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Am I the only one who's sick and tired of the hero scale proportions of gear in game?

Do you think Hero Scale is over done?

  • Nah, I'm simple and I like things big and flashy.

    Votes: 79 60.3%

  • Yes, I'm a person of high taste and I'm tired of weapons that only appeals to simpletons.

    Votes: 52 39.7%
  • Total voters
    131
Failburger

Failburger

Banned
Dec 3, 2018
2,455
I am getting tired of the hero scale proportions in video games. Nothing takes me out of a game more then playing a game that kind of shoots for a realistic-ish aesthetics, but the characters are wielding 20 feet long swords with 5 feet long spikes attached to the blades. I'm not exactly sure why it's so popular, but I think it's because it's either A) back in the day it's easier to show details on large object; or B) gamers are simple and they constantly want things to get bigger to show progression.

I mean look at this imgur album



DaS3Greatsword.png


1-23.jpg

maxresdefault.jpg


So tired of this aesthetic creeping into every game I play and I'm not sure who to blame. I want to point my fingers at Blizzard for making it so popular; but Game Workshop pretty much created this aesthetics. But Japan takes it to the 11s and create that pizza cutter monstrosity. So what I'm getting at is that it's world wide effort in making every game look like a cartoon for 12 years old boys.


Just once, I want to play my demon slaying ninja game with weapons that can actually fit in the room.
 
Last edited:

Deleted member 14377

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
13,520
Easier for visual fidelity, I suppose. There are plenty of games that don't do this. But when it comes to multiplayer stuff with microtransactions, people like this so they can show off their rare shiny and possibly expensive cosmetic toys.
 
ned_ballad

ned_ballad

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
48,220
Rochester, New York
For Warcraft and Dota 2, I think the giant weapons read well from a distance, since the games aren't played with the characters close to the screen. And usually in busy maps with lots going on, and obscured by trees or other decorations
 
Rickenslacker

Rickenslacker

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,415
I'm ambivalent towards it but the pics being from Dota and HOTS aren't the greatest example being that they're likely designed in such a way to give them better recognition with the perspective used in those games.
 
Temascos

Temascos

Member
Oct 27, 2017
12,505
Blizzard's World Of Warcraft art style drives me nuts, it's hard to take it seriously when the heroes have shoulder pads bigger than their damn heads. Like, why? Are humans weak to shoulder attacks or something?

"Balthazar! Your father...has fallen in battle!"
"It's okay, he was only gutted in the stomach and had his intestines used as a skipping rope."
"No...they...hit his shoulder. I'm sorry. I know how much he meant to you."
"Daddy, no!"
 
Glio

Glio

Member
Oct 27, 2017
24,497
Spain
Temascos said:
Blizzard's World Of Warcraft art style drives me nuts, it's hard to take it seriously when the heroes have shoulder pads bigger than their damn heads. Like, why? Are humans weak to shoulder attacks or something?

"Balthazar! Your father...has fallen in battle!"
"It's okay, he was only gutted in the stomach and had his intestines used as a skipping rope."
"No...they...hit his shoulder. I'm sorry. I know how much he meant to you."
"Daddy, no!"
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Because when you have a raid with 25 people and I don't know how many enemies, you need to have elements that make visibility easy.
 
Qikz

Qikz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,470
To answer the poll I'm a simple man who likes things big and flashy. Big swords are cool, big weapons are cool, big shields can be amazing. I love it.
 

Deleted member 2441

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
655
Maxey said:
I believe that's meant to make characters easy to recognize at a glance.
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ned_ballad said:
For Warcraft and Dota 2, I think the giant weapons read well from a distance, since the games aren't played with the characters close to the screen. And usually in busy maps with lots going on, and obscured by trees or other decorations
Click to expand...
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Bingo - I'm sure someone with more artistic chops than me could chime in, but this is for the sake of readability in-game.

Particularly in top-down or isometric games, the character's weapon is central to gameplay and often the most recognizable aspect of their silhouette.

When information at a glance is really important, exaggerated proportions that highlight the silhouette are necessary.

You need to be able to quickly tell apart the greatsword user from the crossbow user, or the ninja from the mage. Especially with cosmetic skins now being more prominent than ever, where a character's colour palette and clothing can change completely from one skin with the next, you need other points of differentiation between characters.
 
Dylan

Dylan

Member
Oct 28, 2017
3,260
Imagine if Anti-Mage had two little realistically-sized daggers. He'd just be a dude.

They should make dota where all the heroes are just regular-lookin' blokes. Hahaha.
 
Doc Kelso

Doc Kelso

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,157
NYC
It's partially due to silhouetting as a design concept, specifically geared towards games with any sort of multiplayer component. The gist of it is that you should be able to tell what you're fighting against or fighting as at a glance and larger weapons are an easier way to do that. The other method is typically in the player character's stance.
 

Deleted member 18021

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
4,000
As far as MMOs go, I think you'll always (eventually) wind up down this road. Big swords and glowing weapons in general are always going to be considered cool to teenagers, and thus good fodder for rewards.

FFXIV, for example, have the long ass, very involved Zodiac and Anima weapon quests, which respectively give you big glow-y vanity weapons. They're at least contextualized in the game's lore (Your Aettir Lux has a Fi living inside it!), and you can easily ignore all of this in favor of the more realistic weapons if you so choose, lol.

 
lightning16

lightning16

Member
May 17, 2019
1,763
It doesn't really bother me, no, although Warcraft is one of the exceptions since I think it's so exaggerated and I think the art style in general in the series is very ugly (but especially in how stupid big and bulky armor looks). Dota on the other hand I think looks fine in comparison in those screenshots. Especially Omniknight lol.
 
Deepwater

Deepwater

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
6,349
If you want "realish aesthetics" go play For Honor or Assassin's creed, not fucking World of Warcraft or DOTA lol
 
Aranjah

Aranjah

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,185
Sometimes the ridiculous WoW armor bothers me, but what really bothers me is when some of the NPCs are, like, 3 people tall.
I get that it's mostly in cases where they're a fightable enemy at some point and their model needs to be big enough to see in a pile of 10-25 players and their spell effects, but I wish they'd at least scale the model to normal character size for the times when they're just NPCs.
 
justiceiro

justiceiro

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
6,664
There is a pretty obvious reason this type of aesthetic is so widely used: animations. To have a good animations, you need to have anticipation, and is almost impossible to achieve this well with subtle moviment. You need to know what each of those characters will do before they do. That's what makes these games so good and fun to play.
 
Red Liquorice

Red Liquorice

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,066
UK
The design examples in the OP look to be aimed at children, they're like cartoon characters so you'd expect toy-like exaggeration. It doesn't appeal to me, but I'm not 10, if I was I'd probably be all about them.
 

Deleted member 17207

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
7,208
Every game you play?

Maybe you just need to diversify. I can safely say this particular thing wasn't present in pretty much any game I played this year lol.
 
ThreepQuest64

ThreepQuest64

Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
5,735
Germany
A reason why I don't play Monster Hunter is because even the """"short swords"""" or """"daggers"""" are as big as my character. It looks so fucking ridiculous.

In games like Diablo 3 where I can customise/transmog my characters they often look like level 1 plebs; no spikes or horns twice the length of my forearms on shoulders.
 
Starlatine

Starlatine

533.489 paid youtubers cant be wrong
Member
Oct 28, 2017
30,375
Could you give a proper example OP? I'm having a hard time thinking games that go for realistic-ish proportions (Last of Us, Uncharted, Tomb Raider, etc) with gigantic weaponry

The closer i can think is gears, but im not sure i would call it realistic and the weapons are not that big in comparison to them anyway
 
Kinthey

Kinthey

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
22,274
Makes total sense for Dota and Heroes of the Storm considering you mostly see those heroes from far away
 
nded

nded

Member
Nov 14, 2017
10,563
I'm fine with the action figure aesthetic and it serves a practical purpose when it comes to character silhouettes and readability.
 
The Iron Banana

The Iron Banana

Member
Apr 25, 2018
1,651
Rockwall, Texas
I really dislike a lot of Destiny 2 Titan armor for this reason. The proportions are all out of whack and are silly to say the least. There are a few sets that are toned down but man early on just about every Titan set had massive shoulder pads and/or legs. The worst being the Eater of Worlds raid lair armor. I mean look at this:

rmOZh2Y.jpg
 
Starlatine

Starlatine

533.489 paid youtubers cant be wrong
Member
Oct 28, 2017
30,375
The Iron Banana said:
I really dislike a lot of Destiny 2 Titan armor for this reason. The proportions are all out of whack and are silly to say the least. There are a few sets that are toned down but man early on just about every Titan set had massive shoulder pads and/or legs. The worst being the Eater of Worlds raid lair armor. I mean look at this:

rmOZh2Y.jpg
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what an absolute unit

well, this sure is an example
 
KDR_11k

KDR_11k

Banned
Nov 10, 2017
5,235
I blame the huge shoulder pads on Games Workshop. Except they were making a tabletop game where you look at small figurines from above, not a videogame with a head-level camera perspective. To some degree it made sense for Blizzard to copy that with their RTS games since the perspective is similar but at ground level it tends to look silly.
Space_Wolves_Hellblaster_VirtualWolf.jpg
 
Uriah

Uriah

Member
Oct 25, 2017
270
Dota and Hots are MOBAs with isometric cameras. The heroes need to be easily recognized at a distance.
 
Mr Spasiba

Mr Spasiba

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
1,779
Well for MOBAs and MMOs which make up a majority of your examples it's about readability, in MOBAs the characters are like an inch tall and in MMOs there's 5000 things happening on screen at once so it's necessary.

Outside of those it's really just on option in most games. You also posted an ultra great sword from a souls games like there aren't like 8 other weapon categories.
 
JumbiePrime

JumbiePrime

Member
Feb 16, 2019
1,878
Bklyn
I would love to see something just as ridiculous but opposite . I like a stick with a butter knife taped to the end of it ...and it does 500 DMG per hit
 
ConfusedOwl

ConfusedOwl

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,125
Canada
The armour I can take it or leave it but one of my favourite weapons in Monster Hunter is the Greatsword. Give me more big swords.
 
dalq

dalq

Member
Feb 13, 2018
1,102
The Iron Banana said:
I really dislike a lot of Destiny 2 Titan armor for this reason. The proportions are all out of whack and are silly to say the least. There are a few sets that are toned down but man early on just about every Titan set had massive shoulder pads and/or legs. The worst being the Eater of Worlds raid lair armor. I mean look at this:

rmOZh2Y.jpg
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You might not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like
 
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