Materials as a color palette is it possible in 2021

Best to take anyone that isn’t a dev opinion with a grain of salt

Imagine combining 4 materials sounds godlike I’ll say with the new technology and company we have today that this could easily be done but again I’m just a kid

I think it could be be done pretty easily

Really, then why aren't you making it happen???

Unfortunately from my own experiences with watching how things go in MMO development, the things that seem the easiest tend to be the ones that end up being incredibly problematic, especially when it comes to changes being made to a core system of the game.

Maybe in the past that this would be difficult but technology had advanced so much in the last couple of years that i really have a hard time understanding what so hard about it, they have the money and team,

But it's not about the available tech. It's about what you're dealing with.

MMOs are evolving creatures, with years and years and years of code to deal with on the successful (or at least long-lived) games. And that code can be interconnected in surprising and unexpected ways.

I remember an update that took place in Star Wars Galaxies back in the day that listed nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING, in the way of changes to the textures and graphics on player houses in the game. In fact it was a relatively minor update, if I remember correctly. But for some reason that update REALLY messed with the exteriors of most (if not all) the player housing in the game. And because there wasn't any sign of changes in the update notes it took a while before it was tracked down and the exteriors were returned to normal.

We're dealing with more than 10 years of code layered on top of one another. Many updates, many changes and we don't know where all the connections with in-game systems may be. I wouldn't dare to think that any change made to the code is something easy.

The difficult part is they didn't design these systems 11+ years ago with materials in mind. When the original cosmic material came out they explained that they aimed for materials to be applied to individual color channels but they couldn't get it to work without issues. I think it was SJ that explained that it would require scrapping the current style system and replacing it, basically a lot of work and not a high priority. And then they figured out a middle ground and introduced chromas, a three-in-one material with variants that gives us more customization without them having to break something.
As much as I would like to see materials applied to separate channels I understand it's not "simple" or something that can be "easily done". It could be a couple more years (if at all) before they acquire the tech or the time to introduce something like this so I'm not holding my breath.

We already have the tech, it really comes down to if the devs feel like doing it or not.

And where exactly did the devs say they have the tech?

From what I know of how our tintable color channels work, we can't have materials operate as a color palette. The easiest way I can explain the shaders and their hookup as far as I personally understand it:
Tintable color channels are round holes
Materials are square pegs.
Chromas can change which channels are round holes and square pegs, but you cannot put a square peg into a round hole.

As far as players choosing materials, I feel like that may fall into the "tintable" category? Or player customizable? Chromas were our best solution to our technical spaghetti mess.

EDIT: Or go read StealthBlue's post below mine because it is less esoteric than my weird explanation lol.

No one is saying that this is completely impossible, but it is EXTREMELY impractical. It's already been pointed out several times in this thread with Dev comments and the video from when the first chroma launched that they would have to completely rebuild the way styles are done in the game to allow this. So we are talking about replacing a fundamental core system within the game, that would take time to design, may also require individual updates to every style existing in game, and then require some way of substituting without breaking anything else in the game.

If you have time and want to go down a rabbit hole, go look up some video tutorials on texture editing in Unreal. They are more geared to environment textures, but they would at least help you grasp the level of work you are requesting (since player customization adds a whole other level of complexity). The short of it is, each piece of gear likely has a "map" like the one below that controls how colors apply and how the textures of the material look. If that's the case, the change to allow us to place a material in each channel of a gear piece would require going in and updating the map on each piece of gear. Of course, that could only happen after some R&D to determine how to make the map apply one of our materials to a given color channel, and would rely on that change not causing stability issues mentioned in response to requests to allow using 4 different materials at the same time.

Ok ok i get it now guess well just to have to wait to they have the tech .

So What Could They Be Working On If Hardly Updated Styles
What are they working on jus episode content and content Styles of that Next Time Capsules What Else Could They Be Working On

You Guys Talk About Updated Skins On Chatacters & Trying To Look Better

But How Better Can They Be It Won't Look Like The Way It Looks Like In Valhalla Or Cyberpunk Or The Way It Looks Like The Cinematic Video When You Make A Character What Are You Looking For

Maybe a good compromise could be if they figured out how to apply to mats to styles and designed only NEW styles to use it. Any older styles would have to wait for an updated version once they've gotten good at doing it and probably not all at once.