Diablo III Designer Defends New Look and Feel

In response to a fair amount of angry outcry at the new look and feel for Diablo III, designer Jay Wilson has critiqued some fan-altered screenshots and defended the new style. "The key thing to remember here is that this has been Photoshopped. This isn't created by the engine. Though it looks really cool, it's almost impossible to do in a 3D engine because you can't have lighting that smart and run on systems that are reasonable. If we could do that, we probably would in a few of the dungeons."

Comments

I don't see it

[grumpygrodyguy]

At first glance I prefer Blizzard's version.

Re:I don't see it

[philspear]

I can't understand the attraction to underlit gaming environments. Maybe it's supposed to be scarier? I just get annoyed when I can't see s***.

Re:I don't see it

[rob1980]

Yeah, that kind of stuff just pisses me off. I hated that I needed to install the "duct tape" mod for Doom 3 just so I could see what was going on.

Re:I don't see it

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

In Doom III, where character level isn't much of an issue, the darkness adds to the gameplay.

It adds to the gameplay for about five minutes. Then it gets annoying.

Re:I don't see it

[Aphoxema]

Too creepy, right after I hit 'submit' the power at the college went out for a minute and the whole room went dark.

Re:I don't see it

[AndersOSU]

stay away from the ventilation ducts.

Re:I don't see it

[Wildclaw]

Doom 3 is perfect if you played in a completly dark room where your eyes can adjust. In that kind of environment "different shades of black" actually works. Playing it in a light room however is painful unless you turn up gamma, which you can't do in the basic settings, instead requiring you to use the console. And if you do turn up gamma the visual quality of course goes down.

This is the problem when doing any visually dark game. You have to consider how the game plays in a not so dark room.

Re:I don't see it

[Haeleth]

Doom 3 is perfect if you played in a completly dark room where your eyes can adjust

And presumably if you have a CRT screen. Increasingly people these days have LCD screens, which can't do black at all. Playing in a dark room with an LCD -- even a good gaming LCD -- means having an immersion-wrecking glowing rectangle hovering in the air in front of you. It just doesn't work.

Kudos to Blizzard for actually trying to design a game that will look good on real people's PCs, instead of pandering to the crazy obsessions of a tiny minority.

Re:I don't see it

[Hossicle]

Doom 3 - The only game you can play with monitor on or off and it still looks the same!

Re:I don't see it

[Bat Country]

If it becomes necessary to alter my environment, buy a new monitor, and use the developer console to see the game as the designers envisioned, the designers need a new vision.

A visually dark game makes little sense when you happen to be a person with extremely good night vision, because you have an expectation to be able to fucking see what you're doing.

Re:I don't see it

[Sun Chi]

I don't think you mean "fog of war." That is a term from real time and turn based strategy games that relates to what area of the map you have explored. I think you are talking about the clipping plane.

Re:I don't see it

[Malekin]

"Gaming" LCDs are optimised for fast pixel response times, not for colour reproduction.

That said, the technology is still improving and the difference between a panel designed for speed and one design for colour is getting smaller.

Shadows Set the Mood

[eldavojohn]

Diablo III Designer Defends New Look and Feel

I haven't really RTFA'd, just looked at the pictures. I'm a bit torn on this story because I don't even think this designer needs to answer to people putting up screenshots that are entitled "wow gayness" when compared to their preferred screenshots. But as to whether or not he felt they had a valid point or he Blizzard just really cares for their fans, I cannot say.

While the lighting in a few of these looks like definitely done by hand, the only other major difference I see is color and tint. In example #1 the lighting is much better in the fan screenshot but I can definitely see what the designer was talking about with it being 'smart.' My question would be (and I'm a complete idiot with vector graphics) why do they have no problem putting directional shadows behind characters but not the scenery? It seems to me that the candle light in that particular screenshot is being blocked by walls and ridges. Is this difficult with scenery? I'm guessing the levels are dynamically generated like in the first and second (a great aspect of the game, might I add), is this what causes difficulty with shadow play? I think by and large with the fan shots they use borderline too much shadow. I am guessing shadow is crucial in setting the mood but dynamically generated shadow would be difficult ... when would you have too much? For example in #1, the big white blob thing attacking blocks 1/4 the screen ... four of those and you'd be blind. There could be an army behind him and you wouldn't know it. Something to think about.

Now, the rest of this stuff just seems to be color pallette and tint which seems to be artistic preference. I can't say which I like better but I've a feeling I'll appreciate color (and a change of that between levels) if I'm going to be staring at it for hours.

I'll be honest, when I first saw the game play I was very nonplussed, it was exactly Diablo II. But then I realized the great thing about II was that it was Diablo I with more features, levels, classes, monsters, etc. Ironically, I think that all that would make me happy in III is just more multiplayer options, more items, monsters, classes, etc. I can't want to play this one!

Re:Shadows Set the Mood

[bigstrat2003]

Ew. No. That was by far the worst part of Diablo before. Not being able to see a damn thing around me is not fun at all. At the very least, they need to make the "blackness" optional.

Re:Shadows Set the Mood

[eldavojohn]

All they have to do, take all that green, all that distanced lighting shit, and make it black. Pitch as fuck black.

You're one of those monochromatic artists, aren't you?

Re:Shadows Set the Mood

[kat_skan]

...this is not hello kitty meets diablo.

I would buy this in a second, if only I could decide whether I'd rather play as Diablo tormenting Hello Kitty, or as Hello Kitty tormenting Diablo.

Re:Shadows Set the Mood

[Anonymous Coward]

My question would be (and I'm a complete idiot with vector graphics) why do they have no problem putting directional shadows behind characters but not the scenery? It seems to me that the candle light in that particular screenshot is being blocked by walls and ridges. Is this difficult with scenery? I'm guessing the levels are dynamically generated like in the first and second (a great aspect of the game, might I add), is this what causes difficulty with shadow play?

The reason is because creating dynamic shadows via shadow mapping or shadow volumes (which is what their technique looks like) is extremely expensive to calculate and then to draw (both techniques are often fill-rate limited, meaning the more that's in shadow, the longer it takes). Typically, designers have to define a subset of shadow-casting objects which are included in the calculation, and everything else is left out. Areas that are determined to be in shadow are then drawn dimmer than their surroundings. Scenery such as walls, mountains or hills doesn't usually cast these kinds of shadows because the effect can be reasonably approximated by simpler techniques (attenuation, directional lights, etc). Indeed, you'll often find that only certain lights cast shadows on certain objects, further simplifying the work.

I don't work at Blizzard, but I suspect the lack of universal shadowing has little to do with the random nature of the dungeons, and everything to do with high cost and limiting returns of truly "realistic" shadows.

Thus, the determination of what will cast shadows is typically done by the designers who have to determine what gets the most bang for the processor time.

Re:Shadows Set the Mood

[the Atomic Rabbit]

It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.

Re:Shadows Set the Mood

[Stormwatch]

What the hell? That article has a screenshot of Doom 3.

Re:Shadows Set the Mood

[ProppaT]

I think some of the things that people aren't taking into consideration are:

1) Diablo came out during the CRT games. The game was dark but not quite as dark as you remember, your monitor just sucked.

2) These are the LCD days. All that black is going to make all the 6bit panels that don't show true blacks well choke and show mud.

3) Diablo wasn't built around 8 player multiplayer. Diablo III is being built ground up as a multiplayer game that can also be played single player. You need to be able to see your companions. That's like the point of the game.

4) The physics of Diablo III look beautiful in motion. To do that, add in all sorts of dynamic, intelligent lighting, and have a game that will play terrific on an average system at standard 1280 x 1024 resolution ain't gonna happen. Not when you have 8 players casting spells and 50 enemies on the screen. This is Blizzard, they're not gonna put out a game if it won't run on an average system. That's kind of their thing.

Solution to Blizzard's design decisions

[douthat]

Step 1) Turn down your monitor's brightness
Step 2) Stop whining
Step 3) There is no step 3!

Honestly, IMHO, the Blizzard shots are nicer. I have to squint to make out what's going on in the fan-created screenshots.

No problem here

[bigstrat2003]

I have always failed to understand what people's problem with Diablo III's graphics. The important thing is the gothic feel here. You don't need a color palette made up of shades of brown, grey, and black to achieve that... there's nothing wrong with having a colorful world, since it doesn't necessarily change the look & feel of the world at all. Hell, I by far prefer the screen shots Blizzard has produced to the "improved" stuff the fans have put out. The people doing that work may be happy with a world full of dreary colors which is hard to see any detail in, but I for one am not.

Re:No problem here

[k_187]

As with any game with a fiercly loyal fan base, nothing blizzard can do other than repackaging Diablo 2 (and probably not even then), will make these people happy.

Re:No problem here

[FreonTrip]

Quake was brown because id had to create a realistically lightmapped 3D environment with a VGA color palette. I greatly enjoyed the first Quake and still believe that technical limitations can result in good, interesting design choices, but the fact that a game designed to run on Pentium CPUs and 1 MB graphics cards has continued to profoundly influence game graphics and people's expectations thereof is... well... sad. As for Diablo III, if people want to kick their feet and scream that it's too colorful, then Blizzard just needs to add a post-processing shader option to thump certain color ranges down a bit. See ATI's SmartShader or Far Cry's "graphics filters" for an example.

Re:No problem here

[BRSloth]

I think the problem is that people don't understand the story behind Diablo.

Diablo 1 events took very long, from King Leoric fall, the death of Prince Albrecht and the appearance of our hero. Also notice that the story says that several other heroes came to Tristam to find fame and fortune, but never came back from the dungeons. So, the place was completely defiled when you start the game.

Diablo 2 events, which should start some time after Diablo is defeated in the first game, find a kinda nice place, except for Kurast, which has been defiled by Mephisto. Also, you move from far away to Tristam, so the land is not defiled by the evils yet.

Diablo 3, as I could understand by the video, seems to take 20 years after the defeat of all Prime Evils and the game starts just after the fall of the meteor. So I would expect that there was no time to have the land and the dungeons defiled.

bgy

[Annymouse Cowherd]

What I don't like is the excessive amount of blue, green, and yellow on what should be plain stone tiles.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[simcop2387]

mostly what he refers to as impossible are some of the more elaborate shadows (e.g. dynamic ones from the enemies off of the spells being cast) and things like that.

Big Props to the Designer

[KnowledgeEngine]

I'm going to have to go ahead and say regardless of anyones personal preference we have to give a lot of credit to the designer for taking the time to comment on their choices. Personally the only user created design change I like better is the last one...wow gayness.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[cowscows]

I think it's more likely that they realize that these fan generated graphics are ugly, would probably look even worse in motion than they do in photoshopped screenshots, and wouldn't play very well because they're so muddled. But they're dealing with some obviously hardcore fans, and they're probably thrilled that there are people out there who care enough to go through all this trouble, so they don't really want to come out and call those fans untalented hack artists.

So rather than call their fanbase stupid, they call themselves stupid. At the end of the day, they'll release the game they want to make, and judging from Blizzard's track record it will be a well made game that will sell very well. These people who are spending hours photoshopping screenshots will switch to spending hours playing the game, and everyone will be happy.

Some of you need to play D2 again

[Anonymous Coward]

People are always complaining about how colorful the current d3 images are. Did any of you ever play Diablo 2? Go join a hell difficulty game. Whenever you see champion/unique/superunique monsters, you almost always see an array of colors. Purples and Reds. Green auras. Even if you're running through the depths of a countess' tower, the screen is contrasted by dark colors and bright colors.

These bright colors make the game easier to play (oh that mob has one red enemy in it, that's the one I want to pop to get the better loot and more exp).

If some of the armchair game critics would go and reinstall d2, they would see that the new style is not all that different from the old! ... And now I'm back to key runs. Need to get a hellfire torch! Later!

Re:Its Blizzard

[PotatoFarmer]

This has to do with Blizzard. Ever since Warcraft 3 they have shifted their graphic design to a more cartoonish or anime style.

I think the cartoonish style is more about a means to an end, rather than an end in and of itself. Blizzard prides itself on producing games that will run well on average hardware, and that means reduced scene complexity, especially in cases where you've got arbitrary amounts of geometry on the screen. Because of this, they're limited to broader artistic strokes to convey meaning.

I look at this a lot like stage theater - actors make exaggerated gestures and wear dramatic makeup on stage because they need to transcend the limitations of the medium. Blizzard uses simple polygons and textures because that's the best way to get a whole bunch of em on the screen at any given time. As long as it doesn't break immersion (and I understand for some people it does, but not for me), then I'm fine with it.

Personally, watching the gameplay video I wasn't thinking "these colors look off" or "this seems too cartoon-like". I was thinking more along the lines of "whoa, wall of zombies" and "that thing just bit that guy in half!"

V. short version.

[MRe_nl]

A lot of the D3 fans don't want D3 to look like WOW.
Designer says "Interesting (not), but thanks for the publicity" ; )

I must say i agree with most of the designers points.
It still has to be easy on the eyes and gameplay, artistic perfection
is not the main point.
And, as others have pointed out, if it's too "happy" for you, adjust the gamma, not the game.
Comma coma, must rest...

Hey emo kids, try this!!

[nobodyman]

Here's what you can do:

1. get some transparency paper
2. print out a radial gradient fill that's clear in the middle and black on the edges
3. paste it on your screen

Problem solved. Diablo zealots are happy, blizzard is happy. Emo kids can use this approach for a host of other games too. As for me, I won't do any of that sillyness. My monitor is rectangular for a reason.

Better Summary - Diablo III

[Nymz]

A Diablo III representative defended design choices against 'dark & desaturated' versus 'brighter & colored'. While admiting that a single screen shot could look cooler when 'dark & destaurated', they concluded, after much playtesting, that 'brighter & colored' 1) offered greater visual playability when many creatures and players are on the screen, and 2) made the game more intersting because different game areas actually looked different.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[thepotoo]

Oh, come on, now. The point is that, two days after launch, those same fans who mostly just altered contrast in the pictures, will release a mod that alters your monitor's contrast whenever you launch Diablo 3. It's not rocket science here people.

For the record, I'm not so much concerned about the contrast changes (see previous sentence), it's the cartoonish, WoW-like graphics that may kill this game's lasting appeal for me (see the Barbarian's armor in the 30min gameplay preview. It looks just like Warcraft 3.

I may be in minority here, but one of the best parts of Diablo 2 was the ridiculous, over-the-top violence and the cold, realistic graphics.

Disclaimer: I put 3000+ hours into Diablo 2, and I consider it the greatest game of all time. Diablo 3 will not live up to my expectations no matter what the Dev team does.

Re:Its Blizzard

[skeeto]

Ever since Warcraft 3 [...]

I guess you never played the first two Warcrafts? Warcraft games have always been cartoony.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[Guspaz]

So, graphics are more important to you than gameplay? That's a rather shallow attitude.

I suggest you take a little trip to South Korea, where their national sport is a 10 year old 2D Blizzard game that runs at 640x480.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[icegreentea]

To be fair, graphics build atmosphere and 'feel'. His criticism felt like he found find the new atmosphere and feel disappointing compared to D2. I think that's a fair point. Really, its going to be the same with SC2. Some people are going to be turned off by the new 'feel' to it. Part of that will be gameplay changes, others will be the result of new graphics.

Graphics do more than 'look pretty'. They can effect gameplay, immersion, and feel. All this stuff about 'put gameplay/AI/story/characters before graphics' may be legit, but that doesn't mean that graphics are no longer a fair point of contention.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[thepotoo]

So, graphics are more important to you than gameplay? That's a rather shallow attitude.

Absolutely not! I play the "national sport of South Korea" several times a week, and love it.

What I'm trying to say is that the style of the graphics is what sells the game (to me). It's not about pixel shaders or polygon counts, it's about showing me a monster that just jumped out of Disney, vs. one that came from Alien. The fun is in what you're doing in the game, and if you're trying to be humanity's last hope in a world of chaos and demonic monsters, fighting off hordes of Pixar baddies tends to kill the suspension of disbelief. Simple as that.

Back to Lost Vikings

[SeinJunkie]

This has to do with Blizzard. Ever since Warcraft 3 they have shifted their graphic design to a more cartoonish or anime style.

I agree. Lost Vikings had it right, with it's ultra-gritty, gothic realism. Let's see a return to the good old days of Blizzard like that!

Hello Kitty 40,000

[tepples]

but honestly, this is to be some form of a dark game, this is not hello kitty meets diablo.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Hardcore fans.

[MaWeiTao]

I think screenshot with the pseudo graffiti font that reads, "wow gayness" pretty much reflects the stupidity and immaturity motivating these guys. I guess in their minds everything needs to be "hardcore".

All I have to say is thank goodness the fans aren't designing the game. I much prefer Blizzard's more colorful, softer feel.

The last thing I need is every little gritty detail being so prominent preventing important details like enemies, items and my own character from standing out. I also don't want Diablo 3 turning into yet another drab, monotone game like most other games out there.

Those fan-altered images look like every screenshot developers release for PS3 games desperate to impress everyone with graphics when they often don't have much else to go on.

I'm surprised that with the popularity of WoW and the Wii that so many gamers apparently are still clamoring for more gritty, realistic, and in my opinion, boring and uninspired, art. No wonder most developers keep churning out crap.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[lgw]

You should RTFA. Most of the designers comments were that the fan-a;tered screenshots missed the point of why D2 was fun after so much time. The spell effects in D2, for example, were *very* coloful. Also, either the background or the monsters needs to have vibrant colors: if you used desaturaed colors for both, the monsters don't "pop" out of the background, and the game becomes fatiguing to play (even if it looks better in a screenshot). They changed to what they have now because they discovered this during playtesting.

This is why Blizzard makes good games - they actually make improvements based on playtest feedback.

Also worth remembering: the reason that WoW is more successful than every other MMO put together is precisely because Blizzard ignored the conventional wisdom, and catered to casual players over the loudly-voiced requests of the hardcore fans.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[oneTheory]

Well.. This is /. after all. It's certainly mean, but from a geek's perspective it's an obvious fake. Now if it were a brilliant link like this that would be fun and cool.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[beckerist]

I hate you so much right now.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[palegray.net]

Look on the bright side. He's never gonna give you up.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[UnknownSoldier]

> Sorry, the reason WOW is more successful is because it uses warcraft property
I disagree. You are close, but missed the mark. Warcraft 2 had _atmosphere_. They were able to leverage that. The toon graphics actually worked in Blizzard's favor. Everyone was sick of yet-another-pixel-shader game -- plus the importance of the ability to run on "low end" hardware can't be stressed enough.

> WoW is not god's gift to gaming. All it did was copied the best elements of prior MMO's and put them into one game (mostly), and gave it the warcraft themed graphics and universe.

MMOs and RPGs. From the 3 Talent Trees, the partial set items, the character classes, to loot-whores they basically learnt their lessons from Diablo 2.

But yeah, agree that wow is a shitty game -- but you must remember everything is relative: compared to everything else, it is WAY better. Blizzard is known for evolution, not revolution -- the constant polish of the UI makes this painfully obvious when playing others. Blizzard nailed the BASICS, and that is more important then the rest. UO focused more on breadth, but Wow focused on Depth. (When do we get our Castles, or the ability to craft furniture, damit!) Talents at level 10, new skills every 2 levels -- they slowly keeping feeding you that most people put up with the asinine grind.

> WoW is not god's gift to gaming. All it did was copied the best elements of prior MMO's and put them into one game (mostly), and gave it the warcraft themed graphics and universe.

Totally agreed. I've ranted before that Wow designers don't have a fucking clue about dead time. They SERIOUSLY need to go play some old school D&D and learn about it. Now if only the stupid mods would understand "dead time" is NOT FUN, maybe you wouldn't be downmodded.

> That's the real reason: i.e. doesn't require any kind of serious twitch skills.
That's NOT a bad thing -- you gotta consider the demographic! It's not really feasible to do a MMO FPS. The RPG genre is different. The average wow age is 30+, not some punk kids. For those that DO want that twitch gameplay, CoD is quite nice, but a SLOWER paced game is what the masses want. The former doesn't require manual dexterity, the latter does. You literally are comparing apples and oranges about STYLES of GAMEPLAY. (OK, PVP throws a monkey wrench in this, but we're not talking about that. :-)

I think the real problem with MMOs is, just because you know what you _don't_ want in a game, doesn't imply that you know what you _do_ want in a game. Allmost everyone agrees the grind is ridiculous, but there are no "good" solutions. (D&D "solved" it by limiting the "level grind" to maximum 20.) People think more is better, but it is actually worse. With 10,000 life, 70 levels, you lose the "core" of what leveling up means. Its all about perspective, and the illusion of power.

Nice to see that others aren't inhaling the warcrack though.

Re:Impossible? That's laying it on a bit thick.

[CountBrass]

program in multiple possible rendering abilities and switch between then to tweak down or up the graphics.

So you've just multiplied both the development effort and the testing effort required.

Just because it's a massive amount of work for little benefit is hardly a reason to not do it.

Actually that's an excellent reason not to do it.