Clear team distinction

(tokamak) #21

Yes. It pays to have a universal solution.

(Mustang) #22

I think it they only appear when the recon sensor is down.

As already expressed a better way would be for blips to appear on the mini-map only and never tags on the HUD.

(kamikazee) #23

I refer to my previous thread: Spotting friendly / enemy and downed / dead players.

(Dragonji) #24

Having 2 teams with the same models is just bad for team distinction, add to that the name tags and that makes it more confusing when a team mate is in a CQC situation up ahead and you can’t tell who is who.

^ This. :wink:

(warbie) #25

More than a few times i’ve attacked my team mate because and enemy was standing behind him and the tag showed up. Either give them very different skins or team colours or something.

(rookie1) #26

I like the big blue color rectangle we have to identifiy IFF… when its works.
…close range could be not show always.

different char color suits may could still be difficult to see at long range …idk

(H0RSE) #27

I’m fan of different models for each team - RTCW, W:ET and QW all did this. Each team should also use their own color palette

(Ashog) #28

Outlining would work best imho.
There was almost no way in ETQW you could confuse strogg and gdf by the way they look when they move and even stand.

Also, the color schemes won’t help much if an enemy is in the distance and his, say, shoulders are painted while the player model is 5 pixels wide. Definitely not helpful to color blind people too.

In ET the outlining was perfected mainly by differently shaped helms and it worked good, meaning the outlining differences don’t seem to need to be involving the whole model, but rather just a part of it, preferably head.

And all the children were shouting: O-U-T-L-I-N-I-N-G! O-U-T-L-I-N-I-N-G!!!

(H0RSE) #29

[QUOTE=Ashog;419103]Outlining would work best imho.
There was almost no way in ETQW you could confuse strogg and gdf by the way they look when they move and even stand.

Also, the color schemes won’t help much if an enemy is in the distance and his, say, shoulders are painted while the player model is 5 pixels wide. Definitely not helpfult to color blind people too.

And all the children were shouting: O-U-T-L-I-N-I-N-G! O-U-T-L-I-N-I-N-G!!![/QUOTE]

Wasn’t outlining on the things people hated in Brink? I was pretty involved in the Brink forums, and I’m pretty sure it was.

(Ashog) #30

I don’t know what you mean with outlining, but I mean the distinctive form of the player’s model silhouette. (w/o highlighting it)

(.Chris.) #31

EDIT nevermind.

(zenstar) #32

I doubt we’re going to see different models for each team. Part of the f2p model looks like people will be buying characters who could serve on either side and I doubt there’s going to be 2 models per character so that he looks different on each team. Plus that’d be a lot of models to learn to recognise.

There should be team colours. Large parts of the skin should be set to “team colour”. There should be an option for us to set up the colours we want (default red v blue) to allow colour-blind people to set something they can easily distinguish too.

The silhouette is for class recognition. So soldiers will always have a big backpack, cov-ops will always be hooded, etc…

Character glow / outline ala Brink (red glow around enemies, blue around friends) was super controversial (as H0RSE says).

TF2 manages to do it with identical models and no glow. All we need are clean outlines per class and strong team colours that stand out. Hell, a lot of FPSs do it with same models per side and only colour defining the team.

(tokamak) #33

There’s nothing wrong with character glow in and of itself, it just shouldn’t be applied to the enemy. The enemy should be free of any indication whatsoever. Then turn all the friend players into Las Vegas christmas trees for all I care.

Right now there’s an orangeish grey indicator for enemies and a blueish grey indicator for teams, that’s just grey and grey and makes you constantly double check. Even just removing the indicator from enemies altogether (like you need to know their hp with the current lethality going on) would really help a great deal.

(murka) #34

Well iI think the problem is that the playermodels are quite dark/dull/gray that they blend into geometry also. I think it was worst in camden near the bushes. It wouldn’t be so bad if one team had lighter skins on models and the other team darker. Like some camo paint to distinguish teams.

(Bananas) #35

Personally, I would love to see distinct teams. I love the us versus them factor it gives. It would also easily fit the current theme of the game. Two different mercenary groups fighting it out? I would assume they would look somewhat different.

I can see how it might be slightly troublesome for selling “skins” or “loadouts” though.

Even from an esports perspective, it might make it easier to distinguish teams for spectators.

(Bloodbite) #36

They don’t have to be radically different like ETQW. But identical ain’t good. Your only resort for identical is garishly bright red vs blue… I’m not a fan of that.

Brink had a great sense of team variation when you consider the clothing and model designs… they just turned out to be “too” unique per avatar that you never truly felt that subconscious connection with a teammate. It made covie identity theft less satisfying to pull off, and both harder to spot a disguise as well as less effective due to the twitch tk inclination that lack of uniform recognition gave many people at times.

We need a happy median.

(zenstar) #37

I guess you could also do it with luminosity… turn down the background brightness… turn up the brightness on enemies so they “pop” out of the background. Team mates can be left at middle luminosity so that they stand out from the background but aren’t as bright as the enemy… if you tinged the lighting effect a slight red and blue then they should be more distinct without actually making the colours garish and without requiring specific team skins.

(Bloodbite) #38

See while that works in theory, it may actually make target identification way too easy, and sneaky flanking maneuvers not so sneaky any more.

(tokamak) #39

I find that a good thing. It makes being sneaky rewarding. It also is something completely separate from being able to distinguish friend from foe which is by far the most jarring thing in the game.

(zenstar) #40

Possibly… we won’t know without trying it… but if we’re stuck with the same models on each side and people don’t want team colours then what other suggestion is there?

I don’t claim to have all the answers… there is quite possibly a graceful answer that I haven’t thought of, but it hasn’t been suggested yet.

Personally I like team colours, especially if they’re adjustable. I know it breaks realism a bit, but imo fun > reality.