Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Ningjinq]

To be fair, Gul’dan’s involvement was set in stone Long before the backlash at the Tim travel started I think. And from a story perspective, Yrel should’ve been in Legion at minimum for instance.

[In Ogres We Trust]

"Flavour" isn't a justification for archaic game design.

And that's your opinion. On the other hand, I want more "flavor!"

[derpkitteh]

Except they are paladins.

"Blood elves are blood knights not paladins"

"They are squares not rectangles"

A sunwalker is a type of paladin.

Obviously

their faith at the very least should manifest differently. there is a fiery orange way that the light manifests, we see it in holy fire, the priest ability. that should be how all of their light looks.

and instead of human designed hammers in their spells, it should be war totems and maces of tauren design. like if they cast judgement, it should be a hurling a massive war totem into the enemy.

for blood elves, it could be blades in place of hammers, and their light have a more orange tone in general(i don't know if you remember seal of blood, but it had an orange tone to it and was different from the alliance paladin spell). when they cast judgement, it should be an elven blade of light piercing the chest of the enemy, hammer of justice could sword of justice and stab through the legs of the individual.

[Steampunkette]

their faith at the very least should manifest differently. there is a fiery orange way that the light manifests, we see it in holy fire, the priest ability. that should be how all of their light looks.

and instead of human designed hammers in their spells, it should be war totems and maces of tauren design. like if they cast judgement, it should be a hurling a massive war totem into the enemy.

for blood elves, it could be blades in place of hammers, and their light have a more orange tone in general(i don't know if you remember seal of blood, but it had an orange tone to it and was different from the alliance paladin spell). when they cast judgement, it should be an elven blade of light piercing the chest of the enemy, hammer of justice could sword of justice and stab through the legs of the individual.

The amount of development time that would need to be assigned to this change is -probably- greater than the value of the change.

I do not foresee it happening.

[derpkitteh]

The amount of development time that would need to be assigned to this change is -probably- greater than the value of the change.

I do not foresee it happening.

that's where the problem is. people thinking in that way.

if it adds more unique flavor to the game, it is worth it. anything that adds to the world building of the game is worth lost time on bullshit like raids.

[Makorus]

that's where the problem is. people thinking in that way.

if it adds more unique flavor to the game, it is worth it. anything that adds to the world building of the game is worth lost time on bullshit like raids.

Why are raids "bullshit" but stuff that like 10% of the player cares about absolutely fine?

[derpkitteh]

Why are raids "bullshit" but stuff that like 10% of the player cares about absolutely fine?

because it makes the world less bland.

we only need raids at like wotlk level in terms of design. raids are over designed now days to compensate for addons. they should go back to old raid design, and ban the addons that people use so that they don't put an idiotic amount of work into them. it's hurting other parts of the game.

[Steampunkette]

that's where the problem is. people thinking in that way.

if it adds more unique flavor to the game, it is worth it. anything that adds to the world building of the game is worth lost time on bullshit like raids.

Not what I mean.

So what you're looking at is the Art Department, which is just one part of Blizzard (A fairly large part, but still one part) let's say, for sake of argument, the Art Team is 33% of the WoW Dev Team. Looking at the team, there's about 200 people. Feel free to count for an exact number. Ignore the dogs. (Well. Don't -ignore- them, they're good boys, but they don't count toward the team size)



That puts the Art Team at around 66 people. Yay!

But those 66 people aren't interchangeable. Some of them are modelers, 2d artists, animators, environmental designers vs character designers, etc. Now of course some of them are going to be able to perform multiple roles consistently and others will happily hop over to help out in a crunch, but for the sake of argument let's say 1/3rd of the team are Animators rather than modelers, environmental designers, concept artists, and cinematic designers.

So that's 22 people. We're getting close! But how many animators out of that team are going to be focused on rigging new enemies and allies, creating new player and NPC animations versus particle animation or effects animation? That number just keeps getting smaller.

And the amount of work involved? We still haven't gotten the new Warlock Spellcasting Animations, and that's just working with the model and animation retargeting. Can you imagine tripling or even quadrupling the spell-entries in game for animations to go on, let's say 1/3rd, the paladin's spells? (Lots of their spells are going to be passive or the animations won't really matter, like Holy Word or whatever, for example)

There's 146 paladin "Abilities" between the three specs and the core class (not including talents, artifact talents, honor talents, or glyphs). That's about 48 abilities, give or take, that need to be modified for racial identity across at least 2 races.

Do we want Draenei to have their own? Make the current one default for Humans only and go from there or invite "Blizz luvs Horde!" because Humans and Dwarves have to share one? When Nelves get added, I'm guessing you want theirs to be silvery, while if Forsaken are ever added theres will be all dead-themed?

For sake of argument let's -just- go with Sunwalkers, Blood Knights, and Vindicators. That's 144 new animations for the Particle Animators to work on. Roughly 3 classes worth of animation changes just for paladin variety. And you saw the staggered animation updates through Legion, right? We're talking about a pretty huge investment on that portion of the art team's time (and the money to pay them) for more visual variety in PC spellcasting.

And then when Nelven Paladins or Zandalari Paladins get added to the game in 8.0 or 9.0 they'll need their own special set of particle physics, snagging the animation team for another 96 animations. Forsaken get another 48... then come the Vrykul Paladins a couple of years down the road...

It's a shitload of work, for a relatively small team of people, that will continue to cascade their workload in the future. And that's -if- you stop it at Paladins. Have it apply to any other class, like Mage so the Nightborne can have more "Nightborney" spells or Priests so Velves and Forsaken can tap into the Shadow in their own ways, or Druid because some race only uses the Sun or Moon or Stars, the workload cascade gets even more massive.

What seems like a small, impactful, and thematically interesting change instead represents a much higher investment than most people consider. Art has -always- been a bottleneck to production of any game because there simply aren't enough artists in the world to keep up with the burnout game development -has- on artists. This tiny change would cram a massive workload into that bottleneck.

Is it worth it? To some players, absolutely. To others, less so. And only Blizzard has the metrics on how much people -really- care.

[huth]

Why are raids "bullshit" but stuff that like 10% of the player cares about absolutely fine?

Because that would actually be a greater fraction than the raiders.

Besides, this is mostly about adapting existing effects. The time investment shouldn't be that huge.

[Steampunkette]

Because that would actually be a greater fraction than the raiders.

Besides, this is mostly about adapting existing effects. The time investment shouldn't be that huge.

Okayso. This is a short gif animation.

https://media.giphy.com/media/r4EdtUp43HUas/giphy.gif

I want you to take all of the Pink sparkles and make them animate in the lower left hand corner, all the green sparkles and make them animate in the lower right hand corner, blue in the upper left, yellow in the upper right, and any white-looking sparkles should just be removed.

Otherwise retain their relative sparkle positions toward the center of their starbursts.

This gif is only a couple of dozen frames long, and you can separate every frame out into a unique still for photoshopping, so it shouldn't take -that- long, right?

This is what "Adapting Existing Effects" is like. Taking a particle animation apart and then putting it back together is not significantly easier than building a new one.

[rda]

This is what "Adapting Existing Effects" is like. Taking a particle animation apart and then putting it back together is not significantly easier than building a new one.

No, no, no, you are overdoing it. Changing an existing animation is easier than making a new one. Usually significantly easier. With the sources for the animation you linked the changes you want made to it are pretty trivial - if the animation is already structured like a set of this spakles and a set of that sparkles instead of sparkles getting colored according to a formula, for example.

I agree adjusting the spells for different races would be a waste of time - at best changes like this should be limited to only a few spells, but you are overdoing the point. It is a fair amount of work, but not something exorbitant.

- - - Updated - - -

PS: A global change to all spells of a particular race - like a global hue adjustor - could be made pretty simply. It wouldn't be enough, though, there'd need to be manual adjustments later, otherwise some colors would look weird / some parts would be hard to discern, etc.

[Lemondish]

Okayso. This is a short gif animation.

https://media.giphy.com/media/r4EdtUp43HUas/giphy.gif

I want you to take all of the Pink sparkles and make them animate in the lower left hand corner, all the green sparkles and make them animate in the lower right hand corner, blue in the upper left, yellow in the upper right, and any white-looking sparkles should just be removed.

Otherwise retain their relative sparkle positions toward the center of their starbursts.

This gif is only a couple of dozen frames long, and you can separate every frame out into a unique still for photoshopping, so it shouldn't take -that- long, right?

This is what "Adapting Existing Effects" is like. Taking a particle animation apart and then putting it back together is not significantly easier than building a new one.

This has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever read on these forums relating to WoW, and I've been here for over 5 years. Bravo.

[rda]

This has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever read on these forums relating to WoW, and I've been here for over 5 years. Bravo.

(Be a little more polite. She is clearly enthusiastic about the ins and outs of graphics and whatnot and wants to learn. Instead of cutting her off, just correct her when she makes a mistake.)

[Deleted]

Hey all, not sure if relevant or Im just crazy... But this was a post at wowhead:

gkmnadsz said:
Check the Xorothian Cultist on the broken shore to find out the release date of the new patch. they are counting down a time. They were doing it before 7.3.2. I followed the everyday. And the antorus came when the time was over. After the antorus came, there was no countdown. Now it has started again (my last check: 15 days ago). and around 700,000 seconds now (08.01.2018). this is equivalent to 8 days ))).

I've checked those npc's for the first time today and for me they have a cast that needs about 11750 minutes to finish. Which would be about 8 days and 4 hours time~
Possible they do that for every week, but it's too late for me to check anyways.

PS; Don't burn me at the stake. Just wanted to share. And it would be kinda funny...

[Khrux]

Blizzard's age old "visual clarity" argument would come into play even if something like this wasn't a massive waste of their time/resources(which it is).

They often argue that players won't understand or be able to recognize whats going on if you change the appearance of things too much. Even something like Destro lock green/red fire goes out the window for colour blind mode(I assume? i'm not colour blind)

If I had a magic wand I'd give mages blue fire or Zandalari Druid's new dino forms for all spec but Blizzard's art team has better things to do and their developers assume all players are retarded and would suddenly have no idea whats going on in the game. Though LFR supports the latter part

[derpkitteh]

hmmm, looks like the artifact power is draining out?

[huth]

Okayso. This is a short gif animation.

https://media.giphy.com/media/r4EdtUp43HUas/giphy.gif

I want you to take all of the Pink sparkles and make them animate in the lower left hand corner, all the green sparkles and make them animate in the lower right hand corner, blue in the upper left, yellow in the upper right, and any white-looking sparkles should just be removed.

Otherwise retain their relative sparkle positions toward the center of their starbursts.

This gif is only a couple of dozen frames long, and you can separate every frame out into a unique still for photoshopping, so it shouldn't take -that- long, right?

This is what "Adapting Existing Effects" is like. Taking a particle animation apart and then putting it back together is not significantly easier than building a new one.

Well, yes. Since you could just delete the white layer and move the green, pink, blue and yellow layers into the corners. It probably wouldn't take more than a few minutes.

They had a whole panel on graphics and animation at BlizzCon where this was explained. It's far easier than you're imagining.

[Khrux]

hmmm, looks like the artifact power is draining out?

Looks really weird, glowing particles being added to each node and AP value going down. Like mass spending AP on traits over and over, as if the weapon is getting stronger and stronger but losing artifact power indicating it will continue to gain power until it just explodes.

[Makorus]

hmmm, looks like the artifact power is draining out?

Holy shit that effect is amazing.

Really makes it seem like your weapon is gonna explode any minute now and is overcharged. Wonder how the "Draining AP" thing will work out though?

[huth]

Blizzard's age old "visual clarity" argument would come into play even if something like this wasn't a massive waste of their time/resources(which it is).

They often argue that players won't understand or be able to recognize whats going on if you change the appearance of things too much. Even something like Destro lock green/red fire goes out the window for colour blind mode(I assume? i'm not colour blind)

If I had a magic wand I'd give mages blue fire or Zandalari Druid's new dino forms for all spec but Blizzard's art team has better things to do and their developers assume all players are retarded and would suddenly have no idea whats going on in the game. Though LFR supports the latter part

That's kinda the point. Keeping the general effect the same, just changing a bright yellow to a more reddish orange and replacing a hammer with a tauren mace is still pretty much the same thing.

Colour blind mode changes the colours so they're more easily told apart. Red/green blindness is common, so the difference gets exaggerated, not reduced.