This is a follow up to my post on the Nexon forums regarding mercs and gun skins (http://forums.nexon.net/showthread.php?1049373-Any-feedback-on-the-new-skins). Since these forums are about to go down, I’m cross-posting here as well…
Part I: Merc Skins
I noticed that some of the mercs’ “Default” skins recently reverted to either their original concept skins or at least something else than the boring black and white skins we’ve had for a while. Hopefully we’ll see more of these in the future.
Part II: Gun Skins
Most of the patterns I had issues with have seen some serious improvements and many are now totally fine in my opinion. These are Grid, MudFlood, Hexagon, Woodland and Urban Digital. Nice work on all these!
That leaves a few which I feel could still be improved:
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[li]Nexon: I still believe it would look better on most weapons if the yellow and black areas were swapped so that blue and yellow stood out as the main colors (as per the Nexon logo).
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[li]HTH: Still don’t see where that one is coming from as it doesn’t match the look and color scheme of the HTH / Hunter player model skins in any way…
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[li]Red Tiger: Looks better with the pattern now applied to the stock / grip as well, however I don’t get why the red base has two tones. Also, the pattern alignment is still inconsistent on some weapons (see Part III below).
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[li]Toy Gun: The only way to improve that one in my opinion is to have die in a fire. If it stays around, I’m actually hoping we’ll be able to purchase “skin filters” to hide the skins we really don’t like in game…
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[li]Resistance: Would be nice to see actual patterns painted in there rather than just random smudges and spatter, but it’s already much better than it was.
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And then the new stuff:
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[li]Decon: It’s OK I guess, but it feels too similar to Edge. Maybe swap the black and yellow so the result is more distinct?
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[li]Bleached Wood: Nice alternate to Woodstock, but just like that one, better left for pistol grips and primaries with “classic” stocks and grips.
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[li]Snake Scale: In my opinion the current pattern is too subtle, at any range but extreme closeup or in 1st person view it effectively comes out looking like a subdued version of Spray Paint Tan, and even in 1st person it’s not that noticeable on some weapons. My suggestion would be to increase the scaling of the pattern (make the “scales” much bigger), boost the contrast and go for more of a Kryptec camo look (google it and you’ll see what I mean).
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Part III: Gun Skins Application
In general things look much better and more consistent now. All the weapons where the patterns looked inverted compared to others have been fixed. However there are two common issues that could still be improved on:
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[li]Some weapons / pattern combinations have repetition issues (wallpaper effect) that are quite obvious on large surfaces or segmented elements (where each segment is textured the same way). The patterns that show this clearly are MudFood (spatter pattern on stocks and grips), Woodland and Resistance. It’s also noticeable on Spray Paint Tan, Urban Digital and Snake Scale, but it’s not as obvious. The weapons where you can see this are Aimee’s SR (foregrip and barrel), Arty’s AR (left side of body*), Aura’s SG (barrel*), Fletcher’s SG (forgrip*), Proxy’s SG (foregrip), Red Eye’s BR (foregrip), Skyhammer’s AR (all over), Sawbonez’s SMG (foregrip**) & Thunder’s MG (body and barrel)
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*: The wallpaper effect is most obvious on these with the Woodland pattern
**: Sawbonez’s SMG is the exception to the previous rule as the Woodland pattern doesn’t show obvious repetition on that one while MudFlood and Resistance do
There are other cases where repetitions can be seen, but they are not obvious enough to bother with.
[li]The Red Tiger camo is not applied correctly on some weapons, the stripes should typically run vertically top to bottom except perhaps on the grips (as long as they are painted across the part, not along it). Weapons where the stripes are incorrect or inconsistent are Aura’s SG, Proxy’s SG, Skyhammer’s AR and the M9 pistol (secondary for Aimee, Arty, Aura, Bushwhacker, Phoenix, Sawbonez & Sparks)
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Finally, in a class all of its own is Phantom’s katana (which is anything but a katana in the first place…). It works well with all the solid color patterns and those with textured grips, but the whole thing becomes strange with any of the actual camo patterns as well as the Resistance pattern:
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[li]Grid: The sword grip looks like traditional lacing as on an actual katana, so who would bother painting a camo pattern on the underlying grip before lacing it over in a plain color…
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[li]Red Tiger: Needs to be rotated 90 deg to run perpendicular to the grip.
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[li]Woodland & Urban Digital: Wallpaper effect on the grip, more noticeable with Woodland.
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[li]Spray Paint Tan & Snake Scale: Wallpaper effect on both the blade and the grip.
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[li]Resistance: Wallpaper effect on the blade.
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The skins are a constant iterative process, due to the nature of our inhouse system making alterations can cause unforseen issues on other weapons and it becomes a tight balancing act to unify the skins across all weapons. For Phantom’s katana, I never wished for it to have skins available, that and Spark’s Revive gun were the two I’d never intended to have skins so they will require special attention when it comes to skin implementation. I’d like to say a huge thanks for your detailed feedback, it is a great boon when I get time to work on them and need to find what to focus on. There will not be much movement on skins for the next month or two (I’m working on something I think everyone will like ALOT right now :D) but when I’m working on them next your post will prove invaluable!