Changing Team Colors: A New Team?!

[fortegigasgospel]

Well Cossack would be less of a faction anyway though, I would see his robots helping Light's, if they weren't always with Wily anyway.
Stardroids and King would make sense the most due to the campaign factions.

[BiscuitSlash]

Keep Cossack.

I know it's beyond our control, but having 6 teams available with only 4 of them playing at once sounds good. Adds more team variety and options.

[IamaMedalHunter]

Well. It's no doubt the Stardroids are going to shine in the spotlight in the future. They will eventually play a great role in the story and Dr.Cossack still doesn't. Unless Cossack plays a very major role as a leader too, I'd say the Stardroids should replace the Cossack team soon.

[Gumballtoid]

Soon, maybe, but not this version. Wouldn't it be just a bit weird to have a Stardroid team in the game when there's not yet any MMV content? no, Tango doesn't count

I think the safest thing to do would be to keep the teams as is, while still updating the colors (preferably using the palettes I posted, though it might not be a bad idea to keep Cossack gold and King purple since that seems to be a popular opinion). To follow up on that, folks should push for 8-team support on the Zandronum end to hopefully assure we'll be able to add these teams in the future.

I like the idea of Stardroid and Mr. X teams being in the game, but I think this is a case where it would be better to cross that bridge when we come to it, either during v7 development, or when Zandronum sees that feature implemented.

--

Yeah, I admit my King palette is kinda brownish, but I think it helps that it can be distinguished from the other teams well enough. That was my big hangup when I was messing around with them.

[Magnet Dood]

I'm a total fuckin loser who wasted like 3 hours on this



If you ask me, I think that the current team colors work well for the four teams that are already in the game. But why stop at 6 when we can have double the fun!?

Ignore the Samba team thing right there (or treat it as a sneak peak for Bit Man's skin?), that's what were gonna use for a potential Samba team in the DOS expansion and I had the logo lying around. The pink team doesn't have a logo, but if it were up to me, it would symbolize some sort of team built on masters that aren't owned by any of the doctors/groups present, which is why the MM10 masters show up there. The current team colors for King, Wily, Light, and Cossack are all nice and do contrast well, which is what I was gunning for with my colors here.

The Stardroids were meant to be a gold-brown color in order to simulate stars and shit, but I'm not huge on the palette. At least it doesn't clash with Cossack though- an older version of this had it being straight up yellow, but it could've been confused with Cossack's orange kind of easily. In any case, this is what I have for it. Obviously, the green and gray palettes would be what I'd add, and it would probably be good to switch Samba with Stardroids for core purposes.

[Gumballtoid]

I'm going to hate myself for saying this later but I don't think we should worry about the Samba team right now. I'll work around whatever core ends up doing.

A big part of this process is being able to distinguish the team colors. Light and Samba stand out well enough, but you might mix up Wily, Cossack, and Stardroids (which is a problem that currently exists in core I think) or mistake King for the non-aligned gang. Hell, if you squint really hard, you could mix up King and Mr. X pretty easily.



When I was going over these, I was trying to make sure no team would be easily confused with another. Stardroids had to strike a fine balance of purples so as to avoid being too close to either end of the Light / Wily spectrum, and King had to be a little less orange and a little more golden brown to keep away from Wily's reddish pink color. With six teams and only so many color options, it's hard to keep them from stepping on each other's toes. With your eight teams, you've got the six colors I've given, but now there's a pink team and another orange-y, yellow-y team, which kind of takes the issue at hand overboard.

Also, having a non-aligned team kind of contradicts itself, maybe? For a team to be a team, it needs to have some kind of identity or allegiance, and if you ask me, even the Mr. X team is kind of pushing it in that regard.


EDIT: While I'm at it, I figured I should try some of the combinations other folks suggested.



I'm really not big on that second one myself, but the first one I can totally see.

[Magnet Dood]

Personally, I don't buy the claims that you can't distinguish the teams in my mock-up. Their primary colors are the deciding factors for the most part, and I'm able to tell them all apart pretty easily. The only one that's slightly ambiguous is Cossack and Wily to me, and even then it's really not that bad. Of course, in game it might be a different story due to distances, so I can't really offer any insight into that. We'll see, though-- I've been a proponent for an 8 team modification for a while, anyway.

With that all being said, I certainly can't deny that all of the mock-ups you posted won't get anyone confused. It'll be sad to see the orange go, but your first makeup on the bottom picture (with the addition of a gray Mr. X team) has the best look out of them. If 6-team support does indeed become a reality, I'd be all for the gold Cossack, purple King and green Stardroid teams (although I like my primary green better since it's a touch darker I think, but whatever).

[BiscuitSlash]

I completely understand that Dr. Cossacks's tie is green, but I do still feel like Cossack's team should remain orange. Though since King's team kinda goes better as Gold than purple, mostly for the sake of King himself.

Essentially:

Cossack's team: Orange
King's team: Gold

Sounds slightly dumb, but the idea should at least be played around a little.

Stardroids purple or dark blue I guess. Depends if they are truly led by Sunstar or not.

[MusashiAA]

The whole "looks the same from the corner of my eye or if I squint my eyes real hard" argument sounds kinda bogus to me, it's like you're trying very hard to be able to say the suggested color schemes aren't discernable enough for the sake of making them as differentiable as aesthetically possible. If you're in a team match and don't realize which player is in which team, either team colors are too similar, or you're not paying enough attention, and pretty much all the color schemes presented are very clearly discernable from each other. I know it sounds like proper game design in theory, but we shouldn't be expected to have team colors be using the most wildly contrastable color schemes imaginable for the sake of portraying the outmost clarity of information to players: players are not dumb, and if they're playing a game, they have to be focused.

[Gumballtoid]

The squinting bit was mostly a huge exaggeration, but I hope folks got the gist of what I was saying.

In a fast-paced arena shooter like MM8BDM, clarity is extremely important. In the midst of a match, there is rarely an opportunity to sit down, breathe, and sort everything out, because you're either on the move, being shot at, or both. No, players aren't dumb. Yes, they have to be focused. The more clear and more pronounced you can make something, the easier it is for the player to grasp on the fly, so their focus can stay on the match and not on who belongs to which team.

Dood's palettes aren't impossible to discern, and some of them look quite nice, but during a skirmish, with folks from several teams joining the fray from different places and getting right to it, you can't afford to stop and try to pick out who's who. In traditional team games, this is never an issue because there are only two colors to worry about: red and blue. Once you start adding teams, such as in a game of 4-Team LMS, things get a little hairy.

I'm not saying his colors are bad, or that they're especially hard to distinguish. I'm saying, though not guaranteed, it is very possible to confuse a red team with an orange one in a heated match. We should be striving to get them as pronounced and unique as possible so as to prevent as much confusion as we can.

[Russel]

Yeah we're using Gumball's latest set of colors up there.

Moved to closed.