Skin color Ballas and Lotus

[VSLl]

Hello. I just decided to replay the old quests after the New War and I alone noticed that the skin color of Lotus and Ballas has changed? The Lotus's skin became much darker, and Ballas's became a poisonous unbearable turquoise. I don't understand if this is a bug or what? Have the developers decide to change the skin color? I've tried changing any graphics settings in the game and it doesn't help in any way, because only I see problems with skin colors. Looking back at my old walkthrough videos, I see a distinct difference with skin color. And I'm very interested in whether this is a visual bug or not. I took screenshots of last year's walkthrough and now. The screenshots on the left is what it is now, and on the right is what it was.

Please tell me that this is a bug and that it will be fixed.

[ant99999]

DE probably made changes in the lighting and materials across the game at some point and sure enough forgot the quests existed.

Far not the first time something like this happens.

[VSLl]

It's been many months.. any news?

[LillyRaccune]

On 2021-12-20 at 11:51 PM, -Lilac-Lily- said:

noticed that the skin color of Lotus and Ballas has changed?

I looked at your screenshots, I see the huge tone differences. For me I always knew Balas to have blue skin, but not Lotus having grey skin. I'm going to replay the quest and to see what colours I experience.

Spoiler

 

[VSLl]

3 minutes ago, LillyRaccune said:

I looked at your screenshots, I see the huge tone differences. For me I always knew Balas to have blue skin, but not Lotus having grey skin. I'm going to replay the quest and to see what colours I experience.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

That's right, Ballas always had blue skin, but never dirty green, and his eyes were white, not black and red.

[LillyRaccune]

I ran the cinematic twice. The weird colours were consistent. I'm using DX12 btw.

[VSLl]

2 hours ago, LillyRaccune said:

I ran the cinematic twice. The weird colours were consistent. I'm using DX12 btw.

You thought I didn't check any graphics settings? This problem is not fixed by any settings, his skin is as broken as Lotus.

[GrayArchon]

What about other quests? Erra and The Maker cinematics, The New War? That last one is obviously a big commitment to catch a bug, but I'm wondering.

[VoidArkhangel]

Skin color appearing grey was a thing for years now but first time seeing this problem with non-human-colored-skin characters.

[VSLl]

1 hour ago, GrayArchon said:

What about other quests? Erra and The Maker cinematics, The New War? That last one is obviously a big commitment to catch a bug, but I'm wondering.

All the same. At least that's how it seems to me, his skin still doesn't have that blue tint, but it's not poisonous green though, Lotus still has the same problems.
He also has a normal eye color, white instead of black and red. Probably his model "chimera" is not broken or broken, but not much.

[Circle_of_Psi]

4 hours ago, LillyRaccune said:

I ran the cinematic twice. The weird colours were consistent. I'm using DX12 btw.
 

Hope this is a bug, Lotus looks really weird with such skin

[LillyRaccune]

2 hours ago, -Lilac-Lily- said:

You thought I didn't check any graphics settings? This problem is not fixed by any settings, his skin is as broken as Lotus.

Yeah... I reread your OP and saw that you already checked that. Sorry. In my defense you could have directly listed some of the settings you tried toggling. My bad for not double checking your OP.

13 minutes ago, Circle_of_Psi said:

Hope this is a bug, Lotus looks really weird with such skin

It could be passed as "localization changes" if it wasn't different colour skin from one place to the next.

[VSLl]

16 minutes ago, LillyRaccune said:

Yeah... I reread your OP and saw that you already checked that. Sorry. In my defense you could have directly listed some of the settings you tried toggling. My bad for not double checking your OP.

It could be passed as "localization changes" if it wasn't different colour skin from one place to the next.

It hurts me to see him like this. It was also funny to notice that his model went into an earlier state in the "New War". Well.. or the developers just thought he sewed his leg back on. In "Chimera" he had a leg that dangled from the limbs of the sentient, in "Erra" and subsequent quests it was gone, in the New War it appeared again. Maybe this was done to show the prestige that he could make a second leg for himself, but from gold. Although with the same success it was possible to do 2. Either this is a very silly miscalculation and a simple hole in the plot. Or they hoped that no one would see or notice it.

[LillyRaccune]

40 minutes ago, -Lilac-Lily- said:

In "Chimera" he had a leg that dangled from the limbs of the sentient, in "Erra" and subsequent quests it was gone, in the New War it appeared again.

This is so weird. I remember from before that Ballas' leg was shriveled piece of flesh.

When he gave us Paracesis, it was starting to degenerate.
In Erra, it was a dangling sock puppet.
In Prelude to New War, it was the thickness of a finger.
So when Ballas put on a golden leg, I thought it was only natural that he wanted to maintain any remaining fascade of humanity.

But I just rewatched Erra and Prelude and now the dangling piece of flesh is gone! This... this is ...

[VSLl]

4 minutes ago, LillyRaccune said:

This is so weird. I remember from before that Ballas' leg was shriveled piece of flesh.

When he gave us Paracesis, it was starting to degenerate.
In Erra, it was a dangling sock puppet.
In Prelude to New War, it was the thickness of a finger.
So when Ballas put on a golden leg, I thought it was only natural that he wanted to maintain any remaining fascade of humanity.

But I just rewatched Erra and Prelude and now the dangling piece of flesh is gone! This... this is ...

That’s why I’m so interested in whether this was done on purpose or if it’s just a technical error/flaw, although it’s hard for me to believe that this is just a mistake, because all of his models have a clearly different name and in the technical side this issue would have clearly surfaced. Although I probably understand the developers, they wanted to show that he became great and could make and return his human leg, and if he had 2 golden legs, it would not look as difficult as if he had different legs - 1 golden, 1 is his own. But it looks so silly... different quests are different. Although the TennoCon last year showed the art of Ballas in the New War and there he has his real leg and the second gold, just like in the quest. This doesn't confirm that this was planned and that they returned to the original model of it on purpose, but it does not refute it either. I will probably never get an answer.

[Jarriaga]

I think this is intentional, OP.

But I think it's a reflection of changes made to lighting in general rather than skin color per se. Your own comparison screenshots highlight different placements for shadows and illuminated areas. For example:

1) First screenshot comparison: Look at how pronounced his Adam Apple is and the illumination of the fabric that hangs down in his chest. Also the shadows in the right side of his face show a lot more detail over his cheek and eye and doesn't look like a long flat shadow (Unlike the pic on the right).

2) Second screenshot comparison: Same thing with the right side of his face and and chest-hanging fabric. As for his extended arm, look at how pronounced the shadow "spectrum" is with different tones of shading and shadow over, around, and under the extended arm.

If it was skin-tone alone those differences wouldn't exist, assuming the timestamps for the screenshots are the exact same.

[VSLl]

24 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

I think this is intentional, OP.

But I think it's a reflection of changes made to lighting in general rather than skin color per se. Your own comparison screenshots highlight different placements for shadows and illuminated areas. For example:

1) First screenshot comparison: Look at how pronounced his Adam Apple is and the illumination of the fabric that hangs down in his chest. Also the shadows in the right side of his face show a lot more detail over his cheek and eye and doesn't look like a long flat shadow (Unlike the pic on the right).

2) Second screenshot comparison: Same thing with the right side of his face and and chest-hanging fabric. As for his extended arm, look at how pronounced the shadow "spectrum" is with different tones of shading and shadow over, around, and under the extended arm.

If it was skin-tone alone those differences wouldn't exist, assuming the timestamps for the screenshots are the exact same.

Graphics quality. The quality on the right is much worse because 2 years ago I played with different settings. You can open any walkthrough of any channel of old quests on YouTube and turn on the game and see for yourself what color your skin is. You said about Ballas but not a word about Lotus, did she suddenly turn black? Or is this also another change in lighting? Why did the eyes turn black and red instead of white? What about the scene in "The Sacrifice"? Got something to say? It's funny, because the rest of the background and shades are not changed in any way. Lighting should not completely change your skin color, it doesn’t work that way, my friend, by the way.

[Jarriaga]

2 minutes ago, -Lilac-Lily- said:

You said about Ballas but not a word about Lotus, did she suddenly turn black?

No, that one is an actual bug introduced with TNW. Margulis/Lotus's skin color can go from Taylor Swift to Serena Williams in between missions.

But without knowing the exact settings you had back then, reproduction is impossible. There are several patches DE have done since The Sacrifice to improve how light affects skin textures, specially around the time Nihil was introduced:

Ballas looks way more in tune with that in the "now" screenshots vs the old ones.

[VSLl]

4 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

No, that one is an actual bug introduced with TNW. Margulis/Lotus's skin color can go from Taylor Swift to Serena Williams in between missions.

But without knowing the exact settings you had back then, reproduction is impossible. There are several patches DE have done since The Sacrifice to improve how light affects skin textures, specially around the time Nihil was introduced:

Ballas looks way more in tune with that in the "now" screenshots vs the old ones.

Ballas even on concept art was like that. He was never conceived as a character with a poisonous green skin color.

Nihil doesn't have that skin color either, by the way.

Have you finally decided already, the problem is with the "lighting" or did they change the color of the skin? Or does the arrow only point in one direction? Lotus skin can bug, but Ballas doesn't.
What's with the reproduction? What does this have to do with it? What does it matter what settings were before? I repeat once again, open any old video on YouTube with the walkthrough of these quests and look. You can open and compare new videos at the same time.

[Jarriaga]

13 minutes ago, -Lilac-Lily- said:

Have you finally decided already, the problem is with the "lighting" or did they change the color of the skin? Or does the arrow only point in one direction? Lotus skin can bug, but Ballas doesn't.

You are the only one I've seen who has reported this as a potential bug. This has been the norm for some time, contrary to what happened to Lotus and Margulis. I stand by my observations.

13 minutes ago, -Lilac-Lily- said:

Ballas even on concept art was like that. He was never conceived as a character with a poisonous green skin color.

Ballas was the only Orokin we had seen in concept back then. Right now, that concept is the outlier in design vs current Ballas, Nihil and the Entrati. This is why I lean on intentional.

13 minutes ago, -Lilac-Lily- said:

What's with the reproduction? What does this have to do with it? What does it matter what settings were before?

It matters because any attempt at getting the game to look like an old video without matching settings to minimize differences in settings quality is futile. We see your screenshots. We see the differences. We can't check if that is still the case absolutely everything else being equal. If all else is equal and still looks consistently like the new screenshots (As opposed to Lotu's random and inconsistent skin tone change) then it is intentional or a side effect of how skin colors react to lighting now, with "now" being when Nihil was introduced because that's when DE touted changes to skin illumination behavior.

[NightmareT12]

Looks like indeed this has to do with the lighting engine and ongoing changes they did starting with Saint of Altra. Will report the thread so it gets moved to Art/Animation feedback, which is more appropiate.

[Horactius]

Just stumbled upon this thread and I'm not sure about cutscenes but I can confirm that this affect Nora on both pop up transmission and nightwave screen and also Lotus customization screen as well. I did manage to make the skin normal again by disabling high shader quality option on video tab which is just a bandaid solution tbh.

[VSLl]

On 2022-04-22 at 11:58 PM, Horactius said:

Just stumbled upon this thread and I'm not sure about cutscenes but I can confirm that this affect Nora on both pop up transmission and nightwave screen and also Lotus customization screen as well. I did manage to make the skin normal again by disabling high shader quality option on video tab which is just a bandaid solution tbh.

It didn't help, unfortunately.

[Horactius]

5 hours ago, -Lilac-Lily- said:

It didn't help, unfortunately.

Hmm yea that's weird, just logged in to try it again myself and turning high shader quality on and off didn't work anymore (thankfully, mine stays normal with and without the setting now). The trick worked just fine a couple of weeks ago but tbf, my game crashed and all my setting was reset back then so there might be more setting involved that I didn't remember.

Screenshot from a couple of weeks ago:

Spoiler

This was with high shader quality turned on:

This one with high shader quality off:

I also tried to play the apostasy prologue to see the cinematics multiple times and the skin color are still weird no matter the setting for me as well.

[VSLl]

47 minutes ago, Horactius said:

Hmm yea that's weird, just logged in to try it again myself and turning high shader quality on and off didn't work anymore (thankfully, mine stays normal with and without the setting now). The trick worked just fine a couple of weeks ago but tbf, my game crashed and all my setting was reset back then so there might be more setting involved that I didn't remember.

Screenshot from a couple of weeks ago:

  Hide contents

This was with high shader quality turned on:

This one with high shader quality off:

I also tried to play the apostasy prologue to see the cinematics multiple times and the skin color are still weird no matter the setting for me as well.

I'd take Ballas' skin color as a "deliberate change" if he didn't look so awful + Lotus' skin color wouldn't be bug either. Also, his eyes are broken, which emphasizes the fact that this is a bug and not a deliberate change. Also, at least some mention in the patch note or somewhere else.