Avatars needs to stay "avatary enough"

[Curix]

Suggestion: Let's stay with the rules - https://www.mmatycoon.com/avatarguidelines.php That seems to be unactual. Look at "latest avatars" accepted. 

Suggestions Description:

Pros:

• Avatars are simillar, what's good for game and fighters.
• Good with the rules from start of MMAT.
• No easier and faster creations for sales.

Cons:

• No option to make them more realistic.

[The1rstSaint]

100% agree. Mike clearly has abandoned his guidelines. From an avatar makers perspective I have lost all interest in making avatars for this very reason. There are so many that get accepted now that are either reface garbage or just simply blended images. 
 

If your going to accept this stuff you might as well take down the tutorial on what should be accepted at this point!

[Skuzbukit]

I've never made an Avatar but given the originals were all made in 3ds Max which is not exactly entry-level in terms of access or cost I think the idea all should be of that same quality is a bit of a stretch, what some users manage to do with refacing garbage is actually pretty solid given that very few people are going to be professional 3d artists in a largely free to play game.

While I understand wanting some consistency & wanting to keep the standards up I can also see why the avatars that get passed do, if there were an army of full-time 3ds Max artists cranking these things out it might be less of an issue.

And let's not forget that appearance/aethetics/cosmetics etc are very highly subjective hard & fast rules are very hard to maintain consistency within because even how your mood is on any given day has a big effect on how your perception of any image is going to be, this is especially true of colour images and one reason black & white photography is still very popular when doing subject study.

So an Avatar that might pass one day might not on another and you can't eradicate the biases causing that without resorting to removing the human equation from the process - not sure anyone's managed that yet, even AI image analysis contains biases from the material it was trained on.

This game's avatar system would massively benefit from a "Character Creation" tool similar to how some MMORPG's do with a broad selection of faces, features & adjustable parameters - but that's far too expensive for a text-based fighting RPG/sports manager game to consider.

[Vlad]

4 hours ago, Skuzbukit said:

I've never made an Avatar but given the originals were all made in 3ds Max which is not exactly entry-level in terms of access or cost I think the idea all should be of that same quality is a bit of a stretch, what some users manage to do with refacing garbage is actually pretty solid given that very few people are going to be professional 3d artists in a largely free to play game.

While I understand wanting some consistency & wanting to keep the standards up I can also see why the avatars that get passed do, if there were an army of full-time 3ds Max artists cranking these things out it might be less of an issue.

And let's not forget that appearance/aethetics/cosmetics etc are very highly subjective hard & fast rules are very hard to maintain consistency within because even how your mood is on any given day has a big effect on how your perception of any image is going to be, this is especially true of colour images and one reason black & white photography is still very popular when doing subject study.

So an Avatar that might pass one day might not on another and you can't eradicate the biases causing that without resorting to removing the human equation from the process - not sure anyone's managed that yet, even AI image analysis contains biases from the material it was trained on.

This game's avatar system would massively benefit from a "Character Creation" tool similar to how some MMORPG's do with a broad selection of faces, features & adjustable parameters - but that's far too expensive for a text-based fighting RPG/sports manager game to consider.

I think Skuzbukit pretty much hit the nail on the head - we do have plans to provide improvements to the avatar section but there is no real way for us to create more of the same avatars as they were all made manually by Mike many many moons ago.

[The1rstSaint]

31 minutes ago, Vlad said:

I think Skuzbukit pretty much hit the nail on the head - we do have plans to provide improvements to the avatar section but there is no real way for us to create more of the same avatars as they were all made manually by Mike many many moons ago.

The improvements to the current avatar selection is a fine idea. That’s not what myself or Curix is talking about though. It’s the process for custom avatars looking nothing like the in game avatar selection that Mike has created many moons ago. 
 

The whole “Avatary enough” topic stems from when his tutorial was created a few years ago and he explains how those avatar parts should be implemented and noticeable in custom creations. I can look through the recent accepted avatars and see way to many that have 0 parts noticeable yet they get accepted. I’m not saying they don’t look cool, they just are not showing any signs of avatar parts. Even they eyes which are very simple to implement look nothing like the ones Mike created.

 

anyway there are far more things of importance that should be done to the game, but this is just my two cents on this matter.

[Curix]

For example:

Avatars accepted (not even close to the rules)

     

Avatars accepted (normal, with the rules, what they should look like)

           

 

Now you know what I mean?

Who sees the difference and who doesn't?

[Zello]

Get rid of the system entirely. I hate the avatar rules. Let me upload whatever and call it a day. Just don’t allow nudity no boobies or penises on avatars.

[Rei]

On 3/2/2024 at 10:20 AM, The1rstSaint said:

100% agree. Mike clearly has abandoned his guidelines.

 

he never had any lol

 

wrote that entire page of what avatars should look like and posted it on the same day that he accepted avatars that went against his rules

[The1rstSaint]

3 hours ago, Rei said:

 

he never had any lol

 

wrote that entire page of what avatars should look like and posted it on the same day that he accepted avatars that went against his rules

Damn you REI! I nearly had this whole topic erased from my memory.

[Skuzbukit]

On 3/3/2024 at 7:54 PM, Curix said:

For example:

Avatars accepted (not even close to the rules)

     

Avatars accepted (normal, with the rules, what they should look like)

           

 

Now you know what I mean?

Who sees the difference and who doesn't?

A lot of avatars fall into the trap of having "just black dots for eyes" which the guidelines posted is pointed out as an issue too, and some of the "good examples" have this in full effect.

Guidelines are interpreted, that process of interpretation is subjective, and everyone will draw lines for themselves and not all are going to agree with all of Mike's use of the guidelines.

[Curix]

14 hours ago, Skuzbukit said:

A lot of avatars fall into the trap of having "just black dots for eyes" which the guidelines posted is pointed out as an issue too, and some of the "good examples" have this in full effect.

Guidelines are interpreted, that process of interpretation is subjective, and everyone will draw lines for themselves and not all are going to agree with all of Mike's use of the guidelines.

Black dots on eyes? What the...?! Man, you just need to past the "custom eyes" from the series of whole "custom avatars", whatever. Other eyes shouldn't be accepted.

What elements must be on that kind of avatar? Eyes, nose and mouth from the game, as you know. You are since sometime in this game, me too, a couple of good years.

[Skuzbukit]

9 hours ago, Curix said:

Black dots on eyes?

"for" Eyes, but it was a reference to this example from the guidelines post:

3/10 Has used bits of our avatar but here we've got an example of eyes just looking like black dots. This is is one of the main problems we have with submissions. People take an image which is small, cut out some avatar eyes and paste them on and they just look like black dots, because the designer is probably trying to edit it at the original avatar size, not scale it up, edit it then scale it back down. If they just look like black dots, you might as well just have used black dots.... I don't care if you actually used avatar bits, because it doesn't look like it. This mouth is fine though... That's clearly avatar, which helps. Blurry. Flying heads doesn't help.

And 11/14 "good examples" you shared have just black dots for eyes, one has no pupils at all.

[The1rstSaint]

50 minutes ago, Skuzbukit said:

"for" Eyes, but it was a reference to this example from the guidelines post:

3/10 Has used bits of our avatar but here we've got an example of eyes just looking like black dots. This is is one of the main problems we have with submissions. People take an image which is small, cut out some avatar eyes and paste them on and they just look like black dots, because the designer is probably trying to edit it at the original avatar size, not scale it up, edit it then scale it back down. If they just look like black dots, you might as well just have used black dots.... I don't care if you actually used avatar bits, because it doesn't look like it. This mouth is fine though... That's clearly avatar, which helps. Blurry. Flying heads doesn't help.

And 11/14 "good examples" you shared have just black dots for eyes, one has no pupils at all.

Your defense is pretty ridiculous at this point. Considering most of those good examples he posted are of EXACT replicas of the faces including the EYES of mikes templates. 

[Skuzbukit]

4 hours ago, The1rstSaint said:

Your defense is pretty ridiculous at this point. Considering most of those good examples he posted are of EXACT replicas of the faces including the EYES of mikes templates. 

Copying the original avatar eyes is not enough if it isn't done right they will still end up looking bad, the quality lost is significant, if you can't see the difference I can't help you, but you can zoom in on the standard avatars and see the iris around the pupil, in the examples for most you cannot - and anyone can verify that for themselves.

I'm not here to argue for the "bad examples" to win over the "good examples" my point is the subjectivity is hard to try and turn into an objective discussion, and people will definitely have a bias when they have skin in the game.

[The1rstSaint]

If you can’t see that that’s already part of the templates I can’t help you. There is no difference, you need eyes check simple as that if you think those good examples don’t match the ones of the templates.

[The1rstSaint]

It’s it pretty obvious you do want to argue lmao! I’m your huckleberry 

[Skuzbukit]

1 hour ago, The1rstSaint said:

If you can’t see that that’s already part of the templates I can’t help you. There is no difference, you need eyes check simple as that if you think those good examples don’t match the ones of the templates.

Lets just agree to disagree, you see them the same & I do not.

[The1rstSaint]

Sure we can agree that your visually impaired, it’s ok I’m sure I will have bad vision one day too.

[The1rstSaint]

Back to the whole damn point though they’re either showing avatar parts or they’re not. Those bad examples are not and clearly they are far from showing Mike’s avatar bits pieces or even micro bits and pieces.

[Fireballer34]

8 hours ago, The1rstSaint said:

Back to the whole damn point though they’re either showing avatar parts or they’re not. Those bad examples are not and clearly they are far from showing Mike’s avatar bits pieces or even micro bits and pieces.

I might be blind or something too, but why is this avatar that bad?

 

Has an avatar face, blended well, maybe a little far away but I feel like it’s not bad. I agree though, most of those bad example were WAY off.

[The1rstSaint]

38 minutes ago, Fireballer34 said:

I might be blind or something too, but why is this avatar that bad?

 

Has an avatar face, blended well, maybe a little far away but I feel like it’s not bad. I agree though, most of those bad example were WAY off.

Keyword it’s a blended image. The eyes look tycoonish. The rest of it though, nose, mouth, no tycoon avatar features are visible. This one I can say at least an attempt to use mikes avatar parts were done.

[The1rstSaint]

Some guy was blending images not long before Mike posted the guidelines. I’ve done blended before but after mike posted his little rules I stopped.

[Curix]

On 3/9/2024 at 1:32 PM, The1rstSaint said:

Some guy was blending images not long before Mike posted the guidelines. I’ve done blended before but after mike posted his little rules I stopped.

I would love to see you again with the designs—not only you, but more of the avatar's creators.

[Carciofi]

I guess my question would be, is it really ruining anyone’s experience at this point?
Another question would be, where does the work need to stop? I’ve seen tons that look like a game av is just pasted on the face of an actual fighter pic while the body portion remains unaltered from the base image. Looks weird. 

We all know there have been massive discrepancies in what is considered acceptable and what is flagged for a rework, so eventually creativity just took over. There are some pretty wacky avatars out there and some really cool ones too. I think they’re all mostly fun to look at and that’s where it stops for me personally.

 

[Curix]

I think the main key to this is to make the rules more serious. Avatars must stay avatary. Also, if you use AI to create the avatar, which usually doesn't even look like the typical acceptable creation in a game, it's just a moment, and you can make great money for almost no work and no time taken. If you are using special programs to make it good, you need more time, and you can get much less money than that thing for AI on the auction, etc. also it looks really bad.