Neocolours

We have a page asking whether people prefer the new or old versions of a pet, and I've just reset the contents to see whether the stats will change. I've kept the old statistics (as well as a sample from just under a year ago) and will eventually be putting them up for comparison. I'm also temporarily hiding the current results page to do so.

Here's the page. Remember, you are voting for the effects on blue pets only. Don't vote as though the old one combines all the best features of the Plushie, Darigan and Maraquan Krawks and the new one is blue.

http://www.neocolours.me.uk/voting.php

I am requesting someone post a bad photoshop mash up of those three krawk colours.

No Auri! You did it wrong!

I wanted a bad photoshop mashup!

I'm trying to vote on just the blue ones, but sometimes the old and new maraquan, royal etc. poses go through my head and I sigh...
It is still hard, sometimes the art on the new one is much better, but the old one doesn't have the fist of doom!

And Aurinona, that is one scary Krawk!

Marah wrote:It is still hard, sometimes the art on the new one is much better, but the old one doesn't have the fist of doom!

I had that problem in a few places. I tried to say to myself, "if just this species had been revamped, would I have been happy with the new version" and in most cases I discovered the answer was yes, despite the fist of doom. I think trying to see them in isolation helped.

Yeah, that's the sort of thing I'm after. If the question is "do you prefer the redraw or the post-Customisation version of redraw colour x" then answer is almost always going to be the former - but that's so obvious that I don't really need to conduct a poll for it. I'm more interested in how the revamps of the basic pets themselves stand up, because that's not so clear cut.

It was very interesting to redo it, now that the new versions are the pets I'm familiar with, and not the old versions. Sometimes the better art wins out over a pose that's less good, sometimes it's not enough to redeem the fists. But then sometimes the fist is actually kind of cute and natural, like the Kacheek's.

I think it might have been easier to see which had the better art if the new versions were larger images- on the Gnorbu, not much had changed except the lineart looked thinner and more even on the new version, but it was hard to tell. And you can't see the strangely muscular forearm of the new kyrii, either.

There were a few species where the fist was just too much to outweight the better art. Mostly those are the pets where it feels like the pose of the pet was drawn around the ability to hold stuff in their hands/feet.

there were also a few pets were I wished I could vote something more than just a plain yes or no. Along the lines of: "do you think the new art is better?" Answer: "NOOOOOOO!"

Marah wrote:There were a few species where the fist was just too much to outweight the better art. Mostly those are the pets where it feels like the pose of the pet was drawn around the ability to hold stuff in their hands/feet.

Yeah, in some cases it really took away a lot of the personality of the pet. The Blumaroo and Meerca, for example. Standing on their tails was just the classic pose, it was one of the neat little quirks about them. Now it's gone. I hate the change to the Skeith, they should have stayed on four legs instead of two. The Lutari lost a lot as well. =/

My favourite pet is the lupe and they got off better with the customization than many (lupes have no hands to make a fist with), though my heart shall forever be for this lupe.

So awesome 0.0

I think the quadrupeds in general changed less (less=good) than those poor 2-legged pets.

Most of my votes were "neutral", actually. Not because the old and new art are the same, but because I honestly don't find either to be better or worse. It does make me wonder why there's such a knee-jerk reaction of "UC GOOD! REVAMP BAD!" so prevalent among Neopians.

There was definitely a good number of revamped pets that I voted as liking better, but for the most part I just find a lot of them to be awkwardly posed in order to hold/wear things. I know there's a lot of people who like anthropomorphizing their neopets, but I've never thought that way and prefer them all to be more natural. It's a large reason for my dislike of most revamp pets that they changed to become more anthro.

Voted old all the way through.

But I was quite hesitant with the peophin. I want both. Jazzy this is a wonderful idea, that can make everyone who hates/quit neo to take a looksee back into our site.

I'm glad this was resurrected, although at this point it's kind of beating a dead horse, it's a dead horse I quite like beating on. That didn't sound right.

Customization has proved to be something users haven't really moved beyond. I don't think it's just the issue of the changed art. That combined with pet trading has really changed the feel of the site. It's easy to be nostalgic for the old way, especially for those of us who have been around since before customization, which I think is the vast majority of posters here.

I was expecting to go through and realize that in the years since customization, I've gotten used to the new looks and the old basic pets would look drab by comparison, and I would discover that I really did like customization after all. I think I remember holding myself to brutal honesty when I voted, and I remember for sure that I liked the new draik and peophin better than the old, and still do, but beyond that I don't really remember exactly how I felt about the pets two years ago. I found that for the most part I still prefer the old pets, and I am sure that was true before. The new ones still seem bland as a whole compared to the old, more dynamically posed pets. A little bit of shading and sprucing up doesn't make a boring pose more interesting, and I still prefer the old art because of it.

But a basic pet now to a basic pet then is comparing apples and oranges. Now, more than two years deep into customization, nearly every basic pet has some manner of clothes on it, so the staid boring pose is merely a prop for much more dynamic (and better drawn) background images, trinkets, clothes, and items. NC mall items take things to another level completely. It's more like this to this:



It's just too different to call it. There is a reason I only have unconverted pets on my main account, but I'm glad that I can still play the site the way I like it and others can play it their way.

I think a lot of the mystique for newer users with UC pets is not basic at all, but rather the rarity and difficulty of obtaining them now that makes them more valuable.