24 replies to this topic

[DaZur]

We have all these wonderfully detailed battlemechs and more to come for months and month if not years.. Yet here we sit with the same 20 common shared (IS and Clan can sport) camo patterns and 10 faction camo patterns.

This should be a no-brainer... The soft operational cost -to- net profit is heavily in PGIs favor

There are quite literally thousands of lore-based Regimantal camo patterns out there and PGI continues to miss the boat. I don't get it.

Yeah, I know... camo patterns are meaningless in terms of game-play and concealment. That said, I don't beautify my mechs for play purpose. I do it to please "me".

(And to address my OCD by all my mechs sporting the same camo)

Can I possibly be the only mechwarrior not content with my Regimental Paint Schemes "kind'a sort of looking like the actual lore-based scheme... but not?

I'll go so far as to infer that less and less patterns are being purchased because the present stable has grown stale, are lack-luster and are overtly generic. I'm not even going to mention the ones that have been changed for the worse since their original inceptions.

Thoughts?

[SecretMantis]

It actually takes a lot of work to make new patterns for mechs because they have to be done by hand for every chassis. Its not financially worth it. Now if they had some kind of program that would allow community members to create patterns for the chassis and submit them to be integrated into the game, that might work.

[Davegt27]

not familiar with lore but I was trying to do the Flash theme earlier today and realized there are very few paint schemes
(was even considering getting a Assassin to go along with the paint scheme)

also not enough decal locations

but that's just my opinion

[Bud Crue]

SecretMantis, on 12 July 2017 - 10:45 AM, said:

...Its not financially worth it.

Maybe. Maybe not. I have no idea how much work, and thus, how much it costs PGI to provide this sort of feature. What I do know is that I spend money on this game primarily for the aesthetics or mechporn aspect (I sure as hell aint paying for immersion or quality game play). I for one have been known to throw cash at the game just to outfit all my potential CW mechs with FRR cockpit merch as well as camo and colors. Now if I had an increased amount of options for camos and regimental patterns that scratched a particular loretard or nostalgia based itch -or hell if they just look cool/different than what we have atm- then I guarantee I as well as many others would throw significant cash at PGI to buy them.

[DaZur]

SecretMantis, on 12 July 2017 - 10:45 AM, said:

It actually takes a lot of work to make new patterns for mechs because they have to be done by hand for every chassis. Its not financially worth it. Now if they had some kind of program that would allow community members to create patterns for the chassis and submit them to be integrated into the game, that might work.

I agree to disagree...

In fact, the way MWO uses three channels to build upon their patterns, it's quite easy in context. (There is a video somewhere where an artist goes through the process in a very detailed fashion). I'm not saying there is not a sizable up-front soft operational cost... far from it. I am inferring that patterns, camos, etc. are "gifts that keep on giving" in the effect that once done, it's a pure net profit vehicle that both old and new players will invest in.

I like the idea of community development but I suspect because of the 3-channel process it's tough to do without allowing public access to the raw 3D assets.

[LordNothing]

exponential work load. simply multiply number of mechs in game by number of patterns, and thats how many textures they have to make. since the former is always going up, and any change in the latter requires making numberOfMechs skins, i very much doubt new patters are on the horizon. now ive done texturing, fastest i ever did was a map in 2 days, though ive had others take a couple weeks. i hate it its a slow tedious job and i usually fall into bad habbits like using the same fill patterns over and over and skimp on the detail work. so the more skins the art department has to spew out, the lower the quality as they try to lighten their growing workload with shortcuts.

Edited by LordNothing, 12 July 2017 - 12:19 PM.

[TWIAFU]

DaZur, on 12 July 2017 - 10:37 AM, said:

Thoughts?

Yes please.

[ScrapIron Prime]

Most units that care about such things pick a pattern and 3 colors and encourage their members to use it on as many mechs as they can afford. Plus decals.

HHoD for example, is red/yellow/black and Tiger print. I do the colors, but I mostly use Tartan instead as -A- I'm a Highlander at heart and -B- Tartan just looks better on some mechs (but not others) and -C- I already paid for Tartan. Then add a couple of Davion starbursts and a conspicuous "HHoD" on the back for advertising, and away we go... regimental.

Yes, new paint schemes would be excellent, but the more mechs they release, the larger a job it is to design a new scheme.

Edited by ScrapIron Prime, 12 July 2017 - 12:30 PM.

[Lorian Sunrider]

I think you are HIGHLY over simplifying how easy it would be and vastly overrating how popular they would be.

For some of the bigger ones? Sure. But for the middle or smaller names? There aren't going to be anywhere near enough people to care.

I think the better option is just to give us more camo options to play with in general, but tying them to lore outside of the big names isn't worth it for PGI to spend the time and money doing.

[Felbombling]

I think we should assume that this would be a metric butt-ton of work. Videos showing Lauren working on a pattern for hours on end on one chassis prove the work involved with something like this.

As of patch day, there will be fifty Inner Sphere chassis in the game. I'm not sure if the Mechs would have to be done individually for the whole chassis, or if the same pattern could be applied to all three plus variants. Some Mechs might require additional work per variant, such as the Hunchback 4G to the 4SP being an example, based on geometry differences.

Ok, so let's just spit-ball here...

I'm a fan of the 1st St. Ives Lancers. Is PGI really going to invest all those man-hours into making a unit specific camouflage pattern for a single unit in game, so that myself and the nineteen other 1st St. Ives Lancers fans MIGHT invest in that camouflage pattern? What if the Gray Death Legion camouflage was previously introduced in the patch before the 1st St. Ives Lancer pattern was introduced, and I love the Gray Death Legion? If I already bought into that, what are the chances that I'd invest into the 1st St. Ives Lancers at that point?

As much as I like the idea and would love it if it got off the ground, I cannot see that being an established, fully realized thing in game.

What I COULD see would be PGI picking a single chassis and/or variant prominently associated with the unit and doing something along those lines as a feeler for the market, but they already did that with hero Mechs like the Gray Death Shadow Hawk and Pirates' Bane Locust from the Gray Death Legion. Worse, they totally butchered their lore-based camouflage patterns, anyway. Gray on gray? No... let's do some really cool dripping blood red on grey, with white skulls and GDL in capital letters! Screw the lore when we can just wing it, man!

LOL No thanks.

[DaZur]

To be clear... I do not mean to over simplify or infer this would be a simple undertaking. I have in the past been a 3D contract artist and I'm well aware of the workload and the tedium this would be.

To be fair, a potion of this could have been mitigated if they didn't come to a dead stop on thematic pattern development in the 1st place... Just say'n.

A single new pattern for each faction and each chassis every 3 months or so would not be an unrealist goal. Many of these regimental patterns are nothing more than a common base with fringe and flair details.

[A Really Old Clan Dude]

Ah I can give you two or three that would be worth it from the old fans

Kell Hounds
Wolf Dragoons
Grey Death Legion
Eridani light horse
Kathil Uhlans

[SMDMadCow]

You can pull off Kathil Uhlans with the Davion faction pattern, black base, yellow, and yellow.

[Angel of Annihilation]

DaZur, on 12 July 2017 - 10:37 AM, said:

Yeah, I know... camo patterns are meaningless in terms of game-play and concealment. That said, I don't beautify my mechs for play purpose. I do it to please "me".

Umm....this isn't exactly true.

If you use Night Vision, light colored mechs show up like their glowing while dark color mechs become hard to see. Also brightly colored mechs or mechs with a pattern that stands out gets noticed more than dark, bland colored mechs (For the same reason the police ticket more red cars than black cars, the colors/patterns attract the eye). Finally if your using ECM, having a mech colored like the background often means you can totally escape notice even when standing right out in the open. So I wouldn't say camo paterns and colors are meaningless, in fact they are pretty meaningful if you ask me.

[Revis Volek]

Viktor Drake, on 12 July 2017 - 02:06 PM, said:

Umm....this isn't exactly true.

If you use Night Vision, light colored mechs show up like their glowing while dark color mechs become hard to see. Also brightly colored mechs or mechs with a pattern that stands out gets noticed more than dark, bland colored mechs (For the same reason the police ticket more red cars than black cars, the colors/patterns attract the eye). Finally if your using ECM, having a mech colored like the background often means you can totally escape notice even when standing right out in the open. So I wouldn't say camo paterns and colors are meaningless, in fact they are pretty meaningful if you ask me.

all mechs are black until like 600 meters and then they are still very washed out because of the crap colors and lighting on the maps. Ever notice how you dont look the same color in mech lab as you do in game? Because the dirty grity ness of war man!


and what is Night Vision? You mean Hulk Rage Vision? No one uses that because its terrible! Camos are pretty useless, its not the color i notice when i play or even what im looking for, its pixel movement.

[jss78]

Yeaup, with the increasing number of 'mechs, any new pattern (which you'd need to do for all 'mechs) is probably just about the biggest ask of all.

You can probably approximate a ton of lore camos if you get creative with the current camos, colours and deckles.

[DAYLEET]

We need a "SteamStore" where people can make special content like patterns to be approved by the players or pgi.

[Quicksilver Aberration]

DaZur, on 12 July 2017 - 10:37 AM, said:

I'll go so far as to infer that less and less patterns are being purchased because the present stable has grown stale, are lack-luster and are overtly generic. I'm not even going to mention the ones that have been changed for the worse since their original inceptions.

This is the major problem, they spend a lot of time and effort building the generic and boring patterns for every new mech and honestly it just isn't worth it for most of them. The unique and cool ones are often the faction or special camos you can't even buy or spread across other mechs (like the blood pact camo, or the Boiler hero camo, or the collector's edition Supernova camo, etc).

[Angel of Annihilation]

Revis Volek, on 12 July 2017 - 02:37 PM, said:

all mechs are black until like 600 meters and then they are still very washed out because of the crap colors and lighting on the maps. Ever notice how you dont look the same color in mech lab as you do in game? Because the dirty grity ness of war man!


and what is Night Vision? You mean Hulk Rage Vision? No one uses that because its terrible! Camos are pretty useless, its not the color i notice when i play or even what im looking for, its pixel movement.

Yep which is why when I am playing my ECM mechs, I often just find a place with a nice dark background or some ground foliage and just stand there motionless. When your camo matches, 90% of the time if you don't move, people will miss you standing there and just assume that you have moved and go back to chasing something with a big red bracket around it.

Also you can say that you only chase movement, but when you have 2-3 moving mechs you can fire at, your eye is most likely to latch on to the one that is brightly painted or otherwise stands out and engage it over targets that blend in to the background more. This is why size matters as well. The bigger the profile, the more it stands out, the more likely your going to get shot at.

As far a Night Vision, I often use it because it gives more contrast than heat vision and allows me better ability to pick out individual sections of them mech. Heat vision generally just looks like a blob and it is hard to make distinctions between say the ST and the CT or even judge lead at times. Also at least on my monitor, heat neutral terrain and such looks like one big dark area and I end up losing depth perception and find myself getting tripped up alot. Also even if most people don't use Night Vision for the reasons you mention, doesn't it still make sense to give yourself an advantage against anyone stupid enough to use it??

So yeah I think anyone who thinks that their choice of paint scheme is meaningless in terms of overall performance is fooling themselves. In fact it may only have a very minor effect but even if that only means 10-15 points of damage gets avoided every other match, over time it would still mean a much higher survival rate, much higher damage amounts, more kills, KMDD, assists and likely more wins.

[Trenchbird]

SecretMantis, on 12 July 2017 - 10:45 AM, said:

Now if they had some kind of program that would allow community members to create patterns for the chassis and submit them to be integrated into the game, that might work.

Hell, they have easy access to a delivery system, considering they added the game to Steam.