Option to view updated sprites differently

[bob_jones]

Hmm. On one hand I realize this option would help people calm down, so that's good. But on the other hand I think it would be a waste of time and effort. People are overreacting HEAVILY when it comes to the update, just as they did with the last one; but eventually people stopped complaining about the last update and the whole "scandal" died down and was forgotten, which is probably what will happen here. So no, overall I don't think this idea needs to happen. There's little point in rolling out a huge new option to appease people if they're just going to calm down on their own anyway, in my opinion.

Edited December 4, 2015 by bob_jones

[MessengerDragon]

Would it be possible to do something like the old/new pinks in the future? That would allow for people who have lineages to keep them intact, would allow people to keep something at least of what they loved, while still allowing the evolution of the art.

I don't think this would be a good idea. I'm still wishing for a frill, and there are many supporters of old pinks being brought back. I don't think people like the idea of sprites that new members have no way of getting.

[tjekan]

Which means that any "newer" breed—or really, any of them released in the past four or five years, which can hardly be considered "new"—is extremely unlikely to be changed, just by raw statistics. And they're not just empty numbers; there's simply no real reason to consider drastic updates to the newer sprites.

1) That's not really true. Nilias were released less than 5 years ago and just got drastically changed.

 

2) Changes that are not considered "drastic" by the artist still sometimes register that way to a subset of users. Either because a subset of users was more attached to specific things like palette or head shape than the artist is, or because, as another player pointed out in the News thread, dragon sprites look different on different computer displays. Not many users were bothered by the sprite update to Sunsets, for example (which also happened less than 5 years after its introduction, BTW), but I was personally kinda crushed-- it had been my favorite dragon sprite, and I don't know if it was my monitor display or just my personal taste, but the reshading really wrecked it for me.

 

3) Even if it were true that only old breeds would be changed, that's probably pretty cold comfort since, you know, old breeds have been around longer and have more lineages built around them. If you changed Caligenes tomorrow, it wouldn't affect a lot of lineages, but if you changed whites, well, it would.

 

I'm not necessarily arguing that you should never change sprites, because obviously there are pros and cons there to be considered, but your argument that we need not fear sprites from the last 4-5 years changing at a whim really isn't very reassuring.

Edited December 4, 2015 by tjekan

[Obscure_Trash]

Would it be possible to do something like the old/new pinks in the future? That would allow for people who have lineages to keep them intact, would allow people to keep something at least of what they loved, while still allowing the evolution of the art.

Sure, but people wouldn't be able to keep breeding those lines. People wouldn't be able to keep grabbing those dragons either. This solution has its own problems. We are never going to make everyone happy - no, not even by not doing updates.

 

~

 

So I think the way things are done now is fine to stay with.

 

Which means that any "newer" breed—or really, any of them released in the past four or five years, which can hardly be considered "new"—is extremely unlikely to be changed, just by raw statistics. And they're not just empty numbers; there's simply no real reason to consider drastic updates to the newer sprites.

 

1) That's not really true. Nilias were released less than 5 years ago and just got drastically changed.

 

This doesn't disprove TJ's statement. He said extremely unlikely, not never.

[KageSora]

Sure, but people wouldn't be able to keep breeding those lines.

Oh, I know that. But I'd be less sad if I could at least have a testament to the work I did without being forced to use a third-party program to fake-build an image of a lineage that will only ever be viewable by those who bother to look at a link I share.

 

This doesn't disprove TJ's statement. He said extremely unlikely, not never.

 

You'll have to forgive me for not being reassured in any way, shape, or form by the "unlikely" claim since we have an actual case that it has happened with.

[LegendOfKorraFan]

TJ,

 

the fact that you seem to care so little for the members of your website worries me deeply. Do our opinions mean nothing to you?

Silver Dragons were my absolute favorite! But now that they're all "new and shiny" compared to literally every other sprite, they stick out like a sore thumb, and just seem out of place.

I also find it frustrating that you can't seem to understand how we (negatively) feel about the update. There have been people who bred massive Silver lineages, which as you know, can take months or years to complete, and now they feel as if their time and effort is all but wasted. I can sympathize with angelicpuppydragon 100%.

 

If you don't take into consideration the feelings and opinions of ALL your members, I guarantee you'll lose many members, not that the prospect seems to bother you very much, if at all.

[Obscure_Trash]

TJ,

 

the fact that you seem to care so little for the members of your website worries me deeply. Do our opinions mean nothing to you?

Silver Dragons were my absolute favorite! But now that they're all "new and shiny" compared to literally every other sprite, they stick out like a sore thumb, and just seem out of place.

I also find it frustrating that you can't seem to understand how we (negatively) feel about the update. There have been people who bred massive Silver lineages, which as you know, can take months or years to complete, and now they feel as if their time and effort is all but wasted. I can sympathize with angelicpuppydragon 100%.

 

If you don't take into consideration the feelings and opinions of ALL your members, I guarantee you'll lose many members, not that the prospect seems to bother you very much, if at all.

TJ has already posted that he does listen and care. Continuing to try and pick at his inner thoughts when we have no way of determining that is not a constructive path. It's also not what this thread is about.

[Fuzzbucket]

People are overreacting HEAVILY when it comes to the update, just as they did with the last one; but eventually people stopped complaining about the last update and the whole "scandal" died down and was forgotten, which is probably what will happen here.

Over-reacting is a bit judgemental here. Many of us have lineages which have changed in ways that do not appeal.

 

But yes, people will stop talking about it, when it is clear that nothing will change. I am still steaming about the golds, myself. But there's no point saying so. The new ones are lovely - but NOT golds as we had learned to love them.

 

Odeen was spot on with the twoheads. Completely changed and really look very much the same dragon - lineages don't suddenly look like something else. The silvers are lovely (if a bit blurry) - but they are NOT the real silvers. And they never will be.

 

I don't actually support this particular suggestion, but it is rather unfair to say, effectively, shut up because you are OK with something.

 

Sorry that I was unclear, but this conversation is not appropriate for the thread. Please stick to commenting on the proposed suggestion.

Edited December 4, 2015 by SockPuppet Strangler

[LegendOfKorraFan]

Sorry that I was unclear, but this conversation is not appropriate for the thread. Please stick to commenting on the proposed suggestion. Edited December 4, 2015 by SockPuppet Strangler

[Obscure_Trash]

Reminder to please stay on topic.

 

Everyone is allowed an opinion. Please do not try to silence other users.

 

If your opinion is that you would leave if this is not implemented, you may say so, but let's not start some rumor scare about masses of users leaving due to updates, as you have absolutely 0 way to predict that and no proof that it would occur.

[Fuzzbucket]

OK. I (still) do not like the new golds as golds, though the dragon is lovely; I didn't say I would leave and I won't leave over that or any other sprite update. Even though they sometimes do Really Bad Things to my lineages. I think leaving over them is a REAL over-reaction, but I defend to the death people's right to do just that.

 

But I do wish such updates were done with more thought to the lineage view - Something which I realise is really hard for spriters, but it boils down to "as much like the old one as humanly possible". Take advice from Odeen, who got the two-heads - which were already delightful - JUST RIGHT. Lineage view is almost more important than sprite view, in a way, as the implications are so much wider.

[KageSora]

TJ has already posted that he does listen and care. Continuing to try and pick at his inner thoughts when we have no way of determining that is not a constructive path. It's also not what this thread is about.

I feel the issue is that tone translates poorly over text, so if TJ was meaning to convey that he does care it doesn't really feel like it.

 

His wording choice in general--possibly taken so by those of us displeased in the first place--came off as more "too bad so sad boo hoo whatever" rather than "I'm sorry that you're upset and I understand that you are and why, but this is the way things are."

 

It's a very emotionally-charged topic, without careful work to convey tone it's very likely to be misread though the emotional filters of those who are upset. It happens, but it can further cause people to be rubbed the wrong way when it does.

 

 

Personally, I would like an option for us to see sprites differently--even if it was just a "toggle sprite legacy view" option that was all-or-nothing, seeing as picking for each dragon would be a lot of work.

[Gealach]

Would it be possible to do something like the old/new pinks in the future?  That would allow for people who have lineages to keep them intact, would allow people to keep something at least of what they loved, while still allowing the evolution of the art.

It would be a nice compromise, actually - let the newly caught / bred dragons have new sprites, but keep the previously existing lineages intact. Yes, we wouldn't be able to continue those lineages, but at least we could keep them as a memento.

 

I still regret not making screenshots of my Silver lineages.

[Tehya Faye]

Personally, I would like an option for us to see sprites differently--even if it was just a "toggle sprite legacy view" option that was all-or-nothing, seeing as picking for each dragon would be a lot of work.

 

I don't think an all-or-nothing option would really do much to help. I'll bet most people prefer at least one updated sprite to the old one, and then they'd have to decide whether keeping some old sprites they prefer is worth giving up some revamped ones they adore. It'd be perfect for a small number of people, but pose an internal debate and frustration to everyone else.

 

...unless you just mean per breed, in which case ignore this.

Edited December 4, 2015 by Tehya Faye

[KageSora]

I don't think an all-or-nothing option would really do much to help. I'll bet most people prefer at least one updated sprite to the old one, and then they'd have to decide whether keeping some old sprites they prefer is worth giving up some revamped ones they adore. It'd be perfect for a small number of people, but pose an internal debate and frustration to everyone else.

But they would have the option to change the view at any time at all. As it stands, you're just screwed all ways around if you liked the old ones.

 

I personally would prefer a "by breed" toggle, but I imagine that would be too much work. Considering that TJ already seems to feel it's too much work vs. the payoff to put anything like this in place, he almost certainly wouldn't touch the coding necessary to do a breed-by-breed pick-and-choose with a 10-mile pole.

[Tehya Faye]

Yeah, but that's way more hassle than I personally would want to go through if there were ever an update I didn't personally prefer to the old one. I'd just go to the wiki in that case - no need to change my account settings, refresh, and then immediately go back to the regular view once I was finished looking. Screenshots would be far less work, and we can already take those before the fact and still recreate their old look after the update happens.

[KageSora]

Yeah, but that's way more hassle than I personally would want to go through if there were ever an update I didn't personally prefer to the old one. I'd just go to the wiki in that case - no need to change my account settings, refresh, and then immediately go back to the regular view once I was finished looking. Screenshots would be far less work, and we can already take those before the fact and still recreate their old look after the update happens.

But the wiki only helps with a single sprite.

 

It does nothing for a lineage completely ruined because the dragons picked no longer pair well enough together due to shifts in coloring and shading or even pose.

 

It may seem a small change, but these things when put into a bigger-picture context can actually have much more intense alterations than the sprite change alone has.

 

For me, I wouldn't care so much if it was a matter of a single dragon and lineages didn't exist. But people work for months or years even on lineages and suddenly the alteration changes the entire look and feel of it, and not always for the better. If something like that were to happen to my Storm/Electric line that changed the look for the worse, I would be devastated because I spent ages working on that line.

Edited December 4, 2015 by KageSora

[Tehya Faye]

Again, you can always recreate those old lineages in Paint if you didn't screenshot them beforehand. You just need to get the old sprite's lineage tiles from someone, and then either replace them yourself or find someone willing to do so. No biggie in terms of wanting to see what was lost again.

Edited December 4, 2015 by Tehya Faye

[KageSora]

Again, you can always recreate those old lineages if you didn't screenshot them beforehand. You just need to get the old sprite's lineage tiles from someone, and then either replace them yourself or find someone willing to do so. No biggie in terms of wanting to see what was lost again.

Y'see, there's a reason I didn't just make a fake lineage in a third-party program to see how nice it looked. I could have done that really easily, it wouldn't have even taken me an hour.

 

But instead I opted to spend just shy of a literal year (working on a breeding project. Because I wanted it to be on-site. I wanted anybody who had a baby from my dragon, or who was clicking around and found my dragon, to be able to see all that I did and what I chose to do.

Edited December 4, 2015 by KageSora

[Tehya Faye]

People would still be able to see the work you'd put into it, though. Those dragons still exist on the site. The screenshot/mockup would just be there for you to view personally and share with those curious about the way you intended it to look.

 

I don't see how an all or nothing legacy view that only you can see would make this situation better, particularly if you don't hands down prefer the old sprites 100%, and even then you wouldn't be able to see the lineages others are building as they intended it. It's not like I'm going to stick the suggested view into my dragon's names, nor mention it when I post my lineages. Wouldn't that make sharing lineages a bit more complicated? I mean, I don't personally care. I would just keep it in regular view all the time regardless, but it does add a layer that wasn't there before.

Edited December 4, 2015 by Tehya Faye

[KageSora]

I would still be forced to use a third-party program and then open that file on my computer to view what I put the work into on this site to make.

 

Again, I may as well just make a fake lineage for my viewing than work on building an actual one. I'd get the same end result--me seeing the lineage I want--with a fraction of the work.

[Clya]

No. The artists worked hard to get their sprites public on to this website, and lets say a sprite gets updated that I don't know, 1/2 of the people online really liked and they don't like the new sprite.

 

Well this one 1/2 group of people can just go and change how the sprite looks, which means the artist that worked so hard on that... their work is not being seen by them.

 

Maybe the museum idea would be a bit better, but the sprites are updated for a reason and there is no real reason to save the older ones on site.

[stagazer_7]

Well this one 1/2 group of people can just go and change how the sprite looks, which means the artist that worked so hard on that... their work is not being seen by them.

Oh, their work would have definitely been seen, hence the switch. Jokes aside, art is a matter if very subjective, personal taste. A sprite might be technically superior, but this doesn't make it better in the eye of the beholder.

 

I'm still not entirely convinced this would even be neccesssary if updates were made with a little more, well not care, as there is definitely a ton of effort, love and most definitely care put into updating and this is IMO the most difficult and ungrateful type of spriting work as there is always a lot of conflucting emotions involved and I always feel a bit bad for the artists who take on these difficult tasks and really do appreciate their work even if I don't particulary care for it - I only wish there was more actual updating, which I see as more of a subtle change, fixing the most glaring anatomical issues and shading, and less reimaginings of the original sprites.

 

But with a situation being as it is, with many sprites undergoing major changes and more of such underway, I can understand why this is being suggested.l

[cyradis4]

OK. I (still) do not like the new golds as golds, though the dragon is lovely; I didn't say I would leave and I won't leave over that or any other sprite update. Even though they sometimes do Really Bad Things to my lineages. I think leaving over them is a REAL over-reaction, but I defend to the death people's right to do just that.

 

But I do wish such updates were done with more thought to the lineage view - Something which I realise is really hard for spriters, but it boils down to "as much like the old one as humanly possible". Take advice from Odeen, who got the two-heads - which were already delightful - JUST RIGHT. Lineage view is almost more important than sprite view, in a way, as the implications are so much wider.

What I honestly think is, given the major blowups recently, that the artists are starting to take the linage views more into consideration. I remember a specific post by Corteo after the Nilia blow-up. He said that he'd be far, far more careful if he ever did it again, because he didn't realize how much such large changes affected the lineages. Not everyone plays the same way, and artists are no exception. For that matter, TJ is no exception! Sprite updates happen so infrequently that many of the artists could have very easily *missed* how upset people get over drastic changes, and more to the point... WHY they get so upset.

 

With Golds, there was no way to avoid the total over-haul, though I do wish the Gold male's pose had been closer to the old Gold's pose. The old sprite was just in too different a style from the other dragons, when it was changed it was going to feel very different, so I feel they made a good call in doing a total swap out, though I wish the female's wings were larger and the male's pose more like the old Golds.

 

The problem with the Silvers was fairly similar. Their color was so far off true "silver", and so far off their description (they "glow"), that if the sprite is to be true to the description and original intent, the color had to change. Oh sure, you could have had a darker silver, but it wouldn't have glowed. And despite the fact that I own over 200 Silvers, most of them checker lineages which are now ruined.... I wish they'd gone whole-hog and fixed the awkward poses of the Silvers, and not stayed quite so true to the old poses. The lineages were already ruined by the (required) shine-up, so go whole hog and fix it all.

 

And the Golds and Silvers had to change. They are the flagship breeds: the 2 most rare dragons that are available to the entire userbase in CB version, the only two true rares, and they were supposed to be the shiny metals (and the Silvers.... weren't). For the good of the site, they had to look spectacular.

 

So having said that, the reason the sprite update for Splits and Hollies went without a ripple is because the old sprites already had the same type of style, pose, and appropriate colors, so those didn't have to change much.... and the artists clearly took a lot of care to *ensure* that they looked the same in lineages. The Golds and Silvers, on the other hand, were doomed right from the start to look too different: the Golds because of the style change and the Silvers because of the dull grey color.

 

But while I'm generally in favor of tweaking and polishing and stuff, I'm dead against any gratuitous dimorphism adding and pose / color changes. I'm still fussed about Nilias.... because the female pose change was completely arbitrary. Yes she's lovely.... But there was no reason other than artist wants for her to change. Horses... the damage wasn't nearly so bad because the male's pose fills the square in a similar fashion to the female's.

 

And as for this suggestion itself, I think that its a bad idea. Though I DO wish TJ would state his intentions with respect to sprite changes clearer: Can we expect sprites older than 5 years to all get work? That's how I read his statement. And can we get a statement that we won't be getting any more retro-active dimorphism.... Which historically has destroyed far more lineages than sprite updates?

 

Cheers!

C4.

[Fiona]

As an artist for this site, I'm going to come right out and say I'm completely opposed to this suggestion. It's not out of the question for Shadow Walkers or Coppers to get an update at some point in the future because my skills as a sprite artist grow. That means my standards for art that carries my name also grows. If a sprite carries my name I absolutely want that sprite to be something I'm proud of, not something I quietly wish I didn't have to look at anymore because I don't think it's up to my standards anymore.

 

And that means, simply, that if something I've done is not up to standards and I convince TJ to update the sprites, the old ones need to vanish. Not be seen at all. In my opinion, that includes everywhere they're displayed. It's not that I don't care about the users who like the old sprites. It's that I hope they have enough respect for me to support me in needing to have something that publicly carries my name be a good representation for me.

 

I know not all of the sprite updates have been done by the original artists. But if you apply that same thinking to the site as a whole - that it needs to be a good representation of the game - then what has happened falls into the same category.