After seeing the screenshots from the current state of the game (at least I think this is the case at the time of writing this post), I’ve decided to play a bit with the editor.
https://imgur.com/a/xqu6UTI
Just a quick one, wanted to see how it would roughly compare. (Lordaeron Summer, dawn, no fog, no global weather, lighting on, shadows on, units in stand animation.)
While incomparable in terms of fidelity and new engine tech, you can notice a couple of things why the new one doesn’t feel right. The new units seem to look like plastic toy figurines (bad) instead of the old look where they blended in with the environment a lot more (good).
The sharp dark shadows are detrimental here, soft shadowing would help. You could also add blob as an option, though that one is a little outdated.
The new scene itself feels also a lot more desaturated (bad) and the lighting seems to be a very close directional light (bad) instead of global sunlight.
The new units’ strong self-shadowing (e.g. Tauren’s fingers) only add to the plastic, artificial feel. (You can notice this also in the screenshots of the new dreadlord and blademaster heroes.)
LoD is inconsistent; e.g. the gold mine and the castle are both (largely) made of stone, but the castle presents tons more visual clutter (to enjoy its design you would need to zoom in all the way). I believe others commented footmen had a similar problem being distinguished from knights.
Materials, that’s a big one. Tauren weapon does not look wooden, but somewhere between clay and plastic, the goldmine entrance looks like clay, castle rooftops plastic, sanctum floating crystals look to be covered in silk (expecting refraction/translucency), wyvern wings don’t look like leather/organic… you might want to revisit your shaders.
Models look like acrobats on a chia smoothie diet.
Water looks unchanged from WC3.
As a bonus, I think there is foliage/grass on one of your screenshots, would be interesting to see a scene in the fully zoomed-out view with that turned on.
Also, would like to see weather effects like sunrays and light/heavy rain or dungeon fog, how that would compare to WC3.
As a player, I would hate to engage my army in a battle only to look at a miniature scene where cute plastic figurines tickle each other into submission and then we all go for a cup of tea. Bring the dirt, the blood, the corpses. This is WARcraft.
To sum it up, I think this would help with immersion:
- increase overall colour saturation (don’t go overkill, refer to WC3)
- balance the colour and shape contrast between units and environment (play around with HSL)
- go with global illumination and soft shadows, consider AO (with care)
- consider the LoD on units/doodads
- revisit materials and shaders
- make the units beefier, more tougher-looking; albeit well done, noone will see the Orcs’ facial details from a zoomed-up view (how people will play 99% of the time)
- water needs to look awesome, there is a lot of water interaction in the campaigns
- do not force distance-blur (increases miniature effect), make it optional
Even better: add detailed video settings for all this so the players set it the way they prefer.
Hope this was constructive.
Thank you for your passion!
(edited for transparency & linking)