I'm kind of surprised that SOE still has an art team considering they can get infinitely more competent people to do their job on player studio instead of paying some lazy guys to copypaste most art and only work on their favourite faction.
The overall aesthetics's have been on a steady decline since launch .. Silly hats ( Player studio has rectified that some what ) Bra and stocking on Infi's Jingle bell and Halloween horns Love heart Xbow's MS paint reskins ( In regards to TR infi armour ) Miss matching ES colours Camo coverage etc etc The gritty sci-fi shooter lost out to a cartoon FPS it seems ...
Man I always try to be an optimist but seeing such a lazy release for the TR on top of all of the issues players are kicking up about TR was a terrible move. What I'd like to change the most is the TR infantry weapons, they look exactly the same which I actually could handle, but I they sound so puny. I used to play airsoft as a kid and I still have airsoft guns that sound more satisfying to shoot
That has me thinking, does Planetside 2 even have the same art team that was around for Alpha/Early Beta? Honestly, as much as the visual quality of the game keeps getting butchered over time, I find myself asking that question from time to time. Surely the same artists that made the game amazing at first can't be the same ones ruining it now and flipping the bird to anyone who dares question their work.
From the various descriptions from this: http://ukitakumuki.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24 I believe it was a different art team/director, and it seems that the original artists are also a bit disillusioned with the way things ended up going. Honestly, it seems like the new art director came in, changed up a bunch of things and then proceeded to never properly implement things based on those changes (opaque-> transparent cockpits, but no player models inside) and never defined a real cohesive scifi art style. I think part of it is that they decided to go F2P and decided "let's just sell things at the expense of looks." The composite armor/helmets should have been the defaults, or earned ingame, as they look much more like actual helmets (and explain the HUD) and much more scifi than the current defaults. The character models are CLEARLY meant to have armor equipped (especially on the TR), and many models look awkward/incomplete without them. Decals still aren't properly implemented on armor, either. While they could have still managed to develop some really good helmets, armors, and other cosmetics to sell while maintaining the original (much better imo) artstyle, they instead decided to go over the top cartoony in order to make money (at least that's my guess). The problem was that (as we can still see) the way they went about was not implemented well. I mean, think about it? How many thousands of dollars has SOE lost because TRay's team STILL hasn't managed to get decals to work on armor? It's a shame, because "sci-fi supersoldiers" already has such an awesomely broad range of potential cool designs you could do, and the art designers for PS2 are lucky enough to get to design THREE factions with multiple classes, each which could have a very cool, complicated and really interesting design. This game has of dozens weapons working off of all kinds of technology which could also have all kinds of neat designs (and some of those are pretty cool, most notably on the NC). If SOE wants to make money on cosmetics, they shouldn't be producing cartoony things--they should instead keep producing good environmental and mechanical camos (which mostly look pretty good), produce more armors that look REALLY cool and scifi, and rework the existing designs to be unique and interesting so people want to play more and invest more in their characters and want to actually play. Has anyone else seen the flash ads that have the TR motorcycle helmet light assault shooting into the mosquito cockpit? It looks like it's an ad for some cheap flash browsergame, and part of that is because the default TR stuff as it it doesn't look like "scifi shooter," it looks like "cheap browser game." I honestly hate to be so critical of the art design, because I love this game and it does have some pretty nice-looking stuff. The issue is that this game has almost zero immersion because of the ridiculous and schizophrenic art direction of the game, and it's REALLY worrying that a member of the development team is allowed to be so rude and blow off paying customers.. I don't need tons of immersion in my sci-fi nanite shooter, but it would be nice to have SOME, and it would be nice if the public face of the art team was one that made players excited about the game they spend so much time looking at and accepted player feedback to make the game better.
It's ok to say nay, not rejoice with the choice of the art team. Hooray not the kind of man that you will find in the art team. The aaart team.
There are countless way to make money without it impacting the integrity of your game. Few examples would be weapons skins .. Sell different MBT barrel skins / models .. Sell different attachment skins ( scopes, barrels, grips etc ) for infantry weapons . I'm sure they would make a fortune from the TR if they could change how their Carv looked ( not performed )
In defense, what I'll say is that it's blindingly obvious why/how this happened. They have deadlines for pushes, they didn't finish TR's in time, and figured they'll push something out in future instead. Fine. Don't care. Wouldn't even care if they were adding lace to my infiltrator bra. In attack though, Jesus Christ do they do NOTHING but spin and ********? What the **** is wrong with saying 'We thought some of you might like something a bit different whilst we finish up on the TR camo; it's taken longer than we'd hoped but we didn't want you to be out in the cold.' This is just more of the same SOE ********; 'WE'RE GIVING YOU SOMETHING YOU'VE WANTED ALL YEAR!!!.... AN OPPORTUNITY TO BUY THE SAME GUNS YOU'VE USED ALL YEAR FOR $40!!!!! ' or 'WE'RE ADDING VALUE TO OUR MEMBERSHIP BY ENSURING THAT THE DEAL IS FAR LESS GENEROUS AND FLEXIBLE!!!!!!! DO YOU LOVE IT OR DO YOU LOVE IT?!'... Luperza, if you're reading this, I really do think you do an amazing job, but you have GOT to get this lot in check. You're not working for a cigarette company, big oil, or even a supermarket. Lose the spin, start being honest. Look at the hype that Star Citizen is sitting on just from having a positive and honest attitude to engagement, instead of allowing their developers to wave their intellectual superiority about on Twitter... Sorry mate. You also have to have pro Twitter and Reddit skills. No need to know what a forum is though, that's excess to requirements... So, have you got Twitter+Reddit? If so, it looks like you could definitely take Tramell's job, just on extra ability
I think I'll just wait for another game to come along that offers big battles and -actually immersive gameplay-, because this money-mongering, corporate, scumbox-saturated, lazy, uncreative, bumbling team of apes flinging **** at each other is getting hard to bear. Sorry that's my honest side talking, keep it up SOE, you've truly come a long way from those original concepts like this, this, and this.
Speaking of Reddit, it exploded on there too: http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/1y2s7c/suck_it_up_tr_youve_got_a_hat_and_the_other/
Honestly, like Phazaar said, SOE could learn a lot from the Star Citizen team. While the game is in alpha, they have received massive crowdfunding support (almost $39 million at this point--having made close to $1 million in the last week alone), have consistently produced lots of solid designs, and are clearly very strong on providing an immersive experience. The community still has a lot of goodwill because the team is very open, and still manages to produce very high-quality things. Pretty much everything they've released has been aesthetically a pleasant surprise, with each manufacterer having a consistent design. There have been threads about people's favorite/least favorite ship, and all ships come out pretty evenly across those, showing that the designs all have something that appeals to a lot of people, and they have personal style. That's what each faction here should be aesthetically: something that looks very good, and has a very consistent design. Instead of pumping out dozens of similar-looking camos and reskinned infiltrator armor (although calling it a reskin is really doing it too much credit) and uninspired rehashes of old designs, they should be creating unique, strong faction concepts. Take the time to do it right and take input from the community. Actually think about the lore and immersion of the game as things are being developed. Most importantly, don't be rude to your customers when they point out obviously lazy design. SOE would receive a lot of good will if TRay had simply said something like "We wanted to give you something because the finished model previewed last month isn't quite yet ready." Honest, polite, and doesn't make 1/3 of your customer base start up a bunch of negative threads.
Moin I guess what TRay was trying to say was that cosmetics aren't released symmetrical. And that's ok for me. What's not ok for me is the crap they are releasing. Btw, I actually like the commissar hat. The only problem is that a proper leather coat is missing. And I'm still waiting for my NC beret, I don't buy the crap that it doesn't fit the NC & PS2 style, but all the other **** we got does.
Lots of people calling for T-Ray's job. I hope Smedly steps up and does something about this. Both T-Ray and Higby need to be put into check and start doing things balanced.
Smedly barely communicates with his customers in his own forum. Do you know how many forum posts he had for 2013? Zero. That speaks volumes right there. A development team that can't even communicate in it's own forums.
Smedly is the CEO of SOE, not the head of the PS2 department. Of course he's not going to post here. SOE owns and manages 10+ games with forums for each. I don't think he has the time.
Commissar Hat = Troll TRay is also being one OP is right TR needs to be worked from the ground up, all over again. Traits, looks, sounds. All of it. It's just not working out at the moment, very controversial design elements, not fun NS variations. I only keep playing TR because of their Lore - No, because of the other Factions' Lore in fact! TR are really not my style and I wouldn't join them, just that I wouldn't join the others either so if I had to pick only 1 and I definitely HAD to pick(As I really want to play or at least, until a better Sci-Fi MMOFPS comes out because I don't see this one holding its own against any full proper competition in this category)... Yeah, TR. It does make some sense right? I can't have strayed too far? It would also help make a stronger case if we had side by side comparison pics of all the TR Infiltrator suits as they are in the game, not only as shown in the Character/Item Menu. By the way, either I have never seen a Lumi Infiltrator, or there's a way to activate the Lumi like it works with vehicles... Or NOBODY bought it. Or it's just not Lumi enough apparently I think that's a separate issue too, so just thought of bringing it up. Or you know, I could be going blind. Is it affected by settings? Because it really shouldn't- If a person buys that thing they're probably expecting it to show on all settings.
This. Seriously, as terrible as Trammels design and reply are, at least ye dont have the bra and tights look. Lol. I cant belive he still has a job after that.
