Personally, I liked what I saw -- and I saw that demo right on my face on a HUGE screen at the event with plenty of detail. The outdoors naturally need to look sharp and colorful, while the dungeons have that dark ambience. There is also obviously a change of illumination between 2D and 3D environments.
UPDATE: This quote was from the same day the game was announced, so it doesn't reflect much on the afterward fan response to the game. In short, he did not read the petition at that point. However, for your knowledge, I submitted today the Diablo III Art Design Direction Survey thread to Bashiok (Diablo III Community Manager). Your feedback was confirmed to have been received.Keith Lee - One of the things that we considered when we were working on the visuals for Diablo III is the fact that color is your friend. We feel that color actually helps to create a lot of highlights in the game so that there is contrast. A great analogy is like in Lord of the Rings. Not everything is dark. It allows you to see what a creepy dungeon can be like but if everything is dark it doesn't allow you to have a lot of contrast.
He continued: Diablo I and Diablo II are darker, and I think that the one of the main reasons why is the fact that in Diablo I, you're basically in a dungeon the whole time. And in contrast to Diablo III, you'll be exploring outdoors, you'll be in dungeons, you'll be experiencing so many different areas. We want to bring as much variety as we can when you're playing the game so that you're excited to check out new environments. We don't want everything to look the same and that's really what we're trying to aim for.
Said thread contains links to three of the online petitions.
well said mate
people complained SC2 was too bright and they kept complaining when they saw it last year and when they showed it, it was only a beta/alpha version of it, you look at the almost finished product and graphics are so much better
what makes people think they wont do the same for D3? again, they aren't dumb, complaining isn't gonna help, that isn't the final polished look
you can imagine you going through a dungeon and the only thing lighting your way is the flames on the wall, and that can just turn off any moment, and all you see is the red eyes of demons in the background
without a light radius and maybe if they implement situations as such, it will only add to the dark and terror that is D3
The problem relates to the textures, hand painted, glowy, lack of bump maps and details. D2 was really well done for its time and resolution to make it look more detailed than it was. I would like to see a similar type of treatment that SC2 received, not major, but subtle to enhance the world view.
Anyway, I think I am going to just sit on this issue until Blizz releases another teaser. I am hoping this artwork comes through as designed:
Not like this:
Colour is essential. Look at this:
side note: the game doesnt look cartoonish... soooo stfu
If you play only on one side (Factions: Horde/Alliance) you are getting only about half of the game. Add to that different paths; different characters; getting items; just exploring the world. I would say it has as much, or more replay value than Diablo 2. You, sir, probably have never played WoW. EDIT: I KNOW you haven't played it enough to know what you're talking about.. Or else, you're a hypocrite. I, myself, have only spent casual time playing it (On free private servers.), and I STILL know more than you about the game. Try giving a game a chance before you bash it in your ignorance. That being said; I'm not a WarCraft fanboy. WarCraft 3 was a horrible disappointment compared to StarCraft for me. So, don't start with that B.S., which I know you were going to do.
--- Johnny.. What are we gonna do with you? The change in StarCraft 2 was negligible. The only people that were satisfied with it were the ones that only partially thought that the game was too "Wow-ish". The people who were most vocal about it were never satisfied with the change. I should know; I frequent all major StarCraft 2 forums. It was very negligible, and was even less of a change than the "How It Should Look Like" pictures that plague this site.
they WONT dissapoint, for all you know theyll add bump mapping and deeper palletes later on when theyve finished everything else or near completion
complain all you want, you'll still play it though
it could be, who knows, out of 25000+ signs, you cant say not even 1 person decided to take advantage of the system, it's very possible
As for the looks and appearance, we haven't seen the deeper areas. So waht if one area looks a little colorful, with autumn leaves? That dungeon wasn't the deeper hellish pits. It all looked like a starter area.
Give it a break, it's 2008. Our game engines use 3D now, our color palletes are more than 256 colors.
A few small vocal people are being drama queens.
I think a lot of the DIII art direction haters (I said a lot, not alll) are really WoW haters and the mere notion of a Diablo game resembling WoW in any way seems to have struck a nerve with some!
I have no idea if any of this is going to sway Blizzard in any way as they have been working on this for several years and I doubt they will suddenly toss what they were doing and re-tool major aspects of the game just because 25,000 people "signed" an Internet petition.
Real paper & pencil petitions oftentimes get little respect. Internet ones are a joke.
A paper & pencil one means that someone (or a few someones) did a lot of work harassing strangers on the street and/or door knocking trying to convince jaded passerby that they need to sign this thing in the 3 seconds they have before they walk on by or slam the door in thier face. And to make matters worse most want some form of ID such as drivers license#, registered voter#, etc., to give some validation that the signatures are unique and wasn't all done up by one guy.
All one needs to do with an Internet petition is fill the name & e-mail and click a couple of buttons. And if you have an autofill feature then you don't even have to type anything out!
So, the first type that takes loads of frustating work is often dismissed.
What makes anyone think a petition that takes hardly any work at all would be thought of any better?
If you want to get thier attention then have these same 25,000 people send a snail-mail hand written letter to Blizzard.
I would bet $50 that of those 25,000 not 1% would be willing to take pencil to paper and write what they have issues with, stuff it in an envelope, write out the Blizzard PR address, stick a stamp on it and mail it.
If Blizzard got a truckload of paper dumped on thier doorstep you bet they would take notice. A report of 25,000 clicks on some web site combined with some complaints on a fan-forum will probably not motivate them very much.
Now, that said, I will agree about the blue/green fog deal being odd. I have toured actual catacombs both with flame torches and more modern halogen torches and have never seen blue/green. And really if it is released like that last time I checked I can fiddle with the color temps on my monitor to make it look any way I want.
I liked the texures and the look of the characters. Is it a clone of the D2 style? Well no, and it shouldn't be. But is it "Diablo" enough, whatever the heck that means? Sure.
I really like the look of those zombie things crawling up the bridge walls to attack the Barb! Something like that was beyond the technology of the D2 engine so I am happy to see what new visual goodies the new D3 engine gives us!
And as far as a Carebear stare goes, if I define that phrase correctly you mean gazing at the screen with a wide-eyed facination with an expression that says you are full of wonder!
Tell me we all didn't have a "Carebear stare" the first time we played D2? I know I sure did.
And for the record I don't play WoW and never will. It's not that I think WoW is cartoony, repetitive, full of leet-speek kiddies, etc. I don't play WoW or any other MMO because I just cannot deal with having to pay a monthly fee to play a game. I don't care how good it is, I will never be good with a subscription based game. Since you are paying each month you feel complelled to play because if you don't then that is money wasted.
It's not like the fee is pro-rated for the times when you are not playing. Go on a trip for 2 weeks, well you are still paying for those 2 weeks of WoW, Star Wars, LoTR, The Matrix, etc. The compultion to play as much as possible so as to not waste the fee is why I avoid all MMO's. Now I am sure there are many MMO players who do not have this hangup of mine, but I do and that is why I don't do MMO's!
what do you think that MMo will be about? sc2? diablo?
i dont think any blizzard employee has yet stated that they chose WOW content becuase it fit diablo....no no that was said.
well i made my response mean sounding, my bad but hey you're probably right, they usually do listen to the community, but i personally think it's fine the way it is, some of the artwork they have shows that it's not always gonna be bright and colorful, as someone posted a picture of hanged corpses in a hellish catacomb
Have you played ANY other games that use DirectX 9.0, but only use DirectX 8.1 features? Almost ALL games from 2002-2004 that used these features looked like that. It's in the engine, and the choice for system requirements, more than the art style choice.
that's true, but who knows maybe with the new battle.net theyre creating, you can patch improved texture if they keep the graphics exactly the same as the gameplay video
we'll just have to see what they have in store but apparently the new battle.net will be useful to download massive content
hahaha drama queens they ARE...and gay...did i say they were gay too? ya gay. there gay
http://www.petitiononline.com/d3color/petition.html
Plus in a Gamespot interview with Rob Pardo, he said that they wanted to portray dark as an "emotion" rather than an art choice. He also said they have changed the art style a few different times before they chose the current one.
They aren't changing it back. Face it.
the link for the interview is on my site.
www.purepandemonium.com
You know where assuming gets you? No where...because assumptions are based off of no knowledge and are usually wrong.
You should keep those banana lips shut and not shoot prematurely from your cockholster.
I played WoW from release and up until a couple months ago. I played both horde and alliance. I have seen all the end game content. I have seen most of the bosses in Sunwell. I have killed Illidain. I've basically done it all.
There is no replay value in WoW because there is no sense of accomplishment. They pigeon hold you to factions and then destroy world PvP with bgs which are northing more than amusement rides for carebears and casual PvPers to enjoy.
WoW is linear, with a hold your hands quest system. It's a great game for people new to MMOs, or for people with little time to play and who want to reach end game quick and fast.
Real MMOs take effort and time. Quests mean something and you feel a sense of accomplishment. They do not hold your hand throughout every level.
Now go find a dark corner and fuck off already.