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Low Quality Avatars


DARK DEMON

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I'm a newbie. I go around watching people's wonderful avy's, all not only accurately representing the characters but also being wonderful pieces of work. I look at (for example):

 

http://storenow.net/my/?f=f9102cd097fc58e471d416cd1ffc4292

http://storenow.net/my/?f=d097103a7b4fae61fdd033ba6163f2b4

http://storenow.net/my/?f=2ceb254788d702c6eb8423d8d53560b2

http://storenow.net/my/?f=c1f44b52da9d2cdd42c871e7c4f6fbc3

 

So I decide to get myself one too! I buy some credits, unlock the avy shop and then take a look. I see.... huh, what?

 

http://storenow.net/my/?f=e1e766746a7b8bcc51a4d09bb5ebec26

http://storenow.net/my/?f=88c58d457d5087452351011611b70a80

http://storenow.net/my/?f=dd76479e27538a2ce3c159a5e0fffeb0

 

Now what would my reaction be?

____________________________________________________________

 

The point of this is to show that there are a LOT more than 70 low quality avatars. IMO that isn't a bad thing: it shows that our artists are doing a really good job and the quality-level has increased greatly. I think almost all 2-D avatars at least should be removed. There are hundreds of these kinds, probably.

 

Almost every "good" avy you see nowadays is usually custom-made for the player by an artist, or put up for direct sale rather than sold to the shop. It's been happening for years. Even though it says here that this is not allowed... ---> http://storenow.net/my/?f=7f3e6299ee7c80f0b7ec2bb1cb52a8aa

 

Who here would actually spend credits on at least 70% of the shop avy's currently, when you know that there's a much better option to get it custom-made from an artist?

 

IMO this has made the avy shop totally redundant. I've seen from others' reaction too that its better off that most of the "junk" there gets removed

 

Edit: clarified something

Edited by DARK DEMON
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exactly what I think about the actual avatars in the shop... I get angry when I see some avatars, because the artworks in game is one of the first thing that attracted me into the game... I don't know who let go in shop such artworks... they ruin the true artoworks and MD style...

 

please do a thorough cleaning of the store... could be created a group of people that could work on this... just an idea

 

example: http://storenow.net/my/?f=a84711221076a63dd39a9e3244b8b351

 

just the first avatar is acceptable... I really can't see other ones... they are horrible artworks... who accepted them???

Edited by MRAlyon
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Just...wow. I'm glad I bought my avatar directly from the artist (not custom made, I just chose from the ones he put up on sale).

 

I agree that there should be a quality check. I guess a lot of people uploaded avatars, just for the credit gain.

 

Can there be a system that lets you show some of your work and get a rating and a permission to sell your avatars to the shop? So you can get the title of artist (lvl1,2...)

 

Quality control is definetly needed.

 

Edit: Disregard my demand for quality control.  DST's post enlightened me on this issue.

Edited by Azrafar
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Just for consideration (and newbie information, i guess), there once was a time when only a few dedicated artists could add avatars, i think the most active one was GlorDamar, but i'm not into arts, someone who was will know them all.

Anyway, the point is, at that time all avatars were great quality, but there were only few. Many people waited for months for a fresh batch to be released, and they were usually gone within hours once they were. That's why Mur allowed pretty much everybody to upload avatars until there were enough for all players.

Now we have a lot less players again, so the worse avatars are left in the shop. At a time, people were happy to have any avatars at all.

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Then uploading of whatever quality may be allowed for one's self for one's own avatar, or drawing for a friend, but the shop itself should have standards imo and it should not accept such avy's until they are manually approved by artists.

 

@Ary, yes, and I think that the fact it shows 8 avatars at a time, and it says there are 700+ avatars in the shop, and the fact that the avatar quality is very poor.... nobody is likely to use that shuffle option. Nobody new, at least. Until a few times, before they realize the truth.

 

This isn't a discussion as to why such avatars were uploaded. Right now they spoil one of the attractive parts of MD and will make anyone new feel disgusted, simple as that (eg: see Azrafar's reaction). Hence I think they must be removed.

Edited by DARK DEMON
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I love how noobs (yes Aeo, you're one as well apparently) have no clue how the avatars system used to work. Let me enlighten you (Burns already pointed things out).

 

- avatars used to be indeed RARE (golden were hmm...gold at that time) and artists (Glordamar, Valy and others) used to send avatars to Mur, Mur would prepare them and upload them - check Anns and you'll see there are some with "avatars have been uploaded" or even teasers with "avatars will be uploaded blabla"

- Mur decided to create the "upload yourself the avatar of your dreams" and created the current system: you upload any piece of crap and someone at the other end approves it (or denies it). For a while Mur was the only one approving avatars (surprisingly 2 days ago he didn't delete  those he first approved although they are AWFUL but heh...he might not have seen them + the avatars interface sometimes had a will of its own). I asked him back then"why on Earth are you approving every piece of crap?" He gave me several reasons:

                                 - we need avatars

                                 - I like to encourage players to draw (this is how some of the lowest avatars appeared)

                                 - bad avys will trigger shuffling

                                 - when we will have enough, I will delete the bad ones

Pretty cool and reasonable reasons, right? I thought so as well

 

- I get the job to approve avatars. I was reminded the above arguments and given few more rules:

                                 - alpha transparent

                                 - MD style (pencil drawn and no colors)

                                 - should represent a thing/a person and should not have background (meaning I could not accept a girl in a garden for example...you get the point)

 

In time, when the number of avatars grew enough, I asked the Council (they were my "contact person") to remove the bad ones ( I personally wouldn't want to do it because I don't consider my art sense to be that sharp). They always said they will. They never did. Then the avatar managers appeared and from there there's their story BUT from what I have seen, the quality of the uploaded avatars increased greatly. It's HIGHLY visible where avatars were approved just for the sake of it and where they were quality checked.

 

Now, we do have avatar managers. Mur has already started the clean-up. I guess they can continue. They don't even need to delete them, just remove them from the shop. But that's their job and I am not going to tell them how to do it cause imo they are great at what they are doing.

 

 

Oh one last thing: you don't like it, you don't buy it. And even if you buy it, you still don't own it if you go inactive (they will be returned to shop as someone pointed out above me).

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I love how noobs (yes Aeo, you're one as well apparently) have no clue how the avatars system used to work. Let me enlighten you (Burns already pointed things out).

Off to a good start. I didn't claim to have an awful lot of knowledge about the avy system. Yes, I know back then the avys were rare, but I personally think this doesn't justify allowing poor quality avys to still exist in the item shop. It feels like we have more artists and/or more people that can upload decent/good avatars, so why not have more of those instead of saying "it's normal for there to be badly drawn avatars in the shop"?

 

In time, when the number of avatars grew enough, I asked the Council (they were my "contact person") to remove the bad ones ( I personally wouldn't want to do it because I don't consider my art sense to be that sharp). They always said they will. They never did. Then the avatar managers appeared and from there there's their story BUT from what I have seen, the quality of the uploaded avatars increased greatly. It's HIGHLY visible where avatars were approved just for the sake of it and where they were quality checked.

Yes. The quality of the uploaded avatars increased quite a lot throughout the years. However, we're still stuck with a ton of bad avys in the store. I personally remember you saying something about the avy store needing a cleanup at some point in the past, but I may be wrong.

If this is the avatar manager's job, then let's encourage/help them do it. I have, indeed, seen improvement regarding the uploading and approval of avatars, but I haven't seen any improvement on the avys in the store and I did shuffle quite a few times in the past few months.

 

Oh one last thing: you don't like it, you don't buy it. And even if you buy it, you still don't own it if you go inactive (they will be returned to shop as someone pointed out above me).

That was me (the noob).

I know that's true (since I stated it and checked beforehand...), and thus I believe that the little text/rule/comment (or however you want to call it) which says that "your avy is yours forever" should be adjusted. False advertisement, IMO.

 

TL;DR - IMO the amount of poor quality avys in the shop does the item store a disservice in the long run. I would personally prefer paying silver/gold to an artist on MD so that I will have an avatar that represents exactly my character rather than wishing that I will randomly run across one in the shop and spending $$ for it. But this is my opinion, as stated above.

Again, since more people can upload avatars now (just about everyone) I don't think the argument that "avatars were rare" is justified. The approval of avatars is great, IMO, so only good avatars will get past that. Thus why not repopulate the item shop with good, quality avys rather than leave the old, poorly drawn ones in?

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I would personally prefer paying silver/gold to an artist on MD so that I will have an avatar that represents exactly my character rather than wishing that I will randomly run across one in the shop and spending $$ for it.

 

 You answered yourself to your own question and my point still stands: you don't like it, you don't buy it BUT you have many alternatives if you really like an avatar that suits you.

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Hmm, oh well. There goes my chance at making my own avatar any time soon which I'd use myself. :P I do like this change though, except that likely one of the few girl avatars was probably removed (sure it was 2d, not that good, and I could probably have drawn it myself, but it was a girl!).

 

I'm almost tempted to sponsor the creation of new female avatars (with gold/stuff) even though I'd ideally want to use my own once I'm good enough.

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  • Root Admin

more avatars have been removed. I shuffled the shop a couple of times and i was in shock of the low qualities avatars i saw there. I released some ancient top quality avatars too, from time to time i reserve those that look the best so i can use them for special occasions. 

 

There are still some terrible ones left, i will remove those in an other avatar deleting rampage some other time. If you still find the current shop avatars too terrible, please cry, so i can take action :)

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  • Root Admin

having some terrible avatars in the shop has its purpose still

it increases list refresh, and that means income..without it selling avatars at 1$ would not be possible

it encourages people to try to draw, and thats a good thing.

it allows for original ideas even if they are not that well represented graphically

 

 

so from my point of view, i need to keep a good balance 

it is true however that the current situation demanded a cleanup, and probably there are still horrible ones to be removed that i missed.

 

(rifles? sky? headphones? ROBOTS? COSMONAUTS?...wth people, seriously? .. you get my point)

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Firstly an avatar is not an obligation. You're actually rather lucky with what you have nowadays as, as DST correctly pointed out, avatars were rare and would only be bought by those quick enough to scavenge them.

 

Secondly, having a shop filled with bad avatars helps you more than it hinders.

  •  It prevents collectors, such as myself, from grabbing all the best drawn straight away.
  • It helps to fund MD
  • It balances out the "rarity" as it takes time to find one you may like.

People seem to forget that the MDShop is practically what keeps MD running. You all love MD so much, yet you'll complain when you have to spend a few extra credits on finding an avatar? Even though years ago you would have been lucky to have gotten one? I wouldn't complain...

 

Finally, I do agree that there are many poor quality avatars in the Shop. I disagree however that they should all be removed. I think 70 removed is actually a very good start and would even say that perhaps only another 30 more should be removed at this time. Make it a yearly cleanup. 

 

Having to shuffle is a hindrance, yes, but also helps players in the long term.

 

~Sasha

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In my mind shuffling would have been between good avy's only. The person wouldn't select the first good avy he or she saw, they'd select based on what they thought fit their character best.

 

For example: I spend many credits to find one good away among all bad ones, but that good avy is a female warrior whereas I want a male wizard. Rather than giving choice between good avy's, you have choice between bad avy's and a good avy even though your role may not be related to it.

 

 

I understand your points, sasha, but is it not the case that the avy's are so so terrible that one wouldn't bother to spend credits at all, even to try to find good ones (thinking they'd go to waste)?

Edited by DARK DEMON
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I get what some veterans say, and I agree. I was just concerned, that some avys were hastily and poorly drawn just to be sent to the shop for those extra credits. I don't think credits earned that way helped funding MD.

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I get what some veterans say, and I agree. I was just concerned, that some avys were hastily and poorly drawn just to be sent to the shop for those extra credits. I don't think credits earned that way helped funding MD.

 

What you need to remember is that the low quality avatars, yes, would have been awarded credits, but that is to one person. Imagine the amount of people that shuffle when they see that poor avatar.

 

Removing avatars is actually more catastrophic to MD funds than leaving them. For when they are removed profit is lost due to shuffling and the fact that the creator was actually rewarded credits for the drawing. Leaving the drawings, however, will increase shuffling and will quickly pay back what was gained by the artist.

 

~Sasha

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No true sasha, when you have 400-500 bad avatars nobody will want to shuffle in first place as said already by DD and others in this topic. I guess it's okay to have some of lower quality ones floating around, but shop flooded with bad quality ones just doesn't motivate people to shuffle.

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No true sasha, when you have 400-500 bad avatars nobody will want to shuffle in first place as said already by DD and others in this topic. I guess it's okay to have some of lower quality ones floating around, but shop flooded with bad quality ones just doesn't motivate people to shuffle.

 

And do we have statistics to show that this is true?

 

I myself have spent a lot of shuffling, not even wanting to buy...just to look.

 

There will always be those that give up on shuffling and there will be those that continue as normal. 

 

In the long term removing all avatars WILL be a knock on funds as fewer avatars means fewer needs to shuffle. Bearing in mind that each avatar sent to shop gains the player $3...we need more shuffling OR place the avatar unlock even deeper.

 

~Sasha

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And do we have statistics to show that this is true?

 

I myself have spent a lot of shuffling, not even wanting to buy...just to look.

 

There will always be those that give up on shuffling and there will be those that continue as normal. 

 

In the long term removing all avatars WILL be a knock on funds as fewer avatars means fewer needs to shuffle. Bearing in mind that each avatar sent to shop gains the player $3...we need more shuffling OR place the avatar unlock even deeper.

 

~Sasha

 

The plan is not to just empty it. I think it will need to be filled up again too, to allow shuffling for finding character-appearance wise, not good-bad wise. :)

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