Need for bright skins?

I don't understand the need for brightskins at all.
It's not like you are playing with black models on night maps without illumination. If you tamper with the graphics then you destroy both balance and the feel of the game. Totally pointless.

That man gots a point there !

and even IF u can hardly see the enemy
he can also hardly see u so that makes it even
we just get used to it

arew said:

I don't understand the need for brightskins at all.
It's not like you are playing with black models on night maps without illumination. If you tamper with the graphics then you destroy both balance and the feel of the game. Totally pointless.

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a lot of players simply couldn't see the new style models because they blended so well with the backgrounds.
so brightskins was born to keep the game alive.

my original point still stands - if brightskins are needed for a lot of players then there is a fundamental flaw in the game.

In UT2004 you could adjust the brightness and translucency of the brightskins.
If they are needed for whatever reason, they should just cap those at a reasonable level

A slight amount of brightness isn't too bad.
But what I really hate are the maximum settings where everyone glows and all you can see is an almost uniform blue/red texture

UnrealGrrl said:

[...]as for brightskins. i want cool looking models i can see against most backgrounds. as long as the character models stand out, itsa no point option. just say no again.

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It just occured me that the other reason UT99 characters were easier to see was also because of the muzzle flash. Remember the minigun's awesome muzzle flash? You could easily see the dude who was shooting at you.

For weapons that DIDNT have muzzle flashes normally the weapon just created an area affect flash lighting up the player shooting as well as a small area around him. This way it was really hard to "snipe" in the shadows....something that should be left for games like Thief.

If they have good lighting and perhaps bring back the weapon flashes I see no reason for anything to be needed in order to see players.

Being able to disable them client side isn't the answer. For certain guns, visual acuity is half the battle, and the fully overlayed glowskins take care of that battle for you. Hitsounds arguabley can be disabled clientside for a minimal disadvantage, and isn't really gameplay effecting until higher levels of competition in 1v1 type situations.

Bright glow skins is different. I would disable them now, but the disadvantage is too much, even for somone who constantly gives himself handicaps when playing online.

Why not "disable" textures and put a light on each player? that would be so pro, you could even force a 50 poly model so you could get an extra 6 fps!

Just seems like a lot of wasted time / money was wasted on making the game look decent when everyone just wants the players to contrast the map and glow. As for "needing" glowskins I don't really think anyone really needs them, I cant think of any skin (even matrix) that isnt visible enough for me even with a monitor that shows 2 images and burns my eyes!

Not sure why this really matters, I disabled glowskins on my system and don't really care if youall use them lol

At no point should a player have to guess where his opponent is, unless he's behind an object i.e. wall. On grendel, if i'm looking at the lg from lift near the amp i will NOT be able to see the player, thast a BAD sign. Actually i can hardly see him WITH brightskins, thats how jacked up scale and lighting is in this game. I'm not going to get all technical and breakdown the difference between ut99 and ut2k4. All i know is that in ut i had no problem seeing my opponents however in 2k4 i have to guess where they are(pre-brightskins), esp on big maps. I shouldn't have to have my gamma settings at a ridiculous level either just to be able to see, come on.

I know some games have a setup feature where it helps you adjust the gamma or brightness settings so that you wont have a hard time. It displays an image or object with a black background and tells you to adjust your monitor until you can see correctly. If a gamma setting is what Epic suggests, they should add it during setup or in game menu somewhere.

If a player is far away, and not moving, there is no reason you should be able to pick him out quick without zoom, whether he is in your direct fov or not.

There in lies the real balance issue with brightskins, and even hitsounds. Certain ranges should make things harder to distinguish. They don't with these two "features."

Sir_Brizz said:

Awesome stuff.

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:tup:

Sir_Brizz said:

I don't know why you shouldn't have to guess where people are sometimes. That's just people thinking that every scenario in the game should be identical to every other scenario. Why can't we have some diversity, and dare I say STRATEGY, in UT? Why can't I take one route to the flag room that is high but well lit and easy to pick people off from, or a deep canyon that is dark and shadowy, but easy for people to rain down rockets and other miserable things in? Different routes in CTF with brightskins on makes little difference as far as strategy goes, and more to do with getting that "lucky pass" through the enemies to your allies. I think that adding more possibilities for strategy is a good thing, but that's obviously not a "pro" enough opinion.

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Has nothing to do with being pro or not pro.. And perhaps the situation i used wasn't the best. I agree with what you are saying in regards to strategy, thats fine. At a far distance maybe i can deal with not being able to see, i'll live with that. HOWEVER, if a player is a reasonable distance in front of me I shouldn't have a hard time seeing them, period.. I'm sure i'm not the only one who has this problem and I dont know why this topic is discussed in such depth. Everybody knows the lighting and scale is messed up in 2k4, why act as if this isn't the case and say "It makes the game more strategical". No it doesn't, it just makes it harder to see wtf is going right in front of you...

I'm not sure if it was on this forum or not, but a few months ago there were two different screenshots taken on irondust. One with bright skins and one without both at medium distance. In the screenshot without brightskins many people thought that a player wasn't even in the shot. However this wasn't the case, the lighting was so bad the player was not visible. And to my recollection they area the player was standing in was not dimly lit. But I guess you'd say it's a good strategy to place yourself in an area with poor lighting so that someone else can't see you.. I just dont look at that way.. This is not hide and go seek.. Come out and fight..

The point is there should be some comprimise, and that is why we hope that epic will simply do something to insure models are visible.

The game is also supposed to be immersive, what's the point of things like grungification, and realistic physics interaction with maps, when we're going to have these surreal glowsticks flying around a map?

Am I the only one left who thinks that seeing your opponents, having a good eye and sharp preception is just as much a skill as moving or aiming well? Bright-skins take one essential skill in the game and do it for you, I consider it not too much different from using an aimbot or binding shock combos. It's a skill to be developed, like any other, and bright-skins does it for you...

os][ris said:

At no point should a player have to guess where his opponent is, unless he's behind an object i.e. wall. On grendel, if i'm looking at the lg from lift near the amp i will NOT be able to see the player, thast a BAD sign. Actually i can hardly see him WITH brightskins, thats how jacked up scale and lighting is in this game. I'm not going to get all technical and breakdown the difference between ut99 and ut2k4. All i know is that in ut i had no problem seeing my opponents however in 2k4 i have to guess where they are(pre-brightskins), esp on big maps. I shouldn't have to have my gamma settings at a ridiculous level either just to be able to see, come on.

I know some games have a setup feature where it helps you adjust the gamma or brightness settings so that you wont have a hard time. It displays an image or object with a black background and tells you to adjust your monitor until you can see correctly. If a gamma setting is what Epic suggests, they should add it during setup or in game menu somewhere.

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Sijik said:

Am I the only one left who thinks that seeing your opponents, having a good eye and sharp preception is just as much a skill as moving or aiming well? Bright-skins take one essential skill in the game and do it for you, I consider it not too much different from using an aimbot or binding shock combos. It's a skill to be developed, like any other, and bright-skins does it for you...

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I agree with both you and osiris at the same time. I feel UT is all about the "Come out and fight..." mentality Osiris is talking about and I realize that locating and identifying your opponent is certainly a skill to have. However, I feel that that kind of "picking out the bad guy among the brush" combat should be left for more realistic games like CS or the Battlefield games.

UT has always had the mentality that this is a spectator sport with lots of glitz, pyrotechnics and action (things to keep the audience entertained). This is why I am glad Epic is getting back to the root idea of "in your face" combat. Already they have addressed many of the issues in the different gametypes (hoverboards in ONS, etc).

If you take a look at some of the super fun console games in our past you will notice that characters normally had rather bright skins so it was easy to differentiate between different opponents and between different teams. The focus was mostly on cutting to the chase and battling it out. In Mortal Kombat, there was no "hide and seek"....it was simply beat the tar out of the other guy. Another example could be Super Smash Brothers... beat the crackers out of each other and then knock em off the level. It was pure fun because anyone could pick up those games and just have at it. They were pretty simple and you didn't have to be super leet to play.

I have felt UT is kind of the same way. Make it so everyone can play pretty easily to just jump in have some fragging good fun. None of this "snipefestcentralfrom500yardsin7feetofgrasswherethefarkisthebastard?!?!"

Im not really for artificially bright skins per se...but I dont see why they shouldn't be as visible as they were in UT99, at least. The tournament encourages in your face combat and they would want their fans to be able to keep track of the action. So I think it would make sense that the armor and jumpsuits, etc would be somewhat bright....kind of like seeing the uniforms a sports team wears or the jumpsuit NASCAR drivers wear.

Sir_Brizz said:

I don't know why you shouldn't have to guess where people are sometimes. That's just people thinking that every scenario in the game should be identical to every other scenario. Why can't we have some diversity, and dare I say STRATEGY, in UT? Why can't I take one route to the flag room that is high but well lit and easy to pick people off from, or a deep canyon that is dark and shadowy, but easy for people to rain down rockets and other miserable things in? Different routes in CTF with brightskins on makes little difference as far as strategy goes, and more to do with getting that "lucky pass" through the enemies to your allies. I think that adding more possibilities for strategy is a good thing, but that's obviously not a "pro" enough opinion.

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And to address Sir Brizz's concerns, I think part of the problem is that most of the newer levels were too large without many small passageways. In a lot of the UT99 CTF maps you could lose a guy because the corridors were short and plentiful making it hard for someone to know exactly which one you took. In 2k3 and 2k4 the levels got MUCH larger and didn't have many tight quarter areas (if any). So I would fault level design more than bright skins on that one.

So far from the videos I think this has been mostly addressed. I think it is still somewhat dark but that could easily be attributed to the low quality of the videos/recordings.



One final note. I can tell that my vision (or perhaps reflexes) isn't what it used to be and I am only 25! It is nice to go back to UT and know I still have a fair chance of taking a guy out because I rarely have to guess if that is a static mesh or a character. When 2k4 came out I felt like the worst player ever because the graphics went up so much and the complexity of all the levels/characters went up so much that it made it difficult to sort out the goods from the fuzz. I felt like I had to squint a lot (especially when they were far away) just to see them. Perhaps that has more to do with the larger levels....whatever it is, it has made the game more difficult for those of us who aren't super leet or at the top of our "game".

I just want to jump into a game and have a decent chance of fraging. It's as simple as that. I get tired of people always having to be the absolute best. Cut out the competitive crap and just have freakin fun playing the game already.

I wish people would just stop treating it like some be-all, end-all status symbol.

Just frag already.

I'd imagine the game will be all species based so it'll be Necris v Axon or whatever thus negating the need for tcs altogether (hopefully). I don't mind brightskins though I always preferred the 2k3 TCs to the later bright ones.

Plz though noone go ruin another game by giving us glow sticks... It's a bad advertisement for any game to watch frag videos of glowing blobs flying around - Who wants that?

On a related subject I hope our characters can be customized from within the game ala UT99 too

Hitsounds I don't care either way I never hear them anyway I've such a bad aim

Brightskins are important because this game is NOT about taking cover or hiding and not being seen. In BF2 and CS and real life simulations, it wouldn't make sense to have brightskins. "Kill or be killed" not "kill or hide" or "hide or be killed".

And what is this 'strategy' that is missing? Err there is enough strategy in how to frag using multiple weapons, knowing where your opponent is, timing, and a bunch of other stuff that's painfully obvious when you play 1v1.

If you guys still think that brightskins are wrong........fine....but just look at this:


This is the visibility line:

_____________________________________________________________











----------------Normal skins---------------------

As you can see our normal skins are WAY below the line.

I have nothing against skins that are visible, and certainly the last thing I want UT to be is a camper/sniper game like FarCry or Halo, I just don't want neon-green/red/blue. I think there's a lot of exaggeration going on with how visible the regular skins are, I've never had the problems you guys are bringing up, with people being invisible against the background or being indistinguishable from objects. I think some people in here may be overracting.
Anyway, there's a difference between reasonably visible skins and neon green dog crap, not having brightskins does not automatically mean everybody's is hiding in bushes 200 km away with a high power rifle...