Yeah just doing primary/secondary would probably be doable, just require “coatings” of them all but that can be hidden (assuming worst case possible of the code base)

But what I assume 343 is going for (engineering side not money side) is to have a color system that does more throughout the life of a game. infinite is meant to be a 10-year game, and 343 has a lot of data on what we like from MCC. While Halo 3 had a bajillion color combos, I’m sure the data says that 75% of people are just running black/white primary with a random secondary color. So instead of the old school system where there’s only one black and red and a lot of unused color combos, they can instead provide hundreds of versions of black and red with different paint jobs and textures etc.

The shortcoming of this better (imo) system that I think they overlooked is that while it scales well with the life of the game, it’s frustrating at the start as they’re is very few shaders in the game. (hell, my orange/grey combo isn’t in the game at all).

BUT- I agree with the potential of the coating system and it’s ability to grow, so I’m not personally shooting for classic color systems back.

(And as previously mentioned giving us the level of customization seen in coatings for ourselves would probably cause many engineers to have a heart attack)