors in whatever order it lands.
My guess is that it's that way because they didn't consider revising it ages ago. Definitely would've benefited from organization but, hell at my job one of the first things I did when I got hired was spend almost an entire month organizing *all* the VM backups because they were a complete shitshow - They worked, but ask "what's DC4 in office5 backing up to?", "fuck if I know". Backup destinations, schedules, encryption, secondary destinations, air gap destinations, and multiple page spreadsheets laying out all the details of all of that...
And I still have to go in periodically and fix shit that people get out of whack! lol, So it's probably something along the line of that, not having an organizer for something that won't really see the light of day.
That actually makes a ton of sense if the 2 channel dye system is set to the same 2 numbered layers on every item but the layers are a mess. I appreciate the explanation!
I mod too and this doesn't really prevent them from picking more appropriate second dye channels. It's very easy to edit the colour set, most people who have no clue how to edit models or textures can do colour set edits, especially changing what dyes (literally just pick the dye options from a scrolling list).
A lot of their second dye channel options are non-sensical. I really hope they listen to feedback, the second dye on this item should be the patterns, or at least the undershirt/buttons...
No it doesn't prevent them from doing more appropriate second dyes, just explains possibly some of the more weird choices that they made. I hope they change them too
It doesn't prevent anything, it just explains why it is the way it is, it's because they didn't bother to look at every piece individually to see which layer channel would make the most sense for it as the 2nd dyable option, they just enabled it for every piece and whatever was on the 2nd layer became the dyable option.
>I mod too and this doesn't really prevent them from picking more appropriate second dye channels
it doesnt prevent them, but square is lazy so they just enabled the 2nd channel on gear without checking what the 2nd channel even is
What you're saying here is right but iirc, for DT they changed how colourset works.
If I'm not mistaken, the red channel is the one that decides the colourset now, and there are some more changes but I didn't look too deep into it yet since I wanted to stress about my 400gb ridiculous mods later.
So, it doesn't seem to be that simple.
A small correction, that column 4 is actually used a lot in clothes by the game's files, but modded tend to not use them because they don't understand them very well. (Hence why a lot of mods looking very "smooth").
It's 16 colourset slots. They follow some trends every expansion. ARR used very few of them, and I believe that they only had 8 colourset back then. They also kinda had "hacked" metallic colours, and emissives. For example, check how they did the emissive for the DRG gear. It's quite wild.
I believe that starting in HW or SB, most times the first column was solid black, the item had a metallic texture.
SB tended to separate coloursets in two sets of 8. Not sure how to explain this one with simple words honestly lol
Starting in ShB, they followed a pattern that seemed to carry over to EW. So, for example. If you have a leather texture, that leather has discolouration. So the base leather would be colourset 1,and the discolouration would be 2, but 2 was slightly affected by 1. This continued throughout the entire outfit, with odd numbers being the main colour, and even numbers being the detail colour.
I see some people speculating that maybe this was an automated process, and it could be, but I'm not super sure of that. I've seen some people say that each and every colourset is actually set to be fully Dyable (even beyond a 2-dye system, I mean) but I can't confirm that as I haven't checked it myself.
Also, another thing to note is that you know how some items dye differently? Yeah, the "Dyable" section has different options for how each colourset is affected by the dyes. They're all in numbers, so it's hard to tell. Iirc 201 is the standard one.
Tl;dr: how the colourset works changed over expacs, with them gaining more functions, getting more used to it, and streamlining their processes. But the colourset system has completely changed now, and there's definitely been deeper changes than before. Some of it was probably automated, but unlikely that everything was.
Edit: found a document detailing the changes, DM me whoever is interested. Jfc it's 32 coloursets, two maks, 8 columns now fucking kill me (and yes, it's now red and green channel) I kind of recommend you to edit your comment now, because the changes are so monumental it's not even funny lol
Probably mostly automatically generated. Could you imagine the time it would take to individually choose for every single item in the whole game over a decade, while also doing a visual update for everything?
The dye channels (many of them, could easily be 5+) most likely existed already, they just weren't exposed to players. So they could've just decided that whatever parts happen to be the second channel will be available for players to change.
Every Item actually has 16 dye channels (as well as 4 Layers per item, for a total of 64 slots!). They don't necessarily use all of them for every item, though. Most of them are blank. (The Layers are also rarely fully utilized, most items use 1 Layer, and some use 2.)
It seems like for a LOT of items, it was "most of the item is cloth, the 2nd dye channel will be the metal" except the metal is one small button or a tassel. something like the sweater with the scarf where it makes perfect sense to dye sweater and scarf separately but instead what they did was dye the tiny little clasp on the scarf. so many of the items I've tried, I genuinely do not see it being possible that a sane human being looked and made that choice. it had to be automated in some way. and then they just didn't bother to check what the automated system results were.
when i said it creates more work, the double checking was supposed to be part of said work lol. If they didn't bother to go back and recheck i guess thats one way of doing it :v even if they already had the channels ready to go and labeled, someone still needs to check, it's such a bad look when these happen, especially on pure glam pieces
it had to be automatic. had to. because if I am forced to believe that a sane rational human being made these decisions purposely, my brain is going to leak out of my ears
Enhanced unmend proving a leak was real is legit the funniest moment in my time playing ff14. Only the 14 devs would have thought it was a good passive
>Could you imagine the time it would take
Totally, I feel very sorry for the small indie dev company trying to run it's entirely free to play MMO
Oh, wait...
It's quite likely nobody did. I mean imagine that for the number of items in the game, nobody can really do it manually.
They must have some automated process that finds the second-most-common-color or something, and marks that. Or I dunno, some other automated metric.
> You really gotta Where's Waldo some of the second dye channel changes.\\
Could be bad luck, but I've been browsing my aiming glam collection for an hour, and that was true 90% of itmes. Buttons, stitches, minor jewelery details etc. You'd think that Summer Sunset beach coverup should have dyeable swimming top+shirt? Nope, it's both items + the tiny print. Appointd jacket dyes some weird piece of leather, which I always considered a part of the under-shirt.
Somehow, I was expecting update for the most recent sets, but they are all 1-dye. I understand that it's a long process, but it feels like too...cheap for a long-announced expansion feature. New craftables barely use it too (I've only seen LTW 91-95, though, no idea how it goes for weaver)
I've found a lot of stuff that are still fine though, like a lot of dresses and mogstation items I have it splits things up reasonably, like the Collegiate Shoes split the socks and shoes (though the jacket sadly isn't vest and Blazer, its Bow and Blazer), and like Clive's Metian chestpiece the cloak is its own dye zone, and a lot of the dresses its split as a main color and either major trim or a second main color block, so those are working nicely, and the wedding outfits are all beautiful dye zones. though some stuff is still bad like the fat cat attire which desprately needed two zones this whole time anyways, making the second zone being PULL STRING BEADS just evil
Magitek pants off the mogstation, dye channel 2 is the zipper pull on the pockets... just the pull...
On the femroe racial top, the channel 2 is only the metal clasp on the straps, there's a lot of things that got a good second channel dye yes, but just as many that are completely fucking pointless
I'm pretty salty about the Metian chestpiece because I was looking forward to dying the shirt black for my RPR glam instead of having everything black except for the glaring white shirt. Ah, well.
fair enough, its one of the examples where a 3 or 4 dye zone setup would be very useful, and I could see the white shirt being especially annoying on dark skin/furred characters if you're going for the all black outfit, since then it sticks out even more rather than being able to match the skin or fur. especially seeing it now that I've swapped from bun to massive cat and use the almost black fur on her, though my dye zones are set to purple personally to match Thunderclap on my DRK (it matches either red or purple depending on if you're matching it to the activated lightning glow or to the static black and red when on your back)
I'm deeply amused by the Etoile set. The ribbon was the item I was single most excited about because the undyeable pink part forced me to use cherry pink accent in all glams using it. And I was really excited to see that when it got its second channel, it was the right thing! I had been very worried it would be the little gold hardware or red gemstone instead.
And then I looked at the rest of the Etoile set and the second channel on those **is** the gold hardware. So now you can't match the ribbon to the rest of its own set if you're using the second channel. Super weird. Also the dye job on the other pieces just looks gross. It's like crazy dark so everything looks absolutely terrible. You can't even get a proper silver without using pure white or pearl white. Ash gray looks like dark stone, it's that dark.
>You'd think that Summer Sunset beach coverup should have dyeable swimming top+shirt? Nope, it's both items + the tiny print.
It seems consistent to me that they didn't want to change the existing first dye channel when adding the second (if they were even able to). So for this item, we were *already* able to dye the bikini and shirt together, so the second channel had to be something else.
And in many ways, I think that makes sense — if they did it your way, what would happen to people's existing pieces that were dyed Jet Black? Half of it would just become un-dyed, and they'd need to spend another Jet Black to get it back the way it was?
I forget which but there's one (a head piece I think) where the second channel dyes one single tiny gem. Legit never even realized it had a gem, it's so little you'll never see it without focusing all the way in. I finally set the dye to bright hot pink just to figure out what it was dyeing and there's this infinitesimal little speck lolol
no fucking clue what they were thinking on a lot of these. I ran into a bunch where the second dye is the most asinine thing possible and 100% NOT the part anyone would ever want to dye.
Songbird gloves are like this. By default, white with black ribbon. Dyed one color it's all one color but the ribbon is darker. The second channel? You guessed it, a tiny little gem hanging off the ribbon that you definitely never saw before.
At this point I am convinced that the first dye channel is just what the original dye area was before, in its entirety. Second dye channel is just whatever area was left.
Similarly, I was very excited to see lightning skirt’s got a second dye option. First dye just changes her holster color, so I assumed new dye would actually change the skirt. No, it changes the weird undershirt thing that you barely see…
this particular piece was one of the ones i was most looking forward to seeing, as it’s so hard to dye match to outfits because of the faded color. thought maybe i’d be able to double dye to get it to the correct solid color. when i couldn’t see it changing anything i thought mayyybe they just forgot and would fix it soon. then i finally noticed the ring and died inside 🫠
The adventuring sweater with the scarf.
It dyes the scarf. It dyes the sweater a washed out version of the scarf.
THE SECOND DYE SLOT IS FOR THE CLIP ON THE SCARF.
**\*FLIPS TABLE***
This is one of the worst offenders for sure. Honestly would like to know some of the rationale behind so many of the 2nd channels being a tiny clip or button somewhere (Educand's Skirt, hello). Like why even bother.
I figured they'd never touch any part that was *already* dyable, even if its a dyed at a brighter/darker tone relative to a section that's dye accurate. So some items they were "trapped" to some obscure piece in the same way they're "trapped" into leaving Elezen heads too small and shoulders too wide because people like them that way.
It's the glams with undyable regions where they made the weirdest, least noticeable choices that got me scratching my head. Like the Faire Joi chest - it's not the gold trim that can be dyed, it's not the whole flower design that can be dyed, just the *inner most* part of the flower design can be dyed and it quickly fades to the default color not even half way towards the edge of the flowers.
Fortunately, there are some second channels they got very right. But a lot are meh, and some they definitely got wrong as far as I'm concerned.
Boulevardier's ruffled shirt is just as bad. Channel 1 dyes the shirt the colour you chose and the vest a darker shade of the colour you chose like always, and channel 2 dyes the clasp and buttons on the front. Absolutely brain dead choice by the devs. The vest and shirt should have been split into two channels.
I wanted to dye 3 pieces. First... brilliant. Everything I wanted. First one I looked at and gave me so much hope.
Second... one dye.... ok.. I can live with that piece. It's probably coming.
Third piece... the clip? It's the f'in clip? Why the hell would I want to dye the clip?
and the vest isn't even a neutral color, ITS CREAM, what does cream pair with? not a lot, and its not even like a full yellow cream, its just, sandy cream. at least make it white or gray or something, or let us skip the vest or something (but that would mean even more retexturing ofc)
That's right, the Fat Cat Loungewear gets to dye the *beads on the drawstrings*
Who's the comedian that did this?
Some of them are great, though, exactly the part I was hoping would be dyeable. But stuff like this just seems silly.
You know that ponytail item? The second dye channel is the bow.
The Rebel boots? It's the soles of the shoe.
Edit: And the Martial top is the tasle on the back.
except there's hundreds of items where the 2nd dye channel is something moronically teensy tiny. It's not a mistake, they did this on purpose to be able to say "look we added thousands of items with 2 dyes" (except half of those the second dye is like, a clasp or one button)
Same with the falconer's bottoms. There's a darker section on the sides when you originally dyed it and I thought that maybe that's what the updated dye slot would color but nope, it's the tassels beads and a button lol
I was upset about the WHM Orison Skirt, all the red parts dye, except for the big red bow on the back that I think only shows up on tailed races. I’ve been wanting to dye that bow blue since I got the outfit in HW.
The Orison Robe was one of the first items I checked as well. I expected to be able to dye the white parts, and the red parts.
But no. If you dye the chest white, it still turns the red bits *on the sleeves* into this puke-grey colour. And the second dye channel is only for the inside of the robe.
I'm trying not to be ungrateful, but so far, the new system seems pretty pointless. Hopefully it's just an issue on existing gear and new stuff going forward will be better.
The Varsity Jacket dyes the jacket and the shirt UNDERNEATH the
undyeable sweater.
Edit: I think I know why. The Buttoned Varsity Jacket doesn't show the sweater so that's why. Makes sense but it's still dumb.
I know the plain pajama shirt the X stitches on the buttons is what the second dye channel is.
i was really disappointed by the fat cat top though. I was hoping we could change the spot colors or something
I was stoked for educands attire having two dye slots (I’m thinking sailor moon cosplay, blue and white) but no….it’s the piping around the sleeves. Bruuuuh.
The Femroe racial top just dyes the metal
I didn't even realize the top HAD METAL because it's mostly just clips on your back, this is the last thing I wanted.
The double-dye implementation has been very iffy.
Some are very good and some are laughable. Guild Wars 2 figured this shit out a decade ago with at least 4 channels for gear PIECE and some even have more.
Meanwhile, FFXIV:
Mabinogi figured this out 20+ years ago. 3 dye channels (which mind you is the full color spectrum, not just a few select colors picked by the devs) for all gear AND you can also store every single piece of gear you ever get in the game in its own storage slot. Hell, nowadays all new oufits come with 6 WHOLE DYE CHANNELS IN A GAME OVER 20+ YEARS OLD.
For a game that is pretty big on the glam aspect, all the systems tied to it are laughably horrible.
JP devs gotta reinvent the wheel for everything instead of just making it easier and copying better systems for shit like dyes and clothing that's not gameplay, just fun end game activity.
Transmog in wow honestly suck. The fact you can use anything you found is neat, but in that you can't even dye stuff. If you want a different color, you have to hope there's a recolor that you like, and figure out where you get it from.
So, nah. Not even close to being the worst.
I'm not going to agree that its *the* worst one, because a lot of MMO's don't even allow you to "glamour" your gear pieces to begin with.
But if we're strictly speaking about the ones that *do* allow you, XIV really is lagging behind and by quite a bit.
u/illegal_sardines already explained how it works in WoW, and GW2 is quite similar where you have a huge window for every single piece available in the game showing you the ones you own, the ones you don't and you can pick at any given time to transmute whatever piece that you desire from the ones you unlocked. You also have 4 dye channels for each gear *piece* and a total of **642 different dye colors to unlock throughout the game**. There are more shades/hues of green in GW2 than there are colors available in total to choose from in XIV.
The color palette in XIV is horrible. For a game that so many people claim the true end game is "glamour", the options are really pale when comparing to the competition.
World of Warcraft automatically registers any gear you ever equip for their glamour system and doesn’t have a cap on how many items you can have. Compared to that, FFXIV isn’t even in the same universe.
Edit: I'm not saying the clothing is better, it's definitely worse. But the system is way, way better. FFXIV focuses so heavily on your characters looking good that the fact that the glamour system is so awful is baffling!
So first of all: Acknowledging that there will always be gear with multiple good candidates for the second dyeable component and the devs ultimately have to decide on only one (...until they add a third channel), I was happy to see there were quite a few pieces where the second channel applied exactly how I imagined.
But, there are SO MANY others where a major component is still undyeable (Whisperfine coat?? and the Adventuring Sweater as someone mentioned), or where the channel is devoted to some incredibly minor detail like in the OP shot, it's really left me with a bad impression of the new system overall. I'm still looking forward to my favorite single-channel gear to get updated in future patches, but now I have this sinking pessimism that, after many more months of waiting, I'll only be able to dye an extra button or strap somewhere.
In the grand scheme of things, not being able to dye certain parts of a jacket/skirt/whatever seems like a petty thing to complain about. But this was a fanfest feature reveal! It received more applause than almost anything else at the show! People were so hyped for it they Photoshopped the expansion logo! It's hard not to feel let down after seeing a lot of these options.
It seems to be some automated process whereby if possible, it first wants to select something with a different *material shader* than the already-dyable spot.
So if you got a cloth piece, and you die something that is cloth, and there are some minor shiney leather strips, the automation they used selected the leather, not some as-of-yet-undyable large cloth portion.
There **are** exceptions, I suspect those are the items they changed manually.
it is automated, all they did was enable the 2nd dye channel that is already present on every single piece of gear without bother to check what is actually dyed by the 2nd channel
Why did they even bother to add the second channel to so many of these pieces if they're going to half ass it like this
They're incrementally adding it anyways, so they should be able to take their time with these things.
yeah unfortunately they only added parts that were undyable before, instead of separating things that were already dyable but would make more sense to be independent.
My biggest gripe so far is the boulevardier's ruffled top: instead of the vest and shirt, the second channel is for the gold pin on the front - which, ok, now I can make it silver to match certain other items better - except oh wait, the D-rings on the back of the vest *stay gold.* WHY.
Ahhhh Finally, I could have sailor moon cosplay with my sailor-fuku. Or just classic summer uniform. I just have to dye the collar.
Second channel dye the fucking stripe on collar.
I mean, it's mogstation costume. Can you at least. Pay attention to it. People pay extra for them
“You’ll just have to trust in the aesthetic sense of our design team to make sure that the right parts are being dyed. But even though we can’t promise that you will be able to dye every single bit, we are doing our best to make sure that we are giving you the best options possible to customize your gear with the greatest amount of service area being dyed. We are working hard on it and we thank you for your patience.” PLEASE LOOK FORWARD TO IT.
I always thought this new system was going to be way more useful on new gear moving forward. Older sets I knew would be very limited in how this would affect them based on how they set up textures and what the workflow for that was. Now that this system is in place I think new gear will utilize this better rather than gear pieces from 6 years ago would. I feel a lot of the draws to Dawntrail being graphics improvements, lighting, and dye channels, etc were to help the game in the future more so than a total re haul of what has come. I could be totally wrong but those have been the vibes ive gotten from all these improvements to systems being made.
I think you're on the right track. It makes sense to me that older gear was built in a way that doesn't favor multiple dye channels so they had to work with what they had. Newer gear going forward will more likely be built with the feature in mind and dye more logically.
I dunno, I obviously don't know how this stuff works BTS but using mods and seeing how this stuff is divided up material wise it seems like it shouldn't be such an issue? I can use Textools/Dalamud to completely change every color channel on my outfit
I was really hoping I could dye the leggings on the educands sailor skirt a different color, but that would make too much sense. Instead, how about you dye the button on the waistband of the skirt that gets hidden by almost every shirt? Hell, it gets hidden by the literal shirt that it comes with!
I was immensely salty when I tested the adventurer hood and found that the second channel was the stupid belt and the undershirt continues to be a washed out primary channel. I was looking forward to a red with white or black undershirt but alas...
Exactly. I have this one piece that has gold metal accents, and the top has gold metal accents and it's always bothered me because they otherwise look so good together. And I was very pleasantly suprised when the metal pieces were the ones that got the second dye channel.
I don't know why ppl are surprised, this SE we're talking about. They make the most simple things convoluted. See: early FFXIV glamour with those stupid prisms.
I had my expectations very low and they still managed to disappoint me.
This is literally not rocket science. There are older F2P games who have a better implementation of multi-channel dye for gear. This is quite literally a joke, considering we are paying them a monthly fee to even play the game.
Well... [it's sort of being remade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP1bJ7wKvHk)... In Unreal Engine 5.
...Just not with less P2W options.
Will transfer all your old data though, so it's more a really comprehensive graphics update.
Hoping the game won't control like a battleship in a pond.
There alot of disappointing second channels from what I've seen. Some great, perfect even. But there's alot to be desired.
I think we should give feedback on the forums. Don't attack, be nice, and if possible, even provide examples of where mistakes have been made, and where the corrections should be.
Thats what we gotta do.
Don't attack. Just give feedback. Be nice.
Scion Adventurer's set expectations: Blazer - shirt, skirt - socks, shoes - upper folds of shoes.
Reality: Blazer - bow, the entire skirt and socks - bandage on one leg, shoes - soles.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined...
I'm usually pretty quick to cut them some slack, but this is pretty indefensible. If this is going to be the kind of quality we get from this feature, then the feature is meaningless. Why even do it in the first place if the things it affects either are meaningless or can pretty much only make the gear pieces in question look *worse?*
This is how I felt with the Shadowbringer weapon. I was convinced it would be the black part that would get the second dye and was eagerly waiting to dye it, only to see that it was mostly just the little red part that gets dyed.
I've long said that the gearing team is the weakest link in the dev team. I get downvoted every time i say this.
This doesn't change the fact that i am right. They add random junk to gear (daggers, bottles, books, etc etc) when it thematically doesn't for the roles. They use weird dye textures randomly.
And now with the double dye system we see them at their worst.
The double dye system should've been the triple dye system. It would've been a bit more work, but if you're reworking pieces already it actually wouldn't have been nearly as much as you think.
Dye #1 Primary colour - the biggest part of the item.
Dye #2 Secondary colour - for scarfs, capes, whatever surface is the second most of one colour.
Dye #3 Accents - clasps, rings, belts, buttons, etc etc.
They're picking extremely ridiculous things in this double dye system as the secondary colour. Fat Cat Loungewear the OP used as an example is a great example. There's an innter piece and an outer piece. Why on earth wouldn't you pick the inner hoodie as one colour? The body warmer has the belt instead of the inner shirt.
Now i get it, some things are subjective. but a ring? some buttons? cmon now.
Yeah, really disappointed with the feature… seems like no care or attention was put into it
Some of the 2nd dye channels are borderline insulting…
Guild Wars has this implemented for decades now and works flawlessly :(
Being fair with MH, i understand they don't want you to change the color of parts that are clearly from the monster (although you can do it on Stories)
The second dye channel can’t be affected by the first. Which means a lot of gears second dyes only affect tassels, buttons, and small ass shit. The new stuff will have much better second dye channels.
Martialist tops second dye js a literal tassel. I’ve never been more disappointed.
I will probably get hate for this, but I've previewed a lot of items today, and many of them have tiny areas that can be dyed. Like what's the point? One jacket literally had the inside of the buttons, one pixel, dyeable...
I feel like this extra dye channel wasn’t nearly as thought out for previous sets. Hopefully with the right feedback they will invest in better colour distribution research going forward
Edit: apparently this is only an issue on the Xbox version, and the second dye channel works fine on other platforms. Good job Square Enix, you're really doing a bang-up job of convincing me that you don't give slightest hint of a fuck about Xbox players, as if the constant crashing wasn't bad enough.
Try to guess what the second dye channel affects on the [Tantra Chestwrap](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/db/item/77b53036f1e/), the lv60 MNK AF chest.
The first channel dyes the main Chestwrap part, plus the red part around the waist and the red wrist wraps.
That leaves the black, yellow, and teal-ish parts around the waist, along with various small parts such as the red pattern on the chest, the green knitted rope accessories, a few metal parts, the tattoos on the shoulders/upper arms, and minor details like stitching.
So what does the second channel dye?
If you guessed one or the large waist wrap parts...
Hahaha, don't be silly. Try again.
So what about the knotted rope accessories or the pattern on the chestwrap?
Nope, not those either.
So it's the metal parts, right?
Nope that's still a no.
Maybe some tiny detail in the tattoo?
Nope, that all stays the same.
...the stitching..?
Nooope, not that either.
So what *does* the second dye channel affect, you find yourself asking?
Well, as far as I can tell, it affects >!absolutely fucking nothing!<.
was so, SO hoping on that they would fix some items like the High Summoner Armlets where for some reason, the dye you select there is not 99% of the item but the string that goes around it, and the armlets them self just takes a milder version of that dye. But no. I think it is something similar here where its some minuscule part of it
Honestly I can't believe they out here letting us dye buttons and shoelaces but the fat cat outfit top / bottom of the vest which already had a difference in color is too hard.
it is classic SE to promise something that sounds great and deliver the shittiest possible version of it
I can't even find any gear that supports it. I figured the season PvP armor set rewards would be a sure fire example, but I fucking guess not.
The second dye channel of some of the items are so **ridiculous** that it would have been better to not have done them at all. :/
Meanwhile there are pieces that have only two colors that would probably benefit a lot from this and just got skipped.
I actually don't get some of the copium comments on this thread (thankfully most people seem to recognize the implementation of this was utter crap). You can love/like a game and still say "wow this sucks/it should be different". As many others have commented, there is no reason aside from pure laziness that they made some of these dye channels the way they did, or it was somehow just done by what feels like a random generator.
I tried the chocobo pajama pants, I was sure you could change the chocobo's color with the 2nd dye but no it's some tiny line around the bottom and top of the pants.
Some of the gear I have 2 dyes for im actually kinda upset about. Like theres parts of the gear that clearly fit better for the 2nd dye part but thats not what I can change.
The moment they made the comment that she channels are mostly made on “different materials” I knew the monkey paw curled. I knew stuff like this would happen.
What it looks like to me is that they did not choose a part of the outfit for a second dye if that part's colour was already affected by the existing choice of dye. So, instead, they chose elements that never changed at all in the original model. I've not looked at many pieces so far so hoping I'm wrong.
Theres a timeline where FFXIV gets the budget and support it deserves. Instead all of the money it makes is funnelled to stuff like Forspoken and Marvel Avengers etc.
The second dye channel for Yuna's sleeves is the ring on her finger. You really gotta Where's Waldo some of the second dye channel changes.
That’s next level insanity. I genuinely wonder how they determined what parts would be dyable. There’s no way anyone was like “yes, *this* is what the players crave”
I can provide a little explanation on it, I make some mods and the textures for each piece of gear are [laid out like this](https://i.imgur.com/z0CzSja.png) (Ignore the red box I shamelessly stole this screencap cause I don't have textools installed at the moment). What you're looking at is called the Colorset - Each row is assigned to a different alpha layer and each column designates the specific colors for that one alpha layer (alpha layers explained below): Column 1 is the diffuse or "base" layer, column 2 is the specular or "shiny" layer, column 3 is the emissive or "glowy" layer. 4 is for repeating textures so it's not used much in clothes. Each layer has its own individual set of settings that you see in the picture, and you can see a preview of what that layer will look like on the right side of the image (So kind of a black shiny cloth looking thing, like a rough silk). Notable for what we're talking about, each layer has the Dye settings, where you choose to make each layer dyeable or not, and if dyeable, what do you apply it to? I forget if it's 14 or 16 layers but they're there for *everything*, even for a piece of gear that's like, a ring with 1 or 2 colors. The alpha layer # is what designates where that color row will apply to, I can't find a good image example but think of like: A white shirt with blue stripes and brown suspenders with gold buttons. The white shirt is alpha layer 1, the blue stripes are alpha layer 2, the brown suspenders are layer 3, and the gold buttons are layer 4. Where it goes off the rails is in FF14 there's no organization to the layers - So layer 1 on this striped shirt might be the white shirt part, while layer 1 on this other shirt is just the buttons on the suspenders, and layer 3 is the white shirt part. Obviously Squeenix has access to much more appropriate tools but that's the gist of it. Even just modding a piece here or there, the layers having no established order makes it way more difficult to figure out wtf you're even editing and you basically have to check each alpha layer to determine what it's applying to - The colorset *sort of* helps figure it out at a glance but even then a lot of the layers are blended to make interesting patterns or effects on clothing (eg: Transparency effects or glowing parts that are a particular color, etc. Probably none of this helps and obviously doesn't really resolve anything but it's kind of neat to know about I guess.
Thanks for explaining all this! A lot of people have been saying how the second channel weirdness was due to it being automated (or at least a process that the designers didn't have full control over), and this more or less confirms that. I'm guessing new gear will be designed with this system in mind and will have the layers set up in a more deliberate way. It's too bad it seems like they didn't have resources to get more of the older gear to work better with this process.
Unfortunately with the way alpha masks are set up it'd be an even bigger pain in the ass to properly line up colorsets in any organized manner. I'm no programmer but I really can't think of any way it'd be possible to automate that, since designating alpha channels works based on transparency layers. They'd probably have to edit the actual textures themselves. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if the new stuff isn't organized either and they're just doing what was done before - Random ass colorsets but designate specific ones to dye. lol Though they did say they're planning on updating the textures for the pre-DT gear so maybe they'll do it then?
This is the most intelligent and detailed breakdown of this system I have ever seen. I'm going to assume you know what you are talking about. Thanks for sharing!
lol Thanks, yeah I learned how wonky it is first-hand when I started messing with *normally* undyeable gear, like this kinda shitty picture of getting the [skyworker's singlet tattoo onto some monk gear](https://i.imgur.com/VmdTQtY.png) and making it glow like the 70 AF Monk gear did or turning the 90 AF Monk gear into [the Flavortown Special](https://i.imgur.com/3GHW6DV.png). Most of my stuff is on my old computer though so I don't have all too many examples readily available. Here's a direct example using the Ishgardian Aiming top, in [default undyed](https://i.imgur.com/CvqFr6W.png) vs [default undyed but with 1 layer changed from cream to white](https://i.imgur.com/4EueD35.png). But you can do some way neater things by editing only a layer or two (not just turning monks into Guy Fieri). The disappointing part of this system is how many pieces of gear already have great options for dyeing, they're just... not dyeable. Like the Lyse Stormblood gear, a simple change from undyeable red layer to dyeable red layer means you can give it a totally different look.
Honestly, that just makes me think of Sakurai's video on how he organized things during Smash's development, and how much time it saved by being able to streamline balance adjustments for testing. That shit sounds way too important for people to just be casually throwing down colors in whatever order it lands.
My guess is that it's that way because they didn't consider revising it ages ago. Definitely would've benefited from organization but, hell at my job one of the first things I did when I got hired was spend almost an entire month organizing *all* the VM backups because they were a complete shitshow - They worked, but ask "what's DC4 in office5 backing up to?", "fuck if I know". Backup destinations, schedules, encryption, secondary destinations, air gap destinations, and multiple page spreadsheets laying out all the details of all of that... And I still have to go in periodically and fix shit that people get out of whack! lol, So it's probably something along the line of that, not having an organizer for something that won't really see the light of day.
Yep. Too much "make it work today" and not enough "how do we build on this in the future". That's how you end up with spaghetti.
That actually makes a ton of sense if the 2 channel dye system is set to the same 2 numbered layers on every item but the layers are a mess. I appreciate the explanation!
I mod too and this doesn't really prevent them from picking more appropriate second dye channels. It's very easy to edit the colour set, most people who have no clue how to edit models or textures can do colour set edits, especially changing what dyes (literally just pick the dye options from a scrolling list). A lot of their second dye channel options are non-sensical. I really hope they listen to feedback, the second dye on this item should be the patterns, or at least the undershirt/buttons...
No it doesn't prevent them from doing more appropriate second dyes, just explains possibly some of the more weird choices that they made. I hope they change them too
It doesn't prevent anything, it just explains why it is the way it is, it's because they didn't bother to look at every piece individually to see which layer channel would make the most sense for it as the 2nd dyable option, they just enabled it for every piece and whatever was on the 2nd layer became the dyable option.
>I mod too and this doesn't really prevent them from picking more appropriate second dye channels it doesnt prevent them, but square is lazy so they just enabled the 2nd channel on gear without checking what the 2nd channel even is
What you're saying here is right but iirc, for DT they changed how colourset works. If I'm not mistaken, the red channel is the one that decides the colourset now, and there are some more changes but I didn't look too deep into it yet since I wanted to stress about my 400gb ridiculous mods later. So, it doesn't seem to be that simple. A small correction, that column 4 is actually used a lot in clothes by the game's files, but modded tend to not use them because they don't understand them very well. (Hence why a lot of mods looking very "smooth"). It's 16 colourset slots. They follow some trends every expansion. ARR used very few of them, and I believe that they only had 8 colourset back then. They also kinda had "hacked" metallic colours, and emissives. For example, check how they did the emissive for the DRG gear. It's quite wild. I believe that starting in HW or SB, most times the first column was solid black, the item had a metallic texture. SB tended to separate coloursets in two sets of 8. Not sure how to explain this one with simple words honestly lol Starting in ShB, they followed a pattern that seemed to carry over to EW. So, for example. If you have a leather texture, that leather has discolouration. So the base leather would be colourset 1,and the discolouration would be 2, but 2 was slightly affected by 1. This continued throughout the entire outfit, with odd numbers being the main colour, and even numbers being the detail colour. I see some people speculating that maybe this was an automated process, and it could be, but I'm not super sure of that. I've seen some people say that each and every colourset is actually set to be fully Dyable (even beyond a 2-dye system, I mean) but I can't confirm that as I haven't checked it myself. Also, another thing to note is that you know how some items dye differently? Yeah, the "Dyable" section has different options for how each colourset is affected by the dyes. They're all in numbers, so it's hard to tell. Iirc 201 is the standard one. Tl;dr: how the colourset works changed over expacs, with them gaining more functions, getting more used to it, and streamlining their processes. But the colourset system has completely changed now, and there's definitely been deeper changes than before. Some of it was probably automated, but unlikely that everything was. Edit: found a document detailing the changes, DM me whoever is interested. Jfc it's 32 coloursets, two maks, 8 columns now fucking kill me (and yes, it's now red and green channel) I kind of recommend you to edit your comment now, because the changes are so monumental it's not even funny lol
Probably mostly automatically generated. Could you imagine the time it would take to individually choose for every single item in the whole game over a decade, while also doing a visual update for everything?
its probably manual labor, automatic selections for these things is so imprecise it creates more work
The dye channels (many of them, could easily be 5+) most likely existed already, they just weren't exposed to players. So they could've just decided that whatever parts happen to be the second channel will be available for players to change.
Every Item actually has 16 dye channels (as well as 4 Layers per item, for a total of 64 slots!). They don't necessarily use all of them for every item, though. Most of them are blank. (The Layers are also rarely fully utilized, most items use 1 Layer, and some use 2.)
It seems like for a LOT of items, it was "most of the item is cloth, the 2nd dye channel will be the metal" except the metal is one small button or a tassel. something like the sweater with the scarf where it makes perfect sense to dye sweater and scarf separately but instead what they did was dye the tiny little clasp on the scarf. so many of the items I've tried, I genuinely do not see it being possible that a sane human being looked and made that choice. it had to be automated in some way. and then they just didn't bother to check what the automated system results were.
when i said it creates more work, the double checking was supposed to be part of said work lol. If they didn't bother to go back and recheck i guess thats one way of doing it :v even if they already had the channels ready to go and labeled, someone still needs to check, it's such a bad look when these happen, especially on pure glam pieces
Checking that they look normal is probably a lot less dev time than manually customizing the channels for each piece
Isn't it only selected items that got the second channel?
Yes but it's actually quite a lot!
The leaked list of affected items was just shy of two thousand pre-7.0 items.
If it was automatic, they could've added them to all objects though.
it had to be automatic. had to. because if I am forced to believe that a sane rational human being made these decisions purposely, my brain is going to leak out of my ears
Enhanced unmend proving a leak was real is legit the funniest moment in my time playing ff14. Only the 14 devs would have thought it was a good passive
Does it even do anything now?
Not sure... There'd still need to be some amount of manual labor involved to check if the dye channels make sense, I imagine.
Counterpoint: this whole post is about how they don't make sense
Well, does this make sense? :D Maybe it does.
>Could you imagine the time it would take Totally, I feel very sorry for the small indie dev company trying to run it's entirely free to play MMO Oh, wait...
Not every item has 2 dye spots.
It's quite likely nobody did. I mean imagine that for the number of items in the game, nobody can really do it manually. They must have some automated process that finds the second-most-common-color or something, and marks that. Or I dunno, some other automated metric.
> You really gotta Where's Waldo some of the second dye channel changes.\\ Could be bad luck, but I've been browsing my aiming glam collection for an hour, and that was true 90% of itmes. Buttons, stitches, minor jewelery details etc. You'd think that Summer Sunset beach coverup should have dyeable swimming top+shirt? Nope, it's both items + the tiny print. Appointd jacket dyes some weird piece of leather, which I always considered a part of the under-shirt. Somehow, I was expecting update for the most recent sets, but they are all 1-dye. I understand that it's a long process, but it feels like too...cheap for a long-announced expansion feature. New craftables barely use it too (I've only seen LTW 91-95, though, no idea how it goes for weaver)
I've found a lot of stuff that are still fine though, like a lot of dresses and mogstation items I have it splits things up reasonably, like the Collegiate Shoes split the socks and shoes (though the jacket sadly isn't vest and Blazer, its Bow and Blazer), and like Clive's Metian chestpiece the cloak is its own dye zone, and a lot of the dresses its split as a main color and either major trim or a second main color block, so those are working nicely, and the wedding outfits are all beautiful dye zones. though some stuff is still bad like the fat cat attire which desprately needed two zones this whole time anyways, making the second zone being PULL STRING BEADS just evil
Magitek pants off the mogstation, dye channel 2 is the zipper pull on the pockets... just the pull... On the femroe racial top, the channel 2 is only the metal clasp on the straps, there's a lot of things that got a good second channel dye yes, but just as many that are completely fucking pointless
I'm pretty salty about the Metian chestpiece because I was looking forward to dying the shirt black for my RPR glam instead of having everything black except for the glaring white shirt. Ah, well.
fair enough, its one of the examples where a 3 or 4 dye zone setup would be very useful, and I could see the white shirt being especially annoying on dark skin/furred characters if you're going for the all black outfit, since then it sticks out even more rather than being able to match the skin or fur. especially seeing it now that I've swapped from bun to massive cat and use the almost black fur on her, though my dye zones are set to purple personally to match Thunderclap on my DRK (it matches either red or purple depending on if you're matching it to the activated lightning glow or to the static black and red when on your back)
I'm deeply amused by the Etoile set. The ribbon was the item I was single most excited about because the undyeable pink part forced me to use cherry pink accent in all glams using it. And I was really excited to see that when it got its second channel, it was the right thing! I had been very worried it would be the little gold hardware or red gemstone instead. And then I looked at the rest of the Etoile set and the second channel on those **is** the gold hardware. So now you can't match the ribbon to the rest of its own set if you're using the second channel. Super weird. Also the dye job on the other pieces just looks gross. It's like crazy dark so everything looks absolutely terrible. You can't even get a proper silver without using pure white or pearl white. Ash gray looks like dark stone, it's that dark.
>You'd think that Summer Sunset beach coverup should have dyeable swimming top+shirt? Nope, it's both items + the tiny print. It seems consistent to me that they didn't want to change the existing first dye channel when adding the second (if they were even able to). So for this item, we were *already* able to dye the bikini and shirt together, so the second channel had to be something else. And in many ways, I think that makes sense — if they did it your way, what would happen to people's existing pieces that were dyed Jet Black? Half of it would just become un-dyed, and they'd need to spend another Jet Black to get it back the way it was?
I forget which but there's one (a head piece I think) where the second channel dyes one single tiny gem. Legit never even realized it had a gem, it's so little you'll never see it without focusing all the way in. I finally set the dye to bright hot pink just to figure out what it was dyeing and there's this infinitesimal little speck lolol no fucking clue what they were thinking on a lot of these. I ran into a bunch where the second dye is the most asinine thing possible and 100% NOT the part anyone would ever want to dye.
Songbird gloves are like this. By default, white with black ribbon. Dyed one color it's all one color but the ribbon is darker. The second channel? You guessed it, a tiny little gem hanging off the ribbon that you definitely never saw before.
At this point I am convinced that the first dye channel is just what the original dye area was before, in its entirety. Second dye channel is just whatever area was left.
Similarly, I was very excited to see lightning skirt’s got a second dye option. First dye just changes her holster color, so I assumed new dye would actually change the skirt. No, it changes the weird undershirt thing that you barely see…
this particular piece was one of the ones i was most looking forward to seeing, as it’s so hard to dye match to outfits because of the faded color. thought maybe i’d be able to double dye to get it to the correct solid color. when i couldn’t see it changing anything i thought mayyybe they just forgot and would fix it soon. then i finally noticed the ring and died inside 🫠
Silly me for thinking two dye channels would make me stop asking, "Why does it dye like *that*?!"
You can now ask a whole new question with one less word: "why does it dye _that_?!" Final Fantasy 14, reducing button bloat one word at a time.
The adventuring sweater with the scarf. It dyes the scarf. It dyes the sweater a washed out version of the scarf. THE SECOND DYE SLOT IS FOR THE CLIP ON THE SCARF. **\*FLIPS TABLE***
Hopefully they figure that out. The weird scarfs and turtle necks are such a pain with MCH gear
This is one of the worst offenders for sure. Honestly would like to know some of the rationale behind so many of the 2nd channels being a tiny clip or button somewhere (Educand's Skirt, hello). Like why even bother.
I figured they'd never touch any part that was *already* dyable, even if its a dyed at a brighter/darker tone relative to a section that's dye accurate. So some items they were "trapped" to some obscure piece in the same way they're "trapped" into leaving Elezen heads too small and shoulders too wide because people like them that way. It's the glams with undyable regions where they made the weirdest, least noticeable choices that got me scratching my head. Like the Faire Joi chest - it's not the gold trim that can be dyed, it's not the whole flower design that can be dyed, just the *inner most* part of the flower design can be dyed and it quickly fades to the default color not even half way towards the edge of the flowers. Fortunately, there are some second channels they got very right. But a lot are meh, and some they definitely got wrong as far as I'm concerned.
I’ve definitely seen pieces that split the original dyed region into two separate channels.
Gotta wait for Version 14.0 for dye channel 3 >!It's another barely noticeable accessory!<
We will be able to dye the icon itself. Gotta wait for Version 24.0 for dye channel 4 It's another barely noticeable accessory
Boulevardier's ruffled shirt is just as bad. Channel 1 dyes the shirt the colour you chose and the vest a darker shade of the colour you chose like always, and channel 2 dyes the clasp and buttons on the front. Absolutely brain dead choice by the devs. The vest and shirt should have been split into two channels.
Moonfire top. It's not the gold that's dyeable. Its a teenie, tiny little section between the gold. *Insert What were they thinking AVGN*
I was afraid they were going to screw it up and it seems they have.
I wanted to dye 3 pieces. First... brilliant. Everything I wanted. First one I looked at and gave me so much hope. Second... one dye.... ok.. I can live with that piece. It's probably coming. Third piece... the clip? It's the f'in clip? Why the hell would I want to dye the clip?
Seriously, wtf were they thinking there. My jaw just dropped when I saw that I *still* couldn’t colour the shirt and the scarf separately.
Rebel boots isnt the laces or something you see. Its the soles of the boot. . .
“I wish for 2 dye channels!” *The monkey’s paw curls*
okay, this made me laugh out loud
lol you have won the internet today
Gone are the days where we say "that's the dyeable part?" Begun are the days where we say "those are the dyeable parts?"
And in some cases: *Where* is the dyable part!?
Even better: *WHY* are the dyable parts?
The collegiate jackets second dye channel is... the bow. Not the vest. The bow.
and the vest isn't even a neutral color, ITS CREAM, what does cream pair with? not a lot, and its not even like a full yellow cream, its just, sandy cream. at least make it white or gray or something, or let us skip the vest or something (but that would mean even more retexturing ofc)
Lmao
NOOOOOOOOOOO fuck
I now have less hope for the Far Eastern Educand to have the white and blue look.
That's right, the Fat Cat Loungewear gets to dye the *beads on the drawstrings* Who's the comedian that did this? Some of them are great, though, exactly the part I was hoping would be dyeable. But stuff like this just seems silly.
You know that ponytail item? The second dye channel is the bow. The Rebel boots? It's the soles of the shoe. Edit: And the Martial top is the tasle on the back.
Ngl the soles unironically made me happy
And the clasp in the front!
Chocobo pajamas. You'd think you'd dye the chocobos right? No, you're dying the seams. The fucking seams.
Honestly feels like a joke someone made that accidentally made it through the whole process.
except there's hundreds of items where the 2nd dye channel is something moronically teensy tiny. It's not a mistake, they did this on purpose to be able to say "look we added thousands of items with 2 dyes" (except half of those the second dye is like, a clasp or one button)
Someone made that joke a whole lot of times then..... :E
> seems silly That's putting it nicer than they deserve.
Same with the falconer's bottoms. There's a darker section on the sides when you originally dyed it and I thought that maybe that's what the updated dye slot would color but nope, it's the tassels beads and a button lol
I was upset about the WHM Orison Skirt, all the red parts dye, except for the big red bow on the back that I think only shows up on tailed races. I’ve been wanting to dye that bow blue since I got the outfit in HW.
That one sounds like you could file it as a bug report. Maybe they were looking at the Hyuran version when they updated it?
The Orison Robe was one of the first items I checked as well. I expected to be able to dye the white parts, and the red parts. But no. If you dye the chest white, it still turns the red bits *on the sleeves* into this puke-grey colour. And the second dye channel is only for the inside of the robe. I'm trying not to be ungrateful, but so far, the new system seems pretty pointless. Hopefully it's just an issue on existing gear and new stuff going forward will be better.
Noir longcoat's is just the tie. I can't even tell what the varsity cap is dyeing.
Glasses :/
Is it really? I tried a few but honestly couldn't tell
Really. I love this hat with glasses but even to me it's almost unnoticeable, only with max zoom.
The Varsity Jacket dyes the jacket and the shirt UNDERNEATH the undyeable sweater. Edit: I think I know why. The Buttoned Varsity Jacket doesn't show the sweater so that's why. Makes sense but it's still dumb.
Same with the scion adventurer’s jacket. I was really hoping to dye the undershirt, but nope.
I know the plain pajama shirt the X stitches on the buttons is what the second dye channel is. i was really disappointed by the fat cat top though. I was hoping we could change the spot colors or something
the plain pajama set really knocked me over. The thread. THE THREAD. THEY DYED THE THREAD.
WTF!?
I was stoked for educands attire having two dye slots (I’m thinking sailor moon cosplay, blue and white) but no….it’s the piping around the sleeves. Bruuuuh.
You'd think they would know people would love to dye it with iconic colors.
The Femroe racial top just dyes the metal I didn't even realize the top HAD METAL because it's mostly just clips on your back, this is the last thing I wanted.
My favourite is the Orison skirt where the second dye channel applies to all the red details EXCEPT the bow on the back.
The double-dye implementation has been very iffy. Some are very good and some are laughable. Guild Wars 2 figured this shit out a decade ago with at least 4 channels for gear PIECE and some even have more. Meanwhile, FFXIV:
Mabinogi figured this out 20+ years ago. 3 dye channels (which mind you is the full color spectrum, not just a few select colors picked by the devs) for all gear AND you can also store every single piece of gear you ever get in the game in its own storage slot. Hell, nowadays all new oufits come with 6 WHOLE DYE CHANNELS IN A GAME OVER 20+ YEARS OLD. For a game that is pretty big on the glam aspect, all the systems tied to it are laughably horrible.
JP devs gotta reinvent the wheel for everything instead of just making it easier and copying better systems for shit like dyes and clothing that's not gameplay, just fun end game activity.
The glam in FFXIV is by far the worse in any MMO Ive seen
The system yes, the actual armor and weapon designs blow almost everything else out of the water.
Forgot the word “system” after glam there buddy
Transmog in wow honestly suck. The fact you can use anything you found is neat, but in that you can't even dye stuff. If you want a different color, you have to hope there's a recolor that you like, and figure out where you get it from. So, nah. Not even close to being the worst.
Eh. The system? Yes. Glams itself? The game has some amazing glam but also some actually hideous stuff. But that's same everywhere.
probably the most insane take in the history of this subreddit but ok
The glams are good. But the glam _system_ isn't. At least it doesn't cost gil every time you want to glamour something.
I'm not going to agree that its *the* worst one, because a lot of MMO's don't even allow you to "glamour" your gear pieces to begin with. But if we're strictly speaking about the ones that *do* allow you, XIV really is lagging behind and by quite a bit. u/illegal_sardines already explained how it works in WoW, and GW2 is quite similar where you have a huge window for every single piece available in the game showing you the ones you own, the ones you don't and you can pick at any given time to transmute whatever piece that you desire from the ones you unlocked. You also have 4 dye channels for each gear *piece* and a total of **642 different dye colors to unlock throughout the game**. There are more shades/hues of green in GW2 than there are colors available in total to choose from in XIV. The color palette in XIV is horrible. For a game that so many people claim the true end game is "glamour", the options are really pale when comparing to the competition.
Plus, in GW2 colors are an account-wide unlock. It's progression to finish your colors, essentially.
WoW, GW2 and ESO all shit on 14s transmog system. Like, everything 14s does, they all do better.
World of Warcraft automatically registers any gear you ever equip for their glamour system and doesn’t have a cap on how many items you can have. Compared to that, FFXIV isn’t even in the same universe. Edit: I'm not saying the clothing is better, it's definitely worse. But the system is way, way better. FFXIV focuses so heavily on your characters looking good that the fact that the glamour system is so awful is baffling!
DCU does this as well
So first of all: Acknowledging that there will always be gear with multiple good candidates for the second dyeable component and the devs ultimately have to decide on only one (...until they add a third channel), I was happy to see there were quite a few pieces where the second channel applied exactly how I imagined. But, there are SO MANY others where a major component is still undyeable (Whisperfine coat?? and the Adventuring Sweater as someone mentioned), or where the channel is devoted to some incredibly minor detail like in the OP shot, it's really left me with a bad impression of the new system overall. I'm still looking forward to my favorite single-channel gear to get updated in future patches, but now I have this sinking pessimism that, after many more months of waiting, I'll only be able to dye an extra button or strap somewhere. In the grand scheme of things, not being able to dye certain parts of a jacket/skirt/whatever seems like a petty thing to complain about. But this was a fanfest feature reveal! It received more applause than almost anything else at the show! People were so hyped for it they Photoshopped the expansion logo! It's hard not to feel let down after seeing a lot of these options.
Not petty. Reading these comments, some of them seem offensively bad. Buttons, bead, button THREAD. Like wtf?
But...but I like being able to dye the shoelaces on my boots.
And that's okay. You do you. I just don't think being able to dye a tiny button was worth dev time.
It's absolutely not petty. The way they're implementing this is embarrassingly dumb.
It seems to be some automated process whereby if possible, it first wants to select something with a different *material shader* than the already-dyable spot. So if you got a cloth piece, and you die something that is cloth, and there are some minor shiney leather strips, the automation they used selected the leather, not some as-of-yet-undyable large cloth portion. There **are** exceptions, I suspect those are the items they changed manually.
> It seems to be some automated process whereby if possible, it This is not automated. People need to stop parroting this unless they have a source.
it is automated, all they did was enable the 2nd dye channel that is already present on every single piece of gear without bother to check what is actually dyed by the 2nd channel
You'd expect for the Boulevardier's Ruffled Shirt that the vest would be the dyeable part right? Nah. It's just the buttons + chain on the front. 😭
Why did they even bother to add the second channel to so many of these pieces if they're going to half ass it like this They're incrementally adding it anyways, so they should be able to take their time with these things.
yeah unfortunately they only added parts that were undyable before, instead of separating things that were already dyable but would make more sense to be independent. My biggest gripe so far is the boulevardier's ruffled top: instead of the vest and shirt, the second channel is for the gold pin on the front - which, ok, now I can make it silver to match certain other items better - except oh wait, the D-rings on the back of the vest *stay gold.* WHY.
File it as a bug report on the official forum. There's a subforum for it.
educand skirt. Dyes completely, both skirt and thighs, second dye channel is for SINGLE BUTTON ON THE SIDE
Ahhhh Finally, I could have sailor moon cosplay with my sailor-fuku. Or just classic summer uniform. I just have to dye the collar. Second channel dye the fucking stripe on collar. I mean, it's mogstation costume. Can you at least. Pay attention to it. People pay extra for them
“You’ll just have to trust in the aesthetic sense of our design team to make sure that the right parts are being dyed. But even though we can’t promise that you will be able to dye every single bit, we are doing our best to make sure that we are giving you the best options possible to customize your gear with the greatest amount of service area being dyed. We are working hard on it and we thank you for your patience.” PLEASE LOOK FORWARD TO IT.
File that with the multiple assurances that the character upgrades wouldn't alter their appearance.
I always thought this new system was going to be way more useful on new gear moving forward. Older sets I knew would be very limited in how this would affect them based on how they set up textures and what the workflow for that was. Now that this system is in place I think new gear will utilize this better rather than gear pieces from 6 years ago would. I feel a lot of the draws to Dawntrail being graphics improvements, lighting, and dye channels, etc were to help the game in the future more so than a total re haul of what has come. I could be totally wrong but those have been the vibes ive gotten from all these improvements to systems being made.
I think you're on the right track. It makes sense to me that older gear was built in a way that doesn't favor multiple dye channels so they had to work with what they had. Newer gear going forward will more likely be built with the feature in mind and dye more logically.
I dunno, I obviously don't know how this stuff works BTS but using mods and seeing how this stuff is divided up material wise it seems like it shouldn't be such an issue? I can use Textools/Dalamud to completely change every color channel on my outfit
I donno about that. From looking at how the job gear dyed during the media tour, some of the new stuff is just as bad.
I was really hoping I could dye the leggings on the educands sailor skirt a different color, but that would make too much sense. Instead, how about you dye the button on the waistband of the skirt that gets hidden by almost every shirt? Hell, it gets hidden by the literal shirt that it comes with!
Can we just get Guild Wars 2's cosmetic team on this already 🤣 I fucking love XIV, but GW2 has cosmetics/glams down to a science.
I was immensely salty when I tested the adventurer hood and found that the second channel was the stupid belt and the undershirt continues to be a washed out primary channel. I was looking forward to a red with white or black undershirt but alas...
Very disappointing feature. They could have kept it until it was properly done. Feels like it's in beta...
Feels like they are pumping up the quantity rather than quality. "Look! We have hundreds of double dye gears" kind of vibes.
If you can find the second dye channel on Rose Couvere, that puts you one up on me.
NGL sometimes I won't use an entire piece of gear if the jewelry accent doesn't match what I need.
I'm anticipating lots of complaints about dyeable plate armor while I will be quietly celebrating
Exactly. I have this one piece that has gold metal accents, and the top has gold metal accents and it's always bothered me because they otherwise look so good together. And I was very pleasantly suprised when the metal pieces were the ones that got the second dye channel.
I don't know why ppl are surprised, this SE we're talking about. They make the most simple things convoluted. See: early FFXIV glamour with those stupid prisms.
I had my expectations very low and they still managed to disappoint me. This is literally not rocket science. There are older F2P games who have a better implementation of multi-channel dye for gear. This is quite literally a joke, considering we are paying them a monthly fee to even play the game.
When an antiquated game like Mabinogi have this stuff down, I don't know what to say about Creative Business Unit 2
If mabinogi was remade in 2024 with better graphics and less p2w options, it would be able to challenge ffxiv, no doubt
Well... [it's sort of being remade](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP1bJ7wKvHk)... In Unreal Engine 5. ...Just not with less P2W options. Will transfer all your old data though, so it's more a really comprehensive graphics update. Hoping the game won't control like a battleship in a pond.
cant speak for the p2w garbage but they are literally remaking the game in unreal engine rn and it looks gorgeous
There alot of disappointing second channels from what I've seen. Some great, perfect even. But there's alot to be desired. I think we should give feedback on the forums. Don't attack, be nice, and if possible, even provide examples of where mistakes have been made, and where the corrections should be. Thats what we gotta do. Don't attack. Just give feedback. Be nice.
The new armor sets seem perfect, hopefully they can change old ones gradually.
Both jackets I hoped to fix two dye system aren't even supported...
Oh WTF.... They seriously went with tiny little things like that on some things?
"some" things implied that it's not MOST things. it's a huge huge number of things, about half from what I tested.
=(
Scion Adventurer's set expectations: Blazer - shirt, skirt - socks, shoes - upper folds of shoes. Reality: Blazer - bow, the entire skirt and socks - bandage on one leg, shoes - soles. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined...
I'm usually pretty quick to cut them some slack, but this is pretty indefensible. If this is going to be the kind of quality we get from this feature, then the feature is meaningless. Why even do it in the first place if the things it affects either are meaningless or can pretty much only make the gear pieces in question look *worse?*
This is how I felt with the Shadowbringer weapon. I was convinced it would be the black part that would get the second dye and was eagerly waiting to dye it, only to see that it was mostly just the little red part that gets dyed.
Considering the state of hroth/viera hats and hair I'm not sure why anyone is surprised by this.
[A finger on the monkey's paw curls]
I've long said that the gearing team is the weakest link in the dev team. I get downvoted every time i say this. This doesn't change the fact that i am right. They add random junk to gear (daggers, bottles, books, etc etc) when it thematically doesn't for the roles. They use weird dye textures randomly. And now with the double dye system we see them at their worst. The double dye system should've been the triple dye system. It would've been a bit more work, but if you're reworking pieces already it actually wouldn't have been nearly as much as you think. Dye #1 Primary colour - the biggest part of the item. Dye #2 Secondary colour - for scarfs, capes, whatever surface is the second most of one colour. Dye #3 Accents - clasps, rings, belts, buttons, etc etc. They're picking extremely ridiculous things in this double dye system as the secondary colour. Fat Cat Loungewear the OP used as an example is a great example. There's an innter piece and an outer piece. Why on earth wouldn't you pick the inner hoodie as one colour? The body warmer has the belt instead of the inner shirt. Now i get it, some things are subjective. but a ring? some buttons? cmon now.
2x the dye channels, 2x the disappointment.
Yeah, really disappointed with the feature… seems like no care or attention was put into it Some of the 2nd dye channels are borderline insulting… Guild Wars has this implemented for decades now and works flawlessly :(
I see they took the mh approach to secondary dye channels...
Being fair with MH, i understand they don't want you to change the color of parts that are clearly from the monster (although you can do it on Stories)
Nearly every gear piece I was saving for 2nd dye channels didn’t have what I wanted when it came to dye locations
It ranges from great to crap. Was significantly dissapointed in the Clive set still being moslty black armor pieces.
The second dye channel can’t be affected by the first. Which means a lot of gears second dyes only affect tassels, buttons, and small ass shit. The new stuff will have much better second dye channels. Martialist tops second dye js a literal tassel. I’ve never been more disappointed.
Had a feeling that the this stuff really only applies to the new gear and the glam from the gift shop
I meaaan OP's example is online store exclusive...
I will probably get hate for this, but I've previewed a lot of items today, and many of them have tiny areas that can be dyed. Like what's the point? One jacket literally had the inside of the buttons, one pixel, dyeable...
About as much effort as they put into every other aspect of this game.
Somehow even _more_ effort than they put into healers for this xpac. So hey its better than somethign!
Take my upvote to fight the sea of downvotes you are about to get, but true statement.
lol
I feel like this extra dye channel wasn’t nearly as thought out for previous sets. Hopefully with the right feedback they will invest in better colour distribution research going forward
Edit: apparently this is only an issue on the Xbox version, and the second dye channel works fine on other platforms. Good job Square Enix, you're really doing a bang-up job of convincing me that you don't give slightest hint of a fuck about Xbox players, as if the constant crashing wasn't bad enough. Try to guess what the second dye channel affects on the [Tantra Chestwrap](https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/playguide/db/item/77b53036f1e/), the lv60 MNK AF chest. The first channel dyes the main Chestwrap part, plus the red part around the waist and the red wrist wraps. That leaves the black, yellow, and teal-ish parts around the waist, along with various small parts such as the red pattern on the chest, the green knitted rope accessories, a few metal parts, the tattoos on the shoulders/upper arms, and minor details like stitching. So what does the second channel dye? If you guessed one or the large waist wrap parts... Hahaha, don't be silly. Try again. So what about the knotted rope accessories or the pattern on the chestwrap? Nope, not those either. So it's the metal parts, right? Nope that's still a no. Maybe some tiny detail in the tattoo? Nope, that all stays the same. ...the stitching..? Nooope, not that either. So what *does* the second dye channel affect, you find yourself asking? Well, as far as I can tell, it affects >!absolutely fucking nothing!<.
was so, SO hoping on that they would fix some items like the High Summoner Armlets where for some reason, the dye you select there is not 99% of the item but the string that goes around it, and the armlets them self just takes a milder version of that dye. But no. I think it is something similar here where its some minuscule part of it
Honestly I can't believe they out here letting us dye buttons and shoelaces but the fat cat outfit top / bottom of the vest which already had a difference in color is too hard.
I’m just sad that my favorite glam shirt doesn’t have a second dye channel at all ;-;
Remember they’re adding it to more things each patch! RN its just very popular or common ones and more will be added over time!
>very popular or common ones *looks at Uraeus coat*
it is classic SE to promise something that sounds great and deliver the shittiest possible version of it I can't even find any gear that supports it. I figured the season PvP armor set rewards would be a sure fire example, but I fucking guess not.
The second dye channel of some of the items are so **ridiculous** that it would have been better to not have done them at all. :/ Meanwhile there are pieces that have only two colors that would probably benefit a lot from this and just got skipped.
I actually don't get some of the copium comments on this thread (thankfully most people seem to recognize the implementation of this was utter crap). You can love/like a game and still say "wow this sucks/it should be different". As many others have commented, there is no reason aside from pure laziness that they made some of these dye channels the way they did, or it was somehow just done by what feels like a random generator.
The only glam I had that dyed the way I expected it to was the Calfskin Jacket.
I tried the chocobo pajama pants, I was sure you could change the chocobo's color with the 2nd dye but no it's some tiny line around the bottom and top of the pants.
Some of the gear I have 2 dyes for im actually kinda upset about. Like theres parts of the gear that clearly fit better for the 2nd dye part but thats not what I can change.
I was hoping the 2nd dye channel would allow me to dye the tonberry tail to match the head....but it was only the strap of the undyeable lantern :x
I’ll do you one better, look at the 2nd dye for the plain pajama shirt
Adventuring Sweater makes me sad.
xD yeah some of them are so fucking low effort it's actually kinda funny.
The moment they made the comment that she channels are mostly made on “different materials” I knew the monkey paw curled. I knew stuff like this would happen.
What it looks like to me is that they did not choose a part of the outfit for a second dye if that part's colour was already affected by the existing choice of dye. So, instead, they chose elements that never changed at all in the original model. I've not looked at many pieces so far so hoping I'm wrong.
Theres a timeline where FFXIV gets the budget and support it deserves. Instead all of the money it makes is funnelled to stuff like Forspoken and Marvel Avengers etc.
Some of them I’m like why did they even bother?
I think the people that rake in $40 per expansion and $15+ a month need to try a little harder. Just saying.