The new gem art just looks messy

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KenshiD wrote:

I don't get people hating on the new gems. They are fucking amazing.

Good job to the artist who did it. I wish I could do something like this.
I love the ideas behind the icons, they are clever and creative.

It's nice to see some good art over simple stuff.

Simple stuff is good for clean designs in softwares and so on. But a fantasy game should have fantasy design!

Well said, KenshiD!

While I like the new gem art because it adds distinction to the skills and supports I feel it could have been much better. I would, in the future, like to see a unique looking gem for each skill and support.

I love the new gems. - shrug -

I also don't like new gems. While I understand the premise behind the design and I think it is a cool idea, the graphics of gems are just too small in game for this to look great. Some of the decorations are so big that the gem itself just looks redundant and reduces readability. Most of the supports aren't even gems anymore. Some gems also look alarmingly simillar to each other (enfeeble and vulnerability).

Another problem is that while some gems represent very well what the skill does, the others are just some random gold decorations. You can pretty much recognize all arrow skills without memorizing how each one looks while there is no way to know f.e. which gem is molten shell without learning it's looks by heart.

I mean sure, you can sort of identify to which category they fall in, here is something that looks like fire, here is something that look like ice, etc. but this effect could be achieved without giving every gem it's unique representation.

The design is also already inconsistent. Most of the decorations tend to wrap around the gem, or create a framing of sorts. But f.e. ethearal knives just look like some gold knives layered over gem graphic. Gold parts of totem gems look extremely flat. Flammability curse looks entirely different from other curses(and most of curse symbols on gems dont even match those in game). And so on and on, I could do this all day. Don't even get me started on support gems.

And to the people saying to just give it time. I have a counter proposition. Remember that they want to make 1 new skill each week or something like that. So imagine the game some time from now. Imagine there is now twice or thrice as many gems. With the current direction I cannot see any other result but total clusterfuck.

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KenshiD wrote:

Simple stuff is good for clean designs in softwares and so on. But a fantasy game should have fantasy design!

Well put, sir.

Our fantasy game's user interface doesn't need to resemble a website nor an iPhone.

I think the gems look cool, and the different shapes make them easier to discern visually than they were before. Good job to the artist.

BTW, it would be nice if they retained their new graphics when socketed.

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TwiiK wrote:

I'm glad they made it so we can tell different skills apart just from looking at the gems, but the new look is just wrong in my opinion.

With the golden borders and details they don't look like gems anymore, but jewelry. Why would loose gems look like they're already socketed? And what's with some gems being tiny and others huge and some have more golden detailing visible than the gem itself?

Every since I got a full stash tab with gems I've been wanting new art which lets me distinguish different skills from eachother by just looking at them, but what I had in mind was a lot more subtle than the art you introduced.

I was thinking something like this:



Being a web designer I used what I had access to so it's not exactly game related icons being used here, but you get the point. It should be easy enough to see what gems I have duplicates of and what they are by quickly scanning over them.

Edit: And to iterate I think the parts that really needed to be distinguished are not much easier to tell apart with the new art. Like for instance tell curses from auras from skills. Or fire skills from lightning skills etc. There's no easy way without memorizing a lot of the new gem art.

Awesome picture, maybe also when mousing over a Gem it will light up the logo/design on the Gem and also light up any Gems of the same Type in that Stash Tab/player stash.

Another vote for usability over pretty. I do think the new gems look pretty cool, but from a usability / UI standpoint they're pretty awful.

I've done a lot of UI design in my time, and these gems just really throw everything off. I would like to see a more polished version of OP's gems from GGG. They could of course come up with a few ideas and poll on which is better. Given how community driven this place is, and how willing the devs are to listen to us, I think it would work out well.

I agree on the fantasy aspect, KenshiD, but that doesn't mean you want things tasteless. Take the Warcraft 3 UI as an example. If you play undead you have bone framing, if you play night elf you have leaf framing. It's not intrusive or untight though, sometimes you don't even notice how it looks, but if you look closer it looks good.


Path of exile also has a pretty tight UI, with cleanly made mana and health gauges, non-intrusive but clear xp bar and a few good details like that. If it wouldn't be tight, I'd be bothered about it. Actually as it is now, I'm a bit bothered about the buttons and a few things. These are good points to bring up as beta feedback. I'm not being insane and whiny about it, it's just lacking/subpar/unfulfilled potential/unwanted level of grade/wanting in refinement.
It's not a just a one time loose emotion I've had, that passes away and is forgotten. The game is continuously communicating to me "I need this" and I've considered it in discipline and come to the point where I can definitely say things like "the skill gem portrayal icons are untight and need work".

This thread got a lot of attention since the last time i saw it haha

I think the new gems are an improvement over the lack of differentiation we had before, but they could still be better. I much prefer the topic starter's approach. Simple and distinct over flashy.