Goonhub
06-07-2024, 09:14 AM
I took a bit to think about this before I commented. I'm still in the boat of believing skintone customization should be available for everyone (with the hex limits to prevent high saturation like seen in the post body), but I feel more strongly that it would be better avaliable for either everyone or no one. If the problems that having it available for your average player are non-negotiable, then the door should be shut for contributors to cause them, too. I have seen contributors use the feature to make monsters and hide in maint to scare/confuse new players. I have seen contributors use it to make characters who are uncomfortably bright or dark. I have seen contributors play characters who start the round with green skin, and mistakenly believed that they were gamma ray'd. From my perspective as a player, I've never found any of these problems to be something that would outweigh the benefit of having more options for fun characters -- the middle problem will become impossible with locking colours within a range, and the other two either are a player problem (people who want to play monsters/mess with players will continue to do so whether or not they can use funny skintones) or are already available (lizards can already be green, and genetics can make you green without gamma ray). All of this is stuff that's already been covered in the thread though.
I'm mostly commenting now because I disagree with the idea that more skintone options would ruin mutrace uniqueness or viability. While there are definitely instances of people who want to make a character and choose a lizard for it specifically because having colourful scales is necessary for the look they're going for, from my experience the majority of people who play lizards play lizard because they want to play a lizard. Goonstations mutraces very intentionally are not just recolours of humans or of each other, they all look and play completely distinct from each other and none rely on one specific feature to make them notably Not Human. A blue lizard and a blue human don't look anything alike, as there are other elements of custom spritework that give lizards a distinctive silhouette even without getting into the audio design and text effects. While there are some few people who likely would stop playing a lizard if they could play a human with a colourful skintone due to the drawbacks of playing a mutantrace (hair), especially in the first couple weeks after it got added and it would be New and Exciting, I doubt it would spell ruin for either the identity of lizards as a mutantrace or for any hypothetical future mutantraces added. I understand where the idea comes from, but my own personal opinion is that if another bug race gets added then its identity should and likely will be more visually and conceptually distinct than "a bug, but with more customization than our current bugs." As a roach main, I'm excited about the concept of more bug options -- but dev work on this game is volunteer work, and with no public knowledge beyond "someone was working on it at some point" that could be a thing tomorrow or it could be a thing five years from now. It'd be nice to have more options in there here and now, with Minty here willing to code them in with the tools that already exist.
My idealized implementation of it as a trait would be specific in saying that it's a Genetics Thing and you're like that Because Genetics Can Do That, coz many players both new and old don't know that genetics even can change your skintone and it'd be neat if it was more common knowledge. I like it when people learn stuff.
TLDR: I dunno, I think it'd be neat. And if it's too potentially evil to be neat then I think no one should have it or people are just gonna keep fighting over it. And if I'M tired of people fighting over it then I can't imagine devs feel great either.
I'm mostly commenting now because I disagree with the idea that more skintone options would ruin mutrace uniqueness or viability. While there are definitely instances of people who want to make a character and choose a lizard for it specifically because having colourful scales is necessary for the look they're going for, from my experience the majority of people who play lizards play lizard because they want to play a lizard. Goonstations mutraces very intentionally are not just recolours of humans or of each other, they all look and play completely distinct from each other and none rely on one specific feature to make them notably Not Human. A blue lizard and a blue human don't look anything alike, as there are other elements of custom spritework that give lizards a distinctive silhouette even without getting into the audio design and text effects. While there are some few people who likely would stop playing a lizard if they could play a human with a colourful skintone due to the drawbacks of playing a mutantrace (hair), especially in the first couple weeks after it got added and it would be New and Exciting, I doubt it would spell ruin for either the identity of lizards as a mutantrace or for any hypothetical future mutantraces added. I understand where the idea comes from, but my own personal opinion is that if another bug race gets added then its identity should and likely will be more visually and conceptually distinct than "a bug, but with more customization than our current bugs." As a roach main, I'm excited about the concept of more bug options -- but dev work on this game is volunteer work, and with no public knowledge beyond "someone was working on it at some point" that could be a thing tomorrow or it could be a thing five years from now. It'd be nice to have more options in there here and now, with Minty here willing to code them in with the tools that already exist.
My idealized implementation of it as a trait would be specific in saying that it's a Genetics Thing and you're like that Because Genetics Can Do That, coz many players both new and old don't know that genetics even can change your skintone and it'd be neat if it was more common knowledge. I like it when people learn stuff.
TLDR: I dunno, I think it'd be neat. And if it's too potentially evil to be neat then I think no one should have it or people are just gonna keep fighting over it. And if I'M tired of people fighting over it then I can't imagine devs feel great either.