Arcanist aesthetics need a re-work

robertlabrie · April 26

No comment on the skills or damage or anything else but the overall look and feel of the character was too tightly tied to the DLC. When we got Necros it wasn't Elsweyr dragon themed, and wardens weren't tribunal themed, they were unique standalone classes decoupled from the storyline in which they added. Would be nice to see arcanist get a similar rework in terms of theme and animations. Right now it's abilities are:
* shoot green laser - out of a literal book
* launch green blobs
* apply green circles
* sometimes there are green triangles
* these weird tentacles that shoot out of the player

I'm sure others will disagree, and maybe I'm biased because I don't care for the Apocrypha aesthetic but I feel like the whole class artwork feels jarring and bolted on via the DLC instead of a unique class that had always existed in the game universe.

Kick it around pls when you get to the class rework.

Hapexamendios · April 27

I'm fine with the way it is. To each his own.

Alp · April 27

If we could change the colour of the emotional support doritos I would be cool with it. I like the magical runes look.

Malyore · April 27

I suspect arcanist was a special nepotism project that one person wanted and got put into the game. It has way too many ties to apocrypha, the devs always contradict their own lore for it, and they said it was a class people had been asking for for awhile. I don't recall anyone saying they wanted a tentacle spewing apocrypha class... folks wanted something that was "arcane" to fit the mage archetype better than sorcerer does. And this is what they got.
Plus its release completely changed the playing field of the entire game.

Vulkunne · April 27

robertlabrie wrote: »

No comment on the skills or damage or anything else but the overall look and feel of the character was too tightly tied to the DLC. When we got Necros it wasn't Elsweyr dragon themed, and wardens weren't tribunal themed, they were unique standalone classes decoupled from the storyline in which they added. Would be nice to see arcanist get a similar rework in terms of theme and animations. Right now it's abilities are:
* shoot green laser - out of a literal book
* launch green blobs
* apply green circles
* sometimes there are green triangles
* these weird tentacles that shoot out of the player

I'm sure others will disagree, and maybe I'm biased because I don't care for the Apocrypha aesthetic but I feel like the whole class artwork feels jarring and bolted on via the DLC instead of a unique class that had always existed in the game universe.

Kick it around pls when you get to the class rework.

Ah I don't necessarily disagree with you but are you really sure you want them messing with it? It might begin with one thing but they'll end up changing alot.

coop500 · April 27

Warden 100% got awkwardly shoehorned into Morrowind crud, with a few random skills (bear, grove) that don't fit.

Even Ice Magic can be summed up as Solstheim.

BretonMage · April 27

I'm ok with the aesthetics in general, though they need a bit of tweaking. The beam is too bright and intense, and too laser-like - it could do with little wispy runes or tendrils emanating from the sides to look more magical.

The cruxes definitely need to match the skill style applied (and I wish they weren't triangles, I never associated Mora with triangles).

I do think it should match the Apocrypha aesthetic, but there is of course room for skill styles to reflect others sources of runic power.

AScarlato · April 27

I really like them myself. They are much more tolerable in the nice blue color. Hope to get the rest of them and they change the crux too.

Alp · April 27

AScarlato wrote: »

I really like them myself. They are much more tolerable in the nice blue color. Hope to get the rest of them and they change the crux too.

The orange that one skill style in the tome has also looks sick.

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vuwuv · April 27

coop500 wrote: »

Warden 100% got awkwardly shoehorned into Morrowind crud, with a few random skills (bear, grove) that don't fit.

Even Ice Magic can be summed up as Solstheim.

I would say warden is even more awkward in this sense than arcanist is. The only natural DLC class is necro. But all of it was obvious right on the release, why would we discuss these matters now, I don't think class reworks will fix them.

And I don't even mention skill styles...

emilyhyoyeon · April 27

Malyore wrote: »

I suspect arcanist was a special nepotism project that one person wanted and got put into the game. It has way too many ties to apocrypha, the devs always contradict their own lore for it,

Fully agree

Also ever since arcanist was announced on the first stream, to all the other streams, to it being on PTS, people gave feedback about the aesthetic; it is 100% intented as is

CalamityCat · April 27

There are several things that I find really bad with the arcanist skill appearance. First, it's 2026, so we can use more than one colour now. Apparently, there are even colours that aren't green

There are ways to apply a theme with multiple colours that would make it far easier to "read" what an arcanist is doing and be less blinding. With warden for example, the skills fit the theme of their skill lines, but the visuals are varied and clear. I agree with the Morrowind criticism, but the skills still read well and have a more varied and attractive design. Arcanist skills look like they belong in a game with aliens. Flail looks like some horrible alien tongue when you get hit by it in PvP lol.

I'm still disappointed that they never came up with an arcanist skill that has the animation of you flinging a book at someone. We could have had something similar to the screaming cliff racer but with a tome.

The other issue is that arcanist skill icons are far too similar and tell you very little about what you're using. On my warden it's far better - I can see at a glance what everything is going to do. This is what I'd like to see on all classes. Templar skill icons suffer with a similar vagueness. It's annoying learning a class when the icons are vague and meaningless so you keep having to hover over things to remember what they do.

LikaShade · April 27

It's a tired trope for almost two decades already (since 2008 when Lovecraft's work became public domain) in fantasy and horror media, because creating some "Lovecraftian" horror, which in its nature is indescribable and would drive you mad to even be aware of, is impossible in visual media, so the best we got in the mainstream fantasy is to "make it green and add tentacles".

The best Lovecraft experience is reading words from a paper and hallucinating yourself, but in visual media you rely on whoever is making it.

That's all everyone's got, from indie to AAA. "Green + tentacles = lovecraftian". It's not a Zenimax/Bethesda problem, it's a global thing in fantasy games where people didn't even read the books, they just heard about Cthulhu and "non-euclidean geometry", and there are only a few ways we have figured out how to portray it while keeping it visually appealing and recognizable as a subgenre.

Are there other ways to portray it? Yeah.
Why not do it? Because it's a financial risk, and not everyone is willing to take it, until everyone gets sick of "Lovecraft + green + tentacles".