Why I critique things the way I do: An Explanation.

[Velen]

For a lot of people. I am known for sometimes giving very harsh, heated critiques. Which I have done several times in the past. I often get negative responses from people for this. I think it's time for an explanation of why I give such harsh critiques. It's not out of spite, misplaced rage, directing my rage at someone, or any other manner of venting. It's because of how I view the mods on this site.

When I look at a mod. I look at is as if I were a game developer myself, the head of a development team. The head of a team of people who are making a commercial game. A lot of you think of this as taking things too seriously, and some of you even might go as far as to say I need to "get a life"...Guess what? With some of the stuff I see on the Vault sometimes, I feel I'm too lenient with a lot of you, and only hold back from saying anything cause I know I'll most likely get a negative response on it. Why bother then?

-because -like it or not- you're learning skills that could lead to a career in the gaming industry, even if you only mean it to be a hobby, it doesn't change the fact you're learning skills that could better prepare you for a career in that field if you were ever to seek it. That is why I am often so harsh. Cause based on the models in most video games I see that come out today. I can see pretty well what developers would expect of their development teams.

I don't expect people to exactly make professional quality work, but I do expect it to be good, and I do expect people to try to be good about taking feedback. Cause if you were to take up a job in a development studio as a modeler, artist, texture artist, animator, etc, you would be getting a lot of it, and sometimes it will be very harsh or blunt, depending on how you perform. What all modders should strive for is to make their works look like they belong in the final game, model-wise, rigging-wise, everything.

Why? It's simple, because it looks the best aesthetically, makes for a natural-looking mod, and makes your works look even better.

You might say things like "I don't do this for the downloads" or "I don't care about downloads", assuming downloads are what I care about when it comes to hacking.

That's the farthest thing from my mind. What I want out of people is good looking hacks. That's all I want, and that's all I'll ever want of people who make mods on here.

[LC-DDM]

inb4 noobs ignore the wall of text and belittle you for wanting quality in a Vault riddled with [censored]ty OCs and poorly rigged models.

Except... y'know, you're right, and [censored]es can't handle the truth.

[SJS]

I'll start off with some words of wisdom - Sometimes, no matter how much something tears at you, you just have to keep your damn mouth shut.

I always believed that a person's best critic is themself. Everyone knows their own skills and limits. Some have the drive to try new things and better themselves, while others would rather stay in their comfort zone. Portrait making really helped me get out of my comfort zone and expand my talents. And I did so at my own pace... that is without someone playing pretend game developer on my back.

Here's a great idea, why not take all your wisdom and apply it? Open 3DS Max and rig something. Make a model. Anything. Just become a model importer yourself. You might even have fun doing it, which is truly the point of it all. Maybe then people would be able to take your critiques to heart.

[StarWaffle]

Some people really do think of this as a hobby though. Like strictly a hobby. Something they do for themselves to have fun.

I would never ever in a million years want to work as a character modeler/texturer/animator or literally anything that has to do with video games in my future.

Video games and everything that goes along with it, to me, is not something you should get paid to do. Because it would then become a JOB and no longer a hobby.

why would anyone ever want to make their hobby, their one thing they can do to relax, their passtime, their thing they do when not at their JOB into a JOB. I guess a lot of people would argue "BUT YOU CAN MAKE MONEY DOING WHAT YOU LOVE" but to me if I make money off of it, it wouldn't be fun anymore. I do these things because I don't have to do them. I share what I make with random people on the internet and if they like it, that's cool too.

I shouldn't have to feel like I owe it to anyone to make things better, so long as I am happy with what I made.

and for someone to come in and tell me what I do in my free time is bad or unworthy to be shown to the public, is a little insane.


lol I tell people their stuff is bad all the time though so I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite =D

[Albafika]

When I read the title on the Forum Index, I knew it was Velen. lol

why would anyone ever want to make their hobby, their one thing they can do to relax, their passtime, their thing they do when not at their JOB into a JOB. I guess a lot of people would argue "BUT YOU CAN MAKE MONEY DOING WHAT YOU LOVE" but to me if I make money off of it, it wouldn't be fun anymore. I do these things because I don't have to do them. I share what I make with random people on the internet and if they like it, that's cool too.

I shouldn't have to feel like I owe it to anyone to make things better, so long as I am happy with what I made.

Easy. If you like programming, and you can get paid for doing so, why spend 4 years studying something you dislike to live off it all your life than actually do what you love? To be good at something, you have to like it, as well.

[BlueBrain]

velen, please, start trying to rig/import something, after that, as star said, people will probably take ur critique a bit less.. u know, how they take it, also, there are a loooooot of ways to say things, you can say the exact same thing without hurting people, and that's your real problem when "expressing your opinion", you have absolutely no right to humiliate, insult, and offend people for something they do as a hobby

[Velen]

inb4 noobs ignore the wall of text and belittle you for wanting quality in a Vault riddled with [censored]ty OCs and poorly rigged models.

Except... y'know, you're right, and [censored]es can't handle the truth.

Though you'd probably right in a lot of cases LC, that's not the case here, I think...So far.

Here's a great idea, why not take all your wisdom and apply it? Open 3DS Max and rig something. Make a model. Anything. Just become a model importer yourself. You might even have fun doing it, which is truly the point of it all. Maybe then people would be able to take your critiques to heart.

(I did read the rest of your post, I just truncated to the part I felt I would be best to answer)
(Spoilered for length.)

Here's the problem: At this moment, I have no desire to be a model importer, nor any desire to make my own models. I know nothing of 3DSMAX and at the moment, don't have it installed. I have it sitting in my downloads folder along with the keygen information I saved if I ever decide to.

Here's something to consider: I run everything on a Macbook Pro 13" -a now outdated one- with Parallels allowing me to use Windows on the same machine. The point of me mentioning that? My computer doesn't have nearly as much power or memory as a desktop does, or even as much as a newer Mackbook, and considering that Parallels -even at maximum- doesn't have all that much memory allocated to it when it's active (only about 3052MB last I checked), my current set-up is not ideal for modeling anyway.

I find textures more fun to do than the idea of messing around with a model anyway... I did that once, and was frustrated by it, and what was when I wanted to make a Queen Peach idea with a billowed out skirt similar to what Rachel Alucard has as part of her attire.

Even if you're not a model importer, or a do any kind of rigging. You don't need to be either of those things in order to tell when something is wrong. I've made mistakes by publicly giving my harsh reviews several times in the past, and I need to make a change to that and keep up to date.

-and as you can tell from Pik's Masked Man, and Toon Zelda: the best kind of hacks are the ones that look like they belong in the game, as if they could've been made by Nintendo themselves. That is something the vault seriously lacks right now, and needs more of. Besides. In a way. We're all "playing pretend game developer" anyway, by making these mods. The Hacking teams are a perfect example of this, as well as the collaborators who help each other here on this site: these are local examples of how an actual development team works. We have modelers, texture artists, musicians, and programmers, all of whom would part of a development process for a commercial game, and while we're all doing it as a hobby, it doesn't change that fact.

Some people really do think of this as a hobby though. Like strictly a hobby. Something they do for themselves to have fun.

I would never ever in a million years want to work as a character modeler/texturer/animator or literally anything that has to do with video games in my future.

Video games and everything that goes along with it, to me, is not something you should get paid to do. Because it would then become a JOB and no longer a hobby.

why would anyone ever want to make their hobby, their one thing they can do to relax, their passtime, their thing they do when not at their JOB into a JOB. I guess a lot of people would argue "BUT YOU CAN MAKE MONEY DOING WHAT YOU LOVE" but to me if I make money off of it, it wouldn't be fun anymore. I do these things because I don't have to do them. I share what I make with random people on the internet and if they like it, that's cool too.

I shouldn't have to feel like I owe it to anyone to make things better, so long as I am happy with what I made.

and for someone to come in and tell me what I do in my free time is bad or unworthy to be shown to the public, is a little insane.


lol I tell people their stuff is bad all the time though so I guess I'm a bit of a hypocrite =D

I understand, and that's your right.

lol At that last part. xD

@Joke: I don't need you to tell me what people have basically already said to me, Joke. I'm going to work toward giving reviews more privately from now on.

[SJS]

And why should your ideals of quality be pushed upon everyone else?

[zutox]

While I do agree that having other suggest positive changes for their models or other hacks, not everything you see as good is good for everyone else.
Take the fact that you want to see a character that fits in naturally in brawl, that it was there from before. You know, brawlified.
I on the other hand want my characters to look as different as possible, to make my brawl a splatter of different graphics and characters that really really stands out from everything else in the game.
That is what I like to see because i think that was half the point with brawl mods.
Your own wonder brawl.

So I say that while giving critique is good, better be sure to add in: "In my personal opinion"   

[LC-DDM]

But is it really his opinion, though? I mean, have you seen KTH's [censored]? It's all rushed. It's like he doesn't give a [censored]. The model could T-pose all the time and he would still probably release it because "LOL NEW CHARACTER DOWNLOAD PLZ".

[??_?]

There isn't anything wrong with constructive criticism.  There is, however, a problem when you post stuff like this.  Just don't be mean. Really. It's that easy.  There's always going to be low quality stuff around, and everyone is 100% against any other method of organizing content on the vault for one void reason or another, so you just have to deal with it without being an [censored]. By all means, tell them what they can do better, point them to a tutorial.

I don't really feel the need to say any more here, because I've already said it there.

[Segtendo]

By looking at the last few posts, I've been wondering: why are you brushing off other peoples' suggestions? Do they not matter to you?

[TailsxPokemonxBrawler222]

But is it really his opinion, though? I mean, have you seen KTH's [censored]? It's all rushed. It's like he doesn't give a [censored]. The model could T-pose all the time and he would still probably release it because "LOL NEW CHARACTER DOWNLOAD PLZ".

um well first that never happens second his hacks are so much better than urs its unbelievable why would u post something like that on a thread about a topic like this?

[Pik]

(First off, I'm on my phone, so it'll be hard for me to type huge paragraphs. I just wanna make a few points.)

As an artist, it's a very bad thing to just stay in your comfort zone and not try to improve. As a modder, I think the priority is to make mods for other people's entertainment- therefore, you should try your best, right? You want other people to have fun with your stuff. Go that extra mile, listen to feedback.

Take the fact that you want to see a character that fits in naturally in brawl, that it was there from before. You know, brawlified.
I on the other hand want my characters to look as different as possible, to make my brawl a splatter of different graphics and characters that really really stands out from everything else in the game.
That is what I like to see because i think that was half the point with brawl mods.
Your own wonder brawl.

I'm quite against this concept- mixing models from other games with Brawl's is style mixing, and it's aestheticly clashing. Why would you want something to look out of place, deliberately? It's called consistancy and polish, broseph. Why do you think they made Toon link fit in with the other characters? Variety is good and all, but you don't do it by making things look like they're not supposed to be there. Harmomy is lost.

[LC-DDM]

um well first that never happens second his hacks are so much better than urs its unbelievable why would u post something like that on a thread about a topic like this?

BWEE BWEE RAGING FANBOY ALERT

On a more serious note... bull[censored] it never happens, EVERYONE who isn't a 12-year-old complains about the holes in the models, or how much poor rigging his models have. Or hell, the quality of the models altogether. Also, "oh his hacks are so much better than urs". Maybe so, but I don't release [censored] half-finished and deem it complete. And you wanna know why I posted what I did? It's because of idiots like you, who don't care about quality and think it's unfair when someone says the truth, or that maybe a thing or two could stand to be better. Maybe not at a critical point like Velen, but [censored], how many years has KTH had to be here? Why is he STILL doing the same mistakes?