How do you guys feel about the colored team lights and how they affect gameplay, both for aesthetic reasons as well as game performance? I hear a lot of people talk about how the colored lights cause framerate/lag issues, but have yet to see/test it for myself. Do the colored team lights ALWAYS cause negative issues when placed on the map, even bare ones, or only when it is placed in high volume areas such as a part of a forged map with a lot of objects placed in one spot? And what about those symmetrical maps made of gray chunks where everything just blends together? The only way to tell bases apart is using colored lights... but is it worth it if it affects gameplay negatively? I always thought that if a map was good enough it wouldn't need the help of colored team lights to help distinguish which side of the map you were on, as a good map has set pieces that blend into the next one seamlessly, with each set piece still maintaining its individuality. A good map should make it easy for the player to immediately understand where they are on the map at any given time, using the map geometry as indicators of their location, and in turn the locations of weapons/objectives/routes/etc, rather than having to resort to the gimmicks of the colored team lights. Let me share with you my train of thought which has lead me to make this post here today: > Forge 2.0 has new features to make forging easier. > With Forge 2.0 being easier to use, more people have made more maps faster. > More maps faster means more maps posted here at Forge Hub, most made without much thought. > The "Diamond In The Rough" maps, as usual, still appears periodically, but this time have to share screen space with countless other bad maps, more than ever. > These countless other bad maps all look the same, big gray blobs. > Forgers are making giant gray blobs, some floating over water with bridges and catwalks, some enclose the player in a big gray room with walls, catwalks, platforms, and various degrees of angles of gray. > In an effort to make their map stand out, everyone has inadvertently made all their maps looks the same. Big gray blob maps have taken over Forge Hub. > Map makers resort to colored team lights to help players distinguish which base is which, they're hardly used for practical aesthetics anymore. > The colored team lights cause framerate issues. Are they worth it?
Short Answer: Use them. Bungie uses color to disguish diffrent areas. Take guardian for example. It was easy to tell where you were because of blue and gold lighting. I hate bland maps. Sand box and now forgeworld suffer from too many same colored objects. Even changing object color helps very little.
In a serious map, i think they're very rarely worth it. It's better to find ways to incorporate objects with lots of color on them like the Platform XL, Strut, and Brace.