Request: Please improve human avatars in Mission Board

[Deleted member 171883]

Dear Developers!

As a veteran commander I played with every Elite games in my childhood. I can tell you with great certainty that ED is a very good game. Talking and playing together with my friends many of us has the same opinion that - every part of the game is a very good quality artwork, beautiful graphics, excellet mechanics, - except one thing: The Human Faces (factions avatars) inside Mission Board are a very shallow work. I cannot believe these characters could be leaders in factions for real. They have lack of human greatness in them, most of them metrosexual, anti-charismatic, not-leader-type, etc. - they are not likeable at all. The quality of the drawings itself are low.

I suggest and ask you, please hire the artist who created the galaxy power leaders’ faces’ in the galactic powers menu. They are more believeable, good quality. I suppose those are rendered pictures of real persons while the mission board characters are only drawings. I ask you please get this last missing quality work done, and put real and charismatic or somehow other way special, more majestic, and graphically better faces to this menu. Like the ones in the power play section would be awesome. That is more of an art, not caricature.

Anyway we are facing these low quality, spiritless drawings in our 10-15 percent of our gaming time, when we are browsing different missions and presently we don’t have that awesome experience that we have at other parts of the game.

Thank your for reading my suggestion,

Steve

Here is a link of my comparison:

https://ibb.co/cNm64G

 

[metatheurgist]

There are probably thousands of factions in the game, it'd be a butt load of work to draw one for each and every rep rank. So they don't. The faction reps are created identikit style, like in Frontier. Powerplay leaders were created by an artists so no surprise they're better. IMO the faction reps look pretty good.

 

[Deleted member 171883]

Ok. I aggree it would be a huge job to do it, but maybe they could mix couple of hundreds of characters' in parts of their faces.

They don't look pretty good. My friends also a don't think so. They are so ugly, bloodless nobodies, no faction leaders. They don't demand respect, just average faces. Everybody has dark circles under eyes, etc. The ratios of genders, and races also repelling. Almost everybody is a woman, whites are brown too. Then marlon haired, balds, punks. Just not normal conservative leader types. This is not a noire cyberpunk game and universe, this tends to be reality simulator. As I said upper. Not a good artwork not in coherence with the spirit of the game. Need to be improved in my opinion to catch up to the game's overall standard.

Thanks for your comment.

 

[xondk]

Don't look pretty good?

It seems a rather subjective asesesment.
As for the ratio of genders and races, that seems pretty even in my experience, remember there's also one npc per alignment level with a faction as well, so each faction has 6 npc's.
And when it comes to generation of random faces, it really is a rather tough to create unique and 'good' looking npcs.
Dark circles under the eyes isn't something I see in every npc, and I see the whole color range and white's are......white? so yeah.

Calling it 'sloppy' seems a bit arrogant, can you do better? can you create procedural generated npc's that look even like this? I have my doubts. That isn't to say it is perfect, and doesn't needs work, it does, but calling it sloppy? when it clearly far far from it, look at a ton of games out there, to see truly sloppy characters. The way you rate things really shouldn't be only two steps, 'great'/'sucks' because things rarely fall into two steps like that.

 

[Deleted member 171883]

Ok sloppy isn't the good word, I wanted to say slummy.
Have you checked the picture I attached? Elite is a superb quality game. When those faces looking back at me calling themselves faction leaders (have you seen a leader in your life?) I say this is NO ELITE.

Please improve them in 2019-

 

[xondk]

Ok sloppy isn't the good word, I wanted to say slummy.
Have you checked the picture I attached? Elite is a superb quality game. When those faces looking back at me calling themselves faction leaders (have you seen a leader in your life?) I say this is NO ELITE.

Please improve them in 2019-

One is an artist individual drawing a picture, the other is an actual generated model, it really isn't something you can compare.

 

[Fenris Wolf]

Here is a link of my comparison:

https://ibb.co/cNm64G

Steve, looking at your attached image would I be right in assuming that you don't profile your monitor?

Just asking as the avatars look very dark on your screenshot.

 

[Deleted member 171883]

Yes, indeed. I know, I wrote the same in my opening comment. If it is generated, then no human spirit in them. On the other hand the artist can put human spirit and leader spirit into them. But I think the power play ones are real humans' (or actors') photos made up by an artist. The generator should also use more of a leader style details, not just generate some kind of human figure in a boring mix of genders, races, and classes.
And let off cyberpunk.
Simply, I don't have good feelings when I play with them. Maybe it is subjective, but others can feel the same, who has greater quality demands.

So I still think it need to be improved. Put ELITE spirit in them. The bigger the work the better the result.

 

[Winterwalker]

I think they're pretty good myself. They also improved dramatically after one particular update, so I'm sure the art depertment will tweak from time to time. I don't think it's fair to compare to powerplay faces either because - as mentioned above - those are hand drawn and not procedurally generated.

Sure some aren't the prettiest people you ever saw but my crew-girl is a real looker (no I'm not showing you a pic!) and I think there is character there, which is surprising given everyone has the same neutral expression. Who - ever - looks good on their driving license anyway? And it's certainly one step beyond FE2 (I played too)

Spoiler

I'd never tell the art deparment to stop developing of course .. but wonder if the OP spotted the technical (face generation) difference between factions and powers? o7

 

[DARGAN]

translator

I think it lacks animation.

most games today we have right to facial animations and movements, the holo-me to animations. I think animated images would give a lot of life to the game, even if they must be repetitive.

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

There seems to be about 5 or 6 different basic archetypes of NPC face, and then there are many variations based on those, creating an impression that there are a lot of differing procgen NPC's - so it looks to me like Frontier select one of the basic archetypes then randomly vary things like hairstyle, colour, skin type/colour, age.

Unfortunately, quite a few of those basic archetypes range from 'face like a half-chewed caramel' to 'face only a mother could love', and only one or two archetypes are quite decent looking.

What's needed are more of the 'decent looking' archetypes, to balance out the 'face like a half-chewed caramel' types IMHO

 

[xondk]

Yes, indeed. I know, I wrote the same in my opening comment. If it is generated, then no human spirit in them. On the other hand the artist can put human spirit and leader spirit into them. But I think the power play ones are real humans' (or actors') photos made up by an artist. The generator should also use more of a leader style details, not just generate some kind of human figure in a boring mix of genders, races, and classes.
And let off cyberpunk.
Simply, I don't have good feelings when I play with them. Maybe it is subjective, but others can feel the same, who has greater quality demands.

So I still think it need to be improved. Put ELITE spirit in them. The bigger the work the better the result.

Sorry, but this has nothing to do with 'quality' but your expectations vs reality, generating millions of NPC's that look decent, and actually human like is VERY difficult compared to simply painting individual pictures, and there are simply too many npc's to individually paint every single one.

as for "Elite spirit" I am not sure what you are talking about, but yeah, you do not agree with the style currently, that's fine, but I think its great especially compared to what is seen elsewhere, but i'm not blind in that it needs improvements especially with the lighting, but Frontier is clearly working on it......so relax a bit.

There seems to be about 5 or 6 different basic archetypes of NPC face, and then there are many variations based on those, creating an impression that there are a lot of differing procgen NPC's - so it looks to me like Frontier select one of the basic archetypes then randomly vary things like hairstyle, colour, skin type/colour, age.

Unfortunately, quite a few of those basic archetypes range from 'face like a half-chewed caramel' to 'face only a mother could love', and only one or two archetypes are quite decent looking.

What's needed are more of the 'decent looking' archetypes, to balance out the 'face like a half-chewed caramel' types IMHO

'decent looking' being......what? quite honestly what? super models? and such?

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

'decent looking' being......what? quite honestly what? super models? and such?

Ones which don't look like a half-chewed caramel, would be a great start.

And why not have one or two archetypes which look like supermodels? Do you have some objection to this?

 

[Deleted member 171883]

Thanks, Genar's comment sounds like true. But photo quality also should be improved, I think, not just the style.

The game Freelancer is a "pretty good" -, but Elite is dangerous. Why do we play rather Elite? So don't stop developing. Look at it again, the power play ones are real human's faces on artistic photos. That would be the best. Somehow hundreds could be turned into thousands technically and as Genar said from decent-looking archetypes. Means for me they are not slummy. Everybody should know what I mean. Genders and races should be according to the ratios as in Elite gamer community worldwide.

No life in current ones. And they are not just in strange stlye but unrealistic.

I will go - as Fenris recommended - and push up brightness on my monitor then I will believe the hypohair young punk lady is my chancellor

 

[Vasious]

I actually think they have done a great job.

You are given a hint as to the faction's government type and allegiance by the style of clothes, accessories, and the Imperials perchance for bright hair.
They also seem to have a range of looks based on rank ; ie the negative rep contacts look like Grim rougher characters, the low rank neutral ones younger, vs the Higher rank ones looking the Older weathered look

 

[metatheurgist]

Also, I'm not sure where the idea that people who lead are automatically super gorgeous and "charismatic" comes from, after all they're just normal people too. I mean, let's just take a look at today's world leaders. I could single one out but then this thread would get locked.

 

[Deleted member 171883]

Absolutely not a good job regarding the core systems around Sol, where I play normally. And the opposite for me. The greater rank, the younger the person is.
Have you checked the picture in my first comment? Is that young white-haired hippie girl a Chancellor?? Come on.

metatheurgist: I am from a country (not from the western part of Europe) where these times are decent charismatric leaders, fortunately, that is why I could think who made and approved those pictures had never seen a leader.
That is only one thing. There is graphics quality, aliveness, spirit, decent-looking, gender and race ratios - with accordance to the power itself, etc. many more imperfection. Maybe good for a game like Freelancer or Fallout 3 or Deus Ex 3, but not for today ED.

The overall effect they do on me is disappointing, sometimes annoying - as I wrote above - they are not likeable.

 

[Mae Tang]

'face like a half-chewed caramel'

Honestly, this is my aesthetic, so I don't mind seeing it at all lmao!

I personally like the leader pictures and as others have mentioned it's probably a game generated mechanism, rather than art work. Besides, leaders seldom look dazzling, you only have to look at the current gen of leaders in todays real world.

 

[Deleted member 171883]

Saltie Mae: Looking at your "avatar" I don't doubt it

But you must admit others may have a better taste

I've made another faction my ally, and again a woman, who looks like an albino chemotherapied supermodell: (here is the link)

https://ibb.co/i2h7ib

...not that bad anyway as the others in my first comment.

 

[FrogsFriend]

There are 75000+ Factions in the game, each with 10 representatives (5 for missions, 5 for passenger missions), so it's unlikely that they can get an artist to hand paint each one in a photo-realistic style

But if it's a white, European, dark haired, middle-aged man you're looking for... he's probably out there somewhere.

Here's a selection to browse through in the meantime:
https://imgur.com/a/PWOuv
(it's worth clicking each page of images to see them at full resolution)

They look pretty good to me