Firmly in the camp that all the translucent white outside of highlights needs to go. Large blocks of opaque white are also weird, but they minimally don't make dark colors muddy and gross looking. They'd still be better off using an input color, though.

Thought about these traits for a bit, and on the player end, it might be easier to just have another accent slot to replace what would otherwise be static white. Some things would probably work fine drawing from ec/accents, but there's traits like fairy wings on bulbs that already do, and might look odd if the white was replaced by something it already uses. Plus, tons of designs have been created around the whiteness, so suddenly switching to a potentially very different color might screw up a lot of stuff.

Krin brought up the idea of being able to control rune whiteness many years ago, but clearly it hasn't happened. I think having another color slot instead would have about the same result without needing an entirely new mechanic, plus allows for more variety. Could maybe have this extend to things like opaque white sparkles - eg if someone wants a sparkle to be bright red with a darker red glow. I don't know how much of a pain this would be to code, but considering accents have been added before, it's probably easier than the mechanic he never put in.

Also not a fan of inconsistent iridescence. It looks a bit strange to have colored highlights in some spots, but not on the whole pet. Nyte iridescence, for example, isn't too bad because it's a gene that covers the whole body. But nixi mermaid muts and neph water nymph wings look out of place and make designing difficult.

Also, going to add that puff stoneheart regalia & griffi battle armor have the opposite issue:

The darkening is equally annoying. Anything too light & saturated will look ugly.

Just want to comment my incredibly adamant agreement - I cannot stand the white overlay on the rikki runes. It makes it so having a darker C1 than G1 is practically impossible to make look good; I adore the Peppercorn Vine Rikkis but because of that overlay, both rune traits look abysmal on that theme.


^Not a good look for that poor ferret, AND not the G1 color Catinheadlights selected to begin with.

SO many glowy traits have this weird, pure white core to them - it doesn't make them look glowy, it makes them look bad. I fully agree with either having them pull from an accent color slot (on some species the ac1/ac2 are barely used anyway), eye color, or at LEAST a lighter version of the trait slot instead of just. White.

Also want to chime in about the ryos - please, please, please, get rid of the blue shading. It looks SO weird, it throws off any color selection, it's just entirely a bizarre choice. Look at the difference between a pure white rikki and a pure white ryo. It makes any ryo with a warm or yellow toned C1 look weird and gray-ish, it's just not good shading.



Catinheadlights made an excellent thread about how forcing any designated color onto a slot is irritating - be it white, black, or the iridescent overlay. I'm in full agreement with that thread as well.

Please remove the overlays from traits - they're a pain for designers, they make traits look worse, and there are much better alternatives.

Putting snowflake, galaxy, & the elemental traits on the "too much white" list