Gorgon is well bellow the standard I'd expect

mchaywire

Hi Folks,

I've been playing since day one and have never felt the need to criticize PW publicly until now. I was looking forward to using the new Gorgon mount when it dropped from a box. I thought it would be an ideal match for my Warlock, so I duly bound it to him and activated it. At first I thought it was a graphics glitch, but no. The shape and animations are fine, but it looks like the they couldn't be arsed to apply a skin to the bloody thing. A mono color mount is well below the standard I'd expect from PW, considering the detailed skins on all other mounts. I wish I'd sold the thing in the AH now as I'm a bit embarrassed to be seen riding the ugly thing. Please ask your art department to skin this mount with something more the the color blind gerbil friendly skin it has atm.

Haywire

bioshrike

Is it different looking than this?

charononus

Screenshots please so we can all see and understand.

eldarth

If your shader setting isn't turned up to max you could easily be missing lots of detail.

str8slayer

Yeah the gorgon mount looks like a moving metal bull statue, gorgons scales have a darker quality that isn't as shiny.

Also, at least give their eyes a color (green?).

Additionally, gorgons are not used as mounts because they can't be domesticated (meaning people have certainly tried and failed), not a great choice of a creature for a mount lore-wise...

destinyknight

As others said. Screenshots will really help this.

berserkrage99

Indeed, it truly is the ugliest mount they've ever produced. Have no clue why they deemed it worthy to be purple or lockbox status. Furthermore, the re-skin "legendary" metallic dragonborn does absolutely nothing for me either, I despise recycled content.

charononus wrote: »

Screenshots please so we can all see and understand.

You don't need screenshots, just log into the game and go to the mount vendor. The gorgon mount is on display there next to the blue guard drake mount.

bioshrike

berserkrage99 wrote: »

Indeed, it truly is the ugliest mount they've ever produced. Have no clue why they deemed it worthy to be purple or lockbox status. Furthermore, the re-skin "legendary" metallic dragonborn does absolutely nothing for me either, I despise recycled content.



You don't need screenshots, just log into the game and go to the mount vendor. The gorgon mount is on display there next to the blue guard drake mount.

We want to know what the Gorgon looks like for the OP, when they are in-game, to see if it's an issue with how their graphics are set.


For instance, here is what the Gorgon looks like in-game for me:

hustin1

There's also The Ecology of the Gorgon in Dragon #97. Elminster absolutely hates gorgons (he lost a pet dog to one) and wears a special gem that he calls his "gorgon killer".

Oh, and there's this little tidbit: what happens when you summon your rust monster companion while riding your gorgon?

(NB: rust monsters are immune to the effect from gorgon breath!)

The creature most feared by the gorgon is the rust monster, and gorgons rarely delve deeply into subterranean areas as a result. Rust monsters are themselves well armored against a gorgon’s hooves and horns, and view gorgon scales as a desirable and substantial meal. At the touch of their antennae, a scale will rust and fall off, and although a biting, kicking gorgon will rarely let a rust monster munch happily upon the result (usually biting off its antennae or overturning the rust monster with a horn and then running away), the damage is then done. For their part, rust monsters can move more rapidly than gorgons can, and will pursue one, or even a group of gorgons, fearlessly.

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A gorgon cannot re-grow or otherwise replace body plates that fall off (due to rusting or any other effect).

Someone didn't do their research.

Edit: that said, the notion of a rust monster companion is itself pretty absurd:



Edit #2: Of course, then there's the true origin of the rust monster. So perhaps there's not much wrong with absurdity in a game that's all about imagination:

http://diterlizzi.com/home/owlbears-rust-monsters-and-bulettes-oh-my/

fantasycharacter

Haha When I first heard Gorgon I thought it was going to be a Snake/woman hybrid with snakes for hair!

In the Forgotton Realms Gorgons are bovine?

matiagronx

bioshrike wrote: »

We want to know what the Gorgon looks like for the OP, when they are in-game, to see if it's an issue with how their graphics are set.


For instance, here is what the Gorgon looks like in-game for me:

This is a beautiful implementation of a gorgon, skinwise. Colour could be darker though, so apparently the OP has set the graphics setting to LOW and he cant see skins but only coloured surfaces. Check your settings mate and change the thread title, its misleading. There are indeed many things Cryptic is HUGELY lacking at, but not at artistic department.

vasdamas

I am ok with gorgon as long as it's not warg/horse/panther reskin :P

It looks pretty neat btw

ambisinisterr

fantasycharacter wrote: »

Haha When I first heard Gorgon I thought it was going to be a Snake/woman hybrid with snakes for hair!

In the Forgotton Realms Gorgons are bovine?

Gorgon is a general term in ancient Greek mythology which originally meant terrible or dreadful. So when Medusa was turned into a gorgon it doesn't mean what she looked like was a gorgon but rather that she was turned into something terrible, dreadful (and hideous) rather than that all gorgons are half snakes with snakes for hair.

Gorgons often refereed to snake-like creatures especially due to the ever famous Medusa tale as she was a very prominent Gorgon but gorgons originally had a variety of appearances although they were rather vague in nature. In D&D they are a bovine creature which instead of turning creatures to stone upon sight they breath out a gas which will turn those who breath it in to stone.

panderus

ambisinisterr wrote: »

Gorgon is a general term in ancient Greek mythology which originally meant terrible or dreadful. So when Medusa was turned into a gorgon it doesn't mean what she looked like was a gorgon but rather that she was turned into something terrible, dreadful (and hideous) rather than that all gorgons are half snakes with snakes for hair.

Gorgons often refereed to snake-like creatures especially due to the ever famous Medusa tale as she was a very prominent Gorgon but gorgons originally had a variety of appearances although they were rather vague in nature. In D&D they are a bovine creature which instead of turning creatures to stone upon sight they breath out a gas which will turn those who breath it in to stone.

The more you know...

alkemist80

I thought the gorgon mount model looked pretty cool. Color wise, it's a little blah but it's from D&D lore so not much they can do to alter it to look more.. glamorous.

Would I pay an absurd amount of AD for it though? No, I wouldn't.

zandurrr

I think it looks nice.

lionmaruu0

Gorgons from Dnd probably come from the works of Edward Topsell an English cleric that wrote a "Bestiary" in the "1600s". This guy work (The History of Four-footed Beasts) is awesome hehe worth a look!

Here an excerpt I found about the Gorgon:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/oddnotes/topsellgorgon.html


you will see that the good people at dnd art department made a WAY better job than the good priest

berhudarol

Lol, I can change my painted donkey (50% horse) with your Gorgon if you didn't like it

katbozejziemi

What standard? You mean like the Ioun Stone of Radiance that still doesn't have its skins fixed a year later?

That is the standard you should expect.

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charononus

magenubbie wrote: »

I agree. The model itself looks awesome and pretty detailed, which I like. The metal plating.. not so much. I would have preferred it if they had modelled it after a more.. idk living and less metal gorgon. But considering they used something like

from the 4th ED monster manual for reference, I'd say they did a pretty good job.

My first thought when I saw it was that it was a construct not a living creature.

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ambisinisterr

Perhaps if it had a bit more of a blue green hue?

But yeah...idk...Wizards did take it down the metalic look road.

It's what I expected to a tee but there it is a very valid point that it looks like a construct rather than a living creature. Even the image magenubbie posted, IMO, doesn't look like a construct but the in game model I can definitely agree looks more like the Destroyer from Thor than a living creature.

I guess it could be lumped in the same category as the elf eyes issue. Wizards of the Coast decided to change elf eyes to have a downward angle to make them look (exotic?) which on paper could look good and even alluring but in the 3D environment it results in a bit of an alien and 'something is off' feeling that was complained about at the launch of the game. It is no fault at all of the Cryptic Devs...they were just following current specifications.

charononus

ambisinisterr wrote: »

Perhaps if it had a bit more of a blue green hue?

But yeah...idk...Wizards did take it down the metalic look road.

It's what I expected to a tee but there it is a very valid point that it looks like a construct rather than a living creature. Even the image magenubbie posted, IMO, doesn't look like a construct but the in game model I can definitely agree looks more like the Destroyer from Thor than a living creature.

I guess it could be lumped in the same category as the elf eyes issue. Wizards of the Coast decided to change elf eyes to have a downward angle to make them look (exotic?) which on paper could look good and even alluring but in the 3D environment it results in a bit of an alien and 'something is off' feeling that was complained about at the launch of the game. It is no fault at all of the Cryptic Devs...they were just following current specifications.

Part of the problem may be translating from something that is essentially in our heads to a 3d model. It's easy to imagine something with metalic skin, it's hard to draw it and have it not look like a robot.

frishter

katbozejziemi wrote: »

What standard? You mean like the Ioun Stone of Radiance that still doesn't have its skins fixed a year later?

That is the standard you should expect.

^This, plus they recycles the rage and imperial drakes for lockbox mounts. Though I think the gorgon looks fine. It did look more basic when I had character texture detail on 50% which I think I did to try and reduce tiamat lag.

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ambisinisterr

Elves are supposed to be beautiful. Alien, yes, but more alien in their grace and beauty than anything else. The angle eyes have a "is that some sort of birth defect?" be the first thought to come to mind though. I personally don't hate it...in fact I didn't notice it until the complaints...but I can understand why the complaints came up once it was pointed out.

And charononus, that was kind of my point. You can imagine something with metal skin but it is hard to translate that to paper and a 3D model is exponentially harder.

There was a video on youtube a few years back which was shared to me which came to mind. It was a guy showing off how he met this really hot chick online and was going to have a date with her that afternoon. His friend says "IDK dude...that chick has the angles..." which the friend described as taking pictures at certain angles to make her look better.

The girl didn't look...horrible...in the pictures...but of course it turns out to be a guy.

So the elven eyes looked good at certain angles when drawn just as you can draw a creature with metal scales and still have it look living creature at a certain angle but it really didn't look as good when you could choose from a near infinite amount of viewing angles.

hustin1

The Wkipedia page shows the illustration from the 1E Monster Manual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29

Oh, and devs, before you get the idea of gorgon armor or gorgon shields, please read The Ecology of the Gorgon. It explicitly points out that the plates are too soft and too small for that purpose.

zebular

hustin1 wrote: »

The Wkipedia page shows the illustration from the 1E Monster Manual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29

Oh, and devs, before you get the idea of gorgon armor or gorgon shields, please read The Ecology of the Gorgon. It explicitly points out that the plates are too soft and too small for that purpose.

Not sure what this has to do with anything here but I will dispute your last sentence as such are generally reinforced by not only other materials but also by magic. Hide itself from cows and other creatures is too soft for any real use for armor. To make it plausible for armor, one needs to work it into leather or better. The same is true for gorgon hide.

bioshrike

hustin1 wrote: »

The Wkipedia page shows the illustration from the 1E Monster Manual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29

Oh, and devs, before you get the idea of gorgon armor or gorgon shields, please read The Ecology of the Gorgon. It explicitly points out that the plates are too soft and too small for that purpose.

If people would skin animals and use their hides for shields, such as is the case for some of the shield transmutes we have, (the one from the Pirate's Skyhold CTA comes to mind), then there is absolutely no reason why someone wouldn't or shouldn't use a Gorgon's hide for such a purpose as well.

charononus

zebular wrote: »

Not sure what this has to do with anything here but I will dispute your last sentence as such are generally reinforced by not only other materials but also by magic. Hide itself from cows and other creatures is too soft for any real use for armor. To make it plausible for armor, one needs to work it into leather or better. The same is true for gorgon hide.

Even just plain leather has some protective properties. It's why it's been biker gear for years. It can save you some road rash, pulling gravel from your skin sucks.