Tailor Archive
Thread: Tailor Nerf? Colorization for all?
I don't like it. I do understand why armorsmiths do. I can honestly say that one of the things I enjoy most about being a tailor is working with a customer to come up with just the right outfit in just the right colors. The whole trying-on, try it with this top, no not those boots, eeewww that green is an unfortunate choice for you... i just love that stuff. If anyone and everyone could recolor, or if IDs can do it, or Artisans make a kit, or even if just any Tailor any level could make a kit or recolor... nope, I dun like it, not one bit. I would be very sad to have the "customer service" part of the game taken away from me. It is the one thing that keeps me coming back, day after day.
I agree that everyone should not be able to color, but how about if it worked like this?
Tailors (and only tailors) could recolor clothing based on their own customization skills (you're limited to the palette you normally have) So a novice tailor could recolor, but they'd only have access to the novice tailor colors. It could even work through an Image Design like interface so that the customer could wear the item and you could change the color without having to trade it back and forth (security issue for expensive items)
Wouldn't that help with the customer service side of things? Instead of having to make 5 different jackets to get the right shade of blue for your customer, you'd be able to make one and keep changing the color until they were happy with it (and you wouldn't be stuck with 4 blue jackets you won't be able to sell)
Your skill level would still be important, you'd just have an added ability to help your customers. It doesn't seem like such a bad idea to me.
Hmm. My concern is that if clothing can be recolored at all, why would anyone buy more than one of each item if they could just keep taking it to a tailor whenever they wanted to change colors? Why would I stock anything but black on my vendor? Why would I display ensembles in my shop to show color combinations as well as styles to choose from?
By the time I get to color choices, I've already burned the resources making it, although I've noticed most customers don't realize this, and yes, I do get tired sometimes of making one jacket in 5 shades of unsellable blue before I get the right one for them... but I do not see how making clothes recolorable (gawds, making up words on the fly here) helps the tailor profession in anything other than a small time and resource saver. Those 5 not gonna happen blue jackets get destroyed. I do not charge my customers a "do-over fee." I consider that the cost of doing business.
If I were Customer Doe, I'd buy one set of favorite outfits and then just recolor them over and over. My tailor would see me only rarely. As Tailor Doe, I'd be charging a helluva price to recolor, to make up for lost profits on durable goods.
If I could take back only an item I made and recolor it, still, I see only lost revenues. I do not see customers impulse shopping because they saw a new color combo on display or the vendor if all they ever need to do is get it recolored. Even if clothing decay actually worked and clothes poofed at 0, it would deplete sales.
Maybe I am missing a point somewhere, but I work/play hard to have a good shop and to give my customers a good experience shopping there, but if recoloring was implemented... no, I would just be a walking, talking dye kit. I dun like it.
I do understand that argument. Though I think if we actually had usage decay (and if decayed clothing was unequipable) that wouldn't be such a problem really. Those are big "ifs", I know.
I honestly don't sell alot of multiples in different colorsto people. Most of my customers want completely different looks, not just things in different colors. Those few that do buy things in multiple colors, do so because they like to mix and match, something they still wouldn't be able to do on their own unless they had a traveling tailor along with them.
*shrugs* I don't know, the idea appeals to me, though I understand why others don't like it.
The fallacy there though is that your customer would just go to a tailor that would do it for cheaper (thus you simply lose the money you would have gotten), or worse bitch at you because you are charging for something that costs you little or nothing. Look at how it works out for schematics of synth cloth or RFP. Armorsmiths know that there are tailors that will do it for nothing, and that it costs us nothing in the way of credits or materials to make, so this has become a defacto free service that tailors offer. Colorizing clothing would be the same.
Mystyrys wrote:
If I were Customer Doe, I'd buy one set of favorite outfits and then just recolor them over and over. My tailor would see me only rarely. As Tailor Doe, I'd be charging a helluva price to recolor, to make up for lost profits on durable goods.
ArthurDentOnBria wrote:
The fallacy there though is that your customer would just go to a tailor that would do it for cheaper (thus you simply lose the money you would have gotten), or worse bitch at you because you are charging for something that costs you little or nothing. Look at how it works out for schematics of synth cloth or RFP. Armorsmiths know that there are tailors that will do it for nothing, and that it costs us nothing in the way of credits or materials to make, so this has become a defacto free service that tailors offer. Colorizing clothing would be the same.
LOL! This is too true. Guildies pay me well for my schematics or make sure I never, ever run out of hides and gems, but the off the street buyer just balks at paying a dime for a schematic. Hmph. He's buying my ability to make it is how I see it. Ah well.
Even so, if like in your example, Customer Dude /t plz com now i want blu pants r u coming? I could politley deny him my services by /r That service will cost you 10,000 credits per color change. And you have to pay, in advance, all my travel expenses, round trip,to get to where you are. Or... you could come to my shop and pay the 10k for those blue pants. Or you could buy those pants already in that blue off my vendor for only 4k.
I know his answer already.
And no, I don't want to be engulfed in the recolor my stuff tells like the DEs are. Ack! I may have to drop a crafting station near every vendor I have to hide from customers better and faster. One caught me ducking into the station just last night.... /sigh
This wouldn't really solve anything other than "It's not quite the color I wanted" which is fine by this tailor!
Here's a simple solution I also posted elsewhere:
Have a universal color pallatte for all crafting professions where color is an option. This universal pallatte will also have a number attached to every single color. All colors should be available for all items, but if they insist on restricting some of them, then that should be represented by X'd outboxes in the universal pallatte where they normally wouls be. The colors will be available to choose from at the beginning of the crafting stage before committing resources, so that you can change your mind & see the possible color combinations BEFORE you craft the item. Also the numbers attached to items should be visible to anyone examining an already crafteditem so that color matching for customers with existing items is no longer guesswork & a waste of time & resources.
ToppDog wrote:
Here's a simple solution I also posted elsewhere:
Have a universal color pallatte for all crafting professions where color is an option. This universal pallatte will also have a number attached to every single color. All colors should be available for all items, but if they insist on restricting some of them, then that should be represented by X'd outboxes in the universal pallatte where they normally wouls be. The colors will be available to choose from at the beginning of the crafting stage before committing resources, so that you can change your mind & see the possible color combinations BEFORE you craft the item. Also the numbers attached to items should be visible to anyone examining an already crafteditem so that color matching for customers with existing items is no longer guesswork & a waste of time & resources.
Even better, make everyone be able to see this pallatte. That would give us a way to deal with pesky custemers, "Ok, pick out your own color!" Sometimes screen shots don't really work well enough, or the person dosn't want to check a website for a number pallatte.
Anabelle wrote:
I honestly don't sell alot of multiples in different colorsto people. Most of my customers want completely different looks, not just things in different colors. Those few that do buy things in multiple colors, do so because they like to mix and match, something they still wouldn't be able to do on their own unless they had a traveling tailor along with them.
Anabelle, no offense.. but are you a master tailor yet (your sig still says uniform marshall)? Because that's where all the good, desirable colors come in, as well as the items of clothes people *will* tend to buy in multiple colors. Low cut tops, metal bikini's, fleshwraps, revealing tops, etc. I have sold revealing tops in 10 different colors to the same customer, usually with matching comfortable slacks. I've sold grand healer's robes in six colors to the same customer. Heck, I have customers withbustiers and hot pantsin a dozen colors.
We have gotten zero new schematics since day 1, the only variety we have is color. Enabling the colors to be changed at whim kills the small resale market that we do have. To be honest I haven't had more than a handful ofcustomers who were extremely picky about colors (usually brown) - and since I have over 40 colors identified it's very easy for people to say they'dlike sapphire, or royal, or navy and get thecolor they want.
I still think this idea is just awful.
Ri'a
There is a term called the "Councillor Salesperson" where you try and explainthe options available, and listening to their requests, make choices for them;targetting what they are looking for. It allows for a customer that is not sure of what he wants to get it quickly without having to be bothered with lots of choice. Giving the customer too much choice is hard, and tailors need to help find what the customer wants.
If you are dealing with someone that wants to test things out and try different items on, that's different, but then I have a few customers that are willing to pay for an hour of my time to try different items on, and listen to my suggestions on colour and style. Having about 700 pairs of shoes, I feel that I deserve the right to say I have a sense of fashion...
Colour changes should be available if the customer does not like the shade. Maybe within the first hour of a clothes existence. That way, you can adjust depending on mood or other items. Let the customer do this himself (based on the tailor's palette) Loot drop items should not ever be changable either. That's the penalty for great loot. Come to us if you want nice colours, stick with the +10 poison resistance, if you like sickly orange pants.
To allow people to change colour on a whim whenever they choose is just silly. I buy clothes in more than one colour when I want them that way. How exactly would they go about pretending this does anything but reduce the load on the databases. GET BETTER CODE!!!
Like a lot of tailors, I put the color of an item in my item name. So I sell a "Kicky Muscle Shirt - Green" to some customer. Later, Customer A decides for whatever reason to get it recolored to grey - goes better with her new jacket, whatever. Later still, Customer A puts the shirt on the bazaar to resell it. Customer B, wanting a green shirt, buys it, then gets ticked off at *me* because I'm apparently color-blind, or selling mislabeled shirts on the bazaar, or whatever.
Again, not a huge deal, or one that's likely to happen enough, but just one more potential headache I'd rather not have.
RandDarkstar wrote:
There is a term called the "Councillor Salesperson" where you try and explainthe options available, and listening to their requests, make choices for them;targetting what they are looking for. It allows for a customer that is not sure of what he wants to get it quickly without having to be bothered with lots of choice. Giving the customer too much choice is hard, and tailors need to help find what the customer wants.
It's not so hard to nail down what a customer wants.. I can ask a few questions and narrow it down and usually make the customer something "perfect" on the first try. Now maybe other tailors wind up doing a lot of custom color work, making things one shade at a time lighter. The only time I got stuck doing that was with a customer who wanted 15 different brown/tan items with boots to match. Talk about pulling your hair out!
Anyhow, if my customers want "blue pants" I can offer them a choice of 7 different shades based on whether they want dark (navy), dark with a hint of purple, bright blue (the lost master blue), a mid range purplish-blue, and two light shades. Oh and a denim-ish one. So far I haven't had a customer say "yeah, I like navy but make it 1 shade lighter." It's far more likely that they say "I like that Sky color on your vendor, can I get a small bustier, light bustier and hot pants in that?" Quick and easy and everyone walks away happy.
I'm just rambling now.. but I think just being able to change colors at will is a bad idea. I don't want people bringing other tailor's clothes to me for color changes. How annoying would that be?
Ri'a