The odd thing previously w\as that to export to maya I had to export at 100 time sthe size, now I have to export at a scale of 1 They keep on messing around with stuff :o)
I remember you talking about this. How far do you push it on W for it to be ignored? As for hassle, I guess it's just a matter of finding or making tools to let you manipulate W as paintable vertex data. Then you also need an exporter that stores W instead of tossing it. And an importer for the engine that reads the W data.