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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
Problems with Implementation of Skins in LotV
Given the enormous success of skins in other games like LoL, Dota2 and CS:GO and their integral role in increasing popularity for thier games (http://www.pcgamer.com/how-400-virtual-knives-saved-counter-strike/), many people have advoated for the implementation of skins into SC2.
There are currently three problems:
1 - Technology.
In CS:GO there are at most 30 models that can be skinned (10 guns, 10 pistols, 10 knives). In LoL, 10 heroes. In dota 2, each ero can be modded with different sets and couriers. The problem with SC2 is that in a general game, it can be anywhere from 200-500 or models to alter. And then you double or quadruple that in team games. Presumably this causes a strain and creates performance issues for the game.
2 - Identity
The second problem is the inherent difference of identity between SC2 and CS:GO/LoL/Dota2. In those games you control a “hero” unit that represents who you are in the game. In SC2 you are a commander of an army and there is less personal investment as you send your soldiers to get slaughtered by the hundreds. Of course this is probably the smallest problem of the three.
3 - Market/incentives
Part of the popularity of skins in games like Dota2/CS:GO is that there is an entire economy built around buying, selling and trading skins. It isn’t enough to just buy/sell skins, but you’d need to also have an infrastructure to allow it, which requires resources and time.
Solutions:
Limit the amount of skins a player can put on into a game. For instance, let there be a loadout screen where they can equip 10 units to have their bought skin. This avoids the performance issue as there won’t be as much slow down and it makes those units “special” creating an identity for the player. Another option is to tie it to unit rank. After a certain amount of kills, the unit is “promoted” in both rank and appearance (Though I can’t speak on the feasibility of this one.)
Achievements:
Random aside, but I’d like there to be esports related achievement/portraits. for instance, if I ragequit 4 games in a row without typing GG, I want a portrait of Idra.
 
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For the performance issues (and those who say playing against skins is annoying), I always kind of wondered: Why not an option to just.. turn it off?
Is it really bad to give the players options like that? Or is the technology for that more complex than I'd think?
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On October 01 2015 07:25 Rehio wrote:
For the performance issues (and those who say playing against skins is annoying), I always kind of wondered: Why not an option to just.. turn it off?
Is it really bad to give the players options like that? Or is the technology for that more complex than I'd think?
If your opponent can't see your skins people won't buy them. If you couldn't show of your cool skins in CSGO the value of every skin would sink tremendously.
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How bout an option to buy something that can turn everyone else into a skin/model of your own choosing?
Should just be like Quake 3 where you can turn everyone into Keel because he was the loudest and biggest/easiest target to hit.
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does that point no.1 really work that way?
as long as the skins aren't changing the base model (not sure the right turn, basically the physical model), shouldn't the performance be similar?
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On October 01 2015 08:34 riotjune wrote:
How bout an option to buy something that can turn everyone else into a skin/model of your own choosing?
Should just be like Quake 3 where you can turn everyone into Keel because he was the loudest and biggest/easiest target to hit.
cl_minmodels 1 was pretty much a given in my CS days. I like portraits and skins but not at the cost of peformance. My pc is struggling as it is.
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Germany3367 Posts
On October 01 2015 14:38 ETisME wrote:
does that point no.1 really work that way?
as long as the skins aren't changing the base model (not sure the right turn, basically the physical model), shouldn't the performance be similar?
In my own experience the zergling skin most of all (with speed upgrade) is really slowing down the performance of the game for me. It's also annoying as hell, because I can't estimate the number of lings coming my way with these stupidly large wings.
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Team logo portraits is something that would be awesome to have.
LoL does this and I think Riot splits the money on team icons with the teams (dunno how exactly) so something like this could be good for teams as well.
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On October 01 2015 07:25 Rehio wrote:
For the performance issues (and those who say playing against skins is annoying), I always kind of wondered: Why not an option to just.. turn it off?
Is it really bad to give the players options like that? Or is the technology for that more complex than I'd think?
Non you are right. Quake III had an option to turn off skins. In 1999.
On October 01 2015 08:34 riotjune wrote:
How bout an option to buy something that can turn everyone else into a skin/model of your own choosing?
Should just be like Quake 3 where you can turn everyone into Keel because he was the loudest and biggest/easiest target to hit.
It was into Sarge 
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i wanna choose my own color
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On October 01 2015 20:54 boxerfred wrote:
i wanna choose my own color
you're not the only one that's grown tired of blue vs red! and I do think this would provide some options.
The other thing I do think could have some marketability is portraits and decals. Unfortunately there's already a lot of them in the game, but I do think there could be room for growth there (even if just a little).
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Katowice25012 Posts
While I think people really overvalue what skins would do in SC2, as its considerably harder to monetize than something like Dota or CSGO, I also think the reasons for having none are kind of bs.
Technology for example, even outside the proposed solution you outlined, SC2 is a five year old game. Can people REALLY have that many performance issues? Who is out there playing SC2 on a laptop that's from 2009? That population seems like it would be tiny.
On October 01 2015 07:22 stuchiu wrote:
Random aside, but I’d like there to be esports related achievement/portraits. for instance, if I ragequit 4 games in a row without typing GG, I want a portrait of Idra.
I'd love this.
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On October 01 2015 17:38 TheOneAboveU wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2015 14:38 ETisME wrote:
does that point no.1 really work that way?
as long as the skins aren't changing the base model (not sure the right turn, basically the physical model), shouldn't the performance be similar? In my own experience the zergling skin most of all (with speed upgrade) is really slowing down the performance of the game for me. It's also annoying as hell, because I can't estimate the number of lings coming my way with these stupidly large wings.
Isn't that because the zergling skin added extra physics because of the longer wings?
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On October 01 2015 18:43 FFW_Rude wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2015 07:25 Rehio wrote:
For the performance issues (and those who say playing against skins is annoying), I always kind of wondered: Why not an option to just.. turn it off?
Is it really bad to give the players options like that? Or is the technology for that more complex than I'd think? Non you are right. Quake III had an option to turn off skins. In 1999. Show nested quote +On October 01 2015 08:34 riotjune wrote:
How bout an option to buy something that can turn everyone else into a skin/model of your own choosing?
Should just be like Quake 3 where you can turn everyone into Keel because he was the loudest and biggest/easiest target to hit. It was into Sarge
Yea Sarge was a good choice too, you could always tell where he was from a mile away because he jumped lol. I liked Keel because of his robotic clunk clunk footsteps, and I think his model represented the hitbox better over the other big model, Tank.
I think force model resulted in 1v1 players walking more and jumping less between battles/item spawn times in order to get the jump on the other guy heh
Though after a while one might get sick of playing against the same model over and over, one always had the option to turn off force model (during casual matches  )
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How about skins for select buildings instead of units, like food so far, maybe bases too? It seems Blizzard is considering more skins:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1PEnNMt.png)
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I think for units skins in sc2, it could be a skin package and it redesigns every unit. So you can only have one unit skin active at a time.
For example my whole army will have the JAGW logos and uniforms if I had bought the JAGW skin.
Pretty sure that would help a lot with performance issues.
Buildings could have different skins I guess?
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Idk about unit skins, I don't want to have to keep track of all the different looks random units can have. I know there are a few already. I like the building skin idea more. Custom colors are cool too. And I say this as somebody who really does buy a lot of custom looks in games.
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however I just watched Polt do a LotV PvT and he played Marauders only because of Adepts. Hell, that was boring af. Skins wouldn't help.
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I think one "modified" skin per race is enough. best solution would be thor, ultra and collossus. No-Go on buildings and units that isn't 6supply. skins for zerglings is/was a very poor idea, incredibly hard to see how much they are.
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The thing you are underestimating with csgo is how much better the game is right now than it was in the hiddenpath days. The game when it came out was a louzy piece of steaming crap and the fact the csgo became more and more popular also comes down to the fact that valve did a great job at fixing the core mechanics and making it good. Of course, the skins helped a ton, hell, a lot, but if you want to retain those players, you have to have a good game. And I think a lot of people are just done with sc2, me included.
As you have mentionned, there is also the problem that it is significantly harder to make skins "a thing" in sc2. In that aspect, csgo is the perfect game for skins : you have your weapons in front of you all of the time cycling through them, people can pick them up, people watch you play with them during the game etc...
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I don't care how many skins they add as long as they also add an option to turn them off. You can have 50 skins on your Protoss army, but I don't want to see any of them. That could be extremely distracting. t.t
To your last point, 4-5 games without gg = IdrA portrait
10 games without gg = temp ban
100 games with gg = WhiteRa "More GG more skill" portrait 
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I feel like Skins in StarCraft would make the game way too confusing for the viewer / player, but that is just me.
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On October 01 2015 07:22 stuchiu wrote:
1 - Technology.
In CS:GO there are at most 30 models that can be skinned (10 guns, 10 pistols, 10 knives). In LoL, 10 heroes. In dota 2, each ero can be modded with different sets and couriers. The problem with SC2 is that in a general game, it can be anywhere from 200-500 or models to alter. And then you double or quadruple that in team games. Presumably this causes a strain and creates performance issues for the game.
Performance with regards to skins is mostly about the level of detail of unit models and the number of units. The number of different types of unit models has a minor impact. And since you already have entirely different models for each player unless you're playing a mirror, using a different model with similar level of detail for a type of unit hardly changes anything.
The engine won't alter any models, it will just load different ones.
Unless you're thinking of adding a unique skin for every single zergling you have on the map.
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Clearly there is no reason to "not" have skins, there are only some considerations to make on how to implement them.
I think the priority is gameplay and release of LOTV, but I could see this being included in the first major update post release.
The skin model has clearly proven itself, so I don't know why blizzard wouldn't follow it. I can't imagine valve isn't making money hand over fist for something the community is generating.
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On October 04 2015 01:04 ShambhalaWar wrote:
Clearly there is no reason to "not" have skins,
There is, though, according to Blizzard. They, as a company, have always catered to lower end PCs, and they think that skins (and thus data space and performance in game) will impact the majority of their customers negatively.
This is the answer I recall coming from them, at least.
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If I cant turn off the skins it would bother me real hard. Its fine for me that you implement skins, but I dont want to fight silver unicorn zerglings - I like the game as it is and if anything I should be able to decide my experience for myself. So while you see a problem that people won't buy skins if they cannot show if I will tell you that you will have an equal amount of players not playing the game due to either performance, personal preference or simply because they are bothered by it.
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Its sad that this game will die because of stubborn community and Blizzard that actually listen to them... Those skins ressurected CS that was dead game, and made it one of the biggest esports, that REPLACED Starcraft as main game on Dreamhack.. Remember it. I know that here in SC community there are people, like me, that would like to have skins for their units. That way, you support Blizzard and Starcraft financially, and make this game better. I feel sorry for Blizzard that they aren't allowed to implement new things in game because of threads like this..
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On October 03 2015 21:18 spinesheath wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2015 07:22 stuchiu wrote:
1 - Technology.
In CS:GO there are at most 30 models that can be skinned (10 guns, 10 pistols, 10 knives). In LoL, 10 heroes. In dota 2, each ero can be modded with different sets and couriers. The problem with SC2 is that in a general game, it can be anywhere from 200-500 or models to alter. And then you double or quadruple that in team games. Presumably this causes a strain and creates performance issues for the game. Performance with regards to skins is mostly about the level of detail of unit models and the number of units. The number of different types of unit models has a minor impact. And since you already have entirely different models for each player unless you're playing a mirror, using a different model with similar level of detail for a type of unit hardly changes anything. The engine won't alter any models, it will just load different ones. Unless you're thinking of adding a unique skin for every single zergling you have on the map.
Models still have to be loaded, so either you have 4 times the loading screen before a match, or when you start Sc2. We are talking about a rts after all. While they actually had this in mind when creating Sc2, it still causes performance issues even for good computers. They optimized it really well and moved alot of it in the background though, but it still is a huge pain.
And people want fancy skins, so every skin would drain more performance then the original. The Ling skin is the perfect example actually.
And then there are those that don't want this. Most likely because they know they would use alot of money on it. xD
I can understand why people are against this. As you can use this to your advantage. Have a squishy Hero ? use a red skin and people are more likely to avoid you. Seems like other games don't care about confusion or advantages like this. And even in real sports the rules are rather limited to a few things in this regard.
I guess for skins to work in a rts, they really have to allow the general lowest settings to not use special skins. And I mean just the general lowest setting, as soon as you custom something. It turns on skins.
Also I really hope we don't become like the homm community lol.
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On October 03 2015 06:41 Mistakes wrote:I don't care how many skins they add as long as they also add an option to turn them off. You can have 50 skins on your Protoss army, but I don't want to see any of them. That could be extremely distracting. t.t To your last point, 4-5 games without gg = IdrA portrait 10 games without gg = temp ban 100 games with gg = WhiteRa "More GG more skill" portrait
This is just dumb,you can't force ppl to say gg -.-"
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On October 07 2015 14:14 Zerg.Zilla wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2015 06:41 Mistakes wrote:I don't care how many skins they add as long as they also add an option to turn them off. You can have 50 skins on your Protoss army, but I don't want to see any of them. That could be extremely distracting. t.t To your last point, 4-5 games without gg = IdrA portrait 10 games without gg = temp ban 100 games with gg = WhiteRa "More GG more skill" portrait This is just dumb,you can't force ppl to say gg -.-"
I had to check your country
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On October 07 2015 00:04 FeyFey wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2015 21:18 spinesheath wrote:On October 01 2015 07:22 stuchiu wrote:
1 - Technology.
In CS:GO there are at most 30 models that can be skinned (10 guns, 10 pistols, 10 knives). In LoL, 10 heroes. In dota 2, each ero can be modded with different sets and couriers. The problem with SC2 is that in a general game, it can be anywhere from 200-500 or models to alter. And then you double or quadruple that in team games. Presumably this causes a strain and creates performance issues for the game. Performance with regards to skins is mostly about the level of detail of unit models and the number of units. The number of different types of unit models has a minor impact. And since you already have entirely different models for each player unless you're playing a mirror, using a different model with similar level of detail for a type of unit hardly changes anything. The engine won't alter any models, it will just load different ones. Unless you're thinking of adding a unique skin for every single zergling you have on the map. Models still have to be loaded, so either you have 4 times the loading screen before a match, or when you start Sc2. We are talking about a rts after all. While they actually had this in mind when creating Sc2, it still causes performance issues even for good computers. They optimized it really well and moved alot of it in the background though, but it still is a huge pain. And people want fancy skins, so every skin would drain more performance then the original. The Ling skin is the perfect example actually. And then there are those that don't want this. Most likely because they know they would use alot of money on it. xD I can understand why people are against this. As you can use this to your advantage. Have a squishy Hero ? use a red skin and people are more likely to avoid you. Seems like other games don't care about confusion or advantages like this. And even in real sports the rules are rather limited to a few things in this regard. I guess for skins to work in a rts, they really have to allow the general lowest settings to not use special skins. And I mean just the general lowest setting, as soon as you custom something. It turns on skins. Also I really hope we don't become like the homm community lol.
It wouldn't affect performance at all. Maybe loading times, and then again, not by much. But in game, there wouldn't be any performance issue, because it's just a different model altogether. The engine already supports having 150 zerglings easily, so changing the skin won't change anything at all.
EDIT : Turning it off could be ok though
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I wonder this though. Are people willing to pay for skins AND for an expensive game? I mean LOTV will cost probably like 50 euro and then more money for skins. DOTA and LOL are f2p and CSGO is dirt cheap, I got it for $7 at the time.
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The fact that Blizzard is adding option to buy campaign in-game kinda leads to microtransactions in future...
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I want a portrait of MMA when I'll destroy 5 or more of my own CC's lol
Also, it'd be cool too a Ryung award when somebody balance whines 10 or more games.
EDIT: Evil players should aim for the Sniper portrait, awarded when somebody makes an opponent cry
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On October 11 2015 09:00 Apoteosis wrote:
EDIT: Evil players should aim for the Sniper portrait, awarded when somebody makes an opponent cry
I'd prefer Shine on hyvaa tbh
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EPT
