Let Us Have Our -Own- Avatars!

[Evan_]

 

Ever had that feeling here? I try to identify people by their post-count. Yeah, I know people has names, but it's the internet, and we are many.

 

I read that Warframe related avatars are coming. It's cool but I don't think even all the heads of 'frames and enemies would make enough diversity. And what's the point? Immersion isn't created here at the forum, but ingame by disabling the voice-chat. :-]

 

So... let us have avatars like kinda' everywhere else on the net. Pretty please? For the payin' customers at least? Founders? I didn't mind the grind ingame, but diversity might just get me to platinum shopping.

 

 

(*resisted the urge to say a word about signatures)

(**dang, couldn't resist afterall)

Edited April 19, 2013 by Evan_

[Venarge]

maybe this has something to do with the servers?

I think we may get more freedom on that in the future ^^

[MotherCorpus]

I don't want to see the explicit material people may put up as there avatars. If it's just Warframe related then I'm okay with that, but otherwise no for me.

[antimab-EGT-]

Yeah thx for this topic. 

First time I am in a forum with no personalized avatars. 

Makes it kind of hard to recognize someone. 

[Tyrian3k]

I don't want to see the explicit material people may put up as there avatars. If it's just Warframe related then I'm okay with that, but otherwise no for me.

 

Why are people so afraid of explicit material? I've been in a lot of forums that allow you to choose your own avatar, but I never found anyone who used an inappropriate avatar. Even if someone does, he'd probably get punished for it.

[Ced23Ric]

Repeated topic, DE response: "No individual avatars, we're looking into preparing a set of WF related avatars".

 

It also seems as if DE will not budge on this.

[krisp]

It looks like they want to copy the WoW forums with personalized avatars of your current frame or something.

[Evan_]

Ced23Ric, on 19 Apr 2013 - 12:51 PM, said:

Repeated topic, DE response: "No individual avatars, we're looking into preparing a set of WF related avatars".

It also seems as if DE will not budge on this.

I read that, that's why I made thread. I didn't find a one specificly for whining about personal avatars. Now people of similar mindsets to mine can do it here. :-]

Warframe related avatars would be a lot better than the current state, but still kinda' nothing compared to... the rest of the entire Internet. There are 12 frames, 24 faces with the alternative masks. If they make enemy avatars an option, the possibilities are still below about 50 images.

Is it adding to the immersion? 1000 characters of story would do better. Is it really about explicit material? I'm quite sure the forum is already moderated, and if you just want to get banned, you can still post nasty stuff with BBcode. :-]

Edited April 19, 2013 by Evan_

[Tyrian3k]

It's not about explicit material from DE's side I guess, I assume it's because they want to keep the forums purely in the Warframe look.

[MilesCadre]

It's not about explicit material from DE's side I guess, I assume it's because they want to keep the forums purely in the Warframe look.

Or to keep data storage to a minimum. Avatars, even if theyre linked, are stored on the server. if WF only has to pull a avatar from a database they already have, it saves alot of space.

 

And although 1-2 megs per person doesnt sound like a lot, it adds up fast, especialyl when you get 10s of thousands of players. And each one has to be queued and pulled up everytime someone loads a page.

 

By doing a smaller preset pool of avatars, it consierably reduces throughput.

 

As mcuh as I'd love to put up my picture of a wolf puking rainbows, I understand where DE is coming from on this issue. We'll ahve to wait and see what they give us

[Evan_]

And although 1-2 megs per person doesnt sound like a lot.

 

1-2 megs is a huge gif animation. The current avatar takes 40kb.

[Tyrian3k]

1-2 MB for an avatar? We don't need wallpaper sized avatars do we?

[Ced23Ric]

Avatars, even if theyre linked, are stored on the server. if WF only has to pull a avatar from a database they already have, it saves alot of space.

 

And although 1-2 megs per person doesnt sound like a lot, it adds up fast, especialyl when you get 10s of thousands of players. And each one has to be queued and pulled up everytime someone loads a page.

 

By doing a smaller preset pool of avatars, it consierably reduces throughput.

 

None of these statements are entirely correct.

Avatars hosted off-site are just a few bytes of text for a reference URL. No load on their servers at all.

 

1 or even 2 MB for a 150x150 px image is outrageous. That is almost a mini-movie as an animated gif there. What Evan said - more like a few kB.

 

Any pool of avatars affects the load on the server, especially the throughput. Currently, there is one image loaded and then displayed once per user - the Excalibur. Multiple images would mean multiple loads per page, and per user, too, amplifying by the userbase.

 

If DE was interested in minimizing bandwidth, they'd allow off-site hosting, if they are really stingy about it, they would simply disable avatars. Currently, they are useless except for DE staff. The advent of a selection of images will do nothing but put more bandwidth on the server and still not give instant/easy identification. While it would be a babystep forwards, away from "Excalibur for all", it would still be a futile exercise that has hardly any benefits and considerable effort, increases in maintenance and bandwidth as a price.

 

Why DE would do this rather than off-site hosting is not entirely clear to me.

[MilesCadre]

1-2 megs is a huge gif animation. The current avatar takes 40kb.

a 200x200 jpeg can take up to 1-2 mb depending on how many colors and how detailed it is.

I've had issues complying to the 450 kb that alot of forums put up, and thats even after converting to png.

But even at 100 kb, we're still talking about volume, not size. loading up 40-50 independant avatars at 150x150 and even at 200-300kb will slow down most DSL and dialup (yes, some parts of Amerika still use Dial-up >.<) connections. Sadly, Broadband isnt available everywhere.

Course, again, DE just saved about 20% of the forums from viewing a rainbow vomiting wolf =)

EDIT:

    Ced23Ric, on 19 Apr 2013 - 10:58 AM, said:

    None of these statements are entirely correct.

    Avatars hosted off-site are just a few bytes of text for a reference URL. No load on their servers at all.

    1 or even 2 MB for a 150x150 px image is outrageous. That is almost a mini-movie as an animated gif there. What Evan said - more like a few kB.

    Any pool of avatars affects the load on the server, especially the throughput. Currently, there is one image loaded and then displayed once per user - the Excalibur. Multiple images would mean multiple loads per page, and per user, too, amplifying by the userbase.

    If DE was interested in minimizing bandwidth, they'd allow off-site hosting, if they are really stingy about it, they would simply disable avatars. Currently, they are useless except for DE staff. The advent of a selection of images will do nothing but put more bandwidth on the server and still not give instant/easy identification. While it would be a babystep forwards, away from "Excalibur for all", it would still be a futile exercise that has hardly any benefits and considerable effort, increases in maintenance and bandwidth as a price.

    Why DE would do this rather than off-site hosting is not entirely clear to me.

The quoting thing broke, bear with me. Either the forums havent been fully configured or DE jsut doesnt want off siting because hotlinking just increases bandwidth. Sites generally dont liek hotlinking.

At risk of making more uneducated statements, I'll just close with this; WF's forums and entire system is young. We'll jsuth ave to wait and see, cuz you never know.

And man my typing is absolutely horrible today

    Tyrian3k, on 19 Apr 2013 - 10:48 AM, said:

    1-2 MB for an avatar? We don't need wallpaper sized avatars do we?

ok maybe I exagerated. But my point still is its data that would ease up bandwidth.

Just trying to give some insight, everyone makes mistakes.

 

Edited April 19, 2013 by MilesCadre

[Ced23Ric]

Not mad at you or anything. :)

 

Offsite hosting such as gravatar would handle the bandwidth, DE would merely reference the source in their forum. When you put an image link down, all DE's forum handles is that part - a text, interpreted by your browser, with the instruction to load an image from a website.