One way to think about it is that honest negative feedback from a stranger could be better for your game than a friend saying "that's nice", when they don't really like it but rather because they know how much work you put in.

Not that this makes it any easier to hear, especially when not phrased constructively!

When you release your game in the wild, people will make a split second decision as to whether they might like it, and unfortunately the looks can be an important factor.

That said, do think about whether improving the graphics is the most important thing for your game right now. How sure are you that the gameplay is solid? Have you play tested it? Is there an interesting progression system? You might spend time polishing some graphics that might end up needing tweaking (or cutting) once you've honed the core game.

Don't let a throwaway comment derail your priorities!

8 minutes ago, rip-off said:

One way to think about it is that honest negative feedback from a stranger could be better for your game than a friend saying "that's nice", when they don't really like it but rather because they know how much work you put in.

Not that this makes it any easier to hear, especially when not phrased constructively!

When you release your game in the wild, people will make a split second decision as to whether they might like it, and unfortunately the looks can be an important factor.

That said, do think about whether improving the graphics is the most important thing for your game right now. How sure are you that the gameplay is solid? Have you play tested it? Is there an interesting progression system? You might spend time polishing some graphics that might end up needing tweaking (or cutting) once you've honed the core game.

Don't let a throwaway comment derail your priorities!

You are right, I haven't play tested the game yet and I haven't yet balanced everything. I guess I should make a minimum viable product first, and then go and make the graphics look better. My main priority wasn't graphics anyways, all I want to do is a game that is actually fun for once...

31 minutes ago, rip-off said:

One way to think about it is that honest negative feedback from a stranger could be better for your game than a friend saying "that's nice", when they don't really like it but rather because they know how much work you put in.

This is a very good point. Don't blindly ignore feedback when it's negative, but look at the entire picture. Why would they say this? Is there a motive? Is it constructive? Is there a reason their feedback could be valid?

I have a select few people who give brutally honest feedback for my company projects, and it's not always what I want to hear but every time I've listened to it my product came out better.  

Just be aware that some people will be toxic and troll you and you could have the best possible graphics for this generate but something would still be wrong.

26 minutes ago, EddieK said:

I haven't play tested the game yet and I haven't yet balanced everything. I guess I should make a minimum viable product first, and then go and make the graphics look better.

I'm working on a commercial project right now and this is pretty much how it's going. We have pretty good graphics done, but before any public release texture maps will be looked at to see if we can improve the look, among other things. Otherwise progress would be halted because we're waiting around for "perfect" art.

You're doing a good job, and I cannot wait for your next project update.  

I do have some ideas and feedback, but I'll save it for later as I don't have enough time today to go through it all.

5 hours ago, EddieK said:

somebody made a comment [on Reddit] about how my game looks like shit. On one side it's motivating because I want to make something that doesn't look like crap, but on the other side it can be really demotivating. 

That kind of reaction is to be expected on Reddit. You can react in a number of ways: 1. Take it as criticism and ask for more detail so you can improve in the future. 2. Take it as trollism and ignore it. Whatever you do, don't get into an argument! When you argue with an idiot, it looks to other people like two idiots fighting. 

Is really important identify bad criticism and good criticism. The key is extract the useful advice from bad criticism. Seeing the useful of the bad side.

6 hours ago, JoeJ said:

One tip: The art is to fix things by not spending too much work... don't get lost in details, they don't matter. It's always the bigger picture that matters the most.

This.

You want to try to identify "low hanging fruit".  N.b. the items that will get you the biggest improvement with the least work.

8 hours ago, JoeJ said:

and people say the same about upcoming AAA games as well.

Yeah. Not AAA here, but still a multi-million dollar game -- I did 6 months of full time work completely overhauling the renderer on a Xb360/PS3 game, adding PBR lighting, dynamic shadows, full post processing stack, dynamic materials (dirtiness/etc), and tonnes of optimisation work to get this all to run at the same speed as the previous renderer... And then it launches, and you get more comments saying "it looks like a PS2 game" than compliments. 

If you get real criticism, try to actually take it in and learn from it... But if you get toxic gamer comments, just leave them in the trash to save your own sanity. FWIW though I actually did engage with a few of these "it's shit lol" type comments on some forums where I could, to try to get them to explain their issue, and in some cases I did actually get somewhere! -- e.g. one guy who said the "graphics are shit" actually meant that the animation blending results in unrealistic transitions. Another guy who said it "looks like a PS2 game" actually thought that the anti-aliasing made it look too blurry. These people don't know anything about the subject, have limited vocabulary, and engage in a lot of toxic culture, so instead of giving actual critique (something they're incapable of) they just shit on you instead  

If you're looking for low-hanging fruit to fix, then I suggest making the grass darker.  You have this cool dark-with-glowing-lights æsthetic in your structures, but the glowing lights are being drowned by the grass, which is almost as bright and much bigger.  Maybe change the lighting from daylight to dusk or night so that the grass doesn't receive as much light, or maybe just use a darker grass texture.

7 hours ago, Tom Sloper said:

Whatever you do, don't get into an argument!

https://kotaku.com/in-the-wake-of-arenanet-firings-game-studios-rethink-t-1827591298

I think we need to solve this with better web GUIs, similar to >format c:  ->  Are You really sure [Y/N]?:

"!@##@!!!!"  -> [Submit Reply]  -> "Please wait one hour and click Submit again..."  -> Captcha  -> [Finally Submit]

5 hours ago, Hodgman said:

Another guy who said it "looks like a PS2 game" actually thought that the anti-aliasing made it look too blurry.

This is hard to deal with. Many people really want sharp graphics. They do not perceive the fact of realtime CG being too sharp as a problem - they want it this way. They are only happy when my eyes start to bleed. 

An option would be to offer a sharpening filter (operating after AA and any blur). Kane and Lynch 2 did this well and even i loved it, and it also made the graphics super realistic (looks like filmed with real camera). This is underused in games i think. Maybe all the people that can never get enough sharpness and texture resolution would be happy with this too.

Does your game run at 240 FPS at 8k resolution? No? Then it's crap..

I'm kidding. I'm echoing the sentiment that game development is hard work, and it often goes unrecognized or under-appreciated. Your game looks like a solid work in progress. Keep at it!