Whoever “designed” new look of the cards should either change the profession or should at least try to finish a basic graphic design course. The new card “design” is mindbogglingly bad. There really should be a new word invented to describe this awful cacophony of colors and effects.
Every single decision regarding new look of the cards was tragic and misguided. More and more the devs start to look to me like a bunch of clowns pretending to know what they are doing with this game. They probably hire coders from Fiverr and they themselves make “design” decisions, which shows. No actual graphical designer would mess up the work so utterly. This level of incompetence is really fascinating.
What specifically don’t you like about the redesign? I don’t think it is that bad - might take a bit of getting used to, but all the information I need is still on the card. My biggest concern was the placement and changing of the health and armor values, but I figured it out pretty quick.
For whatever my two cents is worth - I do think this issue has been exaggerated, as we forum-dwellers tend to do, but that’s not to say there aren’t valid criticisms of the new design. I personally like it for the most part, although I wish a few things were different, namely larger fonts, non-colored mana text, and a way to see base/current rarity more easily. I can play with this new style just fine, but I do hope to see those things addressed sometime in the future.
I do think this makes things much harder for those with vision impairments, especially color-blindness (honestly, massive props to those who have figured out how to play this game pre or post graphic overhaul while not being able to see the gem colors!). Mana colors being so prominent on the new designs along with gradients is going to be difficult for them.
I’m absolutely not saying the new designs are perfect or can’t be improved, especially in terms of accessibility. As with anything on public forums, though, don’t go deaf by the vocal minority to the rest of the community quietly still enjoying the game.
Outside of the aesthetics, I find it much harder to tell when a troop is at full mana and ready to fire, and I find it more difficult to quickly see what mana I should be targeting. It’s all laid out there, but the visual design is so noisy it’s hard to parse.
The old design was FUNCTIONALLY cleaner IMHO.
As to the aesthetics, they look like a high schooler who is really interested in design did the new visual design in their spare time. It’s UGLY and AWFUL.
The old design made it is easy to see the needed imformation at a glance. The new system makes everything other than mana color harder to see. The thing is you could easily see the mana colors before. So the change was completely unnecessary. Im not spending any money, not that i spend much, only the $10 campaign pass, on the game until they revert to the old system, or gut this one and redo it.
For me it’s hard to see the life and armor numbers change during battle. Attack is a bit easier to see because it’s white on a black background. That and the quality of a troop or weapon isn’t as obvious as it used to be.
I hate the new design. Traits have been reduced to 3 diamonds, boring, no border signifying what rarity the troop is and was replaced with teeny tiny stars. The mana color banner is an eyesore. It’s all around a bed redesign. If the devs are being raked over the coals for this, they deserve, and yes, the person responsible should not work in the art dept.
Yup this. The old design was a lot more functional. The life and armor stats were closer to the gem board for both sides so it was easy to just glance at it and decide your course of action. It takes more time now (the smaller text size doesn’t help) and I play on the playstation with a large tv. I can just imagine how much worse this is on players who play on the phone/tablet versions.
Plus some of the design decisions are a bit headscratching. Did they really need to bleed the colors right into the spell and trait description boxes and making the text harder to see? Were the colors on the mana orb and the borders not enough of an indicator? Also, why did they bother putting that fancy color ribbon on the armor/life stats only to remove it when the troop is shiny?
I disagree. I would say that people here are overreacting. The new design isn’t that bad.
Probably, they were just trying to make the game more appealing to children. That is why everything seems to be excessively colorful and the new design does not care too much about accessibility.
Again, I do not think the final result was that bad. What bothers me the most is the mana counter: it was coloured and it was placed outside the mana orb.
As someone over the age of 45 playing on my phone, the visual change has become painful to play. Actually headache-inducing. It’s also extremely difficult to see numbers due to the low contrast color usage.
I’ve been playing for close to six years, and spent a good deal of money. My gameplay has dropped to almost zero due to this change, and I know a lot of guild members doing the same.
I’m hoping the devs will quickly provide a way to revert the change or add an accessibility mode. If they don’t, I will of necessity have to quit.
I think the crux of our problem has been all those commenting that they hate the aesthetics. It hasnt helped us at all and made it competely feasible to ignore those of us who are unable to read the numbers because the font is so small. (That, to me, is a legitimate concern) We just get lumped in with the rest of the complainers and get our valid issues dismissed.
What is wrong with it from a graphics design perspective is that it is confusing, jumbled and there is way too much going on. Good graphic design is supposed to be easy to grasp at a glance. The more different fonts, different sized fonts, colours, flashy stuff is going on, the more confusing it is. Think of any logo that is well known - none of them look like they were designed by someone on an acid trip. In a world where everyone has to deal with information overload, this is even more relevant, as people just instantly move on if they cannot find what they are looking for immediately, and stating this change was made to make the cards easier to understand for newer players in bizarre, since older players can’t even find what they are looking for any more. Companies also need to keep in mind their audience and the new cards suggest the game is targetting children while the monetisation of the game is wildly inappropriate for children.
Text is generally too small, and mana-colored mana-counters are really hard to see on some troop cards.
On a personal note, I liked it better with the frame being rarity-colored, rather than mana-colored. To me, that big mana-ball in the corner was enough to see what colors a troop needed. The mana-colored frames look messy, specialfly on troops/weapons using more than 2 mana colors.
Also, where is the bronze coating on bronzemedalled troops? The gold and silver troops get a nice coating, why not the bronzies?
that the numbers on the card are very small now because they all have to fit on a strip of color. Unless you are viewing the game on the TV screen, that change wasn’t good. Especially on the phones. I have problems seeing the numbers now, and judging by the number of comments here, a lot of other people have the same problem.
I don’t like that mana numbers are in mana colors when you’re doing the battle, so they are even harder to read than if they were all white with black outline. I also don’t like that mana amount is moved to the side for some weird reason, instead of it being where it should be, on the mana circle.
I don’t like that for some reason, all the cards are now in mana colors, which keeps me confused all the time. I keep thinking cards are bosses if they use red mana, especially if they are mono color. I keep thinking the card is ultra rare if it uses blue mana, especially if it is mono color. If I look at the Czernobog card that I uploaded down here, I immediately think epic rarity, not mythic.
Talking about colors, I don’t like that there’s just too much of it. Couple with all the effects and giant cyan strip and arrow, it is just a colored mess and it can irritate the eyes.
I don’t like that traits were removed from the front, where you could easily see which and how many traits opponent has. Now you actually have to click the back of the card to see the information. It might not take much time, but when you are checking a lot of cards, it gets old really fast.
I don’t like placement of the creature info. For example, race info gets cut off if it is longer, because now the diamonds that are supposed to denote traits are in the same line. Graphics get covered with the placement of names - for example, Ancient golem’s or Ancestor Brodir’s head is covered with its name. Those things annoy me from the design and OCD standpoint. The role icons are barely legible, even on the 1920x1080 screen. On the mobile I can’t see them.
I don’t like that trait icons are now all white. They just blurr together. Granted, it’s just a preference, but I liked colored trait icons better because they stood out from each other.
One thing that I like in the new design is the new look of the elite level. That is really nice. But looking at how the elite level graphic flows into that ribbon with numbers, I am seriously starting to suspect that devs changed the graphic for the elite level and then they liked it so much they decided to fit all important info on the colored ribbon that would fit into the elite graphic. But then they had to rearrange everything else because of this, including removing front trait icons and shoving three white diamonds to the right bottom corner instead. I can’t think if any other reason they would change design that didn’t need changing.
In the end, picture says a thousand words. I will just leave this for comparison:
Thanks for the detailed breakdown! Your original post was so devoid of specifics I was just thinking you were bashing the new design for the sake of bashing it. But you’ve listed some relevant points - some of which I still think may just take some getting used to, but some may be issues, especially those with accessibility concerns as others have mentioned.
