Are you tired of seeing bases that just don't fit in the categories they're placed in? Are you confused as to why so many green bases are gold? So am I.
Introducing Chromatic! Chromatic would be everyone's favorite Sparkle Lion group. How does Chromatic work? Simple. We would move existing bases from their genetics that are wonky into Chromatic, where there it would be divided into Dark, Medium, or Light, & Countershaded or Solid. But how do fails work? There's not really a lot of sparkle lion Commons, Uncommons, or Rares, is there?
In my opinion, it would be best to take a page from Wolvden's book and treat Chromatic similar to the * Tier for bases there.
As an example, let's take, say, Jellyfish, which would be moved to Chromatic Dark Countershaded. Since it's Chromatic, it could fail to *any* Dark Countershaded Common, Uncommon, or Rare base. Jellyfish could fail to Slate, or Fulvous, or Prune, or Flaxen! Before you say this is a bit weird, let me remind you that from our current genetics system, Jellyfish can already make Gunmetal Gray, Black, and Dikela. Or Nacre can make Russet.
This also means they wouldn't have to make commons, uncommons, or rares for this genetics group, due to the way it works, though obviously they could bring new ones in.
The reason I suggest for it to work this way is because I think it's a cute little thing! Chromatic just means "relating to or produced by color", so I think having Chromatic able to produce every color group in game is just really cute. In addition, it would only really take the very vibrant bases that stick out, or bases that are consistent of many, many different colors.
As for what would be in which tier, click the spoiler below.
Chromatic Dark Countershaded
Jellyfish, Ra, Nacre, Moss Agate, Olive, and Temporal ADDED 10/02: Witch
Chromatic Medium Countershaded
Arctic, Blue Poinsettia, Cotton Candy, Ennead, Leonid, Murk, Bast, Bushveld, Ankh, and Deshret ADDED 12/10: Esker
Chromatic Dark Solid
Incense, Interstellar, Parhelion, Prismatic, and Sha
Chromatic Medium Solid
Demiurge, Sphinx*, Green, Labradorite, Protea, and Rose Gold
Chromatic Light Solid
Celsian, Water Hyacinth, Citron, Alabaster, Festive, Hexaplex, Ukame, and Decennial
*These bases would fit better in another genetics category, but since pleas to move them to a category they'd do better in haven't been answered, I slapped them in Chromatic.
Cherry Blossom should be moved to Red Light, either shade, and Sphinx to Red Medium or Light.
For an example of how this would work in a mixed breeding, let's take Chromatic Light Solid, say, hmm... Decennial x Black Dark Countershaded, let's say Slate. The way shades and gradients work would stay uneffected, it would still be 25% Dark, 25% Light, 50% Medium, and the shades would still be 50% Solid and 50% Countershaded. The cubs would have the possible color group outcomes:
2% Decennial
62.5% Black Genetic Bases
12.5% Gold Genetic Bases
12.5% Red Genetic Bases
12.5% Cream Genetic Bases
A paring like the one I described would have every single base in game possible from it, but you could narrow this down by breeding a Chromatic Light Solid to a Black Light Solid, which would keep the offspring in the Light Solid category, with the same color group options.
As I'm writing this while sick, I am perfectly open to suggestions from you guys to make this more future proof. Obviously, it's hard to recommend a new genetics color group when we don't have many Commons, Uncommons, or Rares that fit, which is why I went with the Wolvden's genetic rarity system, especially with its * tier. I'm hoping that the colorbombs wouldn't spread too far into the Commons/Uncommons/Rares, but if they do, this suggestion could be adjusted to just be an entirely new color group, complete with its own commons, uncommons, and rares. If you no support, let me know why, and if you do support, thank you so much!
Obviously, this also opens up some gaps where staff shoved colorful bases in that arguably didn't fit the genetics groups they were put into, so hopefully adding a fifth color group and realizing how badly they bloated black, red, cream, and gold with non-fitting bases would make them get in gear to fix it. Regardless, though, we desperately, desperately need to separate these bases out of our current genetics model, as they just do not fit where they are.
Support. * Tier on Wolvden works pretty well and allows for a bit better suspension of disbelief (at least from my experience...) regarding fails not matching perfectly. Sounds like a good relatively low-effort fix that wouldn't shake up the gameplay too much.
If this gets implemented, down the line I'd also love to see Chromatic commons/uncommons/rares as well. I always run into suggestions for more colorful commons-rares and I'm always torn, because I don't want to be breeding for more neutral toned cream lions and get a random green lion and it kind of sucks, because when I was breeding for colorful lions I really wanted something like that implemented because the fails never truly match up to the base.
Obviously not to say they should immediately have to put in a bunch of random commons-rares if this gets implemented. But later down the line it'd be great to have those kinds of suggestions added to the game since they're a great idea but kind of lose-lose at the moment, IMO.