Blizzard, Your art style is perfect! Don't change it

General Discussion
37

Personally, I absolutely agree with that.

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38

Yea I agree the artstyle seems fine. My only complaint in that department is that some models dont look like an updated version of the old model but a completly new model all together. Like if you compared the necromancer side by side would a person be able to tell its an updated version? I dont believe so

39

I find this post more offensive than constructive, but understand where it is coming from. Please be more constructive than rather than attacking and degrading other people’s opinions. Art isn’t a science, one isn’t better than the other, it’s up to the eye of the beholder.

Even tho I do like HOTS art I do also like the direction the art style is going here. I think this style was chosen because they already have very approachable art styles in other projects and due to this one being more serious in story and gameplay it fits nicely in a more realistic setting.

It’s important to note that I can speak from experience this art style is significantly harder to nail which is what I think the root of most of the art topics here are about, not so much ungrounded cries for lack of toonness like this post implies. There is a level of polish that needs to be hit with this HD reforged that I don’t think Blizzard has nailed (YET) and it’s important for the community to be vocal about what details are being missed. Often for performance reasons everything is later optimized, sometimes the optimizations can leave features or details cut and degraded, if something isn’t syncing up with the rest of the composition then be vocal about it!

For instance, I don’t think they nailed the lighting at all in the game, the game play trailer specifically had some really weak lighting that made me not even want to share it with friends because it looked more like a indie machinima than a blizzard product. This is where you saw terrible reflections on Arthas’s armor because that scene was just super blown out. Thankfully it was just the trailer and not the actual gameplay but it definitely left me uneasy about the project’s position.

The level of detail on the Orcs is amazing but I don’t think the assets around them are of the same fidelity, it’s very hard to get fantasy assets of this fidelity to all match and look the same. I’d love to see all the orc builds looks as good as the Orc in the demo mission looked but it seems like they are on different levels. (seen from grubby’s play thru)

tldr; the community is right to speak out about issues with the art, not all of them are an attack on too much toon. We still need to be critical of how these textures, shaders, and animations should be tuned. It is very hard to nail a realistic style in a bright fantasy world, one of the hardest parts is consistency of fidelity between assets and asset groups, be mindful of that in your future posts.

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40

They both look different from their original selves now, but they do look different from each other as well. The Footman has far more armour, huge pauldrons (with his team’s colour on one), a metal shield (instead of a wooden one).

Learning things anew should probably be considered a negative, and yet I doubt the units don’t look too indistinguishable if you focus solely on Reforged and forget about the original. But nobody can say for sure at this point, we need practice.

41

If you look at the old Footman Model you can clearly see that his helm looks a lot more detailed and realistic than the rest of his body. Its very clear that his helm looks like metal and the rest of the body is just white and black colors.
May this be an indication that they did originally intend to make them have a more realistic look but decided to make only the helm because they had no time/resources or other reasons?

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42

100% agree. Please keep the look we saw in the demos, its perfect. People who liked the old graphics are not forbidden from playing the old version. If you dont want anything to change, why play reforged? So please blizzard, dont listen to them, we really love the new style - its not even all that different, it doesnt look grimdark like 40k at all. Just not as ugly as they used to be. Which we never realized by the time because we had no comparison.

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43

Completely disagree! I am one of those who complain about the reforged style, no, do not misunderstand me, the graphics are beautiful, I only complain that the style itself, the atmosphere is lost, the whole game looks like a Disney mobile project, seriously, I don’t associate it with Warcraft I played in, I also play Warcraft 3 for 15 years now, and this is a game that completely enchanted me. I never thought that there was such a mysterious, gloomy, intriguing, but at the same time saturated universe, Warcraft 3. All the original cinematics, the whole gameplay, it was all a certain style of play, a certain atmosphere, which by the way was lost, for me when moving to Vov. As I said earlier, you do not need to reinvent the wheel, you do not need to try to do better what is already perfect. It is just necessary to do better what is, to improve the original, and not to rethink it, otherwise it will not be Warcraft 3. It will be another incomprehensible fun bright rainbow toy for children. I just ask Blizzard to keep the style and atmosphere, to keep it as it was, dark, gloomy, but at the same time quite contrasting and rich. This style of warcraft 3 is even difficult to describe in words. So, dear, the experience of the game for 10 years and participation in the creation of maps is not an excuse to speak on behalf of the entire community.

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44

The giant shoulder pads are clearly influenced from WoW. I like WoW, but the character designs from it should be ignored. Not every character needs to have shoulder pads and a backwards bib. If you’re going to make a cloak, make it a real cloak, not something that has to fit in a generic equipment slot.

P.S. I hate that they gave Jaina shoulder pads and a fake cape.

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45

Orc’s art style are completely correct in Reforged. Really like their realistic leather belts and armor.

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46

But isn’t the whole idea to make the original cartoony look less Disney by making it more realistic?

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47

So the fact of the matter is that it has become more realistic, but at the same time it is even brighter, more colorful and more “rosy”, although it should have been the other way around.

48

Is it? The terrain, the trees and the buildings look far bleaker. The models don’t strike me as brighter either.

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49

Yes, they are clearer, and it makes me very happy, but the color scheme, the lighting, personally, for me, made it not so dark, mysterious and atmospheric, as it should seem.

50

Only in the old gameplay footage did it look that way. They clearly changed thing and desaturated the terrain since then. It looks awesome in the demo.

51

Sorry, I don’t mean to offend, but is it that you just haven’t played Warcraft III in a long time? Because the new game is desaturated, not more colorful and rosy. (and I hate it)

The third one is what I think it should look like. There’s no need to desaturate it…

Although I admit brightness =/= saturation. Maybe tone down the brightness.

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52

I still play, I consider this game a world classic as Heroes might and magic 3, but the fact is that the original texture style was cartoony, it was rendered with a special style, with its own special shadows, with special lighting, maybe I’m wrong in terms of something, maybe it’s not about brightness, but in contrast and saturation? If you look at the texture of the earth from the original and from the reforged one, you will notice that in the original it is more … Saturated? The light, the glow of the heroes, their cartoony, it was all drawn with a special style, but Blizzard switched to a realistic style, and now it’s not all that easy, they lost some of the atmosphere by looking at this style, personally for me in the original, everything was at the same time saturated and gloomy, but if the style is changed to realism, then why not make it more gloomy, like in cinematics? Because they are also realistic, and naturally I mean the original cinematics, they are simply filled with gloom, epic and mysteriousness, and it was they who determined the atmosphere of the game, made it darker and more mysterious (I’m not happy with the new cinematics gloomy as its original)

53

I fully agree, they just need to adjust colors on some (terrain) textures. I cannot speak for the units vs Buildings scale though it is part of war3 and needed to distinguish. Why pay for remaster with same basic graphics n models…

i.imgur. com/04c8rtM.jpg
this is war3 assets in sc2 but imo this is a fine terrain graphics, not the old lime green colors

This is true but tell me, how is SC2 handling 200 supply faster pace and higher models? I know there you don’t care about micro that much but I’ve seen they need to see and quickly estimate numbers too. So more or less the same. I think this is more of 'Fear of new things;. I agree that they need to make things where visibility is a priority.

I know it was also mentioned by Grubby. My respect as he is a legend but he left SC2 early for Heroes of the Storm…

54

I have to admit, that at first I was not exactly pleased with the new graphics and wished for a more cartoony theme.

But now, I start to realize that the game has to also attract new generations to play with the whole lot of old veterans.

The new graphics are great now that I’ve recovered from the initial shock. But what the game needs, is loads of polish. Textures, models and so on.

I have to point out that the Footman model is excellent, and making his shoulderpads smaller would really hurt the recognizability of the unit. He just needs a little player colour adjustments to stand out more as a footie. Tho Arthas needs to get a manlier face!

Blizzard took a gamble to show us the alpha footage, but I think it will in the end work for everyones favor.

Tag along for a ride in the hype train!

:slight_smile:

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55

I absolutely agree, of course there are flaws but they will definitely fix it. This is Blizzard and it’s time to change in terms of the style of the game, the new style is more realistic - this is a new level for the game with 16 year

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56

Yeah totally, they have to stay true to the original Warcraft Artworks, couldn’t care less about those silly looking heroes of the storm and stuff. I just want my mature Warcraft experience.

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