While I’m not a huge fan of the lack of diversity or the new colour scheme, what I do really like is the whole “forbidden arts” kind of vibe they now have. And frankly, that fits! It doesn’t come up nearly enough how a character with all the Advanced Skills maxed is essentially only remotely human anymore, and these reinforce that.
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I tried and failed to figure out what you could possibly mean by that…
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I agree-and yet, that doesn’t remedy the fact the new icons are ugly, same-looking and generally, in my opinion at least, a strict downgrade from the previous ones.
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Not entirely sold on the new advanced skills icons, but the non-icon is absolutely brilliant, so I’m willing to accept the conformity of the icons just for that one.
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I think the new icon designs look cool, but that red is too jarring and makes those skills look intuitively like something bad rather than an asset. Of course, it always takes some time for something new to stop looking jarring, but I do think in this case it’s more than just newness.
I can see why they’d want the red to make it fit in with the colour scheme of the side panel, but it’s too extreme compared to everything else. Either a more toned-down shade or switching the black and the red in the icon so that the background, which is the greater part, is black, and only the image itself is red, would work way better.
I could see the Menaces being that red, because it’s, well, menacing.
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I agree. The colours on the new icons look more menacing than the Menace icons.
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Hmmm, I should have been more specific, sorry!
Bruno said (over Discord…) that both will be updated a point, but it wasn’t a priority nor something urgent. I think he mentioned this about spider-popes the days following the update that made them very valuable; that was about a year ago.
I’ll try to relay messages here the next time I see something this important, but Surface kept me too busy in the past months/year/s.
Indeed! But I think most Hellworm owners are done with London’s content and only stay in the Hinterlands. Who knows, maybe it won’t be such a nasty nerf, but something that may bring more value to different items.
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You’ve frequently mentioned things from other channels before, which I’ve always much appreciated! I think those of us curmudgeons who refuse the newer venues are sometimes at a loss though in terms of some of the “behind the scenes” thinking as for the most part I think FB folks prefer those other venues to this old creaky forum. C’est la vie.
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I will miss the diversity of colours from the advanced skills icon. That made it very easy to tell the advanced skills apart for me (especially shaping arts, Red science, Zeefaring and Monstrous Anatomy for some reason). I am very fond of red, so it’s out of character for me, but I think it makes it harder to read them off.
I like the Mithridacy, Player of Chess and Toxicology symbols better. I’m going to miss the Artisan of the red science (something about the dawn machine swirl was very appealing in that stat). Chtonosophy is clearer now, but I’m not too big a fan of the desing and I think SotD made more sense black than red (I mean come on. It’s their skill)
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What I think would be really neat under the new system would be if Discordance stayed black, to reinforce how different it is from the rest of the skills, but that’s just my thinking.
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I am not a huge fan of all the skills having the same colour. I think I will get accustomed enough to them to tell them apart anyway, but the colour diversity was nice.
I like the more threatening nature of the symbols in general. Especially MA and KT looked much too tame until now.
The designs are great. I will miss MA’s old design because tentacles are just cool. As pointed out before, AotRS and SotD are both big misses, sadly. SotD should just be black. I think that fits it perfectly and might even somewhat fit the new style.
AotRS looks good as a large picture (as can be seen on the wiki) but the small one just doesn’t read well. Showed it to my wife, she thought it was like a hip bone or joint of some sort and I agree. Can’t really see the chain there. That one really needs some redesign.
Overall I think the design is a step in the right direction, but I would like to see some reworks.
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Don’t get me wrong, I do like the art itself. But the uniform color scheme is a little confusing at a glance.
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Echoing what many said here, I like the new designs (player of chess is raddddddd) but I do wish they weren’t all red. Especially zeefaring and discordance, personally.
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Especially because you get an impression a little like “ah, we have the dark and forbidden arts of breaking natural law, reshaping yourself to achieve unforeseen physical feats, and… telling people what to do on a ship.” That last one isn’t quite worthy of all the mystique.
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I put a sepia filter on the new icons and it’s much easier on the eyes, as well as semi-matching the older sidebar icons: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
And I understand they wanted to group all those icons for whatever reason, but them all being red just doesn’t work for me. Definitely gives Menace vibes, which is the opposite of what I’d think.
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Oh man, that looks way better! Still has an edge of menace, but doesn’t look so alarming it reads like it must be a Menace. And just easier on the eyes.
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Nice, idyl! Your sepia filter makes them easier to distinguish.
On the whole, though, I liked the old diverse icons better. Unifying them doesn’t really help. Zeefaring should be blue, Toxicology green, Glasswork silver, etc. And Discordance should be black. Or should NOT be black (wink, wink).
I have to admit, though, that ditching the MA tentacle icon was a good move. I love tentacles, but it DID tend to confuse things with Shapeling Arts, as was mentioned earlier.
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I think the menacing redness is more suitable for menaces.
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Absolutely! The Menaces should scream “Danger, Will Robinson!” - in a visual way, of course. And red is just perfect for that.
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I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but, sadly, this is exactly how I feel about the icon updates! I find the emojis from the forum and Discord easier to read without any effort. 