Altered Lineage Views

[RMMC]

The Guardians also seem to have taken a hit. The no longer have the nice roundish look, either. I can really notice it in a lineage I have with Guardians and Silver Shimmerscales...they both look all chopped.

 

When I'm planning lineages, I not only want something with either complimentary/contrasting colors, but I also want sprite shapes that compliment each other. This change kills a lot of that.

 

 

Edited because I'm forgetful

Edited May 15, 2014 by RMMC

[dragongrrl]

I have to agree with the philosophical Confused Cat.

 

I know how difficult the lineage view change was for so many of us. Some of these tile adjustments really don't bother me, and I actually do prefer a few over the old views, but I bow to ADP and all her beautiful checkers, because I really appreciate the gorgeous lineages she has created. I hope a good balance is found quickly. <3

 

Personally, I do love it whenever the Nocturnes shed their boxes, and I've always wondered if the full sprites would look good in the lineages. If TJ is simply tweaking things on a temporary basis, would that be a worthwhile possibility for anyone else?

[cyradis4]

Personally, I dislike 90% of the new ones, and I'm one who generally likes new things right off the bat. None of these are growing on me, though.

 

Also... When I do lineages (I do a lot of them), the pose as well as the colors of the dragons are critical for the look I'm going after. Now those symmetric (or deliberately asymmetric) lineages look weird.

 

As for using the full dragon's view... I'm game to try it.

 

C4.

[Bunnybrine]

Personally, I like the new look. It gives more detail to the dragons.

[purplehaze]

Nooooooo! This is just wrong! The Shimmers look awful. The Hellfires look awful. The Marrows look awful. Please bring back the old views. I don't see any that were actually significantly improved and most of them are all but ruined.

 

As C4 says, the shape of the dragons in the lineage is as important as any other factor to me. And those have been altered enough to just look "off" and mismatched. And with the female Hellfire even the color has changed, because most of her beautiful blue wing doesn't even show! I am not sure which others have changed. I am almost afraid to look.

 

ETA: I just looked at my Guardian x Deep Sea lineage that I was almost finished with and it makes me not even want to go on with it. http://dragcave.net/lineage/xT4dy

Edited May 15, 2014 by purplehaze

[Lurhstaap]

I'm another one who preferred it the old way. I honestly think full body sprites would look better than any sort of cropping.

[Confused Cat]

ETA: I just looked at my Guardian x Deep Sea lineage that I was almost finished with and it makes me not even want to go on with it. http://dragcave.net/lineage/xT4dy

The Guardians have really changed a lot. I think the new picture would not be bad if it had been like this forever, but the old one was just as good. And it's a very big change that damages lineages that are, for example, built with round shapes.

 

Just as with the previous lineage change, the problem is that many players had based their lineages and lineage plans on the things that were then changed.

I always look at the lineage pictures immediately when a new release dragon grows up, so I can make plans with it. Lineage planning is fun. It will still be fun no matter how this turns out.

... Well, if the male Marrow lineage picture stays the way it is now, I will say some very bad words IRL, write "sigh " in my signature, and continue playing.

[Kallistrate]

I'm another one who preferred it the old way. I honestly think full body sprites would look better than any sort of cropping.

I'm more than happy to try using full sprites (probably shrunk down?) instead of any style of cropping.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Kallistrate

[dragonpuck]

The images look like someone just took scissors and made them fit the space

 

this is just as fail as the last lineage view mess.

 

The shrink the WHOLE image down idea might work better than this

 

Wish TJ would try this stuff out in an ANNOUNCED temporary fashion and get feed back instead dumping on the unaware community.

Edited May 15, 2014 by dragonpuck

[TCA]

Noooo, my guardians ;^; Poor Rin Satsuki's lineage looks so awful now.

[Lavinia]

Another adoptables game I played for a while had some views where you could only see the heads of the creatures. I always hated that; you couldn't ever tell what breed you were looking at! Luckily, this change isn't so bad as all that, but I'm still definitely not in favor of the change.

 

Some of my poor beautiful seasonals are also zoomed in - the winter female is half out of her box!

 

PS - if this is really to cut down on the "butt" lineages, I'm sure people will find a whole new way to be immature and inappropriate, so I don't think it will help any.

[InugamiZERO]

sorry but what are butt lineages

[stardust13]

Not liking the zoom-in. I base a lot of lines off whether the dragon is linear or horizontal in its box, and cutting off the tails - like the female GWs and golds - ruins their "look" in a line.

[Natayah]

I don't honestly mind the re-tiling design on most of the dragons. But I think TJ makes changes, and from the feedback as an example of the last lineage change, if its unpopular or the reaction isn't super positive he will often take feedback and make changes.

 

He's said repeatedly that he is going to sometimes muck around with it, although I agree that since it was a change that was probably rolled in with the other stuff, it probably should have been mentioned in the news. That being said, if its very unpopular, I'm sure he'll take more feedback and play with it again and again til something comes up that people like more. Especially with people continuing to grow lineages out further (gotta get those DC Records!).

 

I think most of the dragons look ok, but I think the Alt Vine Dragon looks really odd. I think thats probably though in part of the sprite design where the dragon itself is "underground" while the different looking bush and leaves are very far away from the dragon. So if you focus on the dragon its easy to cut off the flowers. I'd reposition it a bit to get at least a few of the vines and yellow flowers in if could be, even if it means cutting into the dragon a bit.

 

This change isn't nearly as drastic as the prior change though that I did not like, and I can certainly work with this as he continues to tweak it.

 

But yes, please let us know when pictures change! Some of us are really anal about our pictures. I know I know.. but its a pixel game... thats all we got is those pictures!!

[Tiki G]

I'm not terribly opposed to this change. I don't like it very much, but it's something I'll probably get used to after a while.

Though I'm a bit sad about my Gold x Trihorn line. I liked the way their body shapes were similar, with their matching tail loops, and now it's not as pretty anymore.

 

I'd rather instead of zooming in the rest of the sprites to make them all more consistent, that they all be zoomed out, so more of the body is visible.

I think it would actually look neat if the boxes were removed and the full body was visible, like AoND's, as ADP mentioned.

 

For example:

>>>

I think that looks so much better, and it makes no change to lineage size.

[Nalyua]

http://dragcave.net/lineage/Pa8zW

 

Did the Holly's tail get cut of now?

[DarkEternity]

I feel the Holly tile should be nudged to the left a bit because the tail stub just looks strange.

I feel that of the ones ADP mentions only the Heartseeker feels like it's improved somewhat.

[Obscure_Trash]

PS - if this is really to cut down on the "butt" lineages, I'm sure people will find a whole new way to be immature and inappropriate, so I don't think it will help any.

I have no idea what you're talking about "immature" and "inappropriate". If you find inappropriate lineages, please report them to a mod.

 

"Butt lineages" I was just referring to the handful of dragons that, upon their release, the lineage tile centered on their butt and not their head or body. I will also mention that all I knwo is that TJ was just trying a new view that gave more attention to the dragons' heads - I was merely hypothesizing how it might affect things, such as having no more butt lineage tiles.

 

I have to say, I really like some of the ones that people dislike. The guardian looks so gorgeous now. Makes me want to do a lineage with it. =o

 

Someone somewhere mentioned the purple neb head seems to get cut off. Since that goes against what TJ was trying for, I did report that lineage to him. If you have a complaint about the way a tile is centered (if the head gets cut off or is placed oddly), please provide an example. I'm sure TJ will take user opinions into consideration, but for now I'm just going to report things that do not line up with what he was trying, as we don't know if this is permanent.

[GhostMouse]

I like the idea of the dragon being more visible with these zoomed-in tiles, but I agree with the majority here that the result really just detracts from the lineages themselves. I am all in favor of using the full-body view that AoND has, especially after seeing that example tikigurl91 gave; it's always seemed silly to me to have a large part of the game revolve around building lineages with these sprites (for many people), but being unable to see the full sprite in lineage view.

[Nalyua]

I like the idea of the dragon being more visible with these zoomed-in tiles, but I agree with the majority here that the result really just detracts from the lineages themselves. I am all in favor of using the full-body view that AoND has, especially after seeing that example tikigurl91 gave; it's always seemed silly to me to have a large part of the game revolve around building lineages with these sprites (for many people), but being unable to see the full sprite in lineage view.

I agree with this 100%

[whitebaron]

Dragons in lineages are often picked based upon how well they fit together in that view.

 

Changing how they are displayed invalidates sometimes YEARS of collaborative work. Please don't ruin years of work without giving us options to reclaim what we did. Its the same thing as the last lineage change all over again...

[Shamiir]

I haven't checked out a lot yet, but all my fav lineages selected for their 'round' sprite are ruined in this view. The fem golds... erk.

I don't think I want to look at more.

[Confused Cat]

[Going into "this is why I'm unhappy with the change" mode]

 

I made this Royal Blue x Pink lineage because the dragons had the same pose. Now you can still kind of see it if you know it, but the RB is bigger and more dominant, and I probably would not have made this lineage if they had looked like this before. (Ummmm, DON'T solve this by zooming the Pink, please.)

 

The male Marrow now makes a huge rectangular shape where the body intersects with the border. It was so pretty before. It showed almost the whole body and was still detailed enough to show the beauty of the sprite.

I think in many cases a cropped image is better than the whole body. It depends on the proportions of the dragon sprite and on the dragon's pose. But the Marrow was one example where I thought the "almost whole body" image was perfect.

 

Here's an example of a lineage (Purple Neb x Tsunami) where one dragon was improved, one was (imo) changed for the worse, and the overall look of the lineage is now "unbalanced" when compared to the way I planned and bred the lineage.

 

OLD: NEW:

 

The female Tsunami looks better now because the wing is fully visible. (I'm not 100% sure my old lineage picture is correct, maybe we already had a better one? It's been a while since I made this lineage.) Her look in the lineage has not changed because she was not zoomed.

The purple Nebula, on the other hand, looks awkward because the top of his wing was cut off. It is also more dominant in the lineage now, making the lineage quite different from what it was meant to be.

 

[/this is why]

 

By the way... This Shimmer / female Hellfire lineage was how I noticed the change. When I found it on the AP and read the name "Glitch Art" on one ancestor, I wondered how it could be that one single user had those "glitch images", and even had them for such a long time they would name a dragon after them. Then I realized that was probably not how it was.

 

 

ETA: Maybe this topic could be moved to "Site Discussion" or "Suggestions/Requests"?

Edited May 16, 2014 by Confused Cat

[angelicdragonpuppy]

Dragons in lineages are often picked based upon how well they fit together in that view.

 

Changing how they are displayed invalidates sometimes YEARS of collaborative work. Please don't ruin years of work without giving us options to reclaim what we did. Its the same thing as the last lineage change all over again...

Yes please.

 

90% of what I've been doing on the site for the last three plus years involves creating and collecting lineages I think look pretty. Big, unannounced changes like this make me EXTREMELY uncomfortable. When things that change how many look at their dragons are tinkered with, opinions should really be collected in advance, not left to be gathered in worried confusion after.

 

I am also of the opinion that because lineages were built upon the original images for years, even if a better solution is found, the old view should remain as an option.

Edited May 16, 2014 by angelicdragonpuppy

[Confused Cat]

I am also of the opinion that because lineages were built upon the original images for years, even if a better solution is found, the old view should remain as an option.

Agreed.

The lineage images may not be perfect, because they are not the original dragon sprite on which the artist(s) worked for a long time, but they are visible from the moment the first (adult) dragon exists, and therefore they have greatly influenced users' breeding decisions.

 

ETA:

Oh no. The Heartseekers. http://dragcave.net/lineage/CkbYS

Edited May 16, 2014 by Confused Cat