I'm actually kind of surprised I haven't seen any discussion on this. What's with the pre-defined color/materiel combos, some of which are extremely rare? Why can't we mix and match like in Halo?

Also emblems.

I think the discussion pretty much happened early in the game's life.
I don't care for the vast majority of shaders. I like Provincial Royale on my Warlock because it makes her look pretty without being overly girly. I like Thunderdevil on my Titan because it just kind of looks cool, sort of a black silver look if that makes sense. I got Million Million basically just because I could, and I was surprised to find I really liked how it made my Hunter look. I've gotten some armor since then that doesn't go so well with it though, of note are the right pair of Crucible boots (as in to the left of the other pair in the listing, I think they have discipline and strength?)-- with those and Million Million I look like a clown from the knees down.
I'd like to know the rationale for the combinations of colors, and pre-packaging them together, and why they'll sometimes make colors show up that aren't a part of what's displayed in the shader icon thing (blue and red with Million Million, for example). I'd really like to be able to pick different shaders for each armor piece.
As for emblems, I think they did a bad job of making sure names and clans are readable with them, and I still wish I could get that Alpha Lupi emblem I was supposed to get.

I would love to have blue and silver without orange mixed in, but not much luck on that. Gilgamesh is so close with its blue and white, but the stupid orange that mixes in messes it all up. I wish we could just pick our colors like in Halo.

Also, shaders take up memory slots that could have been devoted to weapons, materials, or other useful stuff.

...yeah, not really. :p

I don't mind theme suggestions, but I would not mind it much more even less (can you do both at the same time?!) if we could then choose our own colors. :)

I'm surprised by how often I prefer not to use a shader. My biggest complaint is that few go well with the faction class items. That's the biggest reason why I'll change then.

I wish certain pieces of armor didn't remain unaffected (like the Don't Touch Me blue).

I never liked the polar oak shader but it recently dropped for me, and it fits my recently grown-up titan in a space marine kind of way.

For fun, I like to wear Goldspiral and pretend I'm Elvis. Just call me Bubba Fett.

I like it but then again I hated the limited design choices for the original character aesthetics.

What color im running either depends on my mood or the season.

I ran with Artic Proxy and Chatterwhite all through the winter because I wanted to be a special snowflake.

I run with God of War when I am feeling especially badass because I love the way the red on red looks.

I ran with Middaye while a lot of the first Crota stuff was going on just because it looked really sick with the serpent cape I got, and it looked neat playing against hive.

Currently I am playing with Prism Dancer because I LOVE the way the purple and gold and tiger pattern makes my armor look.

CC

Opinion: 90% of shaders look like poop on hunters. I think this has more to do with what % of the primary vs. secondary colors show on the character models (it's about 50/50 on a hunter), as opposed to Titans (80/20) or warlocks (90/10?). Sunsetting and Glowhoo look awesome though, so I'm happy.

Facts: There are too many shaders and not enough storage slots. Some are very rare or hard to acquire which makes me uneasy about destroying them, even if they are ones I don't think I'll ever use, so I have craploads of shaders and often run out of room in my "other" storage while weapons is only half full and armor is basically empty. I also like to change my shader when I change my spec so that I always have a visual cue as to what I'm running (same for my teammates), so I do regularly use about 6 of the 9 or so shaders that I can carry with me at any given time.

Ideas for better:

- the CoD method: A book or catalogue of unlockable shaders that doesn't take up any inventory space. Highlight a weapon, press Down on the D-Pad to access the catalogue, choose your shader from the ones you've unlocked so far.
- the Warframe method: Give us actual color palettes and let us select our primary / secondary / tertiary shaders our own damn selves. Instead of unlocking shader combos, you can unlock specific colors for your palette.
- A third method: Give shaders their own inventory storage separate from everything else and make sure there's a slot for every one. I don't like this option compared to the other two ideas, but it seems easier to implement in the current game.

I have this shader on my hunter* and with the armour I'm wearing it looks BOSS!!

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Check it out, please ignore stats.

*edit

That said, I got Aaru's Passage from ToO, and it looks glorious on any of the classes. My Canon shader.