Art Feedback [Megathread]
Models, animations, sounds, visual effects and particles, textures, environment, icons - it all goes here! In addition to how it feels, also let us know how our art adds to or detracts from gameplay.
When providing feedback, please use the following format:
- X happened
- It made me feel Y (or I’d like to feel Y)
- (optional) Here’s a suggestion to improve it
Comments
I was playing Vela and engagin in some pretty intense micro (around 150 apm) when Vela's walk animation paused. She continued moving and the game was functionally fine, but I felt removed from the game watching Vela slide across the battlefield.
There's not many assets in the game right now in pre-Alpha stage, are there? I was under the impression that these tests were more to test the servers, mechanics and to find bugs before moving on to the next stage of testing. The art assets so far I find to be bland and uninteresting, but the style of the heroes and unit design seems like it has potential. I am excited to see where the game progresses with this, for right now it is really the only totally unfinished part of the game.
Correct. The current map you're playing has no art, except for the Squads themselves (hero and units)
An arted map will be playable on the second weekend. So make sure to come back and give us feedback about it after that
Hello!
Regarding the 'ultimate' icon. I realize that it unlocks at level 6, but until then, you can't find it anywhere. Generally, it's much better to grey out an icon that is not selectable in the current context (Such as being below level 6) than it is to simply remove it. New players that might not watch a tutorial can easily be confused by this. I know a tutorial can correct their knowledge, but RTFM exists because people skip things they shouldn't.
This isn't new
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/371921/should-unauthorized-actions-in-the-ui-be-hidden-disabled-or-result-in-an-error
but it is very important. In tvanfosson's answer, he mentions the users confusion when something "was there a minute ago", such as when you select your hero and see their ultimate, but later, just as the game starts, the ultimate is gone.
Me again...
In the loading screen, my bots picture loads (as does my own) but not the enemy bots (I played 2 games, same thing both times).
P.S. I know this is technically a double post, but since it's a separate issue, I think it's okay.
This is regarding the Howling Commando that Grath has access to.
The unit used its attack animation
it felt like it was a single target attack
Add some sort of indicator that it deals splash damage
I looked at the minimap.
I couldn't tell where my units were.
Differentiate between units and resources more clearly.
Some of the t1 unit models are a little small(Like Celestas wisps and Eris's sandstalkers), making them difficult for me to click individually or parse how many of them are in any given clump.
I want to go ahead and say that this is a really good point or to phrase more precisely:
When I saw this post, I felt like I should call special attention to it.
In the initial few games I was confused as to who or what was a hero and what was simply a T3 unit. Some of the T3 units have more health (double! half the time) and look larger and more intimidating than the actual hero itself. This can be applied to some T2 units as well.
There is no special indication for the main hero to differentiate itself other than knowing what they look like (which may be a problem for new players or if you add skins) or the fact that there is only one of them (but some T3 are limited to a max 2 and there may not be that many made).
Some characters have a much better time showing cause and effect than others (I did this and that happened). Eris has fantastic feedback for using abilities and the results where Vela has seemingly very little. Playing Vela I feel like I'm just trying to monitor tiny little health bars constantly instead of it being intuitive the damage I am doing making me feel really detached from the characters. I think it needs more visual effects to go with it, or amp up the currently existing ones ("crit", red dot sight, impact particles, sound effects).
I understand there’s a lot of placeholder art and sounds in game right now, but gathering gems feels unsatisfying. I want to want to be addicted to gemming. I’d like them to be shiny, valuable looking things that you want to fight over. A satisfying noise is also critical, like popping bubble wrap or something. Larger gems should feel more satisfying to pop.
I feel underwhelmed when I'm destroying the enemy nexus. I'm sure the ending of the game and victory screen are something you have already thought of. I would like to see a crumbling or more grandiose animation while beating on the nexus or damaging it to certain levels. Also, I would like to see the victory/defeat screen pan to the dead nexus (similar to LoL) while it explodes or crumbles, or whatever is fitting.
I wanted to start a tier 3 upgrade at an armory multiple times throughout my games, but the icons were all red every time I went to do it and assumed I couldn't afford them. I didn't realize until late in the second game that red didn't mean disabled -- it's just the color of the tier 3 upgrades!
Perhaps the tier 3 upgrade buttons could be a different color.
Following starcraft's UI, Tier 3 Upgrades are all red and unavailable upgrades are greyed out.
I think they just need to make unavailable upgrades more obvious (greyed out)
Important UI Problems
more to come...
Thanks for all of the great feedback, guys! The majority of the feedback here seems to be UI related, and we fully intend to do a complete UI overhaul further down the line. We will make sure to refer to this thread when the time comes. Please keep the feedback coming!
As far as the rest of the art is concerned: the hero and unit models are a great indication of where we're taking the art direction. The environment art during this weekend's playtest is entirely placeholder. Make sure to join us again next weekend where we will be demoing a map with art that actually represents the look we're aiming for!
Hey
The music is amazing. Wherever you got that, get more! (but seriously, you should have more than one track!)
That is all
I agree with this wholeheartedly. Although I prefer the term "bedazzling" over gemming.
I'm not sure if this feedback is feedback on "art" per se, but...
Thematically, neutral weapons feel really weird (no problem with them mechanic wise). You have a sniper, a magical tree, a fire demon, and they all sorta just summon ion cannons and cubes. Even if the models were more polished/slightly changed, every neutral weapon being exactly the same is a big disconnect from the individual and unique "squad" feel that each squad should have.
I don't have any great solutions for the weirdness that I'm describing... I suppose something like making each squad's cannon/cube have their own unique model would do the trick, but that could be both confusing and probably too much work.
-There is multiple instances of bigger fights I can't tell the health of my or the opponents units.
-It is very frustrating to just have to guess based on attacks how close to death units are
-A suggestion to fix this would either make health bars more bright, on-top of units, and larger. I know clutter is a concern but currently I have a hard time making decisions to fight or not because I can not easily tell the state of my army.
I saw the Glacial Rangers waddling around. Their beaver tails made me happy.
While playing a game I noticed that Celesta's purifiers sometime lost their walking animation.
I know that the Glacial Rangers aren't actually beavers, but in my mind they are. I call them my Justice Beavers. Their appearance continues to make me happy. I also enjoy Ryme's little pistol twirl.
gorto005: Animation weirdness is a known issue and will certainly be addressed. Thanks for pointing that out!!
Alos: Neutral weapon models are all super placeholder for the moment. Fear not! Once the game design team is happy with their implementation the art team will do a pass to bring them up to the standards of the rest of our units!
Sockso: Showed Justin your comment. He's the artist that modeled and textured that unit (among many others). If he ever starts a band, it will be called Justin's Justice Beavers.
GentleSaint: Thanks for the feedback. All helpful stuff that we can reference when we get to the UI overhaul!
Thanks again for all of the feedback, guys! Keep it coming!
I know that a lot of what's in the game art wise is placeholder. But I'd like to shout out to the Aquadillo cannon ball animation. So satisfying every time. Some splashy/crunchy sound design on it and we're really talking.
I'd also like to shout out to the majestic and beautiful Windray.
During an engagement, I have difficulty differentiating between the health bar, and the skill cool down bar.
I'd like an quicker and easier way to tell them apart. Maybe a little space between the two bars or an empty outline for empty skill bars?
Some Art Map feedback real quick:
I absolutely love both the color scheme and art style chosen for the Art Map. The current character models mesh very well with the cartoony style of the foliage and terrain. Makes the models make a lot more sense than just on the grey tile of the Gameplay Map. The colors of the models and selection rings also stand out super well against the bright colors the Art Map uses, which makes picking out what is happening in larger battles much easier in my opinion. Also, something I just noticed while looking around the map while writing this post, the color scheme looks great under fog of war as well! All the colors fade nicely when dimmed, while still conveying the terrain clearly.
Super duper awesome work!
Don't have much time right now but I wanted to echo two sentiments and reinforce them, the first being the confusion between a hero and a T3 unit - even having multiple plays under my belt, I still face indecision at times in the heat of battle. It causes me to both second guess myself as well as enjoy the battle a little less when I feel I'm lacking basic information.
And this is the second point - whether the bars are different colors, on different sides of the unit, something - I feel like there needs to be a differentiator. Several times in the heat of battle the skill cooldown bar jumped up on a low-health unit and I thought "Oh, someone healed me!"...ha, nope!
First impressions of Art Map
I like the glows on the light pipe looking things around bases. It'd be neat if after planting an expansion, those pipes started glowing too, like it's activated and linked back to the main base.
I like the bright colors across the map. I also like the different themes across it. The sand abruptly transitioning in spots to grass gives it a slightly alien feel, which I take it is what you were going for. If the sand looked a little more like dirt patches in those areas it'd look a little more natural, which may not even be the goal, I'm just giving feedback
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The shadows are a little inconsistent. The ground transitioning from grass to sand gives it a look like there is some depth to it in spots. In another area there are some nicely wiggling bushes near sand with no shadow which seem like they would be higher. Personally I don't mind a lack of shadows if I don't feel like there is a specific substantial point of light somewhere (unless the shadow is showing a height difference, that's always nice).
It's a little hard to tell that there's a height difference on the expansions on the sides. Some more shadow at the bottom of the cliff may help with that.
The waterfall/ripples are beautiful. The floating blocks are cool. The square tree bush things have a more alien look to them than the orange leaf ones to me for whatever reason. The animated map mechanic is cool. Overall I really like each aspect of the map and feel like each style could probably make its own map and they'd all look great. If this were a finished map, I wouldn't bat an eye at any of my above "criticisms" either.
Unrelated to art, I like the different gem spawn pattern and different player spawn setup. The center map capture mechanic was interesting and makes me think that varying map mechanics are the way to go (Dota vs HotS, maybe not to the extent of HotS but you get the general idea). The bots have some pathing issues with the different heights though. They'll walk at the cliff and back away quite a bit if you're attacking from there.
In general I'm a big fan of more colorful game art like this than say, Blistering Sands of Starcraft 2.
UPDATE after watching the Day9 AMA: With the idea of 3v3 on one map in mind, I would prefer my one map to look something more like this, especially if the zones were slightly different enough either in style or with geometrical features that they could be easily communicated in chat, e.g. "there's an open expansion in the dessert" or "I'll set up on the plateau."
I love the art styles of this game. My only criticism is that there is a distinct difference in the styles of the characters and the environment. Sure, this can be a good thin, such as varying the color palettes so that eyes are drawn to the characters and not environment.
However, the art styles are not cohesive. Characters are smooth and dark, such as Alder, but the environment (on the art map) is colorful, cubic, and "technified." I much prefer the technified styles, which also matches the UI.