lotuss79 said:Are you freeking serious with this?
Looks like a mobile game targeting pre-teens with their parents credit card.
At first i thought they might WoW this thing up too much, but they went straight to Hello Kitty: Rise of the Fallen.
Cash shop is right around the corner.
You sure Bait and Switched me good though, so congrats on that.
By Pantheon. I have no "constructive criticism" for you. You're too far gone.
I also find this way to colorful. What happened to the nice earth tones?
NeoSimplex said:lotuss79 said:Just have to say the animations stood out to me almost as much as the bland lack of texture on the graphics themselves.
Gotta dissagree. The running animation that they showed off looks very choppy and unnatural. (wolves moving around looked fluid, but still the art style is whats typically seen in content geared towards 1-5 year olds, not even the teenage gamers they want to target now)
The wolf animations are from the Unity asset store from someone who did all the placeholder animals they were using in prior videos. It makes sense for them to just reskin the original rigs, but something like the griffon or humans are probably better representations of the quality we can expect for anything in-house.
I'm of the opinion we can't trust any of what they are showing us.
I've heard many people expressing fear that this Art change will only attract toxic children to the game. And the more I read of this thread the more I realize that it already seems to be working... or at least it's turning many of Us into the feared toxic children. Perhaps we as a community should take some moments to ponder if the words we are about to type are not proving that we are indeed the thing which we fear.
I am not referring to those who are simply expressing their honest opinions on the art. I just want people to take the time to articulate their feelings without adding hate or negativity.
The new art looks really, really bad. You can't go and pull a switcheroo like this and make it look like WoW and expect me to play this game. If you are having problems with system performance etc. then at the very least you need to rethink the color scheme. Will this change allow you to get this game into Alpha and Beta in the next year? That's the only way I could even begin to excuse this.
I've been here long enough to have a $100 Knight's Pledge (alpha access I think?) that was discontinued a while ago. Check in every now again. Just saw the video.
Showing off armor/weapons/characters loses most of its appeal now. And the running animation - yiikes. Sorry. The water, the bright building -- hmm. Can VR really make a lot of money selling this to younger people?
Ezrael said:Ashreon said:Savanja said:lotuss79 said:This just can't be the case.
You could have always simplified the graphics while retaining a "realism" style.
This shift to a cartoony style is a fundamental imaging change thats designed to appeal to a "wider demographic".
The producers letter announcing this change stated so very clearly.
For your reading enjoyment, a quote from the Producer's Letter stating the why:
We have opted to shift our in-game art direction to address several needs:
Performance – We have run into difficulty with the former art performing well on even the beefiest of machines. We have made progress on this front but ultimately determined we could get better gains by a shift in style.
Speed of Development – The shift speeds up the art pipeline substantially. What would sometimes take weeks now can take days, or in some cases, hours.
Sustainability – With the new art direction, we feel confident we can achieve our long-term goals with an indie-sized development team. It is not only faster, but more affordable.
Marketability – One of the top comments we routinely receive from the public is how the game looks old or unappealing. This is an opportunity to reach a broader, more contemporary audience.
It was not just a matter of turning down the realism. 3D art rendering is very intensive, time-consuming, and resource-hoarding. If we had tons of funding and a huge staff of 3D artists, then realism would have been the way to go. We don't.
I'm sorry, but being a game developer myself and working for an actual successful company. I can tell that the drivel you just quoted is a lie.
It is PR speak for "we dug ourselves into a hole and now we don't know how to get out of it". I also know why you dug yourself into a hole that you can no longer find a way out of - because you spend so much damn time fiddling with your thumbs.
There has been zero planning when it concerns this project. Zero. You didn't even have your pipeline tools in place until a good year or two ago and now, your funds are definitely also on the low side and you are panicking and boy am I glad young software engineer student me did not pledge a lot of money, but had the foresight to say: No, I want actual results.
I mean for the love of all.. Most of those models and their animations are something a first year Animator/3D Model student produces.. Effing wings clipping through a Gryphon.. Embarrasing.
This is a very immature, naive and rude piece of feedback.
It's quite clear where you are on the Dunning-Kruger chart.
First of all, that's not how Dunning-Kruger works, one bit whatsoever, but mmkay. I guess it was your attempt of the day to seem insightful.
Second of all, truth hurts. Learn to deal with it. You don't get praise when you massively screw up. You get scolded.
Ziegfried said:The new art looks really, really bad. You can't go and pull a switcheroo like this and make it look like WoW and expect me to play this game. If you are having problems with system performance etc. then at the very least you need to rethink the color scheme. Will this change allow you to get this game into Alpha and Beta in the next year? That's the only way I could even begin to excuse this.
Let's not compare this to WoW.. WoW actually has some pretty nice stylized art - cartoon'ish? Maybe, but it is after all based on Warcraft 3. Unlike this Fortnite fiesta they've now dug themselves into.
Zaketh said:I also find this way to colorful. What happened to the nice earth tones?
Agreed. The amount of ovesaturated colors in the game is really distracting and unnatural. I really dislike the shift in tone of the game. I'm fine with their "handdrawn" approach as long as their art takes itself seriously. Also, some of the new trees look REALLY glossy and shiny in their New Art Screenshots (see pic with the fence/tents) Why? That's now how trees look.
Something I don't understand about the claim of the graphic change improving performance for older systems is how much effect this can really have. Aren't all the world assets client side? It's simply the player character's armo weapons that need to be transferred from the server, animations still need transferred no matter the art style.
Could the same performance gains be found by leaving world graphics simular to what we have need led to believe we would be getting and just tone down the character related graphics (that I was never impressed with anywa)?
edit: I'm suggesting a mix of sorts between realistic and the cartoons.
There is two things going on in my head about this:
I don't buy the argument of them doing this to speed up development either. It certainly does not speed up anything to redo allmost all the prior work. This is just sad. Nothing more I can add to this. Just sadness.
Well at least now we understand why VR did the art change. The art change is for 247 to try and monetize kids. VR wants the art the same between 247 and Pantheon to try and say they are continuing to develop Pantheon in some meaningful way.
I feel so disappointed. I’m dreading the 26th at this point.
Sorry I'm late to the news but... what the hell is going on lol.
I understand the art changes, even if I strongly dislike them but... the Cohh stream with assets and spotty lighting looked better than this Torchlight 1 update. A game which came out in 2009. All I can imagine is that beautiful underground fighter / thief area they showed off a couple years ago looking like a cartoonish mess. No one expected this game to look like Red Redemption 2, but we did not ask for this. The armor is too clean and those wolf eyes make this look like a game for my little sister.
WoW was cartoonish in its art style but creatures (and you) at least looked threatening. I'm screaming into the void with the rest of you but I have no friends to vent to for this game.
I am seriously beginning to doubt the team understands what we want out of Pantheon. (yes I still believed in them until the art showcase)
