[TF2] [Art] Cosmetic paint color corrections/improvements

[MeatwadMeatwad]

The cosmetic item paint colors have been pretty contentious in the community for how some of them stand out so much from rest of the game's coloration. Adjusting these would be a long overdue change that would alleviate some of this game's mistakes that have haunted it for so long. Below are the paints in question, and possible ways they could be corrected with suggested color codes in RGB notation. The given examples are simply suggestions and are more of a way to provide a reference point rather than a definitive guideline.

A bitter taste of defeat and lime: Why? Extremely bright and out of place

• Reduce saturation, shift toward a chartreuse hue. More in-line with some appearances of some grass textures while still passing as a lime color
• Suggested: 85, 150, 55

Pink as hell: Why? Extremely bright and out of place

• Adapt into a team paint, reduce saturation. (Could use a name change in this case) More akin to the colors of cotton candy and the balloonicorn
• Pink is for red, and the blu version would be a light teal/blue
• Suggested: (RED) 225, 140, 180 | (BLU) 140, 180, 225

An Extraordinary abundance of tinge: Why? Again, extremely bright though not as egregious as the previous examples.

• Just make it a tad darker.
• Suggested: 190, 190, 190

A distinctive lack of hue: Why? Far too dark to appear good on most cosmetics. Most often ends up stripping away details and subtle shading from the affected paint regions when applied. It being a dark grey would still make it appear black, without causing the issues. Think After Eight without the subtle hue.

• Make it lighter
• Suggested: 40, 40, 40

A color similar to slate: Why? Very biased toward BLU team, becoming very obviously inappropriate for red team.

• Adapt into team color, keep blu team as its current color
• Suggested Red Team Color: 89, 49, 49
• (ALTERNATIVE), can be adapted to a blueish-green instead
• Suggested Alternative: 35, 100, 70

Because some of these paints were originally made to be more expensive because of their saturation, it would only be appropriate to reduce or adapt the price depending on the change. For team colors, the price would remain the same. For everything else adapt it to be the same price as standard paints like brown and whatever else in in that lower price level.

[MeatwadMeatwad]

Ignore the close. That was a mistake. What I meant to say was that I realized the pink as hell team color alternative I proposed is probably bright and realistically should be darker, where its highest RGB value shouldn't exceed 200.

[renimg]

Valve won't update paints because people would be very upset to lose items that they paid for, so previously applied versions would probably be allowed to stay. And if they're allowed to stay then there's the issue of paying for an item that could give you an advantage (like the full slate pyro that fucks with team recognition), they could stop dropping those colors, but then the ones that exist will again just be a "pay for an advantage" situation. This is probably why valve hasn't added any new paint colors since After Eight and Mann's Mint, because there are serious flaws with trying to change these paints up.

While the paints do have issues, especially slate and salmon, They're an issue that will never be solved without making someone upset in some way.

Your lime example is also indistinguishable from Indubitably Green

Why not go further? Yellow is a blue team color, orange is a red team color. Why not change Australium Gold and Mann Co. Orange?

[MeatwadMeatwad]

This isn't the paints getting removed. But rather just them getting updated to have a different color. It's just changing some numbers and that's literally the extent of it. And yeah the lime is too close to that green. Should probably be an in between of indubitably green and drably olive instead. Australium gold and orange could just be turned into cream spirit. Here's more of what I intended for lime to look like. And I suppose I'll chuck in a salmon rework as well. Everyone uses it as exclusively a skin tone paint, so might as well lean into that at the time of reducing the red bias. Two birds one stone and all that.

[renimg]

This isn't the paints getting removed. But rather just them getting updated to have a different color. It's just changing some numbers and that's literally the extent of it.

What about the items that are already applied? people paid money for this specific look, if it changed and they lost the item they paid money for, people would be pissed.

[MeatwadMeatwad]

They don't lose the item. Just the existing color just changes. It would definitely piss people off for sure, but there isn't a better way to fix the paints. The only other alternative is retaining the pre-existing applied colors which effectively means nothing changed. This specific method would just inconvenience people and make the economy even more wonky.