Will we eventually be moving towards better "battle damage" or "damaged state" artwork? The current "Lava-man" artwork leaves much to be desired. This comes to mind every time my character enters the damaged state. Versus proper looking Battle Damaged Armor. There's also the fact that the current "Lava-man" artwork totally removes all the great details and colors from your character. Players aren't going to want to see their awesome armor skins they bought off the store and all their bling being replaced by Lava-man. Personally if I had the choice of no artwork effect or the current effect, I'd choose NO Lavaman effect, just leave my armor looking the same please.
I always hoped that this effect would just be a temporary placeholder. It´s good to bring this up and maybe get an answer from the Devs about their plans with it. I love the looks of the "proper looking battle damaged armour" you posted!
Hopefully it is temporary. At the moment, it's reminiscent of a lazy photoshop job pasted all over your character.
i think they safe up the good battle dmg look for cosmetic options i think they should just make some big cracks over all armor parts to show armor is broken not that many small cracks! btw! does anyone have an ingame pic of the current dmg model?
Instead of changing the entire color scheme of our armor(Black cooling magma crust), just have the cracks(orange lava) contrast to our armor color. The artwork team has put a lot of time and effort into these amazing armor sets, why hide all of that great artwork and all the small details in under the "Lava-man" black and orange nightmare? If we have dark or light colored armor, change the orange lava effects to a contrasting light or dark color. So for Black Legion, the cracks should be silver, for Imperial Fists, the cracks should be black. I do this all the time with my miniatures, it's not rocket science. We don't need to "reskin" the entire model to be black with orange, liquid hot magma in the cracks. Just paint the cracks a contrasting color according to the Chapter color scheme.
I would prefer if the shield prevented armor from being damaged, but once that is down, bolts can penetrate and show the penetration through the armor. I don't like having a constant visual indicator that my shield is down; just a quick yet noticeable effect that says "Woah, shield down" and then your armor starts getting bullet holes or plasma/melta burns.
I know its going to change. But I just dont see the point in it. Its not something that players will really care about. If its just some small crack, dust and blood textures, then yeah whatevs, details. But covering the whole model in shit is kinda annoying.
The current damage model has way too many cracks. bE should significantly reduce the number of breaks but make them thick and noticable, with sparking blue power conduits for Imperials, red/orange for Chaos. Eldar could use the more heavily cracked model, giving it a sort of broken glass-like appearance. Ork Armor could get holes/warping and rust/lose color.
Make plates of fall off the armor each time we take damage until were in undies and instantly die to anything.
