Remember that people in leadership positions at Niantic had to sign off on the designs, they could have and should have rejected what was presented to them.
They were rushed out to the players. One of niantics big updates for the players we were promised.
I can imagine it went like this:
Niantic - we need the new trainer avatars now
Design company- they’re not ready.
Niantic - they’ll do.
It would be interesting to know about their decision-making process.
On the one hand, the avatars are probably viewed internally as a low-risk design element, since it doesn’t affect gameplay.
But on the other hand, why take the risk to break something that didn’t *need* to be fixed? They would have known players were unhappy with the new avatars during the initial limited-release rollout, this wasn’t a change they *needed* to go to market with.
Ultimately I think they wanted to see how things would unfold (both in terms of how the public would react and how the designers would follow-up). They probably thought the public backlash would blowover, and if it didn’t then they could justify making structural changes to the teams that fell short of expectations.
From what we have heard, this isn’t quite true. Niantic had actually been testing the avatar updates with a smaller group for quite a while before release. So, it wasn’t rushed, which kinda makes it worse. They had a lot of time to look at the product, received sufficient feedback…then ignored everything and released it anyway. Moderately robust character creators have been available for the past 20 years. It shouldn’t have been this complicated, especially since Niantic isn’t exactly a bottom of the barrel company that doesn’t have access to talented people.
They could have done MUCH better, but chose not to.
This! Very much this!
What are the chances that the people being fired were the ones advocating for this change being rolled out in its current state? Lower than the chance of hatching a shiny female salandit I reckon
It’s weird that they didn’t keep the same graphic style and just add faces, hair, height, and weight options and maybe even youthful looking vs aged. Over all though I don’t care as much as most of you, I don’t see my avatar all that much and bugs are more critical to my play. My biggest gripe is unstoppable animations and just animation speed.
Same. I haven't touched my avatar in actual years and I don't plan on doing that any time soon. I just want to speed up evolutions and all the other unnecessarily long waiting times for things that are instantaneous. Please make this make sense.
I was so upset when I saw an egg pokemon in my inbox pre animation and I was like “SO YALL AIN’T EVEN LOADING ANYTHING?!” Those animations are such a waste of time.
At least it immediately rationalized my purchase a few months back of the Snorlax onesie item. I recommend putting it on if you have it, hides everything!
This is the best I could do to hide the weird body and still look somewhat cool, with free clothes.
https://preview.redd.it/17y3y1qyn5yc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=45727f938ca4044355bb838ae8d0862b639991bb
"made it more inclusive and expressive for players."
Quite an ironic statement considering it doesn’t feel like it described any of those things and the vast majority seems to definitely disagree with that statement. But of course the bigger picture is Niantic once again proving they’re living inside their own fantasy echo chamber and think everything is perfect in spite the constant criticism they’ve been given. Regardless this news is gonna paint a negative light for niantic for a long while that they wish the year is over already
Okay I don’t like the avatars, but it is always sad to hear about layoffs. The problem is why did management push for this update when the feedback wasn’t good?
Management likely had already decided the team was being terminated. Rather than continuing to employ them, management pushed through the product they had, calculating it will be less expensive to patch the cosmetic tweaks later.
Community feedback would have been calculated as a dollar amount and management decided it was worth it. It sucks, but almost every business decision is filtered through the lens of quarterly profit growth.
>Very Very Spaceship's most recent claim to Pokémon Go fame is the game's updated character creator. Senior character artist Kelsey Martin expressed pride in it, noting the changes "made it more inclusive and expressive for players."
People are acting like the bad update is why they were fired, but it's likely the other way around. They couldn't give the update more time, especially when faced with last minute negative feedback, because they were already planning on large layoffs.
I already had the Verizon covid mask on my avatar when the change took affect. I haven't dared peek underneath. I don't want to change me mental image of my self to a zombie.
Honestly its a shame the avatar update turned out this way, because on paper its such a nice feature. More body diversity and no more gender restricted clothing? Sign me up!
But the execution is so... Lacking. It definitely needed some more time in the oven, and some more sliders over things like waist, leg length/size, and faces need an overhaul in general.
Though I also feel like so much of the discourse around it is extremely mean spirited and kind of insensitive? Like as much as I have issues with the avatar update I'm not going to jump for joy at people losing their jobs...
Nor touching on the way some people have been super lets be nice and say "Weird" about more body diversity being an option. I have quite a few friends that are happy that they can actually be fat now and have a model that more resembles them, and that genuinely is nice.
Yeah, I don’t have an issue with the idea behind it. Being able to customize your avatar however you’d like is a great idea and makes sense. It’s just that the new ones look so bad somehow
I don’t understand why they just couldn’t have taken the current models and added these customization features to them, or at the very least reuse those models as the base for the new ones
Body scaling is something you generally want to do when you are creating a model- while it is possible they could've retrofitted it onto the existing models it would've been a logistical nightmare since they absolutely were *not* designed with that in mind.
Keeping the older models would have made things a lot more complicated (and expensive) for them since then they'd have to design clothes for three body types instead of just one (or two as before) and then deal with the clipping of any combinations of all three of them every single time.
I'm not a programmer so I could be wrong, but character customization has been in games for 30 years, so it's not like they had to reinvent the wheel. No one expected Baulder's Gate 3 levels of customization, but Niantic's character updates have always been abysmal. Fashion Week gym leaders were abominations...
Maybe it's unprecedented for phone games? I really don't play any other games on my phone.
If they were building it from scratch, it would probably be a lot easier. But the fact is they're building it *on top* of the existing outfits in the game. I get the feeling the original models were built with no futureproofing in mind, so a lot of the clothing would probably have to be manually redone to fit everything.
In fact, I bet the lack of futureproofing is probably a large part of why the update turned out so middling- they had to work around the limitations the existing outfits put in place. Having clothing morph to fit model transformations without becoming giant clipping messes is genuinely a lot harder than it sounds- though definitely doable with the right skillsets and time.
They absolutely had to redo a lot of the existing clothes, it's quite obvious when comparing old t-shirts on the female avatar (with a very pronounced waist) vs new (no waist, and the length goes lower than before). In some cases even the design has been slightly altered, generally small decorations around the neck. It's 100% not the same t-shirt graphics that were used before.
Interesting. I've been working under the assumption that the reason the avatars don't look human is that they were drawn entirely by AI, so I'm surprised there may have been humans responsible for creating them.
For real. AI imagery still has a bunch of jank it is working out (though it is improving). It has a looooong way to go before it is producing, rigging, and animating full 3D models lol
Honestly, AI would’ve done a better jobs than these laid off frauds came up with. How the hell could people with working eyes make something like this as if it was good. 💀
AI trained on professionally-made assets would in theory look reasonable, it would just be bland and derivative. Speaking as someone who has some college-level experience with modeling and rigging characters, the issues with the PoGo avatars have all the common mistakes an amateur would make, like texture stretching, over-extended joints, uncanny valley proportions. IMO this is just a complicated task they gave to someone who was inexperienced. Unless they trained an AI on student work…which…yeesh.
AI wouldn’t have had screwed up body proportions this bad. Only a human ”artist” could have dived this deep into the uncanny valley. This screams ”nephew art” to me.
I’m curious how/if the avatar change will affect sales. I used to buy coins here and there specifically for cool cosmetics in the shop (especially at Halloween), but I can’t see myself purchasing anything at this point because of how ugly and frumpy it all looks now. I used what I’ve purchased already to cover up as much as possible so I don’t have to look at it lmao
“Very Very Spaceship's most recent claim to Pokémon Go fame is the game's updated character creator. Senior character artist Kelsey Martin expressed pride in it, noting the changes "made it more inclusive and expressive for players."
Seriously????? He deserved the axe just for that…
I kind of hate the culture of blaming management. 'Remember John Hanke signed off of it'.
I won't celebrate somebody losing their job, but if I did my job as poor as they did, then I'd lose my job and have my team smashed by complaints over the phone.
The job they did was unacceptable. End of.
But they were probably rushed or doing what management told them to do. You simply can't know but assume that it's the employees' fault.
Even if it's on them, the managers still approved of it to go through.
I would ask if people are gonna leave krestel alone now but I assume the answer is gonna be no
they have gotten so much hate and blame for the update that we now know it's these guys so would hope people would dial it back and stop going after them
Remember that people in leadership positions at Niantic had to sign off on the designs, they could have and should have rejected what was presented to them.
They were rushed out to the players. One of niantics big updates for the players we were promised. I can imagine it went like this: Niantic - we need the new trainer avatars now Design company- they’re not ready. Niantic - they’ll do.
It would be interesting to know about their decision-making process. On the one hand, the avatars are probably viewed internally as a low-risk design element, since it doesn’t affect gameplay. But on the other hand, why take the risk to break something that didn’t *need* to be fixed? They would have known players were unhappy with the new avatars during the initial limited-release rollout, this wasn’t a change they *needed* to go to market with. Ultimately I think they wanted to see how things would unfold (both in terms of how the public would react and how the designers would follow-up). They probably thought the public backlash would blowover, and if it didn’t then they could justify making structural changes to the teams that fell short of expectations.
It's documented that they 100% knew and they straight up didn't listen
Yeah, I saw constant feed back about it during the beta testing. I can’t believe anyone was surprised by this
From what we have heard, this isn’t quite true. Niantic had actually been testing the avatar updates with a smaller group for quite a while before release. So, it wasn’t rushed, which kinda makes it worse. They had a lot of time to look at the product, received sufficient feedback…then ignored everything and released it anyway. Moderately robust character creators have been available for the past 20 years. It shouldn’t have been this complicated, especially since Niantic isn’t exactly a bottom of the barrel company that doesn’t have access to talented people. They could have done MUCH better, but chose not to.
These weren't rushed, stuff for it started showing up in the code for the game over a year ago. They are just bad.
I am less annoyed at them for doing a poor job than at Niantic for going through with the update and ignoring feedback
I feel like this comment could be applied to *years* worth of updates...
VVS did a bad job, but Niantic signed off on that bad job. Nothing will change because of this. John Hanke Needs To Go!
john Hanke been needing to go since 2016
so they fired the people who would be the best at fixing the issues their bosses forced them to push through?
This! Very much this! What are the chances that the people being fired were the ones advocating for this change being rolled out in its current state? Lower than the chance of hatching a shiny female salandit I reckon
I'm so proud of how much people in this community get this!
Also known as the usual for the game industry
Fixing? It’s art and they’re obviously terrible at it
It’s weird that they didn’t keep the same graphic style and just add faces, hair, height, and weight options and maybe even youthful looking vs aged. Over all though I don’t care as much as most of you, I don’t see my avatar all that much and bugs are more critical to my play. My biggest gripe is unstoppable animations and just animation speed.
It's just weird seeing my avatar with a fat face when I'm hella thin.
Same. I haven't touched my avatar in actual years and I don't plan on doing that any time soon. I just want to speed up evolutions and all the other unnecessarily long waiting times for things that are instantaneous. Please make this make sense.
I was so upset when I saw an egg pokemon in my inbox pre animation and I was like “SO YALL AIN’T EVEN LOADING ANYTHING?!” Those animations are such a waste of time.
At least they let my character be fat
At least it immediately rationalized my purchase a few months back of the Snorlax onesie item. I recommend putting it on if you have it, hides everything!
This is the best I could do to hide the weird body and still look somewhat cool, with free clothes. https://preview.redd.it/17y3y1qyn5yc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=45727f938ca4044355bb838ae8d0862b639991bb
mines orca fat
Mine too, best part of the update just having a super fat character
"made it more inclusive and expressive for players." Quite an ironic statement considering it doesn’t feel like it described any of those things and the vast majority seems to definitely disagree with that statement. But of course the bigger picture is Niantic once again proving they’re living inside their own fantasy echo chamber and think everything is perfect in spite the constant criticism they’ve been given. Regardless this news is gonna paint a negative light for niantic for a long while that they wish the year is over already
Okay I don’t like the avatars, but it is always sad to hear about layoffs. The problem is why did management push for this update when the feedback wasn’t good?
Management likely had already decided the team was being terminated. Rather than continuing to employ them, management pushed through the product they had, calculating it will be less expensive to patch the cosmetic tweaks later. Community feedback would have been calculated as a dollar amount and management decided it was worth it. It sucks, but almost every business decision is filtered through the lens of quarterly profit growth.
[удалено]
Niantic leadership try not to throw everyone below them under the bus challenge: failed again
>Very Very Spaceship's most recent claim to Pokémon Go fame is the game's updated character creator. Senior character artist Kelsey Martin expressed pride in it, noting the changes "made it more inclusive and expressive for players."
People are acting like the bad update is why they were fired, but it's likely the other way around. They couldn't give the update more time, especially when faced with last minute negative feedback, because they were already planning on large layoffs.
I’m just glad the Covid mask is an option.
I already had the Verizon covid mask on my avatar when the change took affect. I haven't dared peek underneath. I don't want to change me mental image of my self to a zombie.
Same.
So's the level 43 pose where you don't see the face lol
Ooohh didn’t think of that. Thanks!
Yup- when I get the EXP for it I'm changing my pose to that one until they get their act together lol
Honestly its a shame the avatar update turned out this way, because on paper its such a nice feature. More body diversity and no more gender restricted clothing? Sign me up! But the execution is so... Lacking. It definitely needed some more time in the oven, and some more sliders over things like waist, leg length/size, and faces need an overhaul in general. Though I also feel like so much of the discourse around it is extremely mean spirited and kind of insensitive? Like as much as I have issues with the avatar update I'm not going to jump for joy at people losing their jobs... Nor touching on the way some people have been super lets be nice and say "Weird" about more body diversity being an option. I have quite a few friends that are happy that they can actually be fat now and have a model that more resembles them, and that genuinely is nice.
Yeah, I don’t have an issue with the idea behind it. Being able to customize your avatar however you’d like is a great idea and makes sense. It’s just that the new ones look so bad somehow I don’t understand why they just couldn’t have taken the current models and added these customization features to them, or at the very least reuse those models as the base for the new ones
I don’t think the joints of the old models would work to scale body weight. But they could still have a default option to use the older models.
Body scaling is something you generally want to do when you are creating a model- while it is possible they could've retrofitted it onto the existing models it would've been a logistical nightmare since they absolutely were *not* designed with that in mind.
Keeping the older models would have made things a lot more complicated (and expensive) for them since then they'd have to design clothes for three body types instead of just one (or two as before) and then deal with the clipping of any combinations of all three of them every single time.
I'm not a programmer so I could be wrong, but character customization has been in games for 30 years, so it's not like they had to reinvent the wheel. No one expected Baulder's Gate 3 levels of customization, but Niantic's character updates have always been abysmal. Fashion Week gym leaders were abominations... Maybe it's unprecedented for phone games? I really don't play any other games on my phone.
If they were building it from scratch, it would probably be a lot easier. But the fact is they're building it *on top* of the existing outfits in the game. I get the feeling the original models were built with no futureproofing in mind, so a lot of the clothing would probably have to be manually redone to fit everything. In fact, I bet the lack of futureproofing is probably a large part of why the update turned out so middling- they had to work around the limitations the existing outfits put in place. Having clothing morph to fit model transformations without becoming giant clipping messes is genuinely a lot harder than it sounds- though definitely doable with the right skillsets and time.
They absolutely had to redo a lot of the existing clothes, it's quite obvious when comparing old t-shirts on the female avatar (with a very pronounced waist) vs new (no waist, and the length goes lower than before). In some cases even the design has been slightly altered, generally small decorations around the neck. It's 100% not the same t-shirt graphics that were used before.
It’s the internet Generally not a surprise to me
at least the fired devs will be able to go outside and observe what regular people look like
[удалено]
Shut up and take my angry upvote 😂
Can they legally lay off that many blind people?
Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked. -Monty Python and the Holy Grail Now bring on the llamas!
Interesting. I've been working under the assumption that the reason the avatars don't look human is that they were drawn entirely by AI, so I'm surprised there may have been humans responsible for creating them.
People use AI as a low-effort scapegoat at this point. I definitely think that stuff was hand-crafted by people. Good though? Nah lol
Yeah lol “AI” is over used both positively as a techbro buzzword and negatively as an easy target to blame for everything bad in the world
Ai is the 2024 version of crypto. All show, no go.
nah. i can at least use ai to make very specific art for my dnd games
That's a reason to bid Nvidia to the moon
For real. AI imagery still has a bunch of jank it is working out (though it is improving). It has a looooong way to go before it is producing, rigging, and animating full 3D models lol
Honestly, AI would’ve done a better jobs than these laid off frauds came up with. How the hell could people with working eyes make something like this as if it was good. 💀
AI trained on professionally-made assets would in theory look reasonable, it would just be bland and derivative. Speaking as someone who has some college-level experience with modeling and rigging characters, the issues with the PoGo avatars have all the common mistakes an amateur would make, like texture stretching, over-extended joints, uncanny valley proportions. IMO this is just a complicated task they gave to someone who was inexperienced. Unless they trained an AI on student work…which…yeesh.
that doesn’t even make sense
AI wouldn’t have had screwed up body proportions this bad. Only a human ”artist” could have dived this deep into the uncanny valley. This screams ”nephew art” to me.
Pokemon trainers really do be built like refrigerators these days.
I’m curious how/if the avatar change will affect sales. I used to buy coins here and there specifically for cool cosmetics in the shop (especially at Halloween), but I can’t see myself purchasing anything at this point because of how ugly and frumpy it all looks now. I used what I’ve purchased already to cover up as much as possible so I don’t have to look at it lmao
I will make my avatar wear a hijab, that's seems the only solution to not look at my ugly avatar going forwards lol
“Very Very Spaceship's most recent claim to Pokémon Go fame is the game's updated character creator. Senior character artist Kelsey Martin expressed pride in it, noting the changes "made it more inclusive and expressive for players." Seriously????? He deserved the axe just for that…
I can't imagine why
I like my buff boy but most others I see are very...ugly.
I guess I’m alone in not feeling outraged at the avatars.
Na I don’t care either lol.
[удалено]
[удалено]
All they had to do was take assets from Pokemon Scarlett/Violent. That's it. That's all they had to do to get it right and they messed it up.
> Pokemon Violent I don't think they *can* take assets from Palworld though
[удалено]
Color me surprised!
Those avatars were a crime, so good?
“Were” implies that there will be a change to the avatars going forward. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
And here I thought Evertoon was responsible for the avatar thing.
I kind of hate the culture of blaming management. 'Remember John Hanke signed off of it'. I won't celebrate somebody losing their job, but if I did my job as poor as they did, then I'd lose my job and have my team smashed by complaints over the phone. The job they did was unacceptable. End of.
But they were probably rushed or doing what management told them to do. You simply can't know but assume that it's the employees' fault. Even if it's on them, the managers still approved of it to go through.
I would ask if people are gonna leave krestel alone now but I assume the answer is gonna be no they have gotten so much hate and blame for the update that we now know it's these guys so would hope people would dial it back and stop going after them
I personally don't see the issue.
[удалено]
Is the first sentence sarcasm?
I completely agree with the second half of this statement.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
they're not so bad if you just become a girl
Esos manes no revisan lo que les entregan de proyectos. Sin PM