Hello Players und Devs and Hello all other^^
Theme 1 Optics and immersive coloring
Very nice videos on the lighting and coloring.
The work is definitely worth it and will give the game a very specific glow that will set the scene and support the aspects of the world very well.
The overall image of living through a fairly authentic, yet dark fantasy world can be greatly enhanced and engage the player very well.
The animations in slow motion also look really good already.
My general thoughts on the topic and beyond.
However, I would definitely like to issue a clear warning once again. Even at the risk of repeating myself, but only do this to make it clear to the creators and the players that all this work will not fully unfold its effect and power, but will even receive little attention then in the game itself, when all this will be practically wiped off the table after a short time by a game principle.
Only when players live in the moment, so to speak, and perceive the game as an RPG game, and their mindset and the game, its speed and its interpretation nails them, will all of these things have a strong carrying power and get under the players’ skin.
If from the beginning and shortly thereafter players only want to see the tunnel, chase through and get to the last level and then finally play the sports game part and for them the real game, then all these things will fall behind and hardly convey the attention and value that is in them.
I have now almost 3 decades of gaming experience, 25 years of which mainly RPG experience and have dealt with the subject in depth, especially the last few years. I’ve seen and questioned how it keeps happening that RPGs no longer work properly and somehow can’t play to their strengths.
Sure, the easy answer is that a game about endgame and numbers prevents this enormously and players shift from RPG play to this sports game character.
But also the high speed of the games, pulls as a chain reaction a completely different gameplay. Likewise, the quest system as it is made is a big problem and often rather work and such a thing to want to get it over with, which is very bad for an RPG.
Experiencing and living in the moment also means playing a world that you are anchored in and always feel right there in the moment. The pursuit of Endgame must be pulled strongly from the thinking principle.
The RPG values will have no traction if they end up being secondary. An RPG draws its power from the path and the world you travel, which gives you an adventure, but does not pull the player away mentally, but he grasps these things he is doing as a game goal and not as an unimportant means to an end.
And we’re “only” talking about an ARPG here. In MMORPGs there are many other aspects like the whole crafting area that has to be massively present, the whole group play, role distribution, difficulty, regeneration system and much more.
So in short, your work is great in the area of reworking the visuals, no question, and looking at it really makes you look forward to it. Nevertheless, don’t make all these things insignificant again by a game principle that will let you wipe everything off the table after the shortest time and people will only see through and numbers in front of their eyes anyway and thus mentally get stuck in a tunnel and fade out everything else strongly.
If it is to be a good strong RPG, then it also needs exactly this core aspect superficially in the game, not as a side issue. Then the players will notice these things and will be drawn in again and again. Lowering the speed of the game is just as important. It also allows for a lot of other things in a co-op system that you can get across much better in the game mechanics. Don’t make the same mistake as Diablo 3 and skip the actual gameplay. RPG means much more than a skill tree. RPG means completely different ways of thinking that you carry with you all the time. Sports games displace most of that!
Ok theme 2 monsters and bosses and my usual sprawling masses of text 
The Blood Bishop is really a good work between hellish, undead and grotesque. You don’t want to have him sitting on your couch 
The player will be happy to eleminate him.
Necromancers will be interested in his secrets. I can imagine some rpg-units that could be linked to it, e.g. character development for the necro, or a pet upgrade through a knowledge expansion about hidden writings that can be found there.
Of course, the look of the NPCs is one thing, but the suspense and build up to a finale is just as important.
If the player constantly encounters bosses and there are too many colorful effects, plus it’s very fast, it will all feel rather incidental.
Thus, the game world degenerates into a uniform mush, where no depth comes across. So again, it’s a matter of how the game is interpreted. Tension and immersion need a good way and not permanent overload.
The NPCs can be as cool and unique as they are, if the world feels like a barrage, it will all get lost in it.
Also, the NPCs should end up following a certain logic, be encountered and use certain patterns to be able to assign them and file them in his personal mental library and remember them. This gives the player anchor points and recognition values in his mental world. The NPCs also need an authentic life of their own in the game world in a way that fits the environment. It would be a disturbing factor to find such spiders, somewhere in a bright clean heavenly temple.
I, as a player of an RPG, like to walk through believable sceneries. When I walk in a swamp, I also adjust accordingly to certain types of opponents, and there you can still surprise me with pleasure.
It would also be very interesting to challenge the player in a way, when he is faced with a tricky choice and this is done through the monster itself.
Let’s take the situation that a monster itself is not particularly difficult to defeat. But the monster itself was just a cover for a real worse evil. Perhaps a strongly magic resistant soul creature that also has a 95% melee/range dodge chance. But itself protects itself teleporting and attacks the player with strong magic attacks.
The player is suddenly put in a very dangerous situation and has to flee at 2-3 of these things and use a different tactic. He really has to fear these mobs and always ask himself the question whether it is better to skip them right away, because they are very unpleasant.
Now, however, the key comes into play, which always rather motivates the players to finish them off after all. This type of NPC usually guards good treasures and or drops good resources themselves. So you are motivated in a way, but extremely challenged and you are busy with it for a while and maybe die or use up some of your own resources in battle.
So there doesn’t even have to be 10 levels of difficulty to do this. Out of the game itself on any difficulty level such fights are demanding.
In any case, the important thing is. To keep these fights rare and to bring them over in such a way that they don’t seem like boss fights, so as not to diminish their content.
So again, I see a lot of work and mental energy going into this. And it’s only really noticeable in the end if the game world and gameplay appreciates it. A game that only knows how to race through will quickly suppress this theme and in the end it’s just a bomb festival with high speed somewhere at the very end and the whole game itself is gray in gray, no matter how much energy you put into it.
Make the game not a sports game, but an RPG with a lot and long way as the main aspect and it will constantly offer a lot of potential and starting points for expansions. A sports game is just a sports game and will serve the spiral and the rest will quickly be forgotten.
By the way, such a skeleton lord, in order to generate a certain amount of content in the player, needs a special environment and task, or a historical background, which is also conveyed to the player.
Otherwise, such skeletal undead quickly degenerate into a simple bone figure that you slaughter. This whole undead track is very susceptible to that.
But with story elements and thematically fitting settings in the world, it can be enormously exciting and entertaining.
A really cool graveyard, with a swamp area around it where zombis wade around, is more interesting. If there is a crypt leading down, like magical tough but slow ghouls waiting and the Lich princes become strong enemies, you as a player have the feeling to knowingly put yourself in a more and more dangerous situation and experience so much fun in the matter. Again, this can be linked to character tasks, which should be a definite incentive.
Putting a few skeletons somewhere, well… Cannon fodder without effect and statement halt. RPG worlds are themselves complex and simply have to deliver a certain authentic world with halfway fitting monsters.
It doesn’t always have to be totally perfect, but it should fit and always give the feeling that this is a real context.
Simply filling the world with NPCs is rather bad.
A word about the succubus at the end.
A succubus should be able to camouflage herself visually, not invisibly, but I mean make her prettier than she is.
Such a succubus-demoness should also be seductive and lure men. When she shows her true self in battle, she can look more demonic and a bit more gruesome. Maybe put a second version over it and let her change in battle. Could also be conveyed well story-wise in certain situations. Please always with an RPG world in mind and include this as a core aspect. The world and its contents in an RPG is the playground and the driving engine and that is before the end of the game. The end of the game, is just the end of the RPG world. That’s why RPG with sports game endgame always does so badly.
And that’s why it needs a smart concept that the end of the RPG world is not the end of the RPG aspects like character development and story with further character development only different.
And a sports game can not do that and about items this no longer works, but transforms the game into a collection game and shifts an important aspect to a numbers game and comparison principle around.
A transformation is needed here, which on the one hand doesn’t emphasize the urge to reach the endgame, but rather understands everything as part of the path and on the other hand doesn’t suddenly stop and change this path, but rather continues it. However, the way there must still be long and understood as normal content, not as a burden.
Therefore, striving for perfect numbers is also very counterproductive in terms of RPG and individual skill and game preferences. Because if I lay everything out by numbers, then players will also fade out everything else and skills are pretty useless in the end, because people will take whatever gives the best number anyway and that’s not RPG, that’s sports and Olympics and that destroys these games and all its content because it becomes insignificant.
Oh and did I mention that a high game speed and overload of effects and events, makes the game trivial and boring and just not better? And exactly then this kind of work you are doing here will be absolutely suppressed and will remain completely unnoticed instead of constantly supporting the player to experience this world?
No? Then I did it again now^^
The knight in his armor looks very good. The shield is maybe a tad too big. Pay attention to a certain authenticity here, so that it doesn’t degenerate too much into comic style and marshmellow.
Even a female character must remain believable in the end with such a shield. I like the colors of the shield and the details. It looks rough and used, yet neat and sturdy. No new shiny factory showpiece. Well done.
I like characters with shields and still a certain offensive fierce fighting style. So a barbarian with axe and shield and nice battle animations and shield blows, according to the motto gladiator from the arena and on survival and the steppe shaped, something dirty in the fight, yes that could please me well
Final sentences
Finally, I think the work you are doing is really good. Yes, it is important to feed a good world with details and to raise colors, animations and light refraction to a new level.
As a gamer you don’t pay much attention to these things and the art that is hidden there.
But once you get that across, it also opens up a different way of thinking.
What I said, don’t destroy your work with a game concept that will totally push it all aside in the end. Build a real RPG and RPG are ways, not the goal and then I get into the Olympia tournament mode.
Therefore also work out a concept about maximum level, which then further shapes these paths and keeps the actual RPG world, the game world in mind and puts the lever there. And for heaven’s sake slow down the game speed and make the combat itself a little more tactical and convey it a little stronger in execution than in speed and over strength of the hero because he lays everything with 2 swipes. It will just make everything trivial if we all race through game like driven and senselessly slaughter mob masses in bombast effect thunderstorm and superhero style.
See you soon and good luck
ps
Yes I have always been a little repetitive in the area of game principles. It just seems incredibly important to me that this is understood, that this will be one of the cruxes of whether we get a good Diablo RPG game, or just another soulless clone of the sports game endgame spin-offs that have no substance but will be exersive spreadsheets that are just a repeat of nothing.
After all the disappointments for a decade and more, hopefully that’s understandable.
It’s time for a real game again.
Translated with DeepL/Translator (free version)
