just my 2 cents…
Prefer faction footstep sounds over visual indicators. Footstep sounds currently work the same way as having friendly visual icons only. You hear a sound, you look at radar to see if its friendly. It takes a bit too long.
For visual indicators, a slightly different coloured model would be preferable.
I’d much prefer heavy team colors, like full on red and blue. Just a little armband sounds silly to me. You should be able to tell instantly who’s who. I don’t agree on footsteps per team. I really like the footsteps as they are, just use the minimap to see if they are friend or foe. To people saying you can’t sneak in bright colors that’s just not right. The trick to sneaking is staying out of the enemy’s peripheral vision. Most players are too focused on what’s happening in the middle of their screen to notice some movement happening on the side. If it’s a good players he’s going to see you either way. (Unless the covie gets some kind of invisibility cloak)
Bright pink might be a bight easier to notice, but that also doesn’t fit in the setting. The colors are already dusty and grimy. They just need a little less dust, and a little more flair.
As for IFF, IFF should be off on the enemies. The first time I saw it on was in BFBC2 and my reaction was wow they build a wallhack into the game. You can track players through walls. It just clutters up the screen and people aren’t even going to be looking at the models, they’ll just be Doritos hunting.
my 2 cents.
just use the minimap to see if they are friend or foe.
And just run your xhair over a player’s character in Brink to note their class. 
The challenge is to make those customizations visible to the other players and at the same time different… so i will suggest to color the handle of the weapons or the weapons, ammo displayed on the player, antennas of the portable radios, a color from the camo, buckles, belts, ammo pouches, etc.
Personally i still prefer different teams with the above color modification.
tl&dr made some adjustments to the current team, not to happy about only 1 team tbh.
[QUOTE=Dormamu;421406]not to happy about only 1 team tbh.
[/QUOTE]
It’s obvious we need 1 more team.
This is exactly the kind of team colors I’m looking for. Although orange might blend in to some areas, but i suppose having cvars for them colors would be best.
[QUOTE=Dormamu;421406]The challenge is to make those customizations visible to the other players and at the same time different… so i will suggest to color the handle of the weapons or the weapons, ammo displayed on the player, antennas of the portable radios, a color from the camo, buckles, belts, ammo pouches, etc.
Personally i still prefer different teams with the above color modification.
tl&dr made some adjustments to the current team, not to happy about only 1 team tbh.
[/QUOTE]
As a colour blind person… I thought you posted the same image twice 
Absence of a very clear indication (IE not just limited to a band on someone’s arm) is sufficient indication. ETQW with only green arrows on team mates and no redd arrows on enemies isn’t confusing at all. Granted the models differ enormously but when you’re flying in an anansi on outskirts you just happily fire away at the little grey ants in the rainy weather below you simply because they don’t have a green arrow on them.
That’s why a sparkling flashing effect on the core of a team-mate alongside a very obvious sign above his would serve really well in helping you shoot at everyone who doesn’t have that thing going on.
The point is, you can go totally over board on throwing visual effects on the team-mates without breaking the gameplay. The only thing you’re compromising is aesthetics, that’s why you should leave how clear exactly team-mates should be to the player’s own HUD controls, that way he can decide for himself.
As you point out, in ETQW you hardly needed them in the first place so it’s not a great example to validate your point. Again, in my experience, one sided indicators lead to hesitation, don’t mash that up with enemies having arrows or glows. I’m just saying that having both teams easily distinguishable provides more consistent feedback than having only one, it also means both teams can be more subtle in their distinctions rather than having just friendlies with arrows, glows and brightskins.
Hence the misty long distance Outskirts example. It´s not about firing at distinctive silhouettes, it´s about firing at whatever moves around without a team arrow.
Making a team distinguishable in the most extreme forms possible doesn’t influence the gameplay one bit, but doing the same for enemy players then it changes considerably. I don’t want the game to point out my targets for me.
Exactly, with arrows in ET:QW for enemies you could still be sneaky by actually keeping an eye out of the enemy and where they are looking and avoid their line of sight, in some maps it is quite hard to spot players at a distance even if you’re actively looking for them, without any additional indicators these players are getting a free pass by simply moving to a certain distance and hoping for best rather than actually being sneaky. Also radar…
Anyway for DB, arrows aren’t required as you can spot any player quite easily, coloured uniforms would be much nicer as with Dormamu’s example but with contrasting colours and not what he used.
ETQW only really rewarded objective players that were sneaky, not players that were looking to gain a significant advantage in combat.
Players had to use the walk function or crouch walk to sneak in combat effectively. Staying out of ones peripheral vision, while an obvious tip - was not enough.
I was talking about long range, like sneaking around the hills on salvage and sneaking in for a ninja plant.
Radar totally ruined any sneaky approaches for indoor sections anyway so even walking or crouching was not enough.
I wasnt responding to your post. General comment about etqw.
And i was talking about promod.
[QUOTE=Dormamu;421406]The challenge is to make those customizations visible to the other players and at the same time different… so i will suggest to color the handle of the weapons or the weapons, ammo displayed on the player, antennas of the portable radios, a color from the camo, buckles, belts, ammo pouches, etc.
Personally i still prefer different teams with the above color modification.
tl&dr made some adjustments to the current team, not to happy about only 1 team tbh.
[/QUOTE]
I like the idea but i think there’s too much team colour on there. You could spot the difference between the teams with 1/2 the colour changes.
Markings on the arms and head alone would make it easy to identify the different teams.
And as DAUK points out: colour selection should be user defined to help colour blind people too.
And colour selection doesn’t need to be a full range of RGB values. It could just be a selection from 10 different variants. As long as they’re a good, contrasting selection then it’ll be fine. This will also stop the complaints about making you a glowing pink target since glowing pink won’t be allowed in the selection.
I think we need a solution that doesn’t rely on floating icons. Something like red vs blue or coloured armour etc would work. Obviously two separate teams is the better solution, although I appreciate that doubles the work. Especially with multiple variations of each class. It would make for a better game though, and not just gameplay wise. Distinct teams/factions with their own look and character would add a lot. I remember playing a team back in RTCW who refused to play anything other than axis (which led to some interesting discussions when we met up for a SW match!)
if one team were the british police, black body armor type uniform or british army black type of uniform.
There would be a clear distinction, no matter what class or sex you prefer. a distinct colour difference and silhouette.
the 2 teams of mercs as a story just doesn’t work for me.
being sneaky or undiscovered seems to be based on movement in my experience atm
if you see the enemy act like a spider and freeze. if your in their peripheral vision, movement will give you away.
if your wearing bright colours then youll get spotted very easily anyway.
i dont want to spot someone or be spotted easily, i want to identify them or be identified when i do. whether by enemy or team.
i think faction footsteps is good as its an identifier without line of sight. also adds a little more depth to the characters.
you can use the map but i prefer the sound. having both isnt a bad thing.
if the teams i described above existed then the whole uniform would give off a different sound when walking.
and i would instantly know whos coming. without it i have to take my eyes away from the main area to scan the map. or just rush in where fools dare.
and i think anything that removes the need to do that is a good thing. as by the time you do that the match has already moved on.
an instant i.d. to who is around you is vital to good gameplay.
Because the rest of the setting is so believable? Suspension of disbelief.
2 factions are fighting in a made-up near-future London. Maybe the police lost their uniforms and have to dress up as mercs. Maybe the army and police are too busy dealing with the crisis and mercs have been hired to keep the peace in places that the police refuse to go (because, you know, radiation)?
Who cares as long as we get a good game? Use your imagination.
I remember the day when FPS backstory was: “You’re a umm… guy with a gun… like a marine. But it’s Mars so you must be some sort of space marine guy. Because Mars is cool! that’s why. And um, you get sucked into hell to fight demons because that’d be cool. OK OK. Some scientists are… aaah… experimenting with teleporters and they for some reason that links up to hell and so you need to get a shotgun and blast cacodemons in the face!! You don’t need any more story dammit! Shotgun, Demon, Face! Bang! Go! Go! Go!”
And we thought they’d overdone the story.
Except this is a team based game, there really ought to be two different teams, Allies vs Axis, Resistance vs Security, Terrorists vs Anti-Terrorists, GDF vs Strogg, Red vs Blue, A vs B and so on, it’s not really about the story (for me anyway don’t know about previous folk) but having two different teams just makes sense, two identical teams doesn’t.
