looks
Latest
Star Trek Online's artist explains Tier 6 ship designs
The new Federation ship designs in Star Trek Online's upcoming expansion are a pretty big departure from the norm. Sure, the shape of the ships is familiar, but instead of the usual bright Federation white and sweeping curves, they're all hard angles, dark shades, glowing lines, and so forth. They don't look much like the Federation. Concept artist Hector Ortiz took to Reddit recently to explain why the ships look as they do and how the design of the new ships ties into their point of origin despite the departure. Ortiz explains that with the heavy emphasis on intelligence operations in this expansion, it was only appropriate to design ships that resembled nothing so much as spy planes: angular, stealthy, and dark. That led to the inclusion of the blue lines to help the ship silhouettes stand out against the blackness of space, with the unique nacelle designs also part of an effort to minimize the ship profile. There's no assurance that you'll like the new designs after reading his comments on the rationale, but at least you'll understand why they look the way they do.
The Daily Grind: How often do you inspect people?
I swear, I'm not trying to examine you for your gear. I really don't care about that. I'm examining you because your outfit looks really nice and I want to see how you did it. I want to find out your vanity-based secrets. I want to build on that outfit to produce something gorgeous the next time I hit the streets. Anyone can play Final Fantasy XIV, but I intend to do so with a fair bit of style. Some games don't really let you do this. I can't find out your clothing from examining your character in The Secret World. Some games reward people who are peeking at stats more than at a character's outfits. And some people really don't care in the slightest. So what about you? How often do you inspect people? In-game, obviously; if you're hovering behind Dennis from accounting and carefully counting the number of threads in his shirt, that's creepy, but not the sort of inspection we're talking about. Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: Do visuals change your opinion on classes?
I had a reasonably high-level druid whom I had completely abandoned in World of Warcraft simply because I didn't like forever being shifted into another form. Then I found that Glyph of the Stars exists, and suddenly I'm not only playing the class but enjoying it again. There's no practical mechanical difference, just that I can actually see my character now. And that might seem like a trivial thing, but the decision of how classes move and look can have a pretty big impact. Think about it -- the Engineer of WildStar could just as easily be summoning animal pets, but a big part of its visual appeal is the fact that it carts around robots. Mesmers in Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 have a mechanical identity, but the pink-to-purple spell effects and obvious illusions are meant to impress players with a genuine sense of style. Do visuals change your opinions on classes? Or do you look purely at the mechanics and not care about how the whole thing looks in play? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Age of Conan sneaks a peek at some (selectively) stylish crafting
Age of Conan is already unchained according to its subtitle, but players are still restrained in certain ways. You can't just craft an item with your chosen stats and have it look like whatever you want, can you? Of course not! At least, not until the major crafting revision goes live, and the latest game director's letter shows off how players will be able to do exactly that. The letter previews the new crafting interface, which along with ingredients allows players to select a style for the crafted product. New styles are unlocked via completing missions and certain achievements. The system also allows for adding new visuals as endgame drops or from the cash store, giving players more flexible options about how to look. Take a loot at the full letter for more details, as well as discussion about the next major content update and the possibility of porting elements over from The Secret World.
The Daily Grind: Why do you play a tall race?
Let me put my capital-b Bias up front and center here: Tall races are awesome. From Draenei to Roegadyn, Norn to Bahmi, I'm always tempted to play a race that towers above the others. My characters in Champions Online and DC Universe Online both tend to be elevated above the crowd, which can occasionally prove problematic when attempting to slip into smaller passageways. Even the shorter characters I play are on the tall side for their races. Why do I do it? A lot of the time I just prefer the overall demeanor of the taller races, compared to smaller races that often come across as overbearing (Guild Wars 2's Asurans) or annoying (World of Warcraft's Gnomes). Aside from that, taller races have an easier time conveying a variety of attitudes from body language, posture, and dress. And I'm relatively tall myself, so there's a touch of familiarity there. There's no shortage of players who take playing diminutive races as a point of pride, but people who play taller races don't have that same sort of community. So today I say stand up, look down, and tell everyone: Why do you play a tall race? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Vimeo announces 'Looks' feature, now lets users add visual effects to videos
Whether it was inspired by the recent Instagram craze or not, Vimeo's new "Looks" have a pretty good chance of being welcomed with open arms (and eyes) by the video creators on its well-known platform. In partnership with Vivoom, the company announced today that it's bringing over 500 visual effects to the service as part of its Enhancer toolbox, giving folks the ability to easily add some flavor to their own video productions straight from a web browser. Furthermore, Vimeo's made it possible to preview these filters in real-time, as well as letting them be somewhat customizable by implementing various editing options, such as trimming and adjusting the intensity of each one. Vimeo also says the novel feature will be able to make recommendations based on "technical analysis of the user's video and social data," -- in other words, the more you use it, the more likely it is to learn your very own visual preferences. Thanks to Vivoom's 16-year experience in the video effects field, Vimeo tells us it only expects the current Looks selection to grow and deliver more of the "highest quality effects," adding that the main goal is for each and every user to "find what's best for their personal needs." Speaking of which, all Vimeo account holders can play with the new Looks at no cost for the next 90 days, although the company wasn't quite clear as to what we can expect after that period comes to an end. Update: Vimeo has reached out to let us know that following the 90-day trial, the Looks will cost 99 cents each.
The Daily Grind: Are you a graphics snob?
When it comes to MMOs, looks are important. Kind of. Sometimes. Sure, you hear the argument from some that great content can overcome any visual limitations, but that's not true for everyone. There are those who must have the highest fidelity if they're going to grace a game with their eyes. They are the graphics snobs. Have you ever found yourself poo-pooing a game on its looks alone? Are animations and avatar appearances a make-or-break factor in your enjoyment of a title? Does it physically pain you to play earlier-era MMOs due to how crude they look? Do you work in the technical specifications of your graphics card into every conversation you have? Then you might be one of these... visually selective folk. It's OK. I don't judge. I've been known to shut down a game right away if it looks uglier than sin. So where does your visual tolerances lay -- and are you a self-admitted graphics snob? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: What simple things endear a game to you?
In the grand scheme of things, Guild Wars 2's guesting isn't a feature that will add new content or new ways to play the game. But it will allow you to play more easily with friends on other realms, and that's been welcomed by some players. Star Wars: The Old Republic's upcoming reputation system might just be adding titles, but more titles mean a lot to some players. Final Fantasy XIV allows you to jump, and if you played the game for a year beforehand, you'll be looking forward to that addition. Sometimes, what matters isn't the big things that get you addicted to a game but the little elements that improve your overall experience. Cosmetic flourishes, nice-looking equipment, convenience and quality-of-life upgrades -- none of them makes the game good or bad, but sometimes they bring a bigger grin than actual content or systems. So what simple things have endeared a game to you, now or in the past? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
WildStar Wednesday talks about the game's narrative design
Unless you were at PAX Prime last year, about all you've seen of WildStar in action has been the game's cinematic trailer. While it didn't give much of an idea of how the game played, said video certainly had a lot of style. According to the latest WildStar Wednesday community blog post, that style was a big part of the game's narrative design, which is seen as one of the main points of development -- making a game that feels large, engrossing, and epic. As lead designer Chad Moore explains it, the narrative design team is responsible for outlining the world of Nexus, which was in part created to serve as a perfect locus for a variety of different adventures. While this design team isn't particularly concerned with mechanics, it is concerned with ensuring that every part of the game has the same degree of personality as the first cinematic trailer. If you're one of the many people anticipating the game heavily, take a look behind the scenes to see how it produces its feel.
The Daily Grind: Is looking cool more important than stats?
My gaming philosophy is this: Looks matter. They're not all that matter in video games, but they're important. If I'm to spend hundreds of hours with the same avatar, then I want that avatar to look sleek, sophisticated, tough, or coordinated. I do not want to come off like I slathered glue all over my character's body, jumped into a Salvation Army discount bin, and started flopping around. How my character looks in an MMO is so important to me that often I'll choose a piece of gear based on its appearance rather than its stats. If I feel forced to be saddled with an ugly hat or a pair of trousers that were robbed from Bozo the Clown's wardrobe, then it grates and I go to bed that night with a headache. If I can assemble an outfit that I think makes me look cool to others I meet -- and myself especially -- then it almost doesn't matter to me whether I have that extra +5 stamina or not. So even though many MMOs offer both cosmetic appearances and adventuring outfits, the question remains: Is looking cool in MMO ultimately more important than stats? At the end of the day, would you rather look spectacular or fight spectacularly? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
A peek at Sector 4 of Fallen Earth
Sector 4 isn't available for players of Fallen Earth just yet, but it's impossible not to know that it's out there, the fourth piece of a building world. As it turns out, however, Sector 4 is more than just the next zone -- it's a look into what the game's world was like before everything went to hell. In a new diary from Chris "Devo" Deavellar, the aesthetics of the new zone are discussed, and he mentions that Sector 4 is the first branch away from the fairly realistic environments seen in the game up to this point. Deavellar mentions that just throwing a bunch of plant life around would have felt unsuitable for the game, but considering the newest sector highlights the insane experiments of the Globaltech company, the place needed an alien feel. Using several real-world plants such as kudzu for inspiration, the result is a world that still feels true to life in many ways... but also is filled with alien plants weeping amber fluid. Fallen Earth players should take a look at the full diary to get the smallest hint of what this newest zone will look like, a reminder of what would have been the future... before the end of the world. [Thanks to Scott for the tip!]
The details on playing dress-up in Warhammer Online's upcoming patch
If there's one overriding impulse that goes into nearly every MMO, it's the urge to look good. You spend so much time staring at your character that you want to look appropriate -- ominous, or dignified, or just plain cool. That's the motive behind Warhammer Online's new appearance system in patch 1.3.6, and it's a significant upgrade to the game's setup. Designer Sean Bosshardt has penned a developer diary explaining how the new appearance system works in practice, which essentially gives your equipment its own set of equipment. The short version is that when looking at your character's equipment, you can flip over to their appearance slots, and then each eligible item can have another item placed within the appearance slot. However, the new appearance doesn't consume or use the item which granted the new look, and it stays with that piece of armor -- so you can change the look of a pair of shoulders, and that look stays with them until you change it again. It's an interesting system with several nuances, so Warhammer Online players are encouraged to read the full diary to see just how nice they'll be looking when the new patch hits.
Yoichi Yamazaki's latest bot has hungry eyes, nothing else
A quick glance can say a lot, but sometimes its meaning can get lost in translation. For example, there's not a lot of difference between a dirty look and a, uh, dirty look, but Yoichi Yamazaki and cohorts at the Tokyo Institute of Technology hope to quantify that (and many more) by creating a so-called Eye Robot. It's a pair of disembodied eyeballs that create expressions in concert with pink eyelids; a user views each expression and then indicates how it makes him or her feel. At this point it seems like something of a scatter-shot affair, throwing out expressions at random and seeing which elicit a reaction, but hopefully in the near future Yamazaki's metrics will help make the vacant gaze of other bots a little less disconcerting. [Via Engadget Poland]
Bumping your recruitment posts
Many guilds out there have their recruitment posts up on both the realm forums and the global recruitment forums. One of the big keys to a recruitment post is to keep it up on the top of the forums so everyone sees it, and sees it before any other posts. This means that you and your guildies have to bump the post to the top of the list, and bump it quite often.The global recruitment forums recently underwent an upgrade, where the forums were split into Alliance and Horde factions. This has helped a bit with the number of posts per day, and has thus lessened the number of required bumps a recruitment posts needs to keep it on the front page.However, you still have to bump it quite a bit.
Grading the Horde mounts
Reader Justin sent along this witty little guide he wrote rating the Horde starting mounts in the game. From skeletal horse to the Chocobo hawkstrider, he slaps a letter grade on each mount. And although he doesn't actually ever list his criteria for grading (coolness? looks? rideability?), he does come up with some interesting ratings.The winner? The skeletal horse comes out on top, with a grade of A-, while at dead last is actually my personal favorite, the hawkstrider (although I like the horse, too). He says the Chocobo is "only cool to 4-year-old girls and seriously deluded 17-year-old anime fans," but hey, I'm neither, and I rolled not one but two Blood Elves just to ride one. Then again, he also rates the raptor below the kodo and the wolf, so there's obviously no accounting for taste.What do you all think? I know from experience that most of you don't like the hawkstrider (that just means my tastes are exclusive), but does the kodo deserve such a high spot on the list? And if we made an Alliance list of mounts like this (and graded them on the three criteria I listed above), what would come out on top? I'm guessing you lot would like Night Elf cats a lot more than my personal favorite, the mechanostrider. But beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the Broggok.Update: I made a mistake-- I thought these were listed in order of rating. As our wonderful commenters point out (thanks for catching this, guys, you're the best), the ratings are as follows:Undead Horse: A-Troll Raptor: B+Orc Wolf: BTauren Kodo: C-Blood Elf Hawkstrider: FSo the raptor does beat the wolf and the kodo on this list. My fault completely.
Some celebrities shying away from HD cameras
It's all but unanimous that sports programming looks entirely more appealing in high definition than in SD, but for folks on the other side of the cameras, adding all that detail can be intimidating, if not embarrassing. While the "grain structure of film allows for a softness" that lends a hand in covering up the not-so-attractive signs of aging, HD cameras tend to capture that raw, unassailable truth that some celebrities are less than fond of. Diane Sawyer, the 61-year old host of ABC's Good Morning America, reportedly acknowledged that the puffiness under her eyes could no long be covered up, as viewers looking on in HD "could see every flaw." To combat the newfangled "problem" posed to many on-camera stars, makeup firms are devising new "airbrushing" techniques to add glamor and remove blemishes without looking like a shot of Botox gone horribly awry. Interestingly, reports indicated that viewers tended to enjoy the rough, disclosing look on men, but would rather see dames looking their best through those pixel-packed lenses. Nevertheless, HD cameras are making flaws more and more noticeable, and apparently causing quite the ruckus from overly concerned celebrities all the same, but hey, that's the price you pay for being in the (1080i) limelight.
Best looking HDTV out there - not picture, but rather the bezel
We have a question for all of you. When you are shopping for a HDTV, how much does the overall aesthetics of the set matter to you. We aren't talking about the picture here but rather the bezel. (the plastic casing around the screen) Seriously, is this a big thing for you or do you just care about the image quality. That's fine if you do, but why? This thing is going sharing the same living room as you so the looks must matter some. So this brings us to our main question. What HDTV looks the best - when it is turned off that is? Personally, I like Panasonic's new rear-projection LCD/DLPs. I think they look nice and clean but still like a TV. So what HDTV have you seen lately, or of the past, that just looks great?
