Untintable regions on skins

[60framespersecond]

I've been in the market for some new skins, right now especially Loki, and noticed that a lot of skins in general have regions that cannot be modified by the given color channels. To name the Loki skins that have this issue

1. Default
2. Incubus
3. Jotunheim
4. Knave
5. Kodama

That's 5 out of 7 available skins. Also for Ivara:

1. Default
2. Arcuata
3. Astrea
4. Kuvael
5. Youkai

Again, 5 out of 7.

It's not always that bad. But when I'm looking for a skin and checking some different colorations before buying, just to have parts of the skin not matching, totally kills it for me. Sure, it's mostly some blackish or greyish color, but even that can be a significant restriction.

I can see that it's difficult for an artist to create something that matches his vision with only 4 color channels available. As a paying customer though, I believe DE should do something about this problem.

[Vulbjorn]

It's not that difficult, it's just sometimes untintables are part of the design itself, like machinery under plating. I was thinking about introducing untintable areas into my own skins at one point too, before being talked out of it.

[lukinu_u]

Il y a 1 heure, Vulbjorn a dit :

I was thinking about introducing untintable areas into my own skins at one point too, before being talked out of it.

Same, I did it that once and got a bunch of negative feedback. I really didn't think people hated uncolorable tints that much, especially when they are small machinery parts.

[Scruffel]

4 hours ago, 60framespersecond said:

I can see that it's difficult for an artist to create something that matches his vision with only 4 color channels available. As a paying customer though, I believe DE should do something about this problem.

Here's the problem with trying to point this out as an issue, is that most of the skins you are pointing out are TennoGen (except for the Default and Knave skin for Loki, and Default for Ivara), and DE doesn't usually do changes to these items that relate to their stylistic choices or intentions. In the past they have made a point that if an artist designs a skin in a specific way, they are allowed to as long as they still find it acceptable under their guidelines.

Just to name an example I can remember, when the Saryn ION skin was added to the game, people realized that there was no Accent color region, and that the metallic part of the skin was set to Tertiary. While some argued that the skin should have gotten a proper Accent region and/or even reported it as a bug, DE had to address it saying that it was completely intentional by the artist and wasn't going to be subject to change unless the artist says so (something along the lines of that). Even though you may disagree with the work of the artists, that sort of how subjectivity works.

I understand the idea that if you are paying for something, you should get something of equal value of return, but it's not like the skin is suddenly going to fit to your exact expectations. It's very hard for any skin to do that, and expecting for DE to 'fix the issue', seems a bit unfair to those artists. In fact, when you think about it, if DE were to also think this would be a problem, don't you think they would have prevented artists from making skins with untintable areas in the first place? To a certain degree, if DE finds it to be acceptable, and the artists are allowed to do it, it kinda goes back to the consumer's personal preference around it. And it's fine to not like an item for that reason, but expecting someone else in a higher development position to change it seems a bit odd.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Scruffel