Thank you very much for sharing some of your work in progress. I appreciate the amount of time spent to communicate and to prepare the assets. So I hope our feedback will help you to energise and synergise the development process. My feedback concerns mainly the inventory topic which seems to be the most controversial one. I think you lacked discernment on this matter. I am not convinced you have fully foreseen or and analysed the consequences, the intricacies of art interface with game mechanics. I’m going to try to give my in depth opinion on this and I hope you will find it helpful.
Inventory proposition
- Drawing icons and writing near it “Life” “Defense” “angelic”, makes no sense. I would remove superfluous icons, I know it’s work in progress but their artstyle is questionnable . Icons must ideally convey action, and be buttons.
- Displaying 2 times the character is simply wrong. I removed the character in the inventory, and added a Zoom, in zoom out toggle button, (could be auto zoom for casuals in options, when inventory open)
- I think it is dangerous to mix inventory and stats panel. Because you already did the mistake in other games, where you want to convey everything everywhere without structure. It ends up with a map in the quest panel and written quests in the map.
- Beautiful design must be structured and be unique as a function.
- If you need a indicator that your stats increase as you put stuff, you can add a small “+” or highlight visual signal above the stats icon, every time you equip an upgrade. Thus, the player notices he/she must open the stats panel every time he/she wants to equip new gear. (or perhaps make a tutorial interface that can be turned off)
(textures used https://i.ibb.co/smktWcc/d4-inventory-textures-sample.jpg —simply googled medieval patterns)
Background behind images
- Since every quality type (white, blue, set, etc) will have its own pros and cons, and potentially beat a supposed superior quality type item, what is the need to influence the player? Why should quality type influence the decision of the player checking or not checking the item? item class, item type, level and requirements as well as quality type should be the reasons, so everything should be written altogether.
- Since we now have the “green arrow good, red arrow bad”, what is the point of sorting the colors of the items with a background?
- As shown in animated gif below, there is a continuity of having an item lying on the ground without background, hold with the mouse without background, as well as placed in the inventory. Holding an item like this with a rectangle colored background would not look right. A physical action is made between the ground, the mouse, the movement into the inventory. This is what gives value to the item, it’s believability. An item holds no value if it’s just a number in your database.
(if it does not load you can reach the link: item-background hosted at ImgBB — ImgBB)
- This rectangle background makes the item look like an Hearthstone card. The image is supposed to be the item. It’s not supposed to represent it, it’s not an Icon. You have to make the distinction when to use icons, and when to use actual images. In the past 15 years, graphic design, motion design, advertising fell into the trend of using icons (The reason being Web 2.0 and the phone technology)… This cost-efficient way to communicate became over-used and artificial, reducing consumer trust who now seek more authenticity.
Different sizes of items bring more advantages
- The reason why you displayed the new images of the items so big, is because we simply cannot distinguish the details with such small icons in the inventory. It must be the reason why you don’t show the new icons in the inventory.
- It is insane, you now draw such high quality weapons and armors, and are not able to display the details.
- With big enough images, you don’t need to draw a second icon of the item to display it bigger. Everything is simply functional.
- You seem to seek convenience when saying “To avoid interrupting gameplay”[…], we’re not planning on bringing back different-sized items". Excuse me but, in order to play quickly, how can you differentiate a dagger from a sword without different sizes? How do you differentiate to equip a ring from a circlet?
- You say pockets of inventory management disturb gameplay, but why would different sizes disturb gameplay since you add tabs that sort object types? It’s actually the opposite: once you have every item type sorted, you can more quickly visually locate items with different sizes.
- Different sizes simply make the game more believable and immersive.
Inventory looks too flat
An inventory is an ancient instrument of storage. It’s a physical objects with shifting boxes and spaces. We must be able to see the depth of the boxes, we need an inventory (like every panel) that LOOKS like a physical tool. With micro shadows, bumps and sense of materiality.
Though, Items images now half 3d rendered/painted/lighted are now good.
Miscellaneous
- The (work in progress) co-ops interface artstyle and structure lack structure, especially backgrounds and banners hurt the eyes I think. Talents icons look good.
- Various behaviours of monsters are most welcome! It encourages spell decision making in combat, in place of forced spell diversity driven by cooldowns.
- Monsters tone, art, animation look sharp, very convincing and appealing.