[Feedback]: With 1.0: Maybe a good time to polish soft topics?

[Dreepa]

Hi,

great game, great concept, good design, lots of stuff. This is really cool. Like someone said: Let’s do a medieval city builder but properly and don’t be afraid of nerding out, even if the publisher guys will go on your nerves with “accessibility, usability, and streamlining”.

I know what I am talking about, because I worked on Anno since A:1404 and I worked on the The Settlers. I got 15y of game dev experience in QA and design in that regard.

I love how this game just goes all out “we give you all the micro details and pack it full with little features and configuration options”. Like, from field managemnt to tech tree to combat to population agency, etc etc it is all there. The list is endless.

But now hear me out, because I am super fresh to the game. I bought it quite some time ago, but never got to play it until now. I saw it’s 1.0 and thought cool, now is the time. As I said, awesome game, BUT and here is what I think the game lacks: The presentation and the keybinds.

Let me start with keybinds:

They are all over the place, just like a game in development status. It looks to me as if no one ever said: “Tabula-Rasa, we are 1.0 now, let’s do a complete overhaul of keybinds and put them into places that make sense and work on all languages (not just QWERTY).”
Ofc you can configure it all by yourself. But to me it screams: Dev state.
And the key-bind list is also quite long and not very easy to understand. Like, one of the keybinds is “backquote”. I don’t even know what the key “backquote” is.
I realized on a german keyboard it is actually “ä”.

Long story short, I think it could be justified to evaluate a task to look at the whole key-bind thing and give it some love.

The second topic would be presentation. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the game does NOT look bad.
But it seems as if the renderer just isn’t used to it’s full capability. The lighting (the interplay of light and shadow) is kind of weak, the contrast is weak, the color palette is not very pronounced (everything is in the middle ground) no highs or lows that peak out to create more visual stimulation.
And even with 8xMSAA and SS it still looks as if the mipmaps aren’t doing their job properly, the noise in the pixels seems rather strong.

I think since the game is superb in terms of gameplay, features and content my suggestion would be to now tackle this more polished related soft-topics, because I think the game deserves it when it is called 1.0.

This just my personal feedback, ofc.

Keep up the great work and awesome game you made there.

[ROBO]

Some people think the color pallet is actually really refreshing as every game seems to have an over pronounced over saturated color pallet that ends up being cartoonish.

[Dreepa]

Yeah for sure, absolutely not what I was trying to convey.
You can look cartoonish by using the colors in the game no problem, if you wanted to.
Making smth cartoonish or not is about a lot of dials that need to be tuned to make it that way.

Likewise, you can have a super realistic looking game (e.g. Cities Skylines 2 vs 1, 2 going to a realistic approach) while still having less midtones. If you look outside your window, the world shows a lot of color gradients and it is as realistic as it can get, since well, it is the real world

[Dreepa]

(there doesn’t seem to be an edit function… so sorry for double post)
PS: Look at manor lords.
If you only talk about the saturation of the greens then Manor Lords would be cartoonish by that definition.
I would argue no one would consider Manor Lords to be cartoonish. But it has really strong greens that you only get (IRL) when the sun is directly shining on the green surface.
Taking that green by itself, would be the same hue you could use to make it cartoonish. But in combination with the contrast of bright roofs (exposed to sun) and dark near-black shadows (behind the house) you get a realistic look that is still using saturated greens. Because lighting is the single most important factor to make something look realistic (not the only one, and I didnt claim, but by far the one with the biggest impact).

[phoenixwind]

I find the aesthetics of this game very pleasing. To me, the art style and graphics feels “cute”, but not in a way that is cartoonish or childish. It evokes the feeling of miniature model towns, and is very atmospheric in combination with how the seasons and lighting change. It’s a charming stylisation that blends a sense of realism and a sense of medieval pastoral idealism. I don’t really understand your complaints about the lighting and colour palette because to me they are very pretty.

I find Manor Lords completely bland to look at in comparison. It is more realistic in its lighting and visuals, but also entirely lacking in aesthetic beauty.

[Corporal_Dave]

I think the building colors are great. The part that annoys me is the poor color contrast in some situations. For example, when placing shelters, the ground turns color to show desirability, often a bright yellow or green and you can’t see the arrow for the building orientation. In fact, in most cases it completely disappears and the only way to see it is to hover it over an area with low desirability. Another example is the names of the people in the buildings… white letters on green background that are very difficult to read. Black letters would be much better.