Here’s the thing, taking out all three aspects, Storefront, Auction House, and Gifting, is, as typical in this day and age, overkill. Take out the AH and credit laundering stops. Taking out gifting and the stupid people that gift their stuff unknowingly disappears, but what about the storefront? Without the ability to gift or launder, what is the difference between the new setup and the old, other than the fact that it is now missing a nice, easy to browse interface for both sharing your own liveries and tunes and searching for others?
I have the sane feelings about creating liveries and/or logos. By implementing strong restrictions, T10 has made it far less likely that your creations were hacked/stolen. And even if they figure out a way to unlock or copy your work, they can’t really easily profit from it because now its all about how many times your liveries/logos/decals are downloaded, slapped on a car and then that car was driven in a race. I
m not exactly the best livery/logo creator in any Forza game. I tend to do really basic logos that are very simple to mimic in the paint booth, but when I DO create a logo or recreate a real-life design, I won’t use it, let alone share it, if I think that it isn’t very accurate or realistic. I’m pretty good at making the logos but not very creative when it comes to laying down a base coat of paint and the striping. One way to really get your work used by as many drivers as possible is to create a logo or design, share it and then make several alternates just by changing colors of some or all of a design. My best example is that I wanted a TRD vinyl for my Lexus LFA so I created one in a specific color that suited paint and striping. Then I shared it in as many as 20-25 different color arrangements, Because of this, each of my TRD logos has been downloaded only a handful of times but because I have so many alternate options for drivers to choose from. that overall, my TRD logo has been downloaded a lot of times. I also try to make my own logos even if someone else has already made a superior version because you can’t share your overall design if you use someone else’s created logo. By making them myself, I have a much larger pool of liveries to share. I’m not a well-known or popular painter but making alternates means more of my work is spread around and, hopefully, inspires others to create their own version.
Rdo3, painters could easily say that racing has taken away time from their painting. Forza is NOT a racing game. It’s a motorsport game. Motorsport usually requires, racing, liveries, tuning among other things. Just because you think it’s a waste of time doesn’t mean others do. And being quite so rude about it makes you appear obnoxious. Maybe we should get you a copy of mariokart, if you want a game without painting? See how that works. Anyone can throw out insults, but it doesn’t actually add to the conversation.
Most of us see the validity of the game as a whole. I don’t really do much drifting, but i wouldn’t tell the drifitng crowd it should be removed to improve racing or any other part of the game. The people who are complaining are doing it because things have taken a serious step back in almost all game modes. So much is missing from this title that whatever part of the game you like, you’ll notice something that’s gone. Less content, less community features, etc etc. As for the nurburgring being missing because they had to add painting, i suggest you go check some of these facts you think you know. It wasn’t included because it takes 9 months to build a track with the new laser scanning system they are using. NOT because they ‘wasted’ time adding painting.
Anyone who paid for this game has the right to air their opinion, without expecting someone else to be quite so rude about it. We are all supposed to be Forza Motorsport fans, not Paint/race/tune fans. Sure everybody likes their own parts of the game the most, but there’s no reason to be quite so rude about people who don’t blindly follow your lead. We all have our own interests, and if painting isn’t yours, just don’t bother with threads that have ‘paint’ in the title.
If importing was added in this game I would flip out. It was one of the worst mistakes in any Forza for those that actually paint. People got FM4 and went to recreate their own work and couldn’t because hackers were running it over from FM3 faster than they could touch up and put together their own stuff. It was a disaster and would be again.
Thanks to everybody for this discussion. It is interesting to read the different points of view. And some of them made me think a bit.
About the XO not having been released in every country: I honestly did not had that in mind. Thanks guys fro reminding me. That really might be the reason why so many of the “old guard” are missing.
As for laziness. I for sure am not a lazy person. I´d rather call it dedication. Or lack thereof. Do not get me wrong. I really, really loved to paint. Seeing his own idea getting closer and closer to being finished was pure joy. And the first time you took your new baby into an online lobby was a very proud moment. Like “See my neat new lady fellas? Take that!” Maybe i just lack the dedication to redo all the stuff i did in FM3 and FM4. And i really marvel you guys and your patience to be willing to do exactly that. Do things twice.
And thats a good point as GRD 4 3L mentioned. I hate to do things twice. Why should i? I don´t know how you guys approached a design. For me the base was: “Whats a good (non leaderboard) car for online racing? What did my buddies of DYI came up with? Ah. OK. That car. Let´s see what would be an appropriate main sponsor that fits and has not been done yet? What would be the ideal and fitting other decals?” And i just went on and made them. But on some point i started to hate doing decals. But Alas had to do them. I have no idea how you try to reproduce a spot on logo. The way i did that was recreating the same grid that the FM3 and FM4 editor had in GIMP on my laptop, placed a logo on that grid and started painting, comparing it with the original logo until i felt it was spot on. Maybe that was not the “right” way to do it but that´s the best idea i had. If some of you guys can tell me a better way: Please tell me. But with the way i did it there (atm) is no way i will go down this road again. As mentioned: Lack of dedication? Maybe. But the other issue is time. During the days of FM3 i still was an employee. And during the FM4 lifespan i quit my job and since then i am self employed. So having time to paint has become a major issue. After having read your posts, as mentioned above, i really started to think about painting again if time allows. But atm i am just disappointed (even though i knew that there was only an ultra slim chance) that we are not able to import our old vinyls. To save time. I have done that logo already. Why should i redo it?
As for making money: That never was my intention. And i do not think that making money was/is the intention of any painter. I think the most expensive logo i ever put up on the sf was 5000 credits. I never cared about the credits (for them i had no use anyway). For me it was seeing that people liked my work, bought the decals, slapped them on their car and drove around with them online. I think you guys can relate to the pride seeing some in an online lobby running a car with your decals or even a whole design that you did. That´s what it was all about putting up logos on the sf.
@ Oitzbob
I worked in the gaming industry for quite some time and spent many, many years in the business of real time car visualization. I can´t recall how many cars i unwrapped. And each of them had a waaaay higher polycount than the models in the Forza Series. So i think i know what i am talking about. And what you said is absolutely right. Sloppiness. Planar projection on each side and then manually adjust until its right. I know that unwrapping can be a real pain in the butt and everyone hates to do that. But it could have been done better without much effort. Of course i have no idea how FM5 or T10 handles the data. But as a person who has been there and done that looking at it from the outside it really looks like a lack of effort (and/or time). Which is a shame.
Again thanks for the discussion guys and thanks for reading
Think about it from this perspective. Make a plan about what you would like to paint. Classic simple race liveries ALWAYS outsell complicated liveries…its a fact. Best way to approach Forza 5 is to start your first design with a great base, few of your most likely to reuse logos and a main logo. Then you next car can use a couple of that paint and some new ones, and the next…you get the jist. Before you know it you have TONS of logos and numberboards and the such and you never miss a thing from the past.
Here is something to think about. In Forza 3 and Forza 4 I made around 100 designs. Of those designs I 100% made 1 car…1 car in 100!! The others, whilst a lot of work went into them, all in some form or another contained logos that were sent or gifted to me. Yes, sometimes only a single logo was used on a design but nether less I cannot say the work was all mine.
Now in FM5 I have a huge sense of pride from each and every design. No matter what…100% of the layers seen on a design has been moved, sized, rotated and skewed all by me. That is the reason you should start painting and keep painting…for the greater sense of achievement.
I get that “painting” is serious business for a lot of people, but for some of us that just want to stick one of our old paint jobs onto a new car, it’s tough. I just don’t like putting in 100% effort, and then have to do it again. Goes against what I’m about.
Honestly it’s not that we can’t transfer paints, it’s that the system is slow and archaic to begin with. They need to overhaul the editor, there is no reason why we should be drawing in this limited MS DOS style shape editor. We need vectors, or heck just put in a simple modern Paint program. I think people were happy to have the editor, and just got used to this style of painting whether they like it or not. Either that, or it keeps the competition away (meaning folks who aint got time for that) you know that if you spend 5 days, no one else will, instant video game celeb. Woo hoo. Congrats.
BTW I am not lazy, that word should be banned from the forum. It’s a video game. Not wanting to do tedious stuff (I get paid to do tedious art in real life) for entertainment is not lazy.
Learn to separate real life effort from spending useless time over a TV screen making art in a very crude editor. It’s really ridiculous if you’re honest with yourself. I understand some folks really do enjoy tedious inefficient 1970s style shape matching, some folks like to knit. To each their own, but in no way do I share this notion that this editor is okay for a 2014 video game in a modern console. Either overhaul or delete, focus on something else. IMO, needless to say.
Not being funny mate but people waste hours every single day watching garbage on TV 24/7, they set their lives by whats on the old hypnobox & there’s nothing sadder than that. At least painters on this game are challenging themselves each time they create something with this “crude editor”, which btw is the only game that has done it successfully as far as i’m concerned. It’s a hobby for some, me included, i’ve spent the majority of time on this franchise painting rather than racing & there’s nothing more satisfying that seeing something you’ve took time over when its all complete after spending days or even weeks getting it to look right. If you’re a fan of graphic art & motorsport it doesn’t get any better than this imo, yes it could be a better system but i’m just thankful we’ve got one in the 1st place. If Forza didn’t have it i would’ve been gone years ago i know that.
Overhaul, maybe. Delete, why? Focus on something else, say bye bye to a large portion of the community & all the free content we create for others to use. There’s plenty of console car racing games that let you race generic cars but only one that allows us to truly create our own idea of a race car, livery & all, if that goes FM is just another racing game like the rest.
If T10 ever decide to “overhaul” the paint editor, they would still need to keep the current one for the simple shapes and decal placement. But it would also pay to add in what you suggest on top of that. What would really improve the painting side of things, is adding in the ability to use a graphics tablet with what you suggest; a basic but modern paint program with layer support. If I had the ability to use my Wacom graphics tablet within forza (in the realm of possibility, just look have to look at “udraw” on the 360/ps3/wii. Not to mention the X1’s os is windows based in part), then I would be able to get behind some painting myself. As it currently stands I cant create in forza what I would like with the basic shapes, I just cant personally do it that way. Having the ability to draw and paint like I do in photoshop/paint tool sai/gimp/coral painter would be plain awesome in my book.
I stopped painting because it useless to do anymore, for me. I used to just create license plates, sell those unlocked to people for cheap. As for paint jobs, I always only made those for friends. I usually don’t care to sell very many paint jobs on the marketplace, but I don’t understand why gifting paint jobs had to be removed. Who was modding paints? I can understand their logic for disabling this behind tunes and car mods, but paints? Come on…
Well that is all good and said for people who made designs for those reasons, but for me, I didn’t care who got my designs unlocked and what they did with them! If you don’t want it shared, then don’t put it on the storefront. I sold license plates unlocked for 150,000 credits at first, but after having millions I began just giving them away because I didn’t care what people did with them. But if yo u don’t want them in other people’s hands, like I had a few, then don’t sell them or gift them to anyone! It is that simple! I am tired of getting the crappy end of deals because people don’t know how to play the game correctly. Put a watermark on the design then! Something that is built into the designs that can’t easily be written over or removed. My friend did that to stop it. It was really creative and cool and all of his designs centered around his watermark which was easier to recreate the design yourself than remove the watermarks easily.
I don’t think you should stop painting, just paint something you have never painted before, then there’s no need to recreate or import anything, as for veterans not playing because they can’t import there stuff “really” I know painters that are itching to get fm5, plus I’ve also noticed alot of old school painters return who gave 3 and 4 a miss.
although I don’t paint as much as I used too, I find with 5 and the extra layers I take more time and try and share a more quality paint, which also makes me feel great knowing it’s 100% mine. Don’t get me wrong I miss the ability to gift for 1 reason, colabs but that’s it
Also I do see where your coming from, for example a race/replica painter is gonna use more logos than your average fantasy painter and those logos are most likely gonna be used on other cars, so it saves time