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Hello all,
I am a product designer by trade (designs the shape, feel, and function of all the stuff we use), so please excuse me while I geek out a little on color:
In Starcraft Vanilla, players would randomly spawn from a standard 8 color palette. In Brood War, this was upped (I believe) to 12, but it was still luck of the draw. For Korean BW, this was kind of interesting, as each individual game involved different color combinations that were announced at the beginning.
The point of this post is to promote the selection of team colors besides the standard red/blue/green in competitive SC2 matches. Below will be a few brief points behind my position:
1 - Color can strengthen and enhance a player's identity or 'brand.' In the Beta, QXC was famous for Purple Terran, EG Machine had an obsession with Pink Zerg, etc. What if more of our favorite S-class Korean and Foreigner players could show some personality with their team color?
2 - Color adds more aesthetic variety to a spectated game. Red vs. Blue gets boring every series. SC2 is in many ways a more beautiful Brood War, but in the team color aspect so far, it is lacking.
3 - Color could also strengthen a team's identity or brand. What if TeamLiquid was always aqua blue? Maybe for team events like Pro League or Clan Battles, a team could unite under one color, but still be able to have personal colors for individual events?
4 - Team color could be synergistic with the building icons that aren't yet customizable, but will hopefully become so downstream. This would foster some fun associations with the lore/story, etc, kind of like how fans identify with certain races (a la the GSL2 race logo shirts).
5 - In the event two players have the same favorite color, preference could be given to the head-to-head matchup leader, putting something extra on the line.
Finally, I am not aware of any downsides to using all colors in competitive SC2 games. The mini map can be toggled red/green if necessary. Also, Blizzard has carefully selected hues that contrast well with each other and map terrain, even if very close in the color spectrum. They even made adjustments during Beta. As a bonus, all the colors now look good, unlike that weird beige or unnatural green from BW.
Thoughts?
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I would love to see color selection opened up, or maybe even personalized. You get a color circle next to your name and pick a color, along with a preview option showing a worker of your currently selected race with that color. It would be a nice cosmetic change.
In before a ton of bitching about "omfg bnet so horrible why do you care about cosmetic changes omg omg"
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I wish they had more option for colour, like the toggle ally/enemy colours. It would be nice if you could set your own colours for that, green zerg looks retarded, not really the same thing you're suggesting but similar.
I'd also love the ability to not be red/blue in every ladder game though, pick a primary and secondary colour you want to be, and you get one of those two.
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Thanks for the replies so far. Does anyone know if GSL or MLG or any bigger tourneys have a rule against picking your own color?
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It has to be red and blue in the gsl.
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On November 15 2010 13:47 0neder wrote:
Thanks for the replies so far. Does anyone know if GSL or MLG or any bigger tourneys have a rule against picking your own color?
I believe they require the higher seeded player to pick red, lower to play blue, just as a way to universalize the seeding and make it clear who is higher.
Of course, it could be the other way around, but w/e. Just goes to show how useless the system is.
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Hmm, that doesn't sit well with me. I REALLY hope they change that, because I think it would only be a positive.
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Why does it matter though?
Once the brackets are made up, who cares who the higher seed is?
Colors should be optional.
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I'd love to be able to choose my color on ladder because red vs blue gets tiresome. Or something like a top 3 colors so that if one's taken it will just cycle to the next one.
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I think it's like it is (red and blue only) so that it's easy to tell each side apart. Sure purple zerg vs pink terran or blue protoss vs orange Zerg are easy to identify, but what about when you have red protoss vs pink protoss. The higher end graphics of SC2 (compared to BW) can easily make the colors harder to distinguish.
Also what if someone is color blind? Blue and Red are commonly chosen because it's not a common form of colorblindness and ensures that color blind players (and spectators!) have the best chance of working around their colorblindness.
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On November 15 2010 13:58 Logo wrote:
I think it's like it is (red and blue only) so that it's easy to tell each side apart. Sure purple zerg vs pink terran or blue protoss vs orange Zerg are easy to identify, but what about when you have red protoss vs pink protoss. The higher end graphics of SC2 (compared to BW) can easily make the colors harder to distinguish.
Also what if someone is color blind? Blue and Red are commonly chosen because it's not a common form of colorblindness and ensures that color blind players (and spectators!) have the best chance of working around their colorblindness.
All protoss look the same anyway
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On November 15 2010 14:00 GobIin wrote:Show nested quote +On November 15 2010 13:58 Logo wrote:
I think it's like it is (red and blue only) so that it's easy to tell each side apart. Sure purple zerg vs pink terran or blue protoss vs orange Zerg are easy to identify, but what about when you have red protoss vs pink protoss. The higher end graphics of SC2 (compared to BW) can easily make the colors harder to distinguish.
Also what if someone is color blind? Blue and Red are commonly chosen because it's not a common form of colorblindness and ensures that color blind players (and spectators!) have the best chance of working around their colorblindness. All protoss look the same anyway
That is racist, bro.
Anyways, I think color should be 100% tailored to whatever the person or team wants as long as it doesn't get too messy. (Ex yellow and white in bw.)
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I think the color distinguishing/blindness is really overrated. They can have a mode to toggle so the player sees red/blue but the audience sees the true colors. They didn't have the option to pick colors in Brood War, and it was never a big issue.
I also have not had any issues distinguishing between even pink and red or orange and yellow colors, but maybe that's just me.
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Considering that at a high level the skill level of the players would be presumably known to the spectators, I think there is no real reason why they shouldn't be able to choose their own colours.
On a semi-related note, it would also be nice to be able to change your default colour for ladder matches.
+ Show Spoiler +
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I'm color blind, and very much prefer it that they stick with red and blue colors. Even with red and blue, it is so hard to tell whose stuff is whose in PvP, especially while playing.
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I'll admit, the constant Red vs Blue gets a bit bland in tournaments, and I really like how some of the races look with different colors. In my 1v1's though I usually use the Green and Red system, I like the consistency. I would love a way to pick my own color though
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Three pointless things: Pretty sure BW only added the incredibly sexy green color, for Ice and Desert maps (replacing white and brown.) Later colors were added through the use of third party map editors.
If two colors are too close together, one can shift+tab (In BW, I forget the keys for SC2 but the feature also exists) to change the colors. You'll notice that the casting team allies one player at the start of the game and shift+tabs to red vs yellow in BW a lot when this happens. This would allow players to use colors in ladder without issue -- don't like the colors? Just change them. I'm not sure how this feature works with regards to observers, however.
I'm a huge fanboy of the color orange and would love to use that in all my games, and just generally see more color choices. Who else gets happy when GSL has a ZvZ and it's red vs yellow instead of red vs blue?
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colorology is an ongoing science from the wc3 days, Professor Axslav and Doctor Strifecro may be able to give some credible insight on the evolution of colorology. Such as the Easter Imbalance with Pink Protoss, or the Pridefule Purple Zergling Parade, know amongst colorologists as PPzP.
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Where are you guys getting this "Green"? I only see Red and Blue 
But yea, having a way to customize ladder colors, etc. would be pretty awesome just for that extra little flare that makes your spine tingle and you say "ooooh, I can get used to this."
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On November 15 2010 14:24 B-Wong wrote:Where are you guys getting this "Green"? I only see Red and Blue But yea, having a way to customize ladder colors, etc. would be pretty awesome just for that extra little flare that makes your spine tingle and you say "ooooh, I can get used to this."
Enable Ally colours, you are always green, enemies are red and allies are yellow
Edit: On a related note is it possible to have ally colours for the mini-map only like in WC3? This is especially useful in team games where its impossible to tell if an army belongs to one player or two players when theyre all red.
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I THINK in sc1 and sc2 players can pick they color they want to be and i think the obs change the color on the screen we watch to red n blue. have you noticed the first person view is always some strange color (not red or blue). i was talking about pro leagues in korea btw. kay and i would love it to be a pink zerg in ladder games 
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Red and blue are ideal contrasts for the 6%-ish of the male population that is color-blind. If you mix in green, yellow, orange, brown... it starts getting messy for a lot of people.
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EPT
