Just going to flat out say it: The art assets in this game are not up to quality

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crazyfingers619 wrote:

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ongZ wrote:

Can you give some examples of games that has better aesthetics? I really like how PoE looks, of course it can always be improved, but I like the direction it's going. Maybe you could show me how it should be done right.

Say what you want about the core game of diablo 3, the artwork was some of the best there has ever been in a game:



I'll probably recieve some hate for this, but truly the visuals in D3 are phenominal and incredibly well executed. Painterly, Vibrant, and yet still gritty.

LOL you call that artwork?

Looks like a Blizzard Employee took Woiablo Class 101 to paint that

The screenshot he edited was a part of Mud Flats where the environment begins to transition to the dank, watery cave. If you look at the rest of Mud Flats, the walls are normally darker to begin with, and shadows are cast from the walls that further define the areas.

The flora that is supposed to break up the transition between the wall and ground actually draws attention to the division instead. Plus since that area is a part where it's transitioning to a watery stone cave, flora doesn't make sense to be placed there.

Add me to the people that likes that PoE looks real, since so many other WRPGs are going the more cartoony/fantasy art route. It makes areas like Lunaris 3 all the more disturbing.

Also, since the whole game is so zoomed out, I can see why they didn't bother to give much personality to the characters' models since it is difficult to see it and sometimes their heads are covered by helmets as well.

I can summon up this thread in 2 pictures.


This is good
Magiccard Artwork


And this is shit
WoW card Artwork (aka blizzard)



But in all seriousness here.

crazyfingers619 behavior is assholish.

A game is an Artwork. Do you go to an artist and tell him how to paint his painting?
You can point out flaws or dislike it.
But would you go to Albrecht Dürer and tell him his art should look more like Van Gogh?

What you do is force your own personal taste on everyone else. Wtf this is entitlement?

I don't like how Torchlight looks; but do I go to their forum and tell them they should look more like Game X?


My last words are these 2 images from games I think look fantastic and are as well amazing games.

Dark Souls




Shadow of the Colossus



Oh shit everything is brown, grey greenish... so "ugly"

This game is really not deserving any "the art is terribad" threads.
It might come apart in some cases because it has a lot of varying detail while the competition goes for lowres/poly as a complete style. PoE has some very low poly objects with high Res textures and that causes some disparity but other than that, I can't find many faults.

-Floor/Wall intersection is better than in most games I know, no need for flora to hide it. When sand meets a rock wall, there's gonna be a strict divide, that's nature.
-The color palette is fine, the game exudes a feeling of dread, having a carribean island paradise wouldn't cut it.
-The non-noisy part in that paintover actually looks like a hole in the ground and irritates my brain as it looks for any indication of what that flat surface might be.
-I agree on more expressive armor but there are already some good examples like Sun Leather or the Holy Chainmail or armor and armor/eva helmets. Pure eva hats need a serious rework though or an option to hide them, love the pixie haircut of rangers. Also pants, give them to us.
-I'm usually no fan of too much specular and it's overused in many games to comical and detrimental effect. In PoE I think it's spot on. Especially Act I happens in damp or wet places where rocks would be covered by seaspray or caves just never dry out. Later in the golden temples, everything glistens and shines, a bit too much in parts (like the blood that indeed looks a bit plasticy when not in fine splatter) but the first time I got to the gemling queen, I zoomed in on the tilework of her throneroom and was in awe of the technical and artistic style of her whole throne room. Generally, the decadence meets torture theme works quite well to evoke emotions in me. It might be mostly because of the holocaust like elements towards the end but it certainly makes me want to kill piety a lot more. The Immersion is great.
-I really don't think that Dota 2 undead is any good. It's a generic mixup of tired cliche parts, the ribcage looks simply discolored and I can't figure out if it's supposed to be shadow or nothing at all or if it's blackened for some other reason. The head looks like it got into a vice and compressed until a comical small birdhead remained. Surely not a good fit for PoE. The zombies and Miscreations in PoE all tell a tale, you can see what happened to them, what has been done to them. When you look closely you can't help but express pity with them. The swamp zombies look really sick or if moss and fungi grow on them. The Dota guy has some clipping issue and some other not exactly great parts like the fugly toes and somehow levitating leather bands around his shins. Pretty much the only part I like about it are the lower arms and hands, nicely modeled and painted but again, generic and not fitting the PoE style.

I generally get the expression that OP indeed has a problem with the style of this game rather than with the overall quality and has his judgement clouded by playing too many cartoonish games. I love a lot of WoW's art and defended it through the years, I enjoy Torchlight I+II a lot but this is a completely different style and even without considering how a lot of things were done by single persons (hooray for small teams, less overhead and bullcrap, more good ideas actually getting implemented) there are a lot of artistic and technical acomplishments in this game I admire. I'll do my own "What I love about PoE and what's not that great in my opinion" thread at some point with screenshots but right now I want to get back to playing it. :)

I'm going to go insane if I spend much more time in this thread. As I stated earlier I got off my chest what I felt I had to. It's fantastic you guys have such a passion for this game and feel the need to defend it so vehemently, it goes a long way to show how great this game is.

Hopefully this feedback isn't a total waste of time and something good comes of this critique one way or another,

PEACE!

Oh and thanks for the personal reply Russel! Really cool of you guys to be so personable even with threads like this going on. Lone druid's a badass but I can't stand playing badass old men in video games for some reason, gyrocopter's cool though! (why the hell did i roll a Templar?)

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crazyfingers619 wrote:

I'm going to go insane if I spend much more time in this thread. As I stated earlier I got off my chest what I felt I had to. It's fantastic you guys have such a passion for this game and feel the need to defend it so vehemently, it goes a long way to show how great this game is.

Hopefully this feedback isn't a total waste of time and something good comes of this critique one way or another,

PEACE!

Oh and thanks for the personal reply Russel! Really cool of you guys to be so personable even with threads like this going on. Lone druid's a badass but I can't stand playing badass old men in video games for some reason, gyrocopter's cool though! (why the hell did i roll a Templar?)

You know what... in honor of a bickering thread turned to respectful I think the players of Path of Exile deserve...

*Creates a thread to complain about POE artwork/Artstyle.*
*Later makes a comparison to D3 as being something to strive for.*
*Then repaints a scene with garish cartoon coloring and references a cartoon image from DOTA*

Way to completely nullify your argument. Well done.

Personally I am utterly sick to death how the industry has DEGENERATED into their horrible western art styles. From what I can only imagine is a cynical grab at spending less money and resources on art and enable the common idiot to run any game on his god damned microwave. (or possible conversion to a console)

Diablo 3 looks horrible. (you obviously must be forgetting how many people hated it when the first screens where releaed)

Torchlight 2 looks horrible.
DOTA and LOL both look god awful.

I applaud GGG for taking this path. This game although not without it's art flaws is 100 times more aesthetically pleasing to me than the above titles. I want to be immersed in a video game and that particular style kills my immersion.

I want to play a video game not a crappy watercolor painting.

If anything my only real complaint about POE is that the animation especially on hitstun and such needs a bit of work. Also I hope they can get performance to a point where the perspective can be modified with a bit more tilt. D3 did get these things right (and only these)

A real physics engine would be nice too...

The art direction however is mostly fantastic, the underground environments especially.

If you want to show off dark souls artwork, you should really be using this image instead

The art design in this game truly is horrid. If the people in charge of art in this game can't see the problem, then a new art director is needed.

If you want to see a game with an excellent use of color and contrast look at Titan Quest. They accomplish a lot more visibly appealing and interesting environments and models with a lot less polies. And they don't have to go over stylized like D3 or TL to do it. D2 is aesthetically a blend of D2 and TQ but without their eye for color or contrast. Go back and look at D2, they were very careful not to have mobs that blend into their environments and there's a good reason for that.

All I know is that when I look at POE I just think it looks terrible and only works to hurt the game and the ability to attract the most players possible. And clearly many people feel the same way.

I never looked at D2 and said, wow this looks like crap or damn I can't see where the enemies are because everything just melds together because of a limited palette. The characters blend into the floors which blend into the walls which blend into summoned mobs.

This game truly needs new art direction that can rework the art assets from top to bottom and help this game shine.

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FrodoFraggins wrote:

The art design in this game truly is horrid. If the people in charge of art in this game can't see the problem, then a new art director is needed.

If you want to see a game with an excellent use of color and contrast look at Titan Quest. They accomplish a lot more visibly appealing and interesting environments and models with a lot less polies. And they don't have to go over stylized like D3 or TL to do it. D2 is aesthetically a blend of D2 and TQ but without their eye for color or contrast. Go back and look at D2, they were very careful not to have mobs that blend into their environments and there's a good reason for that.

All I know is that when I look at POE I just think it looks terrible and only works to hurt the game and the ability to attract the most players possible. And clearly many people feel the same way.

I never looked at D2 and said, wow this looks like crap or damn I can't see where the enemies are because everything just melds together because of a limited palette. The characters blend into the floors which blend into the walls which blend into summoned mobs.

This game truly needs new art direction that can rework the art assets from top to bottom and help this game shine.

I disagree, art-work is fine, graphics look fine to me, you expect to much from a indie game developer.

I NEVER looked at PATH OF EXILE AND SAID "WOW this looks like crap! or damn I can't see where the enemies are".


So what's your point? I've been playing diablo longer than you've been alive.. I once never thought the art-work on POE was bad. It looks fine and quite frankly it feels more "realistic", instead of all that cartoon shit you see from diablo 3 and torchlight clones.


And AFAIK GGG wasn't developed by a multi million dollar company? Ever heard of a indie game developer making a game as good as d2? It's called POE.

End of story.

Now move alone, nit-picking "art" trolls, your ignorance is insane.

Showing screenshot's of the Marauder showing his model'd feet are 2cm offplace? Really? Grow up...