faction symbol

[ManStarr]

I'd imagine medieval battles WERE quite confusing..

another reason to play tactical, stay in ranks so no one wanders off and gets shot by teamates.

 

[wolfstriked]

While it might be the easiest route to simply distribute the different sets of the existing armor over the various factions, only veteran players who have commited what armors are available to each faction will be able to tell friend from foe in this way. And even then, a veteran player might easily confuse a player of one faction for another at a distance or in the heat of battle.

Aside from this, although it could work for veteran players in multiplayer, the solution would do nothing for the single player campaign where the player's own troops tend to use the armor from various different factions.

It would be much more conducive to gameplay if a bit of work would be put in to simply add bits of adaptive color strips to the various armor. Even players new to the game can easily tell the difference between leather armor with strips of the armor colored blue and brigandine armor with strips of it colored red as opposed to simply brown leather armor against brown brigandine armor.

Of coures in single player this would mean that you'd have to pick a color not associated to any faction right at the start of the game, but I doubt adding something like that to character creation would be that hard to put in.

The colored small bits of strips isn't realistic though and faction specific armors is.But your right about people having troops from various factions.I still think that a slight...very very slight glow to your enemies (think aura)while in combat would eliminate this issue.

Or they could make it so that once you join a faction you get your recruits only from that faction.And in beginning of game you run around with companions only who you can outfit with armors that no other troops have......faction armies or bandits etc.

 

[Commoner]

The colored small bits of strips isn't realistic though and faction specific armors is.But your right about people having troops from various factions.I still think that a slight...very very slight glow to your enemies (think aura)while in combat would eliminate this issue.

Or they could make it so that once you join a faction you get your recruits only from that faction.And in beginning of game you run around with companions only who you can outfit with armors that no other troops have......faction armies or bandits etc.

How realistic colored bits of armor are on the battlefield during medeival battles actually depends heavily on your assumptions. As long as the faction leaders adhere to the conventions of heraldry, however, it is fairly safe to assume that the armor of their troops will adhere to their heraldic colors. So if you're tarking about a barbarian horde who have never even heard of heraldry, then yes, it would be very unrealistic for them to be wearing uniformly colored armor.

However, since each of the factions do seem to some form of heraldic symbol, as exhibited by the fact that they have a faction symbol which are conveniently painted on their shields, then it is not really a big leap to expect their troops to wear armor sporting their faction colors as well.

If done properly, such uniformly colored armor for troops would not look unrealistic at all. What it will do is make the various troops look more like a part of a proper military unit as opposed to a band of warrior nomads or barbarians.

Let me set things straigth here, I'm not talking about leather armor that is entirely dyed bright red or chain armor that's been painted head to toe in an emerald green. I'm talking about some parts of the armor dyed a certain color or clothing worn over the armor to sport the appropriate faction color.

Below are a few examples I've taken off the internet to give you a general idea of the kind of armor coloring I'm talking about.

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-studded armor

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-leather armor

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-banded armor

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-breast plate and some others in the background

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-chain mail

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-plate armor

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-both sides wearing plate but it is easy to tell which side they are on because of the heraldic colors

 

[Myiagros]

The different color of armor sounds like a good idea but I wouldn't mind a way to tell who is who on your own faction without having to walk right up to them. If player names on your team were shown above the players(make a toggle for it for those not wanting names shown) it would be alot easier to find your friends in battle and team up. With all of the armor pretty much looking the same it is hard to distinguish your allies from one another.

 

[Commoner]

If you must have floaty super-imposed stuff to indicate a player's faction, it would probably be a good idea to make them indicate something more than faction. Player names is one option but I think it is even more of an eye-sore than the faction symbols.

Another idea might be to place hitpoint bars over each player instead of the faction symbol. Red hitpoint bars indicating opponents and green ones indicating allies (or maybe only green ones over allies and none over opponents). Hitpoint bars would be alot less obstrusive than faction symbols since they are just a thin strip instead of a big image box plus they have the added bonus of actually communicating something useful to the players. They are also present in most RTS, RPGs, and MMORPGs and thus would probably be more acceptable to most players.

Personally my preference would still lean towards the faction colored armor and believe that anything else that is superimposed like faction symbols, names, hitpoint bars would seem unnatural and detract from the immersiveness of the game.

I do understand that a few players might possibly prefer them, however, and thus think that they should easily toggleable through a hotkey like Tab for example. I do think that instead of Faction Symbols, they should use something which actually communicates some useful information like names or hitpoints, however. That way even if they are eye-sores they will atleast be useful eye-sores.

 

[RF Nigth]

A nother idea is to have the name just show up when you face your teammate (longer range then now)
and enemy name show up when close at long range you will not see them
as friendly fire is a part off war

 

[Cwvym]

The floaty things are fine - I would like them to be brighter. Hot pink would work.