Character Visual Quality

I disagree. New features take new art. The art guys are obviously busy with new features and maps. If other stuff wasn't taking priority then I'm sure they'd be redoing character models.

I just think we should all wait and have faith in what the pros are doing.

 

Features are usually handled by programmers.

They add maybe one scene per release, and that is 2D art usually handled by Scottie I do believe.

3D models and textures are different people.

I trust the leads are keeping everyone busy, but maps for new scenes (and I'm not sure we have maps for new scenes) should prevent work on the character models.

Honestly, I imagine our models are going to be largely covered with clothing, armor and masks in time.

I'm more concerned with the complete lack of clothing in the game at this point. Every NPC looks identical and most PCs look very similar.

Vanity clothing can be a source of income moving forward.

 

Honestly, my biggest beef with SotA is the avatars. I think the visual quality of the avatars is a huge factor to many who see articles on SotA and are sitting on the fence. I hear this time and time again in Comments sections of MMO sites and blogs. So I really hope that by launch, we have vastly higher customization choices, but more importantly, more attractive character models to choose from. I backed at Kickstarter so obviously I wanted a game with the soul of Ultima first and foremost. But in this day and age, I find it really bizarre that even on Unity, making a good looking character model is that huge of an ordeal (and I believe it must be, based on dev comments on the matter). As Unity improves, maybe this won't be such a task.

 

Features take programmers to get them functioning right, they still take art to add visuals.

Clothing and all that is not really a pre alpha thing frankly. Luxury and vanity items like that should come later so they don't end up redoing them 50 times due to changes. They know what they're doing I'm sure. We need content and features right now, which yes both take a lot of art

 

I'd be happy with one pony tail instead of two braided ones for now.

 

How one feels about it is pretty irrelevant. There's an important distinction between a level artist and a character artist. I'd even be so bold to say that most character artist don't care one bit about doing environment art.

The only thing that can take a character artist's time (assuming they only do character art - for a team of their size, I hope so) are new monster types (troll, dragon), combat skills, emotes (including instruments) and new amour sets. They're obviously busy with the dragons and trolls so we won't be seeing new character models for a while (if at all) but to come to a thread about character art and claim that you'd rather see a full feature game (instead) is preposterous...

• That'd be making the assumption that people who cares about character art don't care about the game being full featured. Which is false. We wouldn't be supporting SotA at all if this was the case.
• Art doesn't influence what features go or don't go in a game. You don't need new art to implement new features in a alpha build (much less pre-alpha); that's what placeholders are for.

While I hope they do revisit their character models and animations, the fact that they've already spent so much time on animating random emotes like "playing the piano" means that this is most likely what we're going to get for Episode 1. The longer Portalarium waits as they add more assets (and they'll be adding more hair styles and beards too), the more work it'll be to update them.

I wouldn't be so sure that they'll update the character models if I were you...

I find it really bizarre that people are so quick to put the blame on a game engine. Unity has nothing to do with it.[/QUOTE]

 

lol yes and you are not alone. We have heard from them on this and it is just going to take time. Avatar improvements are not first on the list but they are definitely on the list before launch. I always start a discussion every few months, well and my signature is all because of wanting to see these improvements and more on the the avatar visuals and their mobility. The female run is so bad to me and some others have mentioned it.