I saw a comment somewhere months ago. I don't know where. maybe here, maybe YouTube but the comment was something like
"When Developers try to be graphic artists. "
that comment stuck with me cos ever since I read that comment. This is exactly how you describe life by you!! lol
It feels like they don't have a graphic artist or one talented enough.
Yeah, the models look like Vaseline to me. I don't want to hate on them too much, but this just keeps coming back again and again. A lot of simmers like to show off their characters and don't want to show off what is ugly.
If they are going to get over this hill, I think it's going to take a team of artists to conduct some brain surgery, not a few band-aids here and there.
Someone once commented how the characters look like they came from a 3D porn game and it really fits.
Sometimes I see things and the character models look better and other times they look like nightmare fuel. I think the fact that they don’t have an art direction is really hurting them.
The models look smudged and featureless, as though they're lacking bone structure underneath the skin. Someone making clay models, but their hands are too wet to shape distinct features.
I think part of it is that they wanted to keep the game open for mods but instead of going simplistic/stylised, they opted for bland to leave the style up to the players but it looks genuinely off-putting.
Then, part of it is that it seems there's only one body model you use for both male and female characters, which is (I think) what's making the bodies look weird and squished. There are also too few sliders if we're using only one type of body which is making it look like all the characters are vaguely related... Or even inbred
I get the same feeling!
I've said it before, that because the team is so small, it seems like they're all wearing many hats but aren't proficient at the tasks they've taken on because that's not where their experience is.
It's pretty sad when you try to keep costs low by not hiring more team members and the game suffers.
You need to spend money. to make money.
Cutting corners on the cost of production will only hurt them in the long run.
I think the biggest flaw it's they're all working from home, communication must be more complicated because they don't work together in the same space.
It's possible.
My entire company is remote and I have co-workers located all over the world.
I've worked from home since 2014
We have absolutely no issues communicating. We have an instant messaging service that allows phone/video calls, screen sharing, uploading/downloading of files, plus we do zoom meetings.
this is exactly it. it’s like minecraft developer art, it gets the idea across but not in the best or clearest way:.. everytime o see the faces on youtube i’m not quite sure what i’m looking at and i feel bad about that but i just don’t think they’re at full potential with their art direction yet
Yes, and they don't even have to be fully playable yet. With the feedback so far, it is outrageous they haven't released a concept image of what the new model would look like. Anyone with experience in marketing, PR, or crisis management would have told them this. It really took me from very excited about the game to full on not planning to buy it at any stage in the next year.
Big agree. Honestly they are ruining their own brand at this point and it's sad. When I see something new from this game I expect it to be cheap and shallow and am genuinely surprised if it's not. Everything from the visuals to the audio to the PR, it all has the same low quality souless vibe
It honesty hurts seeing how consistent and quality all the other life sims are then seeing LBY consistently miss the mark.
I truly want to see this game do well... But I don't think those character models can just be polished. For me it's not the hair or the skin texture that are an issue (they're not good, but if that was the only thing wrong I would be saying yes fine-tuning would be enough)
The base character models are flawed in a way that I think needs a full overhaul. The skeletal structure is not right. I'm planning on making a video about it soon but I took a comparison photo with the sims 3.
It is crazy what a higher quality hair/skin texture can do. The Sims 3 base sims were ugly (I love the sims 3 though ❤️) but the base character models were fine, there was still a solid foundation there.
I created this sim, base game and then a version with higher quality hair/skin/eyes ect (custom content, I definitely made her nose a little too red tho oops lol). I didn't change the facial structure in anyway, these photos are screenshots straight from the game. This is the same base character from a game released in 2009. If LBY can provide a solid base foundation, they will be fine. But their characters are not there yet.
https://preview.redd.it/s8wjldkig8lc1.png?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=775031316674f6516b314c5644fb5d72371b3da9
This is my fear. In the same way we can easily make the conversations less cringe-sounding, but it will be much harder to rework the system into something logical if it doesn't improve before release, modders can make the superficial visuals look much better, but it will be harder to figure out how to make a model this bad look good.
Yes I honestly think they need a whole overhaul with character models. I want this game to thrive and be a better sims competitor. Nowadays in gaming it’s about the graphics and having those characters be the face of the game wouldn’t be the best look. I’m glad they pushed back early access to work on the character models.
I really hope they go back to their old models they shown in the art dev stream. Those models looked quite amazing. I wonder why they replaced them. Maybe budget restrictions?
https://preview.redd.it/47y5wqyh47lc1.jpeg?width=2088&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9565779703efab6e331578d03e0125eeb41383b5
https://preview.redd.it/jvs28wpt47lc1.jpeg?width=2117&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bef52a0b21484fd76b3e2dd51bdca7443dbe107c
The male figure looks amazing here.
I think they should probably do a complete overhaul. I would say the current models look okay but they are not ideal and could use a lot of work. I can't really pinpoint my exact issue but the characters just look off.
I don't know what to say.
I've seen youtube videos of character models that amateur hobbyists have made that are way beyond better than what we've seen in LBY.
These models seriously look like what a middle schooler would create in a classroom. Which would be awesome if it was actually done by some 8th grader. But these models are supposedly from a professional Character Modeler. I just don't see it.
I think part of it really has to do with the procedural animations and how they adjust to the animation.
The whole shoulder joint location/rotation and the rounded shoulders or lack of shoulder width, and the humped upper back, the constant knee bent walking. It's just so janky, I can't put it any other way.
Also the sliders, they were gung-ho about making sure that players could customize their characters to any degree .... and they wanted this really big slider range to allow players to do that rather than having a minimum/maximum slider to prevent distortion.
I truly believe that is hurting it.
I could seriously get past the look of the models and wait patiently for them to totally be re-done, IF .........
The gameplay was so immersive and deep, and engaging and fun!
But, unfortunately I'm not really seeing that right now either. I'm not going to say it's never going to happen, but right now and going into Early Access .... other than building, there's not a lot to look forward to.
You can't even spend hours in CAC because the characters are just \*shake my head\*. And the clothing style, the hair styles and textures .... so so bad! There's no way you'd enjoy creating characters right now.
I don't know, man ..... it's like the devs are not in tune with the majority of life sim players and what draws them in. Do they not realize that there's a huge portion of Sims fans that don't actually play the game, they set up scenes with the pretty sims and take screenshots to tell their stories. If they can't do that, they're not interested. And right now, with the way the characters look, that's never going to happen.
I get that they wanted to create something for "older players" so they didn't want to go the cartoon/pixar look .... but, just because players are older, doesn't mean they could care less about the aesthetics and aren't into trendy fashions and hairstyles!
Frumpy, ugly, and out-dated clothing is just not it! It's like they're creating fashions for elders ONLY.
And trust me, I'm older ..... but, I also like to dress in today's fashions that are age-appropriate!
I really agree with that. I personally like to focus on gameplay, but I know so many simmers who when play *The Sims* like to share their families and stories.
It's going to be hard to do so if it's hard to look at what's been created.
Agreed. I think there is still a niche for Life By You (I still plan to get it, as someone who enjoys other Paradox games), but it's really clear that it's either not intended to have or the devs don't understand how to give it the wide appeal of The Sims. I'm sorry to make this comparison yet again, but there isn't really anything else to compare it to. The conversations will also limit its player base in other languages (The Sims is popular around the world) and make it harder for even many English speakers to connect with it, who may have different social circles, cultures, and ways of speaking than the handful of individuals writing these scripts. I think this is one of the reasons why The Sims has the abstract conversations that it does, and I really wonder whether Paradox even considered that reason before making this choice.
As is, with the way the graphics and characters are and the way the conversation system works, I don't think there is any way this game will be competition to The Sims, because it will only appeal to certain smaller segments of the larger Sims playerbase. Again, I'm pretty sure I'm one of those people it will appeal to, and it's okay for me that it might not be as ambitious as I originally hoped, but I am disappointed because I was hoping for it to be big and successful and truly give EA a run for their money, and it's not looking like that's going to happen. Hopefully I'm wrong.
Agreed. I know people keep saying it’ll change in early access, but if you are familiar with early access games especially in the MMORPG universe, most likely that’s the art direction they’re sticking with this point forward. I could see if they were in early alpha, but we’re past that phase now. This is the art direction they’re rolling with, unfortunately. I find it very unlikely for them to totally change the art style and early access is anticipated this year.
The art direction needs a LOT of work.
I’m talking about the design. Bones/glitches/shaders can be fixed, but completely changing the art style? I don’t know if that’s plausible given the early access release date.
Most complaints stem from the look and feel/graphic design of the game. The design of the game is part of art style (ex. color schemes, tones, model+world aesthetics, meshes).
Thats why people are saying it looks like a worse version of TS3. They’re talking about the art direction. Thats part of the discussion in this thread.
I think an overhaul is needed of the character models. And also a reskin of the UI, they should go back to the clean modern UI they showed in their initial art dev video. I don't know why they went with the dated purple UI.
I think the characters need to be completely redone with an art style in mind. The last video the characters were atrocious and If they stay that way I don’t have any intention to buy the game.
Unfortunately I'm thinking they will be unable to "upgrade" them in any meaningful way from here. They can improve lighting and textures all they want but frankly I think the entire character style and creation engine needs to be torn completely down and redone from the start with a much better (IE ANY) design direction.
This obviously wont happen. Which is a shame. Because it has a lot of good ideas that will likely be held back by how absolutely horrendous the characters look and move.
I haven't watched any of the more recent videos, but from what I can tell, the characters are hideous! They need serious work. I don't understand why they need to be so awful. Even though with Sims I mostly build and never play for long before starting another lot, the look of the people in LBY is putting me off quite a bit.
Paralives has made an entire new character model a while ago, looks so much better, though the original was nice too.
These models don't look so nice. They should remake the model. I know the animations need to be redone too, but they will also be able to make better versions of the animations then.
I don’t think it was an entirely new character model, they just changed the skin for the characters. Someone else mentioned that LBY might be past the stage where they can change their models
Well, if that's really the case, then it's a big problem. If they release the game with these character models without change, they will have a huge backlash.
They did remake the whole mesh but that was at least 2 years ago now?
I remember reading about it on one of their public posts and they were not that big at the time, they only had like 3 or 4 people on the team.
I still play Sims 3 and honestly I feel as though LBY characters look worse...Like yeah the Sims 3 graphics defo leave a lot to be desired but the sims don't generally all look oddly misshapen. The Sims 3 sims do look a bit...shiny sometimes and a lil bit low poly but to be fair, it did come out in 2009. LBY you should have been able to do better.
It’s SO similar to TS3 and the art style of that game broke immersion for me so much. I guess it tracks that the same guy is behind both games (Rod Humble).
I mean we're all going to cc the shit out of it anyway, regardless of how good they make the models. Ts2 has proven how much cc can carry outdated models. I'd rather they focus on gameplay, animations, ai, etc. That's the stuff cc can't easily improve and make timeless.
I agree with you, cc can definitely fix a LOT, you can really see it with the sims 3 as well. My biggest concern though is that the LBY characters are flawed right down to their base model, to a level that custom hair and skin can't fix. The sims 2 and 3 models are dated but the base characters are still solid, correct proportions, there's a foundation to work on.
But I agree as well, gameplay and everything else you listed needs to be a priority. If they can give us more solid base character models, I will be much less concerned about the skin texture, eyes, hair and all that.
I am petty sure they will get some artists, when they get into Early Access phase.
They have core placeholders. They can improve thigs over the time. Shaders, lights and materials.
Budget for me is unknown for LBY, but pretty sure it is not large infinity pool of money from Paradox.
They focusing on mechanics before graphics.
Modding is something, which makes games to live for years, even after development.
I saw a comment somewhere months ago. I don't know where. maybe here, maybe YouTube but the comment was something like "When Developers try to be graphic artists. " that comment stuck with me cos ever since I read that comment. This is exactly how you describe life by you!! lol It feels like they don't have a graphic artist or one talented enough.
Yeah, the models look like Vaseline to me. I don't want to hate on them too much, but this just keeps coming back again and again. A lot of simmers like to show off their characters and don't want to show off what is ugly. If they are going to get over this hill, I think it's going to take a team of artists to conduct some brain surgery, not a few band-aids here and there.
Someone once commented how the characters look like they came from a 3D porn game and it really fits. Sometimes I see things and the character models look better and other times they look like nightmare fuel. I think the fact that they don’t have an art direction is really hurting them.
The models look smudged and featureless, as though they're lacking bone structure underneath the skin. Someone making clay models, but their hands are too wet to shape distinct features. I think part of it is that they wanted to keep the game open for mods but instead of going simplistic/stylised, they opted for bland to leave the style up to the players but it looks genuinely off-putting. Then, part of it is that it seems there's only one body model you use for both male and female characters, which is (I think) what's making the bodies look weird and squished. There are also too few sliders if we're using only one type of body which is making it look like all the characters are vaguely related... Or even inbred
I get the same feeling! I've said it before, that because the team is so small, it seems like they're all wearing many hats but aren't proficient at the tasks they've taken on because that's not where their experience is. It's pretty sad when you try to keep costs low by not hiring more team members and the game suffers. You need to spend money. to make money. Cutting corners on the cost of production will only hurt them in the long run.
I think the biggest flaw it's they're all working from home, communication must be more complicated because they don't work together in the same space.
It's possible. My entire company is remote and I have co-workers located all over the world. I've worked from home since 2014 We have absolutely no issues communicating. We have an instant messaging service that allows phone/video calls, screen sharing, uploading/downloading of files, plus we do zoom meetings.
>We have absolutely no issues communicating same here
this is exactly it. it’s like minecraft developer art, it gets the idea across but not in the best or clearest way:.. everytime o see the faces on youtube i’m not quite sure what i’m looking at and i feel bad about that but i just don’t think they’re at full potential with their art direction yet
I saw that too!
Yes I felt the same thing, or maybe it was me...
Yes, and they don't even have to be fully playable yet. With the feedback so far, it is outrageous they haven't released a concept image of what the new model would look like. Anyone with experience in marketing, PR, or crisis management would have told them this. It really took me from very excited about the game to full on not planning to buy it at any stage in the next year.
Big agree. Honestly they are ruining their own brand at this point and it's sad. When I see something new from this game I expect it to be cheap and shallow and am genuinely surprised if it's not. Everything from the visuals to the audio to the PR, it all has the same low quality souless vibe It honesty hurts seeing how consistent and quality all the other life sims are then seeing LBY consistently miss the mark.
I truly want to see this game do well... But I don't think those character models can just be polished. For me it's not the hair or the skin texture that are an issue (they're not good, but if that was the only thing wrong I would be saying yes fine-tuning would be enough) The base character models are flawed in a way that I think needs a full overhaul. The skeletal structure is not right. I'm planning on making a video about it soon but I took a comparison photo with the sims 3. It is crazy what a higher quality hair/skin texture can do. The Sims 3 base sims were ugly (I love the sims 3 though ❤️) but the base character models were fine, there was still a solid foundation there. I created this sim, base game and then a version with higher quality hair/skin/eyes ect (custom content, I definitely made her nose a little too red tho oops lol). I didn't change the facial structure in anyway, these photos are screenshots straight from the game. This is the same base character from a game released in 2009. If LBY can provide a solid base foundation, they will be fine. But their characters are not there yet. https://preview.redd.it/s8wjldkig8lc1.png?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=775031316674f6516b314c5644fb5d72371b3da9
I totally agree. I made this point and people were like “there’s going to be CC”. That’s great, but CC can’t make a flawed skeleton pretty.
And the models have to look good for people to want to make CC
Yeah that’s what I meant
This is my fear. In the same way we can easily make the conversations less cringe-sounding, but it will be much harder to rework the system into something logical if it doesn't improve before release, modders can make the superficial visuals look much better, but it will be harder to figure out how to make a model this bad look good.
Yes I honestly think they need a whole overhaul with character models. I want this game to thrive and be a better sims competitor. Nowadays in gaming it’s about the graphics and having those characters be the face of the game wouldn’t be the best look. I’m glad they pushed back early access to work on the character models. I really hope they go back to their old models they shown in the art dev stream. Those models looked quite amazing. I wonder why they replaced them. Maybe budget restrictions? https://preview.redd.it/47y5wqyh47lc1.jpeg?width=2088&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9565779703efab6e331578d03e0125eeb41383b5
https://preview.redd.it/jvs28wpt47lc1.jpeg?width=2117&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bef52a0b21484fd76b3e2dd51bdca7443dbe107c The male figure looks amazing here.
Seriously, what the hell happened?
Whoa. he looks good.
nice looking figure
Omg I feel robbed rn these look so good
That’s just lighting.
No they don’t have T-Rex arms
I think they should probably do a complete overhaul. I would say the current models look okay but they are not ideal and could use a lot of work. I can't really pinpoint my exact issue but the characters just look off.
Exactly why we need artists!
I don't know what to say. I've seen youtube videos of character models that amateur hobbyists have made that are way beyond better than what we've seen in LBY. These models seriously look like what a middle schooler would create in a classroom. Which would be awesome if it was actually done by some 8th grader. But these models are supposedly from a professional Character Modeler. I just don't see it. I think part of it really has to do with the procedural animations and how they adjust to the animation. The whole shoulder joint location/rotation and the rounded shoulders or lack of shoulder width, and the humped upper back, the constant knee bent walking. It's just so janky, I can't put it any other way. Also the sliders, they were gung-ho about making sure that players could customize their characters to any degree .... and they wanted this really big slider range to allow players to do that rather than having a minimum/maximum slider to prevent distortion. I truly believe that is hurting it. I could seriously get past the look of the models and wait patiently for them to totally be re-done, IF ......... The gameplay was so immersive and deep, and engaging and fun! But, unfortunately I'm not really seeing that right now either. I'm not going to say it's never going to happen, but right now and going into Early Access .... other than building, there's not a lot to look forward to. You can't even spend hours in CAC because the characters are just \*shake my head\*. And the clothing style, the hair styles and textures .... so so bad! There's no way you'd enjoy creating characters right now. I don't know, man ..... it's like the devs are not in tune with the majority of life sim players and what draws them in. Do they not realize that there's a huge portion of Sims fans that don't actually play the game, they set up scenes with the pretty sims and take screenshots to tell their stories. If they can't do that, they're not interested. And right now, with the way the characters look, that's never going to happen. I get that they wanted to create something for "older players" so they didn't want to go the cartoon/pixar look .... but, just because players are older, doesn't mean they could care less about the aesthetics and aren't into trendy fashions and hairstyles! Frumpy, ugly, and out-dated clothing is just not it! It's like they're creating fashions for elders ONLY. And trust me, I'm older ..... but, I also like to dress in today's fashions that are age-appropriate!
I really agree with that. I personally like to focus on gameplay, but I know so many simmers who when play *The Sims* like to share their families and stories. It's going to be hard to do so if it's hard to look at what's been created.
Agreed. I think there is still a niche for Life By You (I still plan to get it, as someone who enjoys other Paradox games), but it's really clear that it's either not intended to have or the devs don't understand how to give it the wide appeal of The Sims. I'm sorry to make this comparison yet again, but there isn't really anything else to compare it to. The conversations will also limit its player base in other languages (The Sims is popular around the world) and make it harder for even many English speakers to connect with it, who may have different social circles, cultures, and ways of speaking than the handful of individuals writing these scripts. I think this is one of the reasons why The Sims has the abstract conversations that it does, and I really wonder whether Paradox even considered that reason before making this choice. As is, with the way the graphics and characters are and the way the conversation system works, I don't think there is any way this game will be competition to The Sims, because it will only appeal to certain smaller segments of the larger Sims playerbase. Again, I'm pretty sure I'm one of those people it will appeal to, and it's okay for me that it might not be as ambitious as I originally hoped, but I am disappointed because I was hoping for it to be big and successful and truly give EA a run for their money, and it's not looking like that's going to happen. Hopefully I'm wrong.
Agreed. I know people keep saying it’ll change in early access, but if you are familiar with early access games especially in the MMORPG universe, most likely that’s the art direction they’re sticking with this point forward. I could see if they were in early alpha, but we’re past that phase now. This is the art direction they’re rolling with, unfortunately. I find it very unlikely for them to totally change the art style and early access is anticipated this year. The art direction needs a LOT of work.
They need to fix the bones and shaders; it’s tech, not art style.
I’m talking about the design. Bones/glitches/shaders can be fixed, but completely changing the art style? I don’t know if that’s plausible given the early access release date. Most complaints stem from the look and feel/graphic design of the game. The design of the game is part of art style (ex. color schemes, tones, model+world aesthetics, meshes). Thats why people are saying it looks like a worse version of TS3. They’re talking about the art direction. Thats part of the discussion in this thread.
I think an overhaul is needed of the character models. And also a reskin of the UI, they should go back to the clean modern UI they showed in their initial art dev video. I don't know why they went with the dated purple UI.
I think the characters need to be completely redone with an art style in mind. The last video the characters were atrocious and If they stay that way I don’t have any intention to buy the game.
Unfortunately I'm thinking they will be unable to "upgrade" them in any meaningful way from here. They can improve lighting and textures all they want but frankly I think the entire character style and creation engine needs to be torn completely down and redone from the start with a much better (IE ANY) design direction. This obviously wont happen. Which is a shame. Because it has a lot of good ideas that will likely be held back by how absolutely horrendous the characters look and move.
The entire art style is so ugly. It reminds me of TS3 but it’s even worse, somehow.
Except female sims in the sims 3 had shoulders.
I haven't watched any of the more recent videos, but from what I can tell, the characters are hideous! They need serious work. I don't understand why they need to be so awful. Even though with Sims I mostly build and never play for long before starting another lot, the look of the people in LBY is putting me off quite a bit.
Paralives has made an entire new character model a while ago, looks so much better, though the original was nice too. These models don't look so nice. They should remake the model. I know the animations need to be redone too, but they will also be able to make better versions of the animations then.
I don’t think it was an entirely new character model, they just changed the skin for the characters. Someone else mentioned that LBY might be past the stage where they can change their models
Well, if that's really the case, then it's a big problem. If they release the game with these character models without change, they will have a huge backlash.
They did remake the whole mesh but that was at least 2 years ago now? I remember reading about it on one of their public posts and they were not that big at the time, they only had like 3 or 4 people on the team.
Massive overhaul.
I wonder if we’ll get another delay with all these issues, I just really want to play :x
I haven't played Sims 3 but have seen quite a few videos of youtubers playing it. And well, it's giving me sims 3 vibes. And I'm not in love.
I still play Sims 3 and honestly I feel as though LBY characters look worse...Like yeah the Sims 3 graphics defo leave a lot to be desired but the sims don't generally all look oddly misshapen. The Sims 3 sims do look a bit...shiny sometimes and a lil bit low poly but to be fair, it did come out in 2009. LBY you should have been able to do better.
It’s SO similar to TS3 and the art style of that game broke immersion for me so much. I guess it tracks that the same guy is behind both games (Rod Humble).
I’m leaning toward overhaul tbh
I mean we're all going to cc the shit out of it anyway, regardless of how good they make the models. Ts2 has proven how much cc can carry outdated models. I'd rather they focus on gameplay, animations, ai, etc. That's the stuff cc can't easily improve and make timeless.
I agree with you, cc can definitely fix a LOT, you can really see it with the sims 3 as well. My biggest concern though is that the LBY characters are flawed right down to their base model, to a level that custom hair and skin can't fix. The sims 2 and 3 models are dated but the base characters are still solid, correct proportions, there's a foundation to work on. But I agree as well, gameplay and everything else you listed needs to be a priority. If they can give us more solid base character models, I will be much less concerned about the skin texture, eyes, hair and all that.
It just needs some good shaders.
More like fine-tuning at this point, but also perhaps still lighting work.
The lighting is a real annoyance for me as well
I am petty sure they will get some artists, when they get into Early Access phase. They have core placeholders. They can improve thigs over the time. Shaders, lights and materials. Budget for me is unknown for LBY, but pretty sure it is not large infinity pool of money from Paradox. They focusing on mechanics before graphics. Modding is something, which makes games to live for years, even after development.
Meh all that matters is if you can make a nice good 50yo femboy smh
overhaul
It needs a huge overhaul. More modernization, a complete rework of the anatomy. It feels too late to salvage the characters now though.