Art style and scale creep

[Mattk50]

Uh, ive noticed some art style and scale creep with some of the more recent additions to the game's art assets. I've seen this really damage the look and feel of a game before (thisto this, andthis to this) so i just wanted to point out a few... practical problems with some of these things... before it's taken too far


I'll just go over the most severe case of this. Honestly im fine with almost all the other things but this one is just absurd to the max and i wanted to give feedback on the art before it went further in this direction.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/169 ... -52-55.png
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/169 ... -42-68.png
What the fuck. you know more than 10 of these gates can fit inside that guys backpack right? This is beyond silly. An art asset never really needs to be this unwieldy and huge especially in a game where you actually need to use and place it in a practical way. These dont seem to have cutaways either so you can see inside the walls and under the gate. You cant place inward facing turrets either. There really is no need for this. it's so massive and poorly scaled that it even needs an interior stairwell that's way too steep, if you zoom in close you can see the steps were obviously lazily scaled in a modeling software just to fit. In my first paragraph i posted a before and after picture of what player houses in that game looked like, the after tower thing was so huge and unwieldy it never could really be placed properly and resulted it most of the slots it was supposed to fit in outright breaking. This is an example of that happening. This is a bad thing.

I really like the worn down concrete look of the walls currently being used for npc cities... more of that would be better than stuff with too many random spikes... especially if we're just getting one set of walls to choose from... I know kenshi is moving more towards a spikey art style than the more conservative realistic approach we got before artists were hired, and i like that to some extent... but this is just silly... Like, i get it on armor, even if that's unrealistic. I get it on turrets and i get it on weapons. On buildings and walls though it makes a huge step towards immersion breaking, it's such a silly and pointless waste of metal, it makes no sense from a practical standpoint. Just imagine the resources spent in making that huge pointless wall, it's staggering.

[Blxz]

I'll second this.

Sometimes I feel like I am playing a bit of dwarf fortress because everything seems to be "menacing with spikes of metal".

[Kamos]

Yeah I'd have to agree that gate is a bit much. I don't mind the design so much but it's soo huge.

[toaster Assassin]

Is the purpose of the massive gatehouse intended for enabling the flow of animals/siege equipment?

Unless its intent is for large caravans/mobile equipment/ giant crazy super emu thing then I am uncertain.


Sidenote: I was gone for a year, I come back and everything is metallic and someone seemed to have awoken Emoozle the Face Pecker (The great emu god of desloation and the occasional acid trip)..........

[BloodyNex]

I'm kind of feeling that way about the armor. I miss the old rubberized plate designs and all the variations among them. Now it's like everyone *has* to look rather dirty.

[Chompster]

I don't have an issue with the style(i really love the style of the gates maybe cus i made 3D assets as well) but i have an issue with their lack of functionality and lack of materials needed to be built.

Now both of these could be due to everything still being WiP, but as it stands they seriously lack functionality. All you can do is open and close the gate.. some of them have ledges and stuff on the front where you would assume people could stand and shoot or throw stuff from. Or maybe just stand there as look-out. Also some seem to have tables/benches which would be great if they could actually interact with and maybe rest on(lookout shifts?)

As for material needed to be built, this is sort of a grip i have with everything in Kenshi for now. You see buildings that have stone/clay, metal, wood, rope, fabrics and all these other materials in them, yet all you need to built any of these are "material" blocks which you get from mining stone.. I really hope this is just a place holder item for now while they work and implement other things, but eventually i would really hope that you actually need to gather wood and use fabric to create rope and have someone combine those to make a certain material needed to build with. This of course limits you to buildings that dont use these at the beginning, but i believe that it should be that way(not that i have a say in things, duh) as it adds another layer of progression(and personally, immersion)

[Zeal]

Not everything in life is built just to serve it's purpose. While i agree that the walls are a bit much for the purpose of just being walls, on another angle I can easily see those kinds of things being built, even in my own gameplay.

Maybe it's just me, but i have one particular character that wants to build a castle. Why? Because that's just the way she is. She wants a fortress. Not because it keeps the bandits out, but simply because "it looks awesome!" And sometimes structures are just built that way.... (very isolated silly example I know, but the point is still there.) Not everything has to revolve around simplest purpose only.

There are many different levels of walls, and they all seem to be a unique artstyle that doesn't really match the others as an "upgrade" more so just a different variant. There's been no indication of any sort of destroying of walls, so to me it's just been "pick your color". Luckily, in those gameplay terms you are not required to build these massive walls. They're just an optional variant.

Maybe I'm entirely missing your argument though...

I most certainly agree with the material thing though. Something like this should take up far more amounts of materials than they actually do, and throwing them up in less than a minute is a bit silly.
As someone else said though... Animals? You most certainly couldn't fit a leviathan through the gates of other walls. Is this by chance large enough to fit them through? I've not built one of these gates yet.