Hi. I decided to changed the camera in my game (Evil crusade) from third person to top-down (diablo like), without changing anything else. I think it makes melee combat less demanding visually, e.g. animations dont need to be as “smart”/realistic, some small details can be ommitted without people noticing, and so on. My game wasn’t focused on melee to start with, so I think this decision cuts unnecessary costs and focuses player attention on the bigger picture, where it needs to be. However, I’m not so sure if this “diablo-likeliness” will make people who look at the screenshots expect something like diablo, e.g. Open world, quests,etc, and get disappoined when they realize it’s linear and not open world. Is there really such a risk or its just me overthinking it?
I think you’re overthinking it. I don’t think people will assume so much from just the camera angle.
@frosted ran into the issue of some steam greenlight voters not understanding he’s making a turnbased strategy game, because of the third-person camera angle he used. I think it is a valid concern. I myself have also skipped some games based on at-a-glance impression of what the gameplay would be like. Imho communicating to people who are looking at your game what’s cool about it, is more important than driving tons of traffic to your storepage. I’m pretty sure the chance of me not playing a game I would deeply enjoy, because I didn’t “get” what it’s about, is much higher than me never having heard of the game (as long as it’s on steam).
@Martin_H , exactly, I observed this behavior in one friend of mine. He doesn’t like strategy games. When he sees a top-down camera angle on screenshots, he immediately assumes it’s a strategy or MOBA. Immediately. There’s a lot of people with short attention span who won’t read anything in the description at all, and just assume everything from the first glance. This is exactly my concern. This is why I’m not starting any marketing yet, because I have to find a way to communicate what the game’s all about in the shortest ways possible (for example using gifs that showcase the most fun parts of the game), and more importantly, not miscommunicate it to people like that.
This. The first iteration of my game, I could explain to people without even showing the game.
On some sites I just used a screenshot of a colored hex.
Seeing the hex instantly told players who liked strategy games that this was a game for them.
I dropped the hex map and used a gridless map and a 3rd person camera. Suddenly nobody knew what genre it was. People kept thinking it was a crappy skyrim knockoff. When we abandon genre convention, there’s a really big cost.
OK, I stand corrected.
@HellSpawnGames , could you maybe have camera options (top-down or over-the-shoulder)? You could make the top-down camera the default, if you think that’ll work better for most people, and tuck the 3rd-person camera away in the options screen. But take at least half your screen shots with the 3rd-person camera, if that is likely to better convey the genre.
It’s a little cheaty, I know, but apparently some people are prone to make snap judgements. 
And so if this is what’s necessary to hold their attention long enough to actually see what your game is, then so be it.
@JoeStrout I considered it but… The whole point of me moving the camera away from action is to hide imperfections of the close view. I don’t want player to look close at sword fights, they are pretty basic and people nowadays have played games like Witcher 3 or Mount & Blade, even strategy games like Total War have realistic-looking sword fights, I just don’t want to put that anywhere near the camera. Plus player constantly needs a tactical overview of the situation (how his undead army is holding up, if there are any enemy reinforcements coming etc).
My camera’s still centered on the character and rotates around (not on all axes, just the vertical), and there’s no cursor. I think that’s at least a little bit indicative that the game’s not an RTS? Also, the HUD is very minimal, an RTS would most likely have like various shortcuts for units/orders/etc…
Can you post a screen shot? It might help us to see what we’re talking about…
I’m going to make a short work-in-progress video soon. My published vids were all from the previous versions where the camera was third person. Just need to fix a few things first lol
I still maintain that camera angles don’t define a genre. Most games would still feel much the same with the camera moved a few feet or rotated a few degrees.
I recently got in trouble for calling Mass Effect an FPS game. But I stand by my point. Moment to moment Mass Effect has players making the same decisions and doing the same things as Halo, Doom, or similar. Mass Effect shares more in common with a FPS game then Portal does, even though portal uses a first person camera set up.
Diablo 1 and 2 were fairly linear. Did they change that for Diablo 3? Anyway, just because you had a Diablo like camera wouldn’t imply open world to me. In fact I’d still expect something with a Diablo like camera to be fairly linear.
On this one I think you are overthinking it.
I honestly think the absence of an explicit grid was more important then camera angle. If you turned a grid on and kept your camera angle, I bet people would be back to intuitively understanding what was going on.
I agree with this, and I want to point out that the combat in that game appears very real-time-y. If nothing happened during a turn but a character moving from grid point to grid point and/or attacking, players would recognize more easily that the game was turn-based.
So here I am again re-considering things. The top down view is boring and unfulfilling compared to the third person.
There’s really no reason to move the camera away other than melee combat animations, the way enemies fight looks just stupid upclose. I guess I should just invest into improving that instead? Third person view is just visually better and I don’t want to waste it.
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Just from the screenshot I have to agree with you there.
Your game would be detrimental as a top down, stick with 3rd person especially if you plan on putting this on steam.
I have wrongly done this myself looking at past games Err of my old ways.
Maybe you can find a happy medium - not so far pulled out like the images above, but not so close to the characters with a perspective that shows the animation flaws.
You might consider using this as a marketing ploy -
In your best Obi-Wan Kenobi voice “This is not the diablo clone you are not looking for”
Sometimes silly - goofy things catch the listener/readers eye and they proceed to read/listen/watch the content to find out more.
Although comparing anyones (your) game to diablo is probably not a great attractant - when the comparison is to point out diablo has features your game does not.
It’s already greenlit lol But yeah I get it, it looks bad top-down.
I probably shouldn’t have used “Diablo” cause it’s too specific. Basically I mean like any action rpg, like sacred 2 or grim dawn, you call them. It implies: loot, open world, quests, etc. That’s what I meant by that comparison. So I think I’ll make it 3rd person but move the camera slightly away, like on this screenshot:
I hadn’t had the chance to read the entire thread but is there a reason WHY you’re considering this? Is it to enhance the gameplay, maybe you’re thinking with a topdown view you can easily see the enemies in a set radius. Or do you think a MOBA style game will generate more sales.
I personally think third person will hit the biggest sales unless it’s a super awesome top down game, of which there are few that fall into the cateogry.
Also don’t forget changing a mechanic like this at such a late stage will have many other knock on effects you must consider.
I only considered top-down because melee combat looks poor so far and I didn’t want it to be viewable from up-close.
The game’s genre is reverse tower-defense. Enemy’s got settlements and defences, your goal is to raze them all down.
I don’t think i’m considering top-down anymore because it looks worse than third person, overall.
OK so you’re basically considering top down to avoid doing the work to fix the animations. It’s a shortcut really, so I think you have your answer already. Good luck!
Yeah, I’m already fixing animations, I wanted to take the shortcut but not anymore lol. Because it’s not really a shortcut if it adds me a ton more work of re-designing environments to look good from top down view. They work much better in third person.