Tailor Archive
Thread: Tailor Nerf? Colorization for all?
SueDenim wrote:
One relatively minor, but non-trivial, issue about post-creation recoloring of any sort has to do with sales and marketing.
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.
A very good point! All of my items are labelled with color and I think most tailors do at least a minimal identification of blue/red/yellow etc.
Ri'a
eman7h wrote:
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.
No no no bad. I do not want to become a "design your own clothing" terminal, which is what this would amount to. We'd acutally spend more time with the really picky customers this way, because it's just too much to pick from. Each customer would want to spend a lot more time exploring color, because though they thought before they wanted a red, there are so many other great looking colors to have you show them!
Giving the average customer too many options up front is actually a bad thing. It's overwhelming and it makes their final decision harder. Many of them don't really know exactly what they want, which is where your experience and knowledge of tailoring comes in. The kind of customer with very specific requirements is the kind of person who wouldn't mind going out of game to look at a site and figure out what they want.
Working with customers is fun, but sitting on my end of the computer mousing over the various colors on one piece or another while the customer watches would make it a boring chore.
Anabelle wrote:
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.
It's odd, but most of my sales, custom and vendor, are for an ensemble in multiple colors. Mix and match or just having a full set in several variations. I dunno.
Just one customer today bought every single decorative vest, two-tone skirt, modest skirt, form-fitting undershirt and soft undershirt I had on one of my vendors in a mall. I boggled as I read the mails pouring in. Mentally ticking off how much restocking I was going to need to do on that vendor, and he just kept buying and buying... and I realized he had bought one of each color set, with matching skirts and shirts. And the same color combos in all the Dress Uniform Jackets too. I had all black, black/red, black/blue, black/white, red/white, green/white and blue/white and the mirror opposite of each set as well. He bought them all. Reseller? Maybe. That or a Rainbow Militia?
But then not an hour later, similar on my other vendor on Tatooine. One guy buying multiples of the same set in different color schemes. Different guy. Later still... Customer walks in to get a custom order done. He wants one outfit, but in four color schemes.
/shrug I dunno. I like it. At least some of those guys are getting out of the "Cool and in black" mindset.
But if they give recoloring to all... *poof* ...we can wave goodbye to sales like that.
Have they implemented this in game already? Reason why I asked is because I come home for my lunch break yesterday and my RL BF was playing SWG. He said, hey, come check out this new composite helment I got and look, I can change the colors!
He unequips it, goes into his inventory and radial clicks on the helmet - thus bringing up a tab for a palette of colors that he can easily change it to? What gives? 
Avaleena, there was a problem with the color palette for composite armor that came up in the last patch. Many people's colors went wonky. In order to fix it the devs made it so that anyone can change the color of their composite armor for a two week period.
That's what got this discussion started.
This is what started the dabate hon.
After the last patch, all armor got randomly recoloured, and everyone was upset. They added this colour change palette, to fix what was broken. Unfortunately people thought it was the best thing ever and want it ingame now, to circumvent our skills as tailors.
I don't like it much at all, except to allow the customer to adjust the clothes if we fail to hit the right colour. Short term, or one shot colour adjustment should be allowed, but it's like the Droid Engineers and the customization. I am sure they want to make droids, not hang out sniffing paint fumes as they recolour every droid in the city, because the colour runs out in 12 hours.
From a long-term master tailor the color vs customer pickyness issue has been quite a strain on me (even on a low-pop server like test) Many times I end up with 5-6 versions of the same clothing in different shades because the customer couldn't make up his or her mind what color they wanted. (sigh) When you go through 5-6 crates of synth per session because of pickyness the lure of this dye kit certainly seems very appealing.
Especialy if it was 1) tailor only and 2) keyed to your current skill.
I know there will be drawbacks to this addition like people asking me to re-colorize their clothes occasionaly. But to me, personaly, that sounds a lot more appealing than the current way we do things.
Anabelle wrote: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.
That might not be a bad idea as long as the clothing decayed every time it was colored (after all, bleaching and redying is not very good for fabric). If it didn't I would probably never get a chance to make new clothes because of all the people lining up to have their clothes recolored instead.
Vandessa wrote:
From a long-term master tailor the color vs customer pickyness issue has been quite a strain on me (even on a low-pop server like test) Many times I end up with 5-6 versions of the same clothing in different shades because the customer couldn't make up his or her mind what color they wanted. (sigh) When you go through 5-6 crates of synth per session because of pickyness the lure of this dye kit certainly seems very appealing.
Especialy if it was 1) tailor only and 2) keyed to your current skill.
I know there will be drawbacks to this addition like people asking me to re-colorize their clothes occasionaly. But to me, personaly, that sounds a lot more appealing than the current way we do things.
Why not just make color samples out of soft undershirts? I can't possibly imagine going through that much synth making clothes that a customer won't buy because the color isn't quite right. Even my worst experience with a color picky customer left me with 2 or 3 tan spec ops dusters that eventually sold off my vendor. And after dealing with him for more than an hour, when he said he wanted to choose some camos next I told him I was out of materials and would have to do it another time (plus I was late for a RP event).
Please tell me this isn't something being considered seriously for tailors (since we now have two correspondents who supportthe idea)?
Ri'a
donnah42 wrote:
No no no bad. I do not want to become a "design your own clothing" terminal, which is what this would amount to. We'd acutally spend more time with the really picky customers this way, because it's just too much to pick from. Each customer would want to spend a lot more time exploring color, because though they thought before they wanted a red, there are so many other great looking colors to have you show them!
I agree! This is the one thing that would make me leave tailoring. I do not want to just be some sort of terminal where a customer walks up, designs clothes and I hit OK to make it in the end or anything like that. Not even those occasional customers who make me want to set my computer on fire and then go off and cry somewhere would make me want this.
Gyopi wrote:
That might not be a bad idea as long as the clothing decayed every time it was colored (after all, bleaching and redying is not very good for fabric). If it didn't I would probably never get a chance to make new clothes because of all the people lining up to have their clothes recolored instead.
Well considering that the current decay system is useless (BE clothes still work at -500 condition) I doubt that they could come up with anything better for a dye system.
The day some other tailor can recolor something I made is the day I quit tailoring. It's that simple.
Ri'a