Are the Concord character designs really that bad?

SF_Okami posted...

Not much room elsewhere to add cool details.

that character's giant fupa isn't a cool detail?

I find it odd that I post here, I am somewhat in tune with video games and I only found out about this game whenever it launched a week or two ago, due to a topic here.

Sony must have had zero advertising budget for this.

To put this into perspective, I saw about 100 WoW ads leading up to the War Within. This, not a single thing, until it launched and someone made a topic shitting on it.

Not on Twitch, not on Streaming, not on Youtube, not even here until it launched. How crazy is that?

ClayGuida posted...

I find it odd that I post here, I am somewhat in tune with video games and I only found out about this game whenever it launched a week or two ago, due to a topic here.

Sony must have had zero advertising budget for this.

To put this into perspective, I saw about 100 WoW ads leading up to the War Within. This, not a single thing, until it launched and someone made a topic shitting on it.

Not on Twitch, not on Streaming, not on Youtube, not even here until it launched. How crazy is that?

They dedicated a large chunk of a previous PS Direct in May to it. Issue was, when it was revealed to be a hero shooter that cost money, most everyone checked out. Then, they showed it again...in another direct that had Marvel Rivals in it, a game that was so in demand that the keys for the beta were constantly running out over and over.

There was a closed beta in July for Concord, that no one really played other than a few influences that went "it's fun enough". A week later, an open beta happened, and did WORSE than the closed beta.

Finally, Wukong came out and took the media by storm. That and Star Wars Outlaws sucked up all the air in the room, and Concord finally came out quietly and already dead. Also I forgot, they announced an admittedly cool looking PS5 controller for Concord but that must have gone over poorly as well.

I followed it, I even played the open beta. Lasted one round before I deleted it. Felt like a mix of Destiny and Halo with heroes that I didn't like looking at and had zero idea what anyone did (which clearly stems from the shitty designs of them). This thing was DOA, everyone knew it, everyone saw it, except the suits at Firewalk and Sony.

Big lesson here? Don't work on something for 7 fucking years before showing anyone. Felt like they were pot committed after the negative reception and just ignored it all.

Did they announce this in May or something?

ThisIsAKnoife posted...

Are people just mad they cant jerk off to them? Seems like bad character design is just kinda a dog whistle for that at this point

Why is this always the first assumption you people jump to when this topic comes up? This just reeks projection at this point.

Most people just like playing as attractive/sexy and cool characters, men and women alike. Not fat, ugly, badly dressed goofballs with no personality besides spouting corny Marvel movie one-liners.

And to be fair, not ALL the characters in Concord look that bad anyway. The dude in the white armor is okay. Boring, but okay. The green girl with the pink hair is kinda adorable. The emo looking girl is okay too. It's the rest of them that really drag the game's appeal down.

Rivals also killed any chance of it succeeding when they announced every hero would be unlocked and free from the start I believe.

You know, it just clicked: So much of it is like your mom trying to be cool, because her younger coworker told her about anime conventions.

Judging by that picture. Yes, they are THAT BAD. Like, you could probably train an AI to make better characters than that. There's zero sense of cohesive design to those characters. Like others said, it looks like someone ate a box of crayons and then puked mixed wax out to create those character palettes. Like, even Redfall had better character designs than this. Those characters at least had overarching concepts. Ugh...

ClayGuida posted...

Did they announce this in May or something?

It was announced earlier, namely when Sony bought them last year and said Concord was going to be a big tentpole title. No one actually saw anything about it until May of this year, yeah.

All of them appear to have been created created by a committee of like five people who never talked to each other once. They might as well have been randomized.

Finis-XII posted...

Why is this always the first assumption you people jump to when this topic comes up? This just reeks projection at this point.

Most people just like playing as attractive/sexy and cool characters, men and women alike. Not fat, ugly, badly dressed goofballs with no personality besides spouting corny Marvel movie one-liners.

While I admit the guy goes to a bit of an extreme with his statement in this case, a large amount of the people who scream Anti-Woke and get oddly nitpicky over character design are the people who well only liked stellar blade because of the Character design and do judge games on how fappable the characters are

ultimate_reaver posted...

All of them appear to have been created created by a committee of like five people who never talked to each other once. They might as well have been randomized.

Have you ever played City of Heroes or Champions Online? They look like you used the hero costume creator and lazily chose this and that; not totally random but not particularly inspired. "Oh this guy should have a cool cloak, she should have goggles" etc

I wonder if they actually made some kind of system Iuke that with interchange parts in the hopes they could use it to keep introducing characters with low overhead and reuse a lot of assets in every new design.

Raiden2909 posted...

While I admit the guy goes to a bit of an extreme with his statement in this case, a large amount of the people who scream Anti-Woke and get oddly nitpicky over character design are the people who well only liked stellar blade because of the Character design and do judge games on how fappable the characters are

Sure, but not here .

UnholyMudcrab posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/0/006f443e.jpg

I dunno, is that a good character design?

Is he cross eyed?

Thermador446 posted...

Is he cross eyed?

"Sorry sir, I'm doing my best!"

(Thank God someone else finally noticed this at least, I thought I was going crazy)

kirbymuncher posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/bff694bb.jpg
I'm not being totally fair since that concord pic up there is like ingame models or whatever and this apex one is more of a promo art thing but I think even that is enough to show there's just way more variety and individuality to the designs , plus the designs are much more interesting on an individual level instead of just being oversized robes

you get a little bit from the poses in the apex picture i guess? other than that, not really. and like you said, one is an artwork, the other is character models. better to compare the same situation (artwork vs artwork, in game model vs in game model). and the concord characters look more varied in species.

i have no experience with either game, just going off the pics.

pauIie posted...

you get a little bit from the poses in the apex picture i guess? other than that, not really. and like you said, one is an artwork, the other is character models. better to compare the same situation (artwork vs artwork, in game model vs in game model). and the concord characters look more varied in species.

i have no experience with either game, just going off the pics.

I know nothing about either game other than what's been posted in this topic, so I wanted to try and be as objective as possible when weighing in. I couldn't find a full roster of Apex Legends' in-game models, so let's just focus on this one character:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/874f4f6d.jpg

While you'll always be able to emote more in hand-drawn / stylized illustration via exaggerated expressions, this image shows that it's still perfectly reasonable to expect some level of characterization through in-game models; in this case, 'precocious tech-y teen' is quite effectively sold to the viewer.

By contrast, even factoring out the bland outfit designs, the Concord characters models all look profoundly bored; no effort was put into giving them discernable personality.They aren't expressing any traits through clothing or pose to sell the viewer on what type of general characters they are; at a glance I can't tell anything about their personalities and abilities beyond their general age and body types (and how the latter might affect their play style). Even something as simple as the smiley face on the Apex robot gives a hint of fun characterization, especially when compared to the 'water heater on legs' (as another user so aptly called it) in Concord's roster.

pauIie posted...

you get a little bit from the poses in the apex picture i guess? other than that, not really. and like you said, one is an artwork, the other is character models. better to compare the same situation (artwork vs artwork, in game model vs in game model). and the concord characters look more varied in species.

i have no experience with either game, just going off the pics.

The Apex Legends designs, while err a little too safely on the side of being generic, are better than Concord, but still a very far cry from the designs of Overwatch and Paladins.

masterpug53 posted...

I know nothing about either game other than what's been posted in this topic, so I wanted to try and be as objective as possible when weighing in. I couldn't find a full roster of Apex Legends' in-game models, so let's just focus on this one character:

[pic]

While you'll always be able to emote more in hand-drawn / stylized illustration via exaggerated expressions, this image shows that it's still perfectly reasonable to expect some level of characterization through in-game models; in this case, 'precocious tech-y teen' is quite effectively sold to the viewer.

By contrast, even factoring out the bland outfit designs, the Concord characters models all look profoundly bored; no effort was put into giving them discernable personality.They aren't expressing any traits through clothing or pose to sell the viewer on what type of general characters they are; at a glance I can't tell anything about their personalities and abilities beyond their general age and body types (and how the latter might affect their play style). Even something as simple as the smiley face on the Apex robot gives a hint of fun characterization, especially when compared to the 'water heater on legs' (as another user so aptly called it) in Concord's roster.

i super agree with concord characters looking bored. in the face. put concord's characters in the exact same poses/expressions the apex characters have, and it would probably do them good. starting to see the difference, and your picture helps.

Tyranthraxus posted...

The Apex Legends designs, while err a little too safely on the side of being generic, are better than Concord, but still a very far cry from the designs of Overwatch and Paladins.

design wise they're both equally boring for me. apex seems to go more into expressions and such so the roster does have more personality.

I don't get why people keep bringing up "woke" as a factor in this. If woke means LGBT and minorities then Overwatch and Apex are also woke. So that's obviously not a factor in if the designs are good or not.

pauIie posted...

better to compare the same situation (artwork vs artwork, in game model vs in game model).

true, but I was having trouble finding pics that were the actual ingame models. but then I remembered I still have the game installed despite not playing it in... well, quite a while. so I just went and took some myself (took me a while to figure out how to get a 3rd person view lol). Part of why I haven't played it is because it cooks my computer so the graphics/texture quality is pretty low but I think it is enough to show general character design
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/7/7d83e39e.jpg

Overall I think the real big problem with concord designs to me is that everyoneis so single-colour. so many plain solid colour jackets or coats or etc with no interesting features on them, which might work ok for a single character among a roster but looks really bad when everyone is like that. like just look at the guy in the center of this, he's got more drip than every character in concord combined