TF2 goes even further than just it's color choices. They specifically designed the class models to be uniquely identifiable from as many distances and situations as possible. Something I wish more shooters did as it makes engagements more fun imo. I know when I fight a soldier what roughly he has and consequently how to engage with them.
This is something that really bothers me about games like Apex. The characters all look the same. I can end a fight, win or lose, and I still won't have a clue what character I fought against.
@@orionfell well yes but actully no, funny enough, the smallest hitbox in the game TF2, in this case Scout, is the more easy to hit a headshot, when the Heavy, the biggest one, is the hardest :V
another thing TF2 has going for it is rim lighting on all characters, effectively a subtle little light-outline that helps distinguish character from wall
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In my opinion, it completely depends on what type of shooter you're making, a more slow paced, positioning based shooter like insurgency sandstorm can benefit from having hard to spot enemies, but any fast paced shooters like CoD or BF can definitely benefit from more visible enemies
Exactly what I was thinking .. but not battlefield .. it's kind of a semi-realistic large scale battle type ... So "snipers in the bushes" is necessary for this game to give a feel about being on a battlefield .. you may right about COD because COD is a small scale arena shooter .. similar small scale games like CSGO etc .
@@flamingchuucygnet8983 for some people that's fun . Just like some people love combat flight simulations while many others think these games are extremely boring .
@@rahatzaman8120 yep definitely, it is fun, but on my end after playing too much milsim, normal shooters get too fast or too unruly for me, so i cant quite enjoy fast paced shooters anymore.
@@rahatzaman8120 Oddly it's not usually the snipers I have an issue with in the recent BF games, as they have a visibility indicator when they aim down sights at you. It's the people playing assault and medic like they're in CoD, zooming round a corner in muted colours.
Another thing that I've noticed especially in the 2009-2010 era of shooters is sharpness. The environment's themselves we're pretty flat with low resolution textures and the player models were highly detailed. This made them stand out by having a sharp object on a relatively blurry backdrop.
@@triynizzles You were talking about level of detail, which yes makes it easier to see too, just look at CSGO, the maps are mostly flat surfaces. I was talking about shaders, which is a whole different thing
Exactly. Games these days try to Look good on screen so people jump onto them, but when you actually play them you can't see shit I've actually heard many pros and good players in games like Apex call the visibility bad. But they take it as yet another thing to learn. To actually see the enemies
hehehe not really. go see unreal tournament 3. released the same year as tf2. worst art style ever for what it is (it's basically the same as gears of war, everything is gritty, visually polluted and blends together)
@@vicfic_ This video is talking visuals. But your score is always on top so I'm not sure how confusing it can get. I've always found it extremely visually simple
@@garbaj oh WAIT just realized my comment sounds like I'm roasting your thumbnail lol, I just meant we need logan paul's red circles and arrows to indicate players 😤
To me, it'll always be dependent on the goal of the game and its art style. I really don't like it when people complain about visibility in games that are meant to replicate real life military uniforms and scenarios.
Yeah, though I'd really reserve that for only those shooters that really try for realism (like ARMA). You've got plenty of "military shooters" like battlefield and CoD that are basically not designed to portray a realistic military operation. It's just a bunch of dudes playing soldiers running around shooting each other and respawning, as opposed to trying to portray a real engagement.
If all tactical shooters keep pursuing realism eventually all of them will evolve into something akin to Arma, dudes sitting around and one gunfight per 2 hours, because that's realistic.
@@Ignatiusussy, never said that all facets of realism should be taken into the execution part of the process. Taken into consideration? Sure. Priority should always be... what kind of gameplay is to be offered. So, I'm all for fast-paced tactical shooters that have more visibility and unrealistic speed and reload mechanics. I'm just saying that there seems to be a lack of balance in this regard due to a desire for having features forced into products that were originally going for something else entirely. Just take Rainbow Six Siege here as an example. I know a lot of people, including myself, that wished for Ubisoft to have maintained the gritty tone and atmosphere.
This reminds me, back in the late 90's I used to hang out with a Quake clan at a local LAN cafe. Those guys would _always_ lower their settings on Q3A, just to get that extra bit of competitive advantage. Naturally, I died to them almost constantly.
At that time we would edit config files to remove things like light coronas or even turn off lighting all together, which removed all shadows. It is how most competitive players would set up. Unfortunately, with todays cry baby players, that would be classed as cheating.
@@nobodyimportant7380 depending on your definition it is actually cheating you are using external programs(text editor) to give yourself a definite in game advantage
@@zjanez2868 Not at all cheating and accepted in competition. All of it could be done within the game console, it was simply faster to use a text editor. This is the entire issue, today's cry babies, seem to think anything that offers an advantage is cheating. Taking that attitude to the extreme. Gaming Monitor, Advanced controllers ( Scuf, Elite) , Headsets, surround sound, steering wheels all give an advantage over a basic TV and controller so should all be banned, Even, Playing in a XBSX in Black ops coldwar against XB1 players. That is the problem. Cheating is when an external program is taking control of certain aspects of the game like aiming (aimbot), recoil control ( anti recoil scripts) or giving the ability to see things that should not be seen ( walls hacks or radar that isn't present in the game). Nothing beyond that is cheating.
@@nobodyimportant7380 there is a blurry line between cheating and just optimizing the game for competitiveness like, is it cheating to turn on the console-only aim assist on the pc to reduce aiming mistakes? by your definition it isn't, cause no 3rd party program is *actively* modifying the game. what if I used a text editor to turn on a debug feature that outlines all players in a game for myself? by your logic that wouldn't be cheating cause again, no 3rd party software is running. yeah it's true people baby about it a lot more, but also it's pretty annoying that you have to look up special settings to use just to get the most out of your skill in a game and I could get why that would piss people off.
@@thespud1094 What you are referring to by effectively turning on outlines was not only covered by my previous post ( the ability to see things that should not be seen) but has been part of the CS for years, the Server either allows it or not. If the server doesn't allow it, then it doesn't work. If the server doesn't allow it an the player finds a way to show it, then it IS cheating as it is breaking the rules set by the server. My point is everything I mentioned could be done within the game settings either basic or advanced settings. With regards to the turning on console aim assist, can that be done in any game using the in game settings basic or advanced? If it can be turned on in game settings, then it isn't cheating. The blurry line isn't blurry with simple clarification. 1. The input must be 100% Human or assisted only within the settings allowed by the server. 2. The ability to use debug tools should be set by the server, If the server doesn't allow them then the official tools don't work. 3. Anything to do with Lighting or gfx should only allow settings within the game, either normal or advanced. 4. No third party software is allowed to control or override anything that is restricted by the server either prior to server entry or on live changes. Beyond that I say nothing is cheating. Your choice of input device, Display, Sound, are all fine as long as the 4 rules are met. The problem is, as I previously said, people NEED an excuse for loosing these days, they are unable to accept a better player exists. So they deem anything they don't have or know how to do, as cheating.
Another example is Quake tournaments, where the entire map is almost completely dark, and the player models fully painted in a very bright green color.
@@MacHammer3000 competitive Quake and UT mods really knew what's good (fullbright, forced color and model - then add some pickup setting) quite early on. (No idea who invented it first …)
Even quake champions allows the player to force very bright and saturated outlines on the enemy... But arena fps never try to be realistic or simulative, unlike some tactical shooters, so it's normal that bright skins and outlines are the norm there.
Although I find your statements agreeable in some ways, in my opinion, certain tactical shooters with larger maps should keep the colors that blend with each other because it allows for more tactical play styles that have to do with stealth. I do agree however in certain games it is better to have the characters be distinct and more vibrant in order to allow for easier detection
I really much agree it really depends on the aim of the game. If you want a hyper realistic shooter like Arma you ain’t going for super Mario Suits. But in a heroshooter with what God know crazy effects? Why not?
this is why i really like the pro-visibility choices of TF2 but not the pro-visibility choices of overwatch, by strictly using only the models and textures (90% of the time) tf2 both gives good visibility in situations where it makes sense but also lets players get sneaky when they put their mind to it. by using screen space elements overwatch effectively removes the ability for players to be in any way sneaky without explicit stealth mechanics/abilities (hostility to emergent features is something the game suffers with overall) the red outline means that instead of having _more_ visible characters it has *fixed* visibility characters, removing any consideration about weather one is more or less visible
Makes sense because people just want a game where you don't have to go into cranky mode for your pc just, because people are like; *I can't see a f-k from a point blank range and keep dying! Just because that same dude can crank his brightness up while I don't want to!* You can disagree but that's ok. But, I do believe that developers should avoid a case where one person can easily crank their brightness to make it easier to spot enemies and kill the other who doesn't want to, or can't do the same thing.
TF2's color choices actually makes it rewarding during stealth, when you position yourself in a way that makes you less noticeable to enemy players. Many maps have a few places where, whether by design or not, allow players to hide either due to physical obstruction or by it being a dark corner that you can blend into more easily by hiding in the shadows.
That goes both ways making it more competitive in noticing people and it’s really not that difficult to see or hear people in games like CoD or apex, people complaining about visibility just aren’t as competitive or good enough nor are they even smart enough to just change their visual settings. Stealth is big in games like CoD and apex because hiding isn’t still very easy, even casuals see things easily and the audio makes it easier to detect people. I love garbaj but his arguments in this video are just not hitting the mark
This is definitely me. I was used to playing modern esport titles on ridiculous render scale values and minimal settings, running games on my old GT640. Once I got an RX580 I played with graphics settings menus and sliders for a bit and realized that I never needed those cool graphics to begin with. I would take sky high framerates over a bit nicer looking shadows or whatever any time and I genuinely wonder how people feel nice about playing games and not pushing the fps counter to its absolute limit
@@garbaj I used to play Insurgency on really low settings with an FPS config and it definitely doesn't; player models will still blend in with the environment if they were already designed to do so, even if they don't have stuff like fake HDR and ambient occlusion covering their asses. It's pretty much the colour example in the video, actually.
This is exactly my gripe (and only one really) with the Halo Infinite. The beta gameplay looks hella fun and I'm excited for it, but I hate that they got rid of the outright red vs. blue spartans. Now it's just whatever your character looks like with either a red or blue outline. I get that character customization is really big in games nowadays and the developers want to allow people to show that off, but I don't think it's the right move. Not even for going against what has been a staple of the Halo style, but exactly for the gameplay reasons you explained. Edit: Just to clarify, I know you said the outlines were there to be a visual aid, but I think that they're not enough of an aid haha.
sometimes the outlines can even make things worse! But yeah, it sucks that bad visibility is becoming a big issue in games these days. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out in infinite
There are plenty of ways they could have allowed for customisation while maintaining player model readability, they were either just lazy or mislead by publishers that wanted to factor in IGMT cosmetics.
You can change the shield colours, but what bugs me really is that it feels pointless to have the custom colours, when past 5m or so you can't really even see what colour they have, all it is is the outline. It just makes the game look more confusing up close, and look like you are shooting at glowing people further away.
As someone with astigmatism, I am glad you made this video. I always have a hard time seeing enemies, human or AI, in most "realistic" looking games. I know that is sort of part of the aesthetic. But I feel that the aesthetic is not worth losing out on players with worse vision such as myself. From a developer's stand point. I personally have been working on adding a slight "rim-light" effect on enemies in a game of mine using a fresnel shader. It helps make characters pop out from the background while not adding a potentially obtrusive "highlight" or outline around the whole model. Its just like a slight edge "shine" that better highlights the silhouette.
I've got some pretty bad vision and an astigmatism in my right eye. I refuse to take shooters with character lighting and Nickelodeon art style seriously. Give me my glasses and a "milsim" game any day.
Not trying to be a jerk but it can totally worth it. Games are no way obliged to cater to everyone and aesthetics are a big part of what makes up a game. That being said a fresnel effect with customizable color on enemies like in valorant is pretty standard and the best choice if realism isn't a concern. It is definitely obtrusive though and makes the gameyness very apparent (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).
Moby Francke was involved in defining the art style in both TF2 and Valorant so clearly the solution for FPS developers is to make sure that Moby is on your team
It doesn't have to be low-poly maps just maps that are clear and easy to read without any distracting details. Like the maps in overwatch, valorant, and tf2.
@@garbaj And not bad for a game that has received zero major updates in three years, and had received mostly negatively viewed updates for the prior two years
If you want a stylistic competetive shooter with abstract shooting mechanics (as in, they're not trying to be authentic to the weapons that are depicted). However if you want a shooter that emulates a more authentic style, visibility is going to suffer as a result of that. Insurgency Sandstorm is a great example, as it is one of the more arcadey "MilSim-ish" experiences out there. The camo patterns of the security forces can blend into the background more often than not. But the gunplay is oh, so satisfying. Edit: Also the question is, which aspect people are supposed to compete in - twitch-muscle reflexes? Tactics? Communication? All these feed into design choices for balancing character and world design.
I think art style is the most important factor, for exemple: i could tell TF2, Mirror's Edge and Overwatch apart from each other, but the other realistic looking shooters i couldn't, they're basically the same with some tweaks, art style and colors complement each other, Doom Eternal is a great shooter that does these things, colorful and easy to tell apart from others
In every doom game each enemy is distinctive and colourful without looking cartoony. I wish other games would do this instead of walking around for 20 minutes in a battle royale then getting instakilled by a random guy who happened to click first
One real looking AAA shooter that I can always recognize is BF1, at least to my eye that game had a particularly distinct style compared to the others.
@@floreroafloreril1458 i dunno, i'm big into games but bf1 seems so painfully average when it comes to its graphics it seems like most people would just see it as generic historic shooter #23523
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but you shouldn't "desaturate" the colors to get an accurate representation of an image in grayscale. The colors, or rather shades of gray, are all over the place. The "value" of a color is not the same as its brightness. To see the difference you can overlay a black layer over an image and set its blending mode to "color" or "saturation". Only then will you get a correct grayscale result. Or use the LAB color space which is more in line with reality by default. Your point still stands, but it's not as bad as you examples make it look.
@@garbaj I just thought I'd throw it out there, it doesn't actually matter in this case and your point still stands. Maybe I'm getting old but I usually set things like foliage to low. In some games there are graphics options which literally make the gameplay worse. Like when you cannot make out pickable plants or treasure chest or even NPCs in all that green chaos. BTW, if your interested in similar things regarding color theory then I suggest you take a peek at Taran van Hemerts (from Linus Tech Tips) channel.
@@trashbytes I found that people in PUBG and such turn off foliage and whatnot as well, because if you have it on and feel like you're hiding in a bush in the middle of a field, someone who has foliage off can plainly see you just laying on a flat surface. Same thing in War Thunder. Cover isn't cover if it can be turned off.
2:20 also in overwatch you can change the color of the outline for the enemy, so for instance you can change it to where they all have a gold outline for better visibility
Doom eternal also uses a smart trick for this. The lighting on enemies in Doom eternal is separate from the environment, so they are always lit and clearly visible, even in dark spots. This makes the game look less 'cinematic' and realistic but is much better for gameplay reasons. Hugo Martin, the game director, said that at first they had all the lighting be from the environment, like in 2016's DOOM. It made the game look really cool apparently, but it played bad in play testing because you often wouldn't clearly see what it was that got you killed, and eternal is much more punishing that its predecessor.
One thing I wished you'd have mentioned is TF2's use of phong shading on characters to give them an edge light that makes sure they stand out more from the background
Battlefield 4 did a great job of making players visible by giving character models separate lighting. It's almost a white outline that makes them stand out. On top of that, each class has a distinct silhouette. It makes the game very readable and you're even capable of playing without friendly/foe icons.
That's one reason I always liked Battlefields spotting mechanic, at least as it was in BF3. Even though it was readily spammable, you still had to be mostly looking at any given enemy. So it was nice to be able to spam the spotting mechanic at a hill when you were taking fire to figure out exactly which pixel was trying to kill you and where to lay down some hate. Even if it wasn't a perfect pinpoint on the exact enemy itself, you at least knew where to look. I definitely think if more FPS games that frequently feature longer-range engagements should incorporate that mechanic in some form. And not just a ping mechanic, cuz that's only as good as the playing calling the ping. But an actual 'spotting' mechanic to specifically point out enemy positions would go a long way, with some limitations of course to prevent it from being too OP.
@@Beefyrulz cod warzone did implement just that, but yea I would agree if more fast paced shooters (primarily battle royale or possible games similar to battlefield) would implement that with ofc some minor tweaks and balances to make it balanced instead of being stupendously overpowered
@@zenohawk1788 iirc warzone's spotting mechanic requires you to be looking directly at an enemy and even then the ping only goes to where they are at the moment you ping, unless that's been changed somewhat recently. The spotting mechanic in BF3 would actually 'stick' to an enemy for a short period of time, either popping a marker over their head if they were readily visible, or flagging them on your mini-map.
@@zenohawk1788 well yeah, that's how it was in BF3 and I think it's good that way. Even if you were still in line of sight, the mark would fade after maybe 3-5 seconds or so. It was literally just enough time to figure out where to look or see the enemy move/react to your shots. And I think it might fade a second or two quicker if you actually broke line of sight.
The way Dirty Bomb did it was that each character skin has an alternative version for the enemy. Enemy players have a red shader on them while teammates have a blue one. Both have a noticeable glow in the darker areas.
And splitgate does something similiar where you and your teammates are seen by eachother with your regular skins but the enemy team will always have a super red version of the skins that theyre using
and this is exactly what i miss about competing on consoles IN THE SAME TV, IN THE SAME HOUSE there are a myriad of SUBTLE AND BUGGISH settings like this to gain an advantage, in and out of the game both from the video settings within the game itself (war thunder is a good example)//how to edit cfg.txt and other files in the root folder//how to change graphics settings in driver or windows panel..//as well as calibrate monitor like here.. .// buy dedicated +360fps hardware...//response times of the mouse (ms), the monitor (ms) and so on..., and countless other nifty things that keep popping up over time. I've mostly left competitive gaming for the past few years to this kind of mischief. Companies should look for ways to eradicate this pest, by locking graphic settings on the server side, (even adapting to specific hardware such as different monitors to have identical results in our homes), without the possibility of changing them... The competitions have become quite corrupted, it has become a matter of accumulating almost negligible advantages to generate an enormous effect. One has to invest enormous amounts of time just to keep up with this nonsense. It is no longer about the simple individual ability, but a lot of things more unrelated to the competition itself... it has been distorted. It's what I miss from the time of the consoles on the same TV with local friends..., something closed, quite fair, but above all SIMPLE, it's the closest thing to the Olympics or any sport in real life but virtually, something genuinely enjoyable, I understand that asking for that level of competitive quality but online may be too much to ask for... but dreaming doesn't cost anything :)
I actually thought he was gonna talk about the Fresnel effect applied to character models on TF2. It further increases the differentiation of players from the background, as player outlines become more visible
I accept dying to enemies I didn't see because it means that I have a chance to kill enemies that don't see me. If everyone can easily see the enemy then that effetely limits the tactical options available to the player. In games where it's harder to see I can have a choice: do I run through the woods to reach an area faster or do I move slower to avoid detection? If I glow bright red then there is no point in even trying the slow approach so I loose that choice. Increased player visibility is one of the reasons I enjoy the original Insurgency over it's sequel, Sandstorm. In the first game, characters had muted colors that blended in with the background. For Sandstorm, they changed camo pattern colors to increase the contrast with the background for the PMCs and gave the insurgents bright and colorful clothes. This made it harder to hide and sneak around. I found myself dying much more frequently because hiding was harder and thus I couldn't play the game the way I wanted to. Not to mention the altered camos just looked wrong because of the weirdly off colors chosen and kind of compromised some of the grounded art style despite everything else being a graphical improvement. I understand why some people like high visibility and that is the direction some games will go. But, I don't want all non mil-sim shooters to go this route as it will alienate people like me
I think it should depend on the player character's intended mobility. Games with realistic mobility standards should be more muted to make stealth viable, but games with very high mobility (wall running, high jumps, power sliding,...etc.), where stealth will next to never be viable, should have high visibility to aid with tracking an erratically moving target .
Another good way to balance this is the Battlefield games. They're more on the realsy-tactical scale and therefore players aren't ultra-visible by default, but the spotting mechanic is brilliant. Once you've been seen and spotted, their team can tell where you're hanging out for a few seconds with HUD indicators and sometimes outlines. So just sitting on a rooftop sniping the whole game isn't the best strategy, when someone on the ground makes you stand out for a passing helicopter to pick off! ...and then on the far end there's Arma, where shots ring out and echo through the hills and you're spinning around going "WHERE?!? WHERE?!" and never see who killed you. LOL
But arma is far from competitive and even against snipers you arent defenseless, sniper os quite hot in thermal optics and easy target for the drone Ofc. Its kinda worse in arma 3 where ghille is now thermal isulated but still a sniper is easy picking for helicopters
I think BFV's approach to the visibility issue is also interesting. It has one of the most stripped-down spotting systems of any major Battlefield game, so to compensate, enemies are giving this slight white "glowing" effect when in dark areas. I think it's kind of like TF2's rim lighting system or something.
Great video highlighting something I have been saying for years, visible players puts the skill back to aim and movement, which in turn reduces camping, and so improves fun. It does however depend on the game style, if it is designed to be more of a simulation, then muted colours would be better.
Halo infinite outlines the enemy and friendlys some people dont like it but personally i think its a really nice touch makes it so much easier to visiaully distinguish things especially in this day and age of just everything being grey i find it so hard to concentrate on my enemies , black ops 4 had a decent system with the enemiy having a red light on their suit
It also plays in to gameplay too in a positive way in my mind as outlines for enemies only appear if the enemy is significantly visible or just left your sight, or you use a piece of equipment to scan for them. So it reflects how in world, your HUD would be scanning for and helping you identify opponents.
This is actually one of my problems with unique cosmetics. Sure they look cool, and they technically don't affect your game, but it's a lot harder to hide in a bush when you're a bright red bad@ss samurai. People can just see you from miles away.
And the opposite can be true in other games as well, such as players picking the "Roze" operator in COD Modern Warfare to get a massive visibility advantage over players.
Them introducing some kind of glow effect to players in R6 Siege, was the day they made it impossible to use your surroundings to your advantage which punishes the more experienced players and just doesn't make sense. Why would I wear a camouflage uniform just to glow like I'm made out of plastic
You forgot about to mention rim lighting. It's something way easier to implement on many styles, and helps a lot. On some of the freezeframes, look closely and you'll notice a little glow around the TF2 characters' bodies. This was meant to help contrast players in darker areas where color may not be as easily visible.
Well, at least we got drop shadow rather often, even though in many cases it's nothing but a side effect of having SSAO turned on. Every little bit of local contrast helps, I guess.
in “Cuisine Royale” (now called CRSED: F.O.A.D.), it only uses bold and desaturated colors, while somehow still having good visibility. you can see an enemy in dark green armor running through a shadowy forest pretty clearly, as long as he’s rendered. it’s not like a “oh look, here i am”. if he isn’t moving, it’s quite hard to see (under the circumstances mentioned above). it somehow managed to have good visibility while also looking pretty realistic.
I always thought devs picked colors specifically to make it more difficult to notice other players, and when I died because I didn't see that gray guy that was obviously standing in front of that gray wall, I always blamed myself for "not being good enough". It made sense because, as you said, armors are made specifically to not stand out. But maybe not all devs were that deliberate after all. Besides, in contrast to real life battles, in games we actually do want players to engage otherwise it wouldn't be as fun. Hell, if we do increase player engagement, players might begin to be quicker and more alert because they know they're in the open, which in turn might unironically make games more competitive.
Back in the days when I was still gaming I wondered about the same thing. Unless we are talking about very specific camouflage, spec-ops and such stand out well in real life. I think the problem is that a game can't really replicate the depth of vision and sense of distance when looking at a screen. So something that would be well visible in real life becomes a mush. Anther thing in modern "reality" shooters is the ridiculous amount of smoke and debris flying. You know, unless we are talking about Vulcan cannon blasting, 5.56mm etc. won't blast off smoke-dust-debris, but will just leave a hole in most cases.
@@ladrok97 Until you go to hyper realistic games, then you get ARMA and Escape From Tarkov and an entirely different audience suddenly starts playing. At that point its trying to see slightly more dark outlines on dark outlines while not having any HUD and not noticing the pixel peeking guy 2 storeys above you, which is entirely your fault because you didnt get a thermal scope which you could have seen him with 20m behind you when you were walking
Or you could integrate the low visibility of characters as a game mechanic, by means of introducing a spotting mechanic. In phantom forces, if you press "e" any enemy in your cone of vision gets marked with a red losenge, which dissapears if no-one in your team is looking at them for a while.
Slow down your movement, see the player first and hit your shots. That's how you win in games where the colors are muted. Using your surroundings is part of the game and I feel like a large amount of people don't think about it and complain about dying all the time. Adapt and overcome.
Yep bro! I was here for the Godot Advanced FPS and TPS tutorial since last year? I don't remember precisely 😅 I am glad Garbaj became popular and offers us better and better content
I just miss how Halo CE did it by having a downwards-facing green triangle to indicate teammates. Halo Infinite doesn't need outlines - it needs HUD markers to show where your allies are. That way you wouldn't have outlines getting in the way of seeing what kind of armour another player has.
The more you push information out of the diegetic gamespace and into the HUD, the more you distract the player from the actual game in front of them. Players end up paying more attention to HUD elements than to all the lovely game art that you spent thousands of dollars developing.
@@tbotalpha8133 Which is why downwards pointing green arrows just for allies are better than having outlines for literally everyone, because it reduces the amount of non-diegetic elements. And in order for outlines to be effective they also have to be THICC which gets in the way of the game art and player armour.
@@MajatekYT I've always found arrows hanging over player's heads to be distracting as well, not to mention invisible and useless in certain lighting conditions, and often so small that they're hard to notice under pressure. When being able to tell what team a player is on is the difference between life and death, having to deal with the slightest moment of confusion or doubt is awful. Because by the time I've worked it out, I'm probably dead.
@@tbotalpha8133 Well if neither method of outlines nor HUD arrows are perfect for everyone because one obscures the armour due to the outlines and the other is distracting to you then let players select which one they want. I'll always choose the HUD arrows because I'll react quicker to a spartan suddenly appearing without an arrow than a spartan appearing with an outline but is slightly differently coloured.
This just takes me back to old CoDs where either your primary gun choice or your first perk choice would decide what your character would look like. Remember BO1 where Ghost gave your a Ghille Suit or Flak Jacket gave you an actual Flak Jacket? In the industry of loot boxes and MTXs where everything has to be flashy and unique but still be homogenized, you end up with the Syndrome quote, "And when everyone is Super, no one will be." I want a return to team-based outfits and/or role-based outfits. Also highlights around characters definitely help as well in certain situations
This is also an accessibility thing. I have issues tracking objects, and it is the difference between a game I can enjoy and an unplayable nightmare to have visible enemies. It's much easier to find a red or blue smear that I've lost than to separate beige from beige. The point of the game is strategy and skill, not a test of how good my eyes can track.
I could see it in a game about realism, on the other hand when you unload several entire mags into an enemy before realizing it's a plant, maybe the camo works too well
i think a lot of games get more from the ability to sneak in a shadow and hide from enemies. Even in CS:GO you can see that from pro-players every so often - they hide in a corner and dont immiedetely kill an enemy, but let more of them reveal themselves to get multiple kills at once, instead of alerting everyone after the 1st kill. some games put a lot of emphasis on staying hidden, so the game screaming "HEY there is an enemy here!" with specific color palletes would not be great. tho i agree, quick-paced shooters like TF2 definitely benefit from this kind of artstyle, since they have other means of staying hidden (i.e. the Spy's cloack and disguise kit)
For something so old, I'm surprised modern FPS don't follow the TF2 route. I would've thought old game designs would've been implemented and refined by newer games. I can see why the TF2 community still lives on to this day.
Thank you for this video! Poor visibility is something that I've been complaining to my friends about when we play AAA games. A good example would be the new Back 4 Blood. There is so much post-processing effects everywhere that is really hard to see if I'm shooting a zombie or a barrel. And also, thank you for keeping the video short (5 min), that's something that I really appreciate since you could easily just drag it to 20 min or so if you wanted to. Nice job!
csgo actually boosts the contrast of enemies far away, and adds a slight white outline to them so no, not all tactical shooters want visibility to be realistic
@@Artician ive looked some more into it how it works is that there's a slight barely noticeable fog in the game and players are unaffected by it causing them to have contrast than the background when they are far away from you and it makes the effect unnoticeable when enemies are close to you
While I agree with good visibility being important, there's games like Hunt Showdown where being able to blend into shadow and foliage actually is part of the experience and theme. In that game, you're no soldier, but a hunter of both the bounty target and anyone in between you. Unfortunately players undermine that part of the game by turning up their monitor brightness to see better especially in night maps
Completely disagree. All I hear is: "I suck at shooters and don't want to spend time getting better, just make enemies easier to shoot". Seeing enemies more clear also has the consequence of enemies spotting you sooner as well. All disadvantages you face, your opponent has to face as well. It's about knowing your disadvantages and planning to use them on your enemy. For example Rainbow Six Siege. Your enemy can hide behind a small hole in a wall to have an easy kill on you. On the other hand, you have the exact same advantage. Making the game easier for yourself results in making the game easier for your opponent as well. TF2 does a great job in terms of visual clearance, but in no scenario, you're trying to hide for a longer amount of time or to actively avoid your enemies. In COD Warzone it's the complete opposite. That's a very thin line to balance between the casual gamer and absolute tryhard, I know, but please don't try to argue that true competitiveness only comes from making your enemies easier to see because that's just not true.
TF2 is awesome as per usual (there's more than just colours with silhouettes and weapon clarity), but what I wanna know is how CSGO's visibility's still pretty darn decent despite the more "real" look
I mean I'll give ARMA a pass because it's supposed to go for that slow super-realistic style, but in most cases, having people be mostly invisible just doesn't make for fun gameplay, since it basically amounts to a huge defender advantage. The attacker who has to be moving automatically becomes way more visible, compared to a defender who can just be laying prone somewhere. The game really needs to be designed around recon for that to work, like Rainbow 6 siege for instance, where attackers get drones, means to breach walls, etc. Otherwise it just turns into some guy hiding in some random bush with a huge advantage against you. Yeah it's a realistic simulation, but it's not particularly fun or competitive either. It just comes off as being cheap.
I think that in a tournament setting, especially when money is on the line everyone's monitor should have to be calibrated by a calibration tool. In my opinion, if you're using reshade, Nvidia digital vibrance, cranking your gamma etc. you're cheating. I don't think that tournament holders should provide their own panels, because a variation in screen size response time and refresh rate could cause someone to feel 'off'. However, they should put a calibrator on all of them. I can't believe this isn't already a thing.
The problem with that is it introduces a restriction on players with visual disabilities such as color blindness. If there was a stipulation in the rules saying only one visual mode could be used, then you'd effectively be barring players with color blindness from your tournament. Now, what you could do in that particular case is have players run an eye test and if they meet the criteria to use certain color modes, then they should. But no other player who fails to meet those requirements should be permitted to.
@@R3_dacted0 I don't think anyone would have an issue with somebody using a filter that made the game appear colour correct for a colour blind person. I'm talking about someone blowing out their gamma so there is effectively zero contrast and they can see every corner, darkened area etc.
I really like the concept of having being able to distinguish enemies from their surroundings be a challenge. Too bad it's a bit impractical to have a multiplayer game focused on that, as players would adjust their graphics to be the most visible possible, in detriment of the fun that comes from that challenge, and in detriment of the intended aesthetics as well
@@lt3880 yeah but as many have said already, tf2 is just in this middle ground of casuel/competitive, other games have causal as a mode for training to play comp. tf2 has casual just as playing tf2 and having fun
@@MedicMainDave thats a valve problem, tf2 is an incredibly deep game that if it had support the competitive scene could be great. its a shame the devs squander its potential not only to be an amazing casual shooter but an amazing competitive game
I love Apex. It’s my favorite game but I have had my moments where I’ve wished I could see players better. I know that’s one of the reasons scanning legends exist and I’m not asking for overwatch level visual pop but I think a small adjustment would be a good quality of life change. I don’t think the game is really what I would consider bound by realism like warzone or pubg so I don’t think it would be a big deal if players were slightly more distinguishable.
bad visibility in "competitive games" results in the person who sees the other first will likely win that fight. but in games with good visibility it results in the better player winning and the worse player learning from mistakes they may have made.
As someone with not great eyesight even when wearing glasses I much prefer games with easily distinguishable enemies rather than games where I have to squint at my monitor and still miss the enemies walking right under my nose
Something i've always beleived is that readability is one of the pillars of a game's competitiveness. Something that people ofter forget with competitive games is that people.... watch. Being able to follow along a game is key. There is a reason people who watch comp Overwatch can quickly get bored, and it's because you can't distinguish anything if you are not already acquainted with the game, the mechanics the abilities... Basically : readability is for both the player and watcher.
in dota1 one of the characters (PA) had an ability to passively make her opacity lower. When valve introduced her into dota2, they reworked that ability and made all characters and mobs easily spottable and distinguishable from each other. Dota is not a shooter but that shows how much valve care about such things.
I wish every shooter had the outlines of Overwatch and the choice to choose the outline color is huge as well ! Being colorblind, it really sucks to getting killed by someone you don't really see on your screen (i had this issue in numerous games, including Apex and Overwatch before they added outlines)
imo its a tactical thing to make characters blend in more, it makes the game harder and requires the player to look better for the enemy and makes the game harder, if every enemy would be so easy to see its a easy game. that pro players change screen settings to see the enemy better is for them a advantage yes but that doesnt mean the games all need obvious enemies, idk if you get what a mean tho
No, I totally see your point. It just comes down to what you call "competitive". Being able to spot camouflaged enemies is a skill that can be learned just like aim or game sense
I've found I can notice movement incredibly quickly, regardless of how much camo or how poor the visibility is You should pick up a rhythm game, they're incredible for reflexes and helped my aim out a lot
Me, using exclusively thermal scopes in COD: Thank you for validating what I've basically been trying to say. Our brains process contrast a lot faster than the actual color. If you want to improve reactions, give your brain less to process.
Thats why I use the color blind option to make the characters look a lot clearer! But i do think they should give a vibrant colours by default and you can tweek it for more realism
@@user-qh8vm1me5w My reaction speed isn't that bad it's just that how am I supposed to react in time where the enemy is hiding next to a gray ass dumpster wearing same gray ass clothes shooting at me, like it'd be dead before I realise he was there
I must say that CS:GO does visibility really well. A lot of the walls/surfaces in the game are pretty brightly coloured and usually only of one colour, while player models are darker. The game also uses lighting strategically to maximise visibility in certain areas. It does all this while still looking pretty realistic.
Funny, I was going to talk about this exact thing in the video but I had to cut it for time. Cs:go's visibility is leagues ahead of a lot of other "realistic" shooters for the reasons you mentioned
so by this logic all competitive games should look like shit. being able to spot the enemy is part of the competitiveness for me. knowing where enemies usually go is part of learning the game. when the game does it for you, it's just kinda boring.
TF2 goes even further than just it's color choices. They specifically designed the class models to be uniquely identifiable from as many distances and situations as possible. Something I wish more shooters did as it makes engagements more fun imo. I know when I fight a soldier what roughly he has and consequently how to engage with them.
That's part of the reason why the design of the tf2 classes remain so iconic 13 years later. The art director really did some magic with the game
This is something that really bothers me about games like Apex. The characters all look the same. I can end a fight, win or lose, and I still won't have a clue what character I fought against.
furthermore, it uses what I think is called "backlighting" to make the character pop even more.
moby francke is the big brain behind this
@@orionfell well yes but actully no, funny enough, the smallest hitbox in the game TF2, in this case Scout, is the more easy to hit a headshot, when the Heavy, the biggest one, is the hardest :V
another thing TF2 has going for it is rim lighting on all characters, effectively a subtle little light-outline that helps distinguish character from wall
and it looks perfectly natural too, unlike a neon border
was gonna say. Yall sayin tf2 has no need for outlines. They still got outlines. Just. Diagetically.
halo5: hold me codpiece
Valorant does a more high-tech version of that, with extra red/blue based on the angle of the character's surface from the camera
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In my opinion, it completely depends on what type of shooter you're making, a more slow paced, positioning based shooter like insurgency sandstorm can benefit from having hard to spot enemies, but any fast paced shooters like CoD or BF can definitely benefit from more visible enemies
Exactly what I was thinking .. but not battlefield .. it's kind of a semi-realistic large scale battle type ... So "snipers in the bushes" is necessary for this game to give a feel about being on a battlefield ..
you may right about COD because COD is a small scale arena shooter .. similar small scale games like CSGO etc .
@@rahatzaman8120 *suffers in MIlsims for 30mins of planning and positioning to kill 1 guy*
@@flamingchuucygnet8983 for some people that's fun . Just like some people love combat flight simulations while many others think these games are extremely boring .
@@rahatzaman8120 yep definitely, it is fun, but on my end after playing too much milsim, normal shooters get too fast or too unruly for me, so i cant quite enjoy fast paced shooters anymore.
@@rahatzaman8120 Oddly it's not usually the snipers I have an issue with in the recent BF games, as they have a visibility indicator when they aim down sights at you. It's the people playing assault and medic like they're in CoD, zooming round a corner in muted colours.
Another thing that I've noticed especially in the 2009-2010 era of shooters is sharpness. The environment's themselves we're pretty flat with low resolution textures and the player models were highly detailed. This made them stand out by having a sharp object on a relatively blurry backdrop.
The trick there was a different shader applied to the character models
@@koryfredrick1164 mostly what I said
@@triynizzles You were talking about level of detail, which yes makes it easier to see too, just look at CSGO, the maps are mostly flat surfaces.
I was talking about shaders, which is a whole different thing
Exactly. Games these days try to Look good on screen so people jump onto them, but when you actually play them you can't see shit
I've actually heard many pros and good players in games like Apex call the visibility bad. But they take it as yet another thing to learn. To actually see the enemies
hehehe not really. go see unreal tournament 3. released the same year as tf2. worst art style ever for what it is (it's basically the same as gears of war, everything is gritty, visually polluted and blends together)
I love how in Splitgate, the enemy team is ALWAYS red. Always. Greatly helps with visibility since we're naturally drawn to red
Sometimes your teammates are red too, depends on the skin, it annoys the hell out of me.
I agree, but splitgate doesn't have the best visibility. Theres lots of times where people are just shadows.
but its confusing sometimes because in the bottom left alpha is always blue and bravo is always red. It's hard if you want to know your team's score.
@@vicfic_ This video is talking visuals. But your score is always on top so I'm not sure how confusing it can get. I've always found it extremely visually simple
I love splitgate's visibility, its amazing. I completely agree.
FPS games could learn a thing or two from clickbait youtube thumbnails
let's just say I saw a particular Veritasium video and now I'm a full simp for clickbait
@@garbaj nah actually i think yours counts as a legitbait
@@garbaj literally watched that video before this one, I must say, you're doing a good job
@@garbaj oh WAIT just realized my comment sounds like I'm roasting your thumbnail lol, I just meant we need logan paul's red circles and arrows to indicate players 😤
oh lol, that makes sense! either way I knew it was all in good spirit :)
To me, it'll always be dependent on the goal of the game and its art style. I really don't like it when people complain about visibility in games that are meant to replicate real life military uniforms and scenarios.
Yeah, though I'd really reserve that for only those shooters that really try for realism (like ARMA). You've got plenty of "military shooters" like battlefield and CoD that are basically not designed to portray a realistic military operation. It's just a bunch of dudes playing soldiers running around shooting each other and respawning, as opposed to trying to portray a real engagement.
If all tactical shooters keep pursuing realism eventually all of them will evolve into something akin to Arma, dudes sitting around and one gunfight per 2 hours, because that's realistic.
@@Ignatiusussy, never said that all facets of realism should be taken into the execution part of the process. Taken into consideration? Sure. Priority should always be... what kind of gameplay is to be offered. So, I'm all for fast-paced tactical shooters that have more visibility and unrealistic speed and reload mechanics. I'm just saying that there seems to be a lack of balance in this regard due to a desire for having features forced into products that were originally going for something else entirely. Just take Rainbow Six Siege here as an example. I know a lot of people, including myself, that wished for Ubisoft to have maintained the gritty tone and atmosphere.
Ears better than sight
Well those games are not competitive in the first place
This reminds me, back in the late 90's I used to hang out with a Quake clan at a local LAN cafe. Those guys would _always_ lower their settings on Q3A, just to get that extra bit of competitive advantage.
Naturally, I died to them almost constantly.
At that time we would edit config files to remove things like light coronas or even turn off lighting all together, which removed all shadows. It is how most competitive players would set up.
Unfortunately, with todays cry baby players, that would be classed as cheating.
@@nobodyimportant7380 depending on your definition it is actually cheating
you are using external programs(text editor) to give yourself a definite in game advantage
@@zjanez2868
Not at all cheating and accepted in competition. All of it could be done within the game console, it was simply faster to use a text editor.
This is the entire issue, today's cry babies, seem to think anything that offers an advantage is cheating.
Taking that attitude to the extreme.
Gaming Monitor, Advanced controllers ( Scuf, Elite) , Headsets, surround sound, steering wheels all give an advantage over a basic TV and controller so should all be banned, Even, Playing in a XBSX in Black ops coldwar against XB1 players.
That is the problem.
Cheating is when an external program is taking control of certain aspects of the game like aiming (aimbot), recoil control ( anti recoil scripts) or giving the ability to see things that should not be seen ( walls hacks or radar that isn't present in the game).
Nothing beyond that is cheating.
@@nobodyimportant7380 there is a blurry line between cheating and just optimizing the game for competitiveness
like, is it cheating to turn on the console-only aim assist on the pc to reduce aiming mistakes?
by your definition it isn't, cause no 3rd party program is *actively* modifying the game.
what if I used a text editor to turn on a debug feature that outlines all players in a game for myself? by your logic that wouldn't be cheating cause again, no 3rd party software is running.
yeah it's true people baby about it a lot more, but also it's pretty annoying that you have to look up special settings to use just to get the most out of your skill in a game and I could get why that would piss people off.
@@thespud1094 What you are referring to by effectively turning on outlines was not only covered by my previous post ( the ability to see things that should not be seen) but has been part of the CS for years, the Server either allows it or not. If the server doesn't allow it, then it doesn't work.
If the server doesn't allow it an the player finds a way to show it, then it IS cheating as it is breaking the rules set by the server.
My point is everything I mentioned could be done within the game settings either basic or advanced settings.
With regards to the turning on console aim assist, can that be done in any game using the in game settings basic or advanced? If it can be turned on in game settings, then it isn't cheating.
The blurry line isn't blurry with simple clarification.
1. The input must be 100% Human or assisted only within the settings allowed by the server.
2. The ability to use debug tools should be set by the server, If the server doesn't allow them then the official tools don't work.
3. Anything to do with Lighting or gfx should only allow settings within the game, either normal or advanced.
4. No third party software is allowed to control or override anything that is restricted by the server either prior to server entry or on live changes.
Beyond that I say nothing is cheating.
Your choice of input device, Display, Sound, are all fine as long as the 4 rules are met.
The problem is, as I previously said, people NEED an excuse for loosing these days, they are unable to accept a better player exists. So they deem anything they don't have or know how to do, as cheating.
Another example is Quake tournaments, where the entire map is almost completely dark, and the player models fully painted in a very bright green color.
That's Quake Live thing. Original Quake 3 had different variety of colors, but they still stood out.
@@MaxSpec that was already a feature of osp & cpma, CL came much later
quake 3 was the best.
and Team Fortress was stemmed from quake.
@@MacHammer3000 competitive Quake and UT mods really knew what's good (fullbright, forced color and model - then add some pickup setting) quite early on. (No idea who invented it first …)
Even quake champions allows the player to force very bright and saturated outlines on the enemy... But arena fps never try to be realistic or simulative, unlike some tactical shooters, so it's normal that bright skins and outlines are the norm there.
What I'm getting from these videos as that TF2 is just a really good shooter
pretty much yeah
akTuaLlY
it's the first and only war themed hat collecting simulator
tf2 isn't just popular for it's memes, there's a real diamond beneath the surface.
Its a timeless masterpiece. Valve is really good with games
Yes!
Although I find your statements agreeable in some ways, in my opinion, certain tactical shooters with larger maps should keep the colors that blend with each other because it allows for more tactical play styles that have to do with stealth. I do agree however in certain games it is better to have the characters be distinct and more vibrant in order to allow for easier detection
Make sence
I really much agree it really depends on the aim of the game. If you want a hyper realistic shooter like Arma you ain’t going for super Mario Suits. But in a heroshooter with what God know crazy effects? Why not?
this is why i really like the pro-visibility choices of TF2 but not the pro-visibility choices of overwatch, by strictly using only the models and textures (90% of the time) tf2 both gives good visibility in situations where it makes sense but also lets players get sneaky when they put their mind to it. by using screen space elements overwatch effectively removes the ability for players to be in any way sneaky without explicit stealth mechanics/abilities (hostility to emergent features is something the game suffers with overall) the red outline means that instead of having _more_ visible characters it has *fixed* visibility characters, removing any consideration about weather one is more or less visible
Makes sense because people just want a game where you don't have to go into cranky mode for your pc just, because people are like;
*I can't see a f-k from a point blank range and keep dying! Just because that same dude can crank his brightness up while I don't want to!*
You can disagree but that's ok. But, I do believe that developers should avoid a case where one person can easily crank their brightness to make it easier to spot enemies and kill the other who doesn't want to, or can't do the same thing.
@@kenneth_blah_blah_blah9228 The last part sounds really really dumb
TF2's color choices actually makes it rewarding during stealth, when you position yourself in a way that makes you less noticeable to enemy players. Many maps have a few places where, whether by design or not, allow players to hide either due to physical obstruction or by it being a dark corner that you can blend into more easily by hiding in the shadows.
I noticed it in a few games, where standing still in a corner is the best way to hide. Not in bushes or other foliage, but simply not moving.
That goes both ways making it more competitive in noticing people and it’s really not that difficult to see or hear people in games like CoD or apex, people complaining about visibility just aren’t as competitive or good enough nor are they even smart enough to just change their visual settings. Stealth is big in games like CoD and apex because hiding isn’t still very easy, even casuals see things easily and the audio makes it easier to detect people. I love garbaj but his arguments in this video are just not hitting the mark
@@Joesmowseph payed $5000 for a rig I ain’t lowering settings for shit
Don't some players just reduce the graphics to the lowest settings? That way they get higher fps and less post processing/shadows on other players.
yeah, lowering the graphics settings can help reduce visual clutter. Dunno if it improves the color contrast tho
@@garbaj It is possible to change the colors if you have an nvidia gpu - ua-cam.com/video/dxrKuDpQIeY/v-deo.html
This is definitely me. I was used to playing modern esport titles on ridiculous render scale values and minimal settings, running games on my old GT640. Once I got an RX580 I played with graphics settings menus and sliders for a bit and realized that I never needed those cool graphics to begin with. I would take sky high framerates over a bit nicer looking shadows or whatever any time and I genuinely wonder how people feel nice about playing games and not pushing the fps counter to its absolute limit
In Overwatch, using the lowest settings removes decorative things like bushes (as far as I remember)
@@garbaj I used to play Insurgency on really low settings with an FPS config and it definitely doesn't; player models will still blend in with the environment if they were already designed to do so, even if they don't have stuff like fake HDR and ambient occlusion covering their asses. It's pretty much the colour example in the video, actually.
This is exactly my gripe (and only one really) with the Halo Infinite. The beta gameplay looks hella fun and I'm excited for it, but I hate that they got rid of the outright red vs. blue spartans. Now it's just whatever your character looks like with either a red or blue outline. I get that character customization is really big in games nowadays and the developers want to allow people to show that off, but I don't think it's the right move. Not even for going against what has been a staple of the Halo style, but exactly for the gameplay reasons you explained.
Edit: Just to clarify, I know you said the outlines were there to be a visual aid, but I think that they're not enough of an aid haha.
sometimes the outlines can even make things worse! But yeah, it sucks that bad visibility is becoming a big issue in games these days. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out in infinite
halo isnt a competitive game.. its a shooter game for console normies
There are plenty of ways they could have allowed for customisation while maintaining player model readability, they were either just lazy or mislead by publishers that wanted to factor in IGMT cosmetics.
It’s the fiero guy! Loved your series
You can change the shield colours, but what bugs me really is that it feels pointless to have the custom colours, when past 5m or so you can't really even see what colour they have, all it is is the outline. It just makes the game look more confusing up close, and look like you are shooting at glowing people further away.
As someone with astigmatism, I am glad you made this video. I always have a hard time seeing enemies, human or AI, in most "realistic" looking games. I know that is sort of part of the aesthetic. But I feel that the aesthetic is not worth losing out on players with worse vision such as myself.
From a developer's stand point. I personally have been working on adding a slight "rim-light" effect on enemies in a game of mine using a fresnel shader. It helps make characters pop out from the background while not adding a potentially obtrusive "highlight" or outline around the whole model. Its just like a slight edge "shine" that better highlights the silhouette.
It’s worth it
I've got some pretty bad vision and an astigmatism in my right eye. I refuse to take shooters with character lighting and Nickelodeon art style seriously. Give me my glasses and a "milsim" game any day.
@9c8s4ltd5xlg== lazy eye and uveitis 😴
Not trying to be a jerk but it can totally worth it. Games are no way obliged to cater to everyone and aesthetics are a big part of what makes up a game.
That being said a fresnel effect with customizable color on enemies like in valorant is pretty standard and the best choice if realism isn't a concern. It is definitely obtrusive though and makes the gameyness very apparent (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).
Tell me any game you've made and I'll buy it. If you haven't made any games yet. Please start
Moby Francke was involved in defining the art style in both TF2 and Valorant so clearly the solution for FPS developers is to make sure that Moby is on your team
But valorant uses outlines
Owned by 4 words ^ lol
High-poly characters are better seen with low-poly backgrounds, so having too much detail makes it harder to see players
That's why a lot of people use minimum quality settings on games like quake or RuneScape, even if they can run on higher settings
i used to play cod1 competitively for years and this is a thing that everyone did, turn everything down other than model quality
It doesn't have to be low-poly maps just maps that are clear and easy to read without any distracting details. Like the maps in overwatch, valorant, and tf2.
Remembering how i redid all arma missions with good graphic settings because the bushes and grass makes it way harder
@Low even CS:GO, there‘s very little detail in the maps themselves, mostly blank walls, so it‘s very easy to spot people
tf2 really is the blueprint. great video as always dude
top 10 most played games on steam, not bad for a 13 year old title
Facts
@@garbaj And not bad for a game that has received zero major updates in three years, and had received mostly negatively viewed updates for the prior two years
@@garbaj yes even with the bits infestation and maggots and ddos server I still coming back
If you want a stylistic competetive shooter with abstract shooting mechanics (as in, they're not trying to be authentic to the weapons that are depicted).
However if you want a shooter that emulates a more authentic style, visibility is going to suffer as a result of that. Insurgency Sandstorm is a great example, as it is one of the more arcadey "MilSim-ish" experiences out there. The camo patterns of the security forces can blend into the background more often than not. But the gunplay is oh, so satisfying.
Edit: Also the question is, which aspect people are supposed to compete in - twitch-muscle reflexes? Tactics? Communication? All these feed into design choices for balancing character and world design.
Title: more games must use this
Thumbnail: this should stop
Me: *visible confusion*
This guy: Neon the characters!
Stealth FPS games: Are we a joke to you?
I think art style is the most important factor, for exemple: i could tell TF2, Mirror's Edge and Overwatch apart from each other, but the other realistic looking shooters i couldn't, they're basically the same with some tweaks, art style and colors complement each other, Doom Eternal is a great shooter that does these things, colorful and easy to tell apart from others
In every doom game each enemy is distinctive and colourful without looking cartoony. I wish other games would do this instead of walking around for 20 minutes in a battle royale then getting instakilled by a random guy who happened to click first
One real looking AAA shooter that I can always recognize is BF1, at least to my eye that game had a particularly distinct style compared to the others.
@@floreroafloreril1458 i dunno, i'm big into games but bf1 seems so painfully average when it comes to its graphics
it seems like most people would just see it as generic historic shooter #23523
Thats the issue with realism. There is only one real life, therefore everything you make on it is going to look the same.
It's the problem with being realistic, you don't have space for the gamified aspect
Maybe I'm nitpicking, but you shouldn't "desaturate" the colors to get an accurate representation of an image in grayscale. The colors, or rather shades of gray, are all over the place.
The "value" of a color is not the same as its brightness. To see the difference you can overlay a black layer over an image and set its blending mode to "color" or "saturation". Only then will you get a correct grayscale result.
Or use the LAB color space which is more in line with reality by default.
Your point still stands, but it's not as bad as you examples make it look.
Not a nitpick at all. it's my fault for not fully understanding how saturation worked when I made the video, so I appreciate the information
@@garbaj I just thought I'd throw it out there, it doesn't actually matter in this case and your point still stands.
Maybe I'm getting old but I usually set things like foliage to low. In some games there are graphics options which literally make the gameplay worse. Like when you cannot make out pickable plants or treasure chest or even NPCs in all that green chaos.
BTW, if your interested in similar things regarding color theory then I suggest you take a peek at Taran van Hemerts (from Linus Tech Tips) channel.
@@trashbytes I found that people in PUBG and such turn off foliage and whatnot as well, because if you have it on and feel like you're hiding in a bush in the middle of a field, someone who has foliage off can plainly see you just laying on a flat surface. Same thing in War Thunder. Cover isn't cover if it can be turned off.
2:20 also in overwatch you can change the color of the outline for the enemy, so for instance you can change it to where they all have a gold outline for better visibility
Doom eternal also uses a smart trick for this. The lighting on enemies in Doom eternal is separate from the environment, so they are always lit and clearly visible, even in dark spots. This makes the game look less 'cinematic' and realistic but is much better for gameplay reasons. Hugo Martin, the game director, said that at first they had all the lighting be from the environment, like in 2016's DOOM. It made the game look really cool apparently, but it played bad in play testing because you often wouldn't clearly see what it was that got you killed, and eternal is much more punishing that its predecessor.
The balance between realism and gameplay. In many cases realism has to take a step back, because a completely realistic game wouldn't be fun.
TF2 also puts a rim light on each character to create even more visible separation between them and the background.
Holy shit, I never realized that. That is so subtle but adds a ton of visibility. So cool
One thing I wished you'd have mentioned is TF2's use of phong shading on characters to give them an edge light that makes sure they stand out more from the background
Yeah there's a sort of a fresnel glean on the models that subtly has a similar effect to an outline.
"I don't like the stylistic choice of this game, therefore this game is NOT competitive"
Battlefield 4 did a great job of making players visible by giving character models separate lighting. It's almost a white outline that makes them stand out. On top of that, each class has a distinct silhouette. It makes the game very readable and you're even capable of playing without friendly/foe icons.
There's nothing more infuriating in a game then dying to a gray blob 500 feet away surrounded by similarly shaped grey blobs.
That's one reason I always liked Battlefields spotting mechanic, at least as it was in BF3. Even though it was readily spammable, you still had to be mostly looking at any given enemy. So it was nice to be able to spam the spotting mechanic at a hill when you were taking fire to figure out exactly which pixel was trying to kill you and where to lay down some hate. Even if it wasn't a perfect pinpoint on the exact enemy itself, you at least knew where to look.
I definitely think if more FPS games that frequently feature longer-range engagements should incorporate that mechanic in some form. And not just a ping mechanic, cuz that's only as good as the playing calling the ping. But an actual 'spotting' mechanic to specifically point out enemy positions would go a long way, with some limitations of course to prevent it from being too OP.
@@Beefyrulz cod warzone did implement just that, but yea I would agree if more fast paced shooters (primarily battle royale or possible games similar to battlefield) would implement that with ofc some minor tweaks and balances to make it balanced instead of being stupendously overpowered
@@zenohawk1788 iirc warzone's spotting mechanic requires you to be looking directly at an enemy and even then the ping only goes to where they are at the moment you ping, unless that's been changed somewhat recently. The spotting mechanic in BF3 would actually 'stick' to an enemy for a short period of time, either popping a marker over their head if they were readily visible, or flagging them on your mini-map.
@@Beefyrulz Honestly it would be better if it's like a few seconds or so instead of like permenently
@@zenohawk1788 well yeah, that's how it was in BF3 and I think it's good that way. Even if you were still in line of sight, the mark would fade after maybe 3-5 seconds or so. It was literally just enough time to figure out where to look or see the enemy move/react to your shots.
And I think it might fade a second or two quicker if you actually broke line of sight.
The way Dirty Bomb did it was that each character skin has an alternative version for the enemy. Enemy players have a red shader on them while teammates have a blue one. Both have a noticeable glow in the darker areas.
And splitgate does something similiar where you and your teammates are seen by eachother with your regular skins but the enemy team will always have a super red version of the skins that theyre using
Ahh, so like in TF2 with red team and blue team, but the enemy is always red :D
CSGO danger zone does the same thing where enemies are orange and your teammate is blue
don't remind me of dirty bomb, it shatters my soul
and this is exactly what i miss about competing on consoles IN THE SAME TV, IN THE SAME HOUSE
there are a myriad of SUBTLE AND BUGGISH settings like this to gain an advantage, in and out of the game both from the video settings within the game itself (war thunder is a good example)//how to edit cfg.txt and other files in the root folder//how to change graphics settings in driver or windows panel..//as well as calibrate monitor like here.. .// buy dedicated +360fps hardware...//response times of the mouse (ms), the monitor (ms) and so on..., and countless other nifty things that keep popping up over time.
I've mostly left competitive gaming for the past few years to this kind of mischief.
Companies should look for ways to eradicate this pest, by locking graphic settings on the server side, (even adapting to specific hardware such as different monitors to have identical results in our homes), without the possibility of changing them...
The competitions have become quite corrupted, it has become a matter of accumulating almost negligible advantages to generate an enormous effect.
One has to invest enormous amounts of time just to keep up with this nonsense.
It is no longer about the simple individual ability, but a lot of things more unrelated to the competition itself... it has been distorted.
It's what I miss from the time of the consoles on the same TV with local friends..., something closed, quite fair, but above all SIMPLE, it's the closest thing to the Olympics or any sport in real life but virtually, something genuinely enjoyable,
I understand that asking for that level of competitive quality but online may be too much to ask for... but dreaming doesn't cost anything :)
Man this dude has studied good clickbait. And now if fallen down a game meachanics rabbit hole at 2 am
Let's just plop lights on the enemy heads. Tbh the problem is big.
It would honestly be an improvement lol
that's pretty much what black ops 4 did, if enemies were in a dark environment you could still see them because of the red lights on their suits
Ah yes, titanfall’s method of strapping LED lights to clothing, it gets the job done even if it seems kinda stupid
I love seeing tactical geared out troops with bright ass lights, total immersion breaker.
Kinda like in halo?
I actually thought he was gonna talk about the Fresnel effect applied to character models on TF2. It further increases the differentiation of players from the background, as player outlines become more visible
Thumbnail: "this needs to stop"
Title: "trick that fps games need to use"
I accept dying to enemies I didn't see because it means that I have a chance to kill enemies that don't see me. If everyone can easily see the enemy then that effetely limits the tactical options available to the player. In games where it's harder to see I can have a choice: do I run through the woods to reach an area faster or do I move slower to avoid detection? If I glow bright red then there is no point in even trying the slow approach so I loose that choice.
Increased player visibility is one of the reasons I enjoy the original Insurgency over it's sequel, Sandstorm. In the first game, characters had muted colors that blended in with the background. For Sandstorm, they changed camo pattern colors to increase the contrast with the background for the PMCs and gave the insurgents bright and colorful clothes. This made it harder to hide and sneak around. I found myself dying much more frequently because hiding was harder and thus I couldn't play the game the way I wanted to. Not to mention the altered camos just looked wrong because of the weirdly off colors chosen and kind of compromised some of the grounded art style despite everything else being a graphical improvement.
I understand why some people like high visibility and that is the direction some games will go. But, I don't want all non mil-sim shooters to go this route as it will alienate people like me
I think it should depend on the player character's intended mobility. Games with realistic mobility standards should be more muted to make stealth viable, but games with very high mobility (wall running, high jumps, power sliding,...etc.), where stealth will next to never be viable, should have high visibility to aid with tracking an erratically moving target .
Cod mobile, on the other hand, give enemies bright red straps on their arms to distinguish between an enemy and a friend. This can be done as well.
Nah it'll look arcadey
anything to improve visibility is nice, especially on tiny mobile screens
@@ash_1419 eh better than making players think they're blind
@@ash_1419 Well, it’s a mobile arcade shooter, so the idea isn’t too unbelievable.
@@lieutenantgodzilla yeah it looks good on mobile but not on a PC game
Another good way to balance this is the Battlefield games. They're more on the realsy-tactical scale and therefore players aren't ultra-visible by default, but the spotting mechanic is brilliant.
Once you've been seen and spotted, their team can tell where you're hanging out for a few seconds with HUD indicators and sometimes outlines. So just sitting on a rooftop sniping the whole game isn't the best strategy, when someone on the ground makes you stand out for a passing helicopter to pick off!
...and then on the far end there's Arma, where shots ring out and echo through the hills and you're spinning around going "WHERE?!? WHERE?!" and never see who killed you. LOL
that's a pretty interesting way to handle it, I'm pretty excited for BF 2042
As long as its not 3d spotting like older bf games spotting which is basically legal wallhacks xD
But arma is far from competitive and even against snipers you arent defenseless, sniper os quite hot in thermal optics and easy target for the drone
Ofc. Its kinda worse in arma 3 where ghille is now thermal isulated but still a sniper is easy picking for helicopters
Battlefield actually do have plenty of visibility bs.
Player character glows in 3/4/5.
I think BFV's approach to the visibility issue is also interesting. It has one of the most stripped-down spotting systems of any major Battlefield game, so to compensate, enemies are giving this slight white "glowing" effect when in dark areas. I think it's kind of like TF2's rim lighting system or something.
"This needs to stop"
"Need to use"
Make up your mind dang it
Great video highlighting something I have been saying for years, visible players puts the skill back to aim and movement, which in turn reduces camping, and so improves fun.
It does however depend on the game style, if it is designed to be more of a simulation, then muted colours would be better.
Halo infinite outlines the enemy and friendlys some people dont like it but personally i think its a really nice touch makes it so much easier to visiaully distinguish things especially in this day and age of just everything being grey i find it so hard to concentrate on my enemies , black ops 4 had a decent system with the enemiy having a red light on their suit
Those outlines are definitely a lifesaver!
Valorant outlines friendlyes and enemies and you can see them very well
It also plays in to gameplay too in a positive way in my mind as outlines for enemies only appear if the enemy is significantly visible or just left your sight, or you use a piece of equipment to scan for them. So it reflects how in world, your HUD would be scanning for and helping you identify opponents.
Halo 3 still had a better system
@@FlamespeedyAMV I don't recall Halo 3 having any system for outlines, it just forced colours on the players.
This is actually one of my problems with unique cosmetics. Sure they look cool, and they technically don't affect your game, but it's a lot harder to hide in a bush when you're a bright red bad@ss samurai. People can just see you from miles away.
And the opposite can be true in other games as well, such as players picking the "Roze" operator in COD Modern Warfare to get a massive visibility advantage over players.
Honestly I like when fps games give the enemy a red outline when fully visible to you, The outline may be ugly but at least I can fucking see them
Them introducing some kind of glow effect to players in R6 Siege, was the day they made it impossible to use your surroundings to your advantage which punishes the more experienced players and just doesn't make sense. Why would I wear a camouflage uniform just to glow like I'm made out of plastic
Wow your channel grew so fast
Oh, I'm very happy with how the channel's been doing lately ;)
@@garbaj I think he's trying to give you a speed ticket.
You forgot about to mention rim lighting. It's something way easier to implement on many styles, and helps a lot. On some of the freezeframes, look closely and you'll notice a little glow around the TF2 characters' bodies. This was meant to help contrast players in darker areas where color may not be as easily visible.
Well, at least we got drop shadow rather often, even though in many cases it's nothing but a side effect of having SSAO turned on. Every little bit of local contrast helps, I guess.
bruh being able to spot people is a part of the competetive aspect
in “Cuisine Royale” (now called CRSED: F.O.A.D.), it only uses bold and desaturated colors, while somehow still having good visibility. you can see an enemy in dark green armor running through a shadowy forest pretty clearly, as long as he’s rendered.
it’s not like a “oh look, here i am”. if he isn’t moving, it’s quite hard to see (under the circumstances mentioned above). it somehow managed to have good visibility while also looking pretty realistic.
I always thought devs picked colors specifically to make it more difficult to notice other players, and when I died because I didn't see that gray guy that was obviously standing in front of that gray wall, I always blamed myself for "not being good enough". It made sense because, as you said, armors are made specifically to not stand out. But maybe not all devs were that deliberate after all.
Besides, in contrast to real life battles, in games we actually do want players to engage otherwise it wouldn't be as fun. Hell, if we do increase player engagement, players might begin to be quicker and more alert because they know they're in the open, which in turn might unironically make games more competitive.
Back in the days when I was still gaming I wondered about the same thing. Unless we are talking about very specific camouflage, spec-ops and such stand out well in real life. I think the problem is that a game can't really replicate the depth of vision and sense of distance when looking at a screen. So something that would be well visible in real life becomes a mush. Anther thing in modern "reality" shooters is the ridiculous amount of smoke and debris flying. You know, unless we are talking about Vulcan cannon blasting, 5.56mm etc. won't blast off smoke-dust-debris, but will just leave a hole in most cases.
If developers want to make games more realistic, then... Noone would want to play them
@@ladrok97 Until you go to hyper realistic games, then you get ARMA and Escape From Tarkov and an entirely different audience suddenly starts playing. At that point its trying to see slightly more dark outlines on dark outlines while not having any HUD and not noticing the pixel peeking guy 2 storeys above you, which is entirely your fault because you didnt get a thermal scope which you could have seen him with 20m behind you when you were walking
Or you could integrate the low visibility of characters as a game mechanic, by means of introducing a spotting mechanic. In phantom forces, if you press "e" any enemy in your cone of vision gets marked with a red losenge, which dissapears if no-one in your team is looking at them for a while.
Battlefield has been doing this for years, hell, decades even at this point I'm sure.
I appreciate you. Thank you for this. I wouldn't have even thought about this!
Slow down your movement, see the player first and hit your shots. That's how you win in games where the colors are muted. Using your surroundings is part of the game and I feel like a large amount of people don't think about it and complain about dying all the time. Adapt and overcome.
Tweak the visual settings to improve visibility. Adapt and overcome.
Here before this blows up. Also shoutout to the OG's from the first Godot tutorial.
Yep bro! I was here for the Godot Advanced FPS and TPS tutorial since last year? I don't remember precisely 😅
I am glad Garbaj became popular and offers us better and better content
I just miss how Halo CE did it by having a downwards-facing green triangle to indicate teammates.
Halo Infinite doesn't need outlines - it needs HUD markers to show where your allies are. That way you wouldn't have outlines getting in the way of seeing what kind of armour another player has.
The more you push information out of the diegetic gamespace and into the HUD, the more you distract the player from the actual game in front of them. Players end up paying more attention to HUD elements than to all the lovely game art that you spent thousands of dollars developing.
@@tbotalpha8133 Which is why downwards pointing green arrows just for allies are better than having outlines for literally everyone, because it reduces the amount of non-diegetic elements. And in order for outlines to be effective they also have to be THICC which gets in the way of the game art and player armour.
@@MajatekYT I've always found arrows hanging over player's heads to be distracting as well, not to mention invisible and useless in certain lighting conditions, and often so small that they're hard to notice under pressure. When being able to tell what team a player is on is the difference between life and death, having to deal with the slightest moment of confusion or doubt is awful. Because by the time I've worked it out, I'm probably dead.
@@tbotalpha8133 Well if neither method of outlines nor HUD arrows are perfect for everyone because one obscures the armour due to the outlines and the other is distracting to you then let players select which one they want. I'll always choose the HUD arrows because I'll react quicker to a spartan suddenly appearing without an arrow than a spartan appearing with an outline but is slightly differently coloured.
This just takes me back to old CoDs where either your primary gun choice or your first perk choice would decide what your character would look like. Remember BO1 where Ghost gave your a Ghille Suit or Flak Jacket gave you an actual Flak Jacket? In the industry of loot boxes and MTXs where everything has to be flashy and unique but still be homogenized, you end up with the Syndrome quote, "And when everyone is Super, no one will be."
I want a return to team-based outfits and/or role-based outfits. Also highlights around characters definitely help as well in certain situations
This is also an accessibility thing. I have issues tracking objects, and it is the difference between a game I can enjoy and an unplayable nightmare to have visible enemies. It's much easier to find a red or blue smear that I've lost than to separate beige from beige. The point of the game is strategy and skill, not a test of how good my eyes can track.
Not a color thing, but I have issues with bad AA. When stuff flickers like crazy.
I could see it in a game about realism, on the other hand when you unload several entire mags into an enemy before realizing it's a plant, maybe the camo works too well
Never really thought about this very much. Very good way of presenting it
i think a lot of games get more from the ability to sneak in a shadow and hide from enemies.
Even in CS:GO you can see that from pro-players every so often - they hide in a corner and dont immiedetely kill an enemy, but let more of them reveal themselves to get multiple kills at once, instead of alerting everyone after the 1st kill. some games put a lot of emphasis on staying hidden, so the game screaming "HEY there is an enemy here!" with specific color palletes would not be great.
tho i agree, quick-paced shooters like TF2 definitely benefit from this kind of artstyle, since they have other means of staying hidden (i.e. the Spy's cloack and disguise kit)
Meanwhile in Finland: Must have been a talking snow.
For something so old, I'm surprised modern FPS don't follow the TF2 route. I would've thought old game designs would've been implemented and refined by newer games.
I can see why the TF2 community still lives on to this day.
Thank you for this video! Poor visibility is something that I've been complaining to my friends about when we play AAA games. A good example would be the new Back 4 Blood. There is so much post-processing effects everywhere that is really hard to see if I'm shooting a zombie or a barrel. And also, thank you for keeping the video short (5 min), that's something that I really appreciate since you could easily just drag it to 20 min or so if you wanted to. Nice job!
*Long Story Short:* the characters blend in the environment which makes it harder to spot enemies.
I’m glad you mentioned how overwatch helps you spot enemies. Its a small thing I always appreciated about overwatch
csgo actually boosts the contrast of enemies far away, and adds a slight white outline to them
so no, not all tactical shooters want visibility to be realistic
You can additionally disable that option if you want to, so you *can* choose to make it "realistic"
@@Artician ive looked some more into it
how it works is that there's a slight barely noticeable fog in the game
and players are unaffected by it causing them to have contrast than the background when they are far away from you and it makes the effect unnoticeable when enemies are close to you
While I agree with good visibility being important, there's games like Hunt Showdown where being able to blend into shadow and foliage actually is part of the experience and theme. In that game, you're no soldier, but a hunter of both the bounty target and anyone in between you. Unfortunately players undermine that part of the game by turning up their monitor brightness to see better especially in night maps
3:37 The french in world war 1 be like.
Completely disagree. All I hear is: "I suck at shooters and don't want to spend time getting better, just make enemies easier to shoot".
Seeing enemies more clear also has the consequence of enemies spotting you sooner as well. All disadvantages you face, your opponent has to face as well. It's about knowing your disadvantages and planning to use them on your enemy.
For example Rainbow Six Siege. Your enemy can hide behind a small hole in a wall to have an easy kill on you. On the other hand, you have the exact same advantage.
Making the game easier for yourself results in making the game easier for your opponent as well.
TF2 does a great job in terms of visual clearance, but in no scenario, you're trying to hide for a longer amount of time or to actively avoid your enemies. In COD Warzone it's the complete opposite. That's a very thin line to balance between the casual gamer and absolute tryhard, I know, but please don't try to argue that true competitiveness only comes from making your enemies easier to see because that's just not true.
TF2 is awesome as per usual (there's more than just colours with silhouettes and weapon clarity), but what I wanna know is how CSGO's visibility's still pretty darn decent despite the more "real" look
csgos visibility is improved by making the player models darker and making the maps more bright so that there is more of a contrast
Except in ancient. That map sucks
@@goodtimesgivecancer1 i agree i really dislike ancient just in general
What about games where camouflage actually works? I love not being seen by the other team, and I think its a legit competitive play style.
Exactly. Imagine a big outline glow around your Arma 3 character lmao
Crysis did that
war thunder :p
RS2V Vietcong wearing ghillie suit hiding in bushes is what you're talking about, and that game is basically a PTSD simulator
I mean I'll give ARMA a pass because it's supposed to go for that slow super-realistic style, but in most cases, having people be mostly invisible just doesn't make for fun gameplay, since it basically amounts to a huge defender advantage. The attacker who has to be moving automatically becomes way more visible, compared to a defender who can just be laying prone somewhere. The game really needs to be designed around recon for that to work, like Rainbow 6 siege for instance, where attackers get drones, means to breach walls, etc. Otherwise it just turns into some guy hiding in some random bush with a huge advantage against you. Yeah it's a realistic simulation, but it's not particularly fun or competitive either. It just comes off as being cheap.
I think that in a tournament setting, especially when money is on the line everyone's monitor should have to be calibrated by a calibration tool.
In my opinion, if you're using reshade, Nvidia digital vibrance, cranking your gamma etc. you're cheating.
I don't think that tournament holders should provide their own panels, because a variation in screen size response time and refresh rate could cause someone to feel 'off'. However, they should put a calibrator on all of them.
I can't believe this isn't already a thing.
The problem with that is it introduces a restriction on players with visual disabilities such as color blindness. If there was a stipulation in the rules saying only one visual mode could be used, then you'd effectively be barring players with color blindness from your tournament.
Now, what you could do in that particular case is have players run an eye test and if they meet the criteria to use certain color modes, then they should. But no other player who fails to meet those requirements should be permitted to.
@@R3_dacted0 I don't think anyone would have an issue with somebody using a filter that made the game appear colour correct for a colour blind person.
I'm talking about someone blowing out their gamma so there is effectively zero contrast and they can see every corner, darkened area etc.
I really like the concept of having being able to distinguish enemies from their surroundings be a challenge. Too bad it's a bit impractical to have a multiplayer game focused on that, as players would adjust their graphics to be the most visible possible, in detriment of the fun that comes from that challenge, and in detriment of the intended aesthetics as well
Good thing tf2 isn't trying to be competitive, tho it is quite a good fps
i approve
what do you mean there was and still is a competitive scene for tf2, many early overwatch pro players started in tf2
@@lt3880 yeah but as many have said already, tf2 is just in this middle ground of casuel/competitive, other games have causal as a mode for training to play comp. tf2 has casual just as playing tf2 and having fun
@@MedicMainDave thats a valve problem, tf2 is an incredibly deep game that if it had support the competitive scene could be great.
its a shame the devs squander its potential not only to be an amazing casual shooter but an amazing competitive game
@@lamptowel hey, we got snakes. who knows what else the single tf2 developer/janitor can cook up?
I love Apex. It’s my favorite game but I have had my moments where I’ve wished I could see players better. I know that’s one of the reasons scanning legends exist and I’m not asking for overwatch level visual pop but I think a small adjustment would be a good quality of life change. I don’t think the game is really what I would consider bound by realism like warzone or pubg so I don’t think it would be a big deal if players were slightly more distinguishable.
bad visibility in "competitive games" results in the person who sees the other first will likely win that fight. but in games with good visibility it results in the better player winning and the worse player learning from mistakes they may have made.
When I started playing apex I also had insane problems seeing players especially at long ranges
As someone with not great eyesight even when wearing glasses I much prefer games with easily distinguishable enemies rather than games where I have to squint at my monitor and still miss the enemies walking right under my nose
I love the lack of visibility in games like Warzone, because I like to be stealthy
Yeah warzone is a bit of an outlier from close range and faster paced FPS games
I like how activision don't want to hear their sweaties for doing a downgrade. Unlike siege who sacrificed casuals for sweaties.
Garbaj: "Overall visibility is better!"
Escape From Tarkov: 👁👄👁
"killed by shadows in the back of maps"
*runs directly into two players around a corner*
lol
Something i've always beleived is that readability is one of the pillars of a game's competitiveness. Something that people ofter forget with competitive games is that people.... watch. Being able to follow along a game is key. There is a reason people who watch comp Overwatch can quickly get bored, and it's because you can't distinguish anything if you are not already acquainted with the game, the mechanics the abilities...
Basically : readability is for both the player and watcher.
agreed 100% I avoided playing Overwatch for almost 3 years because there was so much happening on the screen. Visibility is key
in dota1 one of the characters (PA) had an ability to passively make her opacity lower. When valve introduced her into dota2, they reworked that ability and made all characters and mobs easily spottable and distinguishable from each other. Dota is not a shooter but that shows how much valve care about such things.
One of the reasons why TF2 is a timeless masterpiece.
I wish every shooter had the outlines of Overwatch and the choice to choose the outline color is huge as well !
Being colorblind, it really sucks to getting killed by someone you don't really see on your screen (i had this issue in numerous games, including Apex and Overwatch before they added outlines)
As soon as you said "can only see gray" "getting killed from the darkness, i knew tf2 would come up
Pretty much every try hard has custom post processing filters to make it easier to see enemies
imo its a tactical thing to make characters blend in more, it makes the game harder and requires the player to look better for the enemy and makes the game harder, if every enemy would be so easy to see its a easy game. that pro players change screen settings to see the enemy better is for them a advantage yes but that doesnt mean the games all need obvious enemies, idk if you get what a mean tho
No, I totally see your point. It just comes down to what you call "competitive". Being able to spot camouflaged enemies is a skill that can be learned just like aim or game sense
I've found I can notice movement incredibly quickly, regardless of how much camo or how poor the visibility is
You should pick up a rhythm game, they're incredible for reflexes and helped my aim out a lot
Yep, not all games have to be simulations, real war is very RNG
Me, using exclusively thermal scopes in COD: Thank you for validating what I've basically been trying to say. Our brains process contrast a lot faster than the actual color. If you want to improve reactions, give your brain less to process.
2:52 - *red* traffic cones? What?
"And I'm getting killed by shadows in the darkness" I felt that
Thats why I use the color blind option to make the characters look a lot clearer! But i do think they should give a vibrant colours by default and you can tweek it for more realism
Yeah, I hate these gray ass games where it's first see wins or sumn
I'm still working on that "see first" part
@@garbaj Like as in my sentence being confusing to understand?
I have slow reaction time lol
@@user-qh8vm1me5w My reaction speed isn't that bad it's just that how am I supposed to react in time where the enemy is hiding next to a gray ass dumpster wearing same gray ass clothes shooting at me, like it'd be dead before I realise he was there
@@ruefysh9576 I mean that's why I don't play fps games 247
I must say that CS:GO does visibility really well. A lot of the walls/surfaces in the game are pretty brightly coloured and usually only of one colour, while player models are darker. The game also uses lighting strategically to maximise visibility in certain areas. It does all this while still looking pretty realistic.
Funny, I was going to talk about this exact thing in the video but I had to cut it for time. Cs:go's visibility is leagues ahead of a lot of other "realistic" shooters for the reasons you mentioned
ah yes, Mario games are famous for their yellow coins and orange turtles
This is why I use the combat scout perk in warzone, it gives the enemies a bright orange outline (when I shoot them ) and I can actually see them.
so by this logic all competitive games should look like shit.
being able to spot the enemy is part of the competitiveness for me. knowing where enemies usually go is part of learning the game. when the game does it for you, it's just kinda boring.
Agree
2:47 Hey I know that place!
"After 9 years in development, hopefully it will be worth the wait"
It sure was Gabe, It sure was
"Imagine if everyone ran around wearing a bright Mario red-and-blue costume in warzone"
> We call this the French Army during WW1.