Sylvan Faction - Early feedback.

[Tuco]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8LHgxw5QcQ

I watched the recent trailer about the Sylvan faction reveal.
Honestly I thought a lot of people were being unfair to you devs about the art style you were going for, but I feel this is your first complete miss.

Now, putting aside that I don't particularly like ANY of the sylvan units we can briefly spot there (but that may be way too late to address at this stage of development, and maybe they look better upclose, during their animated attacks) let me tell you I genuinely don't like... Whatever is going on with their color scheme here.

There's WAY too much visual noise (both on the units and on the battlegrounds shown in this trailer) and if I have to be blunt this seems like the work of someone with daltonism (or colorblindness, if you prefer).

I'll try to elaborate if something more specific comes to mind later, but at this point take this just as a general reaction about the overall "vibe" of the trailer.

[unnamed]

Are they trying to be like a pixel design in Songs of Conquest?

[Captain Corey]

I don't think we can make a good judgement based on that trailer alone.

The audio for the units is missing in this trailer, and the audio makes a huge difference in the feel of a game.

[Elveone]

Most of the criticism doesn't really make much sense to me - the units have natural red, brown and blue colors that fit with their elements with pretty unique and memorable designs. The bloom and depth of field are out of control as usual but that is mostly something that can be adjusted in the settings.

[BahamutXero]

I basically thought all the negative "looks like a cell phone game" feedback was weird. They either don't like any that's "not Heroes III" or expected this game to have a AAA budget for graphics. It's a strategy game and I'm here for playing the game, not for what it looks like. I just hope whatever budget they have doesn't get wasted on non-gameplay issues like the "OMG they reused VI assets from VI...You must fix this now!" issue that happened with VII. What a silly waste of time/resources when they was so much more pressing issues.

[DON~ILYA]

Weird or not - you'll have to deal with it. If you want the game to succeed it's best to figure out why exactly so many people feel this way. Ask questions, have constructive discussions. Even people who come off as uncooperative and communicate their distaste in a rude way can say a lot about their feelings if you ask nicely.

Attacking people who provide their honest feedback only makes things worse. Don't forget that Early Access means people can finally leave their reviews on Steam. And you want that score to be as good as possible. You can look at Stormgate's reviews to see how well handwaving critical feedback works.

[Tuco]

Originally posted by Captain Corey:

I don't think we can make a good judgement based on that trailer alone.

I mean, commenting on the finished game would be a bit too late, if the hope is an adjustment/change of direction.

Also, not sure what the "audio" would have to do with their aesthetic, which is what the thread is about.

[Kinja]

Originally posted by Tuco:

Originally posted by Captain Corey:

I don't think we can make a good judgement based on that trailer alone.

I mean, commenting on the finished game would be a bit too late, if the hope is an adjustment/change of direction.

Also, not sure what the "audio" would have to do with their aesthetic, which is what the thread is about.

There's no finished game. What we're getting is an early access game which everyone will probably have a year or more to comment on. They've already listened and changed some stuff, like how stupid it looked that everything was bleeding when attacked, even undead and elementals. They seem open to valid criticism but i don't exactly see "omg this looks like a mobile game!!" as valid criticism.

[Tuco]

Originally posted by Kinja:

They seem open to valid criticism but i don't exactly see "omg this looks like a mobile game!!" as valid criticism.

Cool?
But that's not relevant, since that's not what this thread is about.

[Muneshine]

The animations look great and very smoothed out with lots of detail. Looks good but I feel the art style and theme's just don't seem to fit and looks to...cartoonish for a HOMM franchise.

[Ereghor the Enigmatic]

Originally posted by Muneshine:

The animations look great and very smoothed out with lots of detail. Looks good but I feel the art style and theme's just don't seem to fit and looks to...cartoonish for a HOMM franchise.

Rather, the wrong kind of cartoonish. 1 and 2 were very colourful and fairytale-y with their art direction, meanwhile 5 tried to replicate franime but some of the design decisions combined with the asset quality pre-expansions were dodgy at best (I still don't understand what they were thinking with the gargoyles, the genies, and the treants (especially the latter since the beta had a far better looking model!)).

This is closer to VI's and the tired "generic modern fantasy" artstyle all over again, combined with a lot of familiar-looking rigs and animations (the angels are almost an exact copy of the seraphs from VI/VII), except with contrast cranked up a few dozen notches. People's complaints about it looking like a Chinese mobile game are not exactly unfounded if you compare the simple, down-to-earth and pulpy art of the older games, whether the more or less colourful ones, with this.

[El Guapo]

Don't like the visual style of the Sylvain faction.

A typical nature color palette consists of: green, yellow, brown.
This faction however is: red, purple, blue.

The battlefields look like blood-red like the first day of the battle of the Somme.
The units didn't catch my eye at first glance, giving an overall generic feel like the Hive faction.

[Tuco]

Bump because since the release of the "extended" faction reveal few hours ago I can only stress the points I already made.

I don't particularly like any of the units for this faction that have been shown so far, but the predominant color scheme for the entire faction (landscape included) is the real offender as far as I'm concerned.


EDIT- Aside from the coloring issue, I think I've identified part of what I don't like about most of these Sylvan creatures (beside not being very interesting to me in general): most of them seem to be so OVER-saturated with extra details that you can hardly tell what they are even supposed to be.

[Jarlaxe]

UF, i watched this new trailer several times, and i remain on my previous opinion, this isnt a return to the roots, it looks like a new entry in the ashan universe, or wose...
Gameplay might be solid but we dont know since they didnt show any proper gameplay yet.

[Elveone]

Unique creature designs with elemental themes that do not fall into the tired "here's elves" trope and an autumn landscape. Looks pretty good to me.

[HoMM: OE [Advocate]]

I am more bothered by the name of some of these creatures. Perhaps dev could start a name suggestion poll and get the fanbase to vote on stuff like names and alternative designs?