It seems that the main reason you don't see western blockbusters go for high end graphics is the quality of the computers of their respective audience. Both WoW and SW:TOR want to catter to as younger an audience as possible, an audience that can't afford high end machines.
In comparison, AoC was aiming for mature audience, people who could afford better machines. Unfortunately the problem with AoC was not the high end graphics but the highly unoptimised engine.
If you want to see higher quality graphics, you probably need to look at the Eastern developers (Tera, Blade & Soul, Archage and others). It seems that the people in both Asia and Europe are more likely to have a more recently built PC, while the people in the US rely more on consoles for their gaming needs, thus the specs of their gaming PCs suffer.
I kinda disagree on that one, at least for wow. How old is wow 6-7 yrs now so that means blizz was building that engine way before that....so around 10 years ago is when they started making the engine for wow. Exactly what was considered high end back then?
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
It seems that the main reason you don't see western blockbusters go for high end graphics is the quality of the computers of their respective audience. Both WoW and SW:TOR want to catter to as younger an audience as possible, an audience that can't afford high end machines.
In comparison, AoC was aiming for mature audience, people who could afford better machines. Unfortunately the problem with AoC was not the high end graphics but the highly unoptimised engine.
If you want to see higher quality graphics, you probably need to look at the Eastern developers (Tera, Blade & Soul, Archage and others). It seems that the people in both Asia and Europe are more likely to have a more recently built PC, while the people in the US rely more on consoles for their gaming needs, thus the specs of their gaming PCs suffer.
Yeah, that sounds resonable.
Hopefully will TSW be better optimized at release and still be great looking.
But you can get good graphics and still run the game on mid range computers, it is just harder to code. GW2 can run on the same computers than run TOR and looks a lot better. Part of it is about using art, color and effects right, but great doding can do miracles.
Still, you don't buy Bioware games for it's pretty graphics, and people never have. All games have adbantages and disadvages.
Wow is BTW rather unfair to use as an example for bad graphics, it is ancient and looked fine enough at launch even if it never been one of the best games graphicwise.
Still, you don't buy Bioware games for it's pretty graphics, and people never have. All games have adbantages and disadvages.
Wow is BTW rather unfair to use as an example for bad graphics, it is ancient and looked fine enough at launch even if it never been one of the best games graphicwise.
Are you sure about that? Would you describe Mass Effect and Dragonage as average in terms of graphics, because I wouldn't. At the time they had among the best graphics the market had to offer.
And WoW looked dated even since the time of the BC expansion. Right now it looks prehistoric. But that's a discussion for another thread.
You can not have high end graphics in MMO's, there are simply too many people running around. Every model uses resources, the higher the polygons the more people that won't get to play without $2000 rigs.
FFXIV proves you wrong. My PC cost 800 Euro and i run it at max effects in 1920x1080.
So what was that about a MMO can not have high end graphics?
"Give players systems and tools instead of rails and rules"
I am playing SKYRIM on my pc with a high end nvidia graphic card. The graphics in the game are amazing!! The attention to detail, the trees, rocks, water all come alive in this game. Then I saw a video demo of SWTOR. Now before you post the usual responses of --- "Hey dummy it's a single user game and not a MMO, a MMO couldn't handle those type of graphics", let me say this...
Why the hell not!!!!
Honestly, figure out a way around the lag issues with high end graphics and change the game. The graphics in SWTOR are horrible, cartoonish, and appear outdated. People, my dad survied a complete heart transplant. Scientist are on the age of discovering particles that travel faster then the speed of light. IT'S 2012 and we continue to accept that mmo's have to have low end sub par graphics because why exactly? I've read excuses like, "it would not be profitable for the gaming company to invest in expensive server and graphics cards to sustatin their MMO so they design their games with low end graphics, and also becasue most pc's can't play high end graphics."
Well, if a people still have VCR's, does that mean we don't use DVD'S.
COME ON GAMEING COMPANIES, STOP IT WITH THE CARTOONISH GRAPHICS TO SAVE MONEY! WE DEMAND BETTER IN 2012. STAR WARS IS AN AWESOME IP, AND IT'S A SHAME TO CREATE AN MMO USING THIS IP BUT WITH CARTOONISH GRAPHICS. ABSOULUTELY HORRIBLE!!!!
It's time for the MMO graphics to evolve with the rest of the gaming world, otherwise, it may go the way of the VCR.
set the game to high noob, the demo vids are all set to low and compressed to upload to youtube, the quality is shit, go look at skyrim youtube vids, they look like shit too, duh, your brain must be shit.
You can not have high end graphics in MMO's, there are simply too many people running around. Every model uses resources, the higher the polygons the more people that won't get to play without $2000 rigs.
FFXIV proves you wrong. My PC cost 800 Euro and i run it at max effects in 1920x1080.
So what was that about a MMO can not have high end graphics?
AOC also has very amazing graphics but it sacrificed a lot in other departments to get those nice graphics
I can't disagree with you. I love great graphics. I also love great art design.
I just get the feeling that some players can't see the forest from the trees. For instance, there is this push for higher resolution textures, more detail, farther draw distances. But that doesn't always look good. Let's take the game Morrowind. there have been some nice texture upgrades that really allow the game to stand on its own today. however, there are modders who have been trying to push crisp graphical enhancements on the game and they think it looks good. it doesn't. Seeing each area for as far as the eye can see in crisp detail makes that particular game look like garbage. Why? Because the game wasn't designed for that so you have all these different areas up to the horizon that look like a checkerboard, a mishmash of ecology. There is such a nice artistic sense to the game that taking that away ruins it. Apart from some updated textures of course.
Not every game requires an art design that pushes toward realism. And of course, the closer to "real" that you come the better it needs to be pulled off. We are all very clued into what "real" is. If something isn't quite right then it's going to look terrible. Whereas, if something is somewhat stylistic then it can exist within it's own aesthetic sense quite well.
Good art design and the inclusion of good graphics must go hand and hand and those graphics need to be implemented in a way that brings out the art design. Whether it's skyrim or AoC or WoW or Chronicles of Spellborn.
"Realistic" is only one way to go. It's not an end goal. It's one of many aesthetic choices on the wheel of graphic design.
So yeah, I have a kick ass machine for any game that requires high end graphics in order to make the game world come alive. But that doesn't mean I can't load up a game that doesn't require anything special and marvel at how incredible the art design is.
Here is an interesting Extra Credits about graphics vs art design.
I can't disagree with you Sov, very nice write-up here. I agree with all counts especially in regard to Morrowind and the idea that realism isn't always important. Like I opened with I think TOR's graphics are fine, they do a decent job of catching the feel of the IP while at the same time, the flair adds to their own interpretation of it. Good art design can take something a lot farther than a simple texture pack can. Good art design adds a soul that pure bells and whistles can not.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You can not have high end graphics in MMO's, there are simply too many people running around. Every model uses resources, the higher the polygons the more people that won't get to play without $2000 rigs.
FFXIV proves you wrong. My PC cost 800 Euro and i run it at max effects in 1920x1080.
So what was that about a MMO can not have high end graphics?
I wonder why people actually use Final Fantasy XIV as and example of a good looking MMO, when there was so much wrong with that game and still is. So what if a game is graphically amazing; doesn't matter if the game looks boring and isn't fun to play. I mean what would you prefer; an MMO that looks graphically amazing but can only have about a dozen or two players on-screen fighting before even the best machines suffer from framerate dips, or a decently looking MMO that can have hundreds of players sieging a castle before the best mechines suffer from framerate dips?
For me the answer is simple, because Gameplay > Graphics.
I personally enjoy some games that use cartoony graphics... I play CoH, loved the look of TCoS, and liking what I see of Wildstar. They don't make or break a game for me. Any art style thats done well gets my attention, and that certainly doeen't have anything to do with with gfx card it's being run on.
Personally I think it comes down to animation. All these games I mention have great model animation... SWtoR dosen't. The characters look stiff and disjointed.
At leat they did, they may have been polished. I will judge them again if I cba to do the next beta weekend.
As a side note though, SWtoR does have great environments visually speaking, something I have always agreed with.
Games are made with lower graphics so that more people can play them, WoW would not of been half a popular if it hadnt been made to run off a Corn Flakes box with a mouse attached, finding that balance is hard, as you want the game open to as many people as you can but you want it to look good to.
I'm definitely not a graphics junkie...but i have to say when you have a game that is claiming it has spent more than any other game and the graphics aren't top notch, it has so many of the same features of other populars games, and there doesn't seem to be what i consider a wide selection of race/class. it kinda makes you wonder what all this money was spent on?
Bioware already has answered this a year ago. Simple answer, is they want as many people able to run the game. Higher graphics means beefy rig = less people playing. Not everyone can afford upgrading or purchasing a $2000 rig.
I can't disagree with you Sov, very nice write-up here. I agree with all counts especially in regard to Morrowind and the idea that realism isn't always important. Like I opened with I think TOR's graphics are fine, they do a decent job of catching the feel of the IP while at the same time, the flair adds to their own interpretation of it. Good art design can take something a lot farther than a simple texture pack can. Good art design adds a soul that pure bells and whistles can not.
Yeah that's a good way of saying it.
If someone were to ask me wheher I'd prefer more of a "Mass Effect 2" style for SWToR or what it currently has I would say "Mass Effect 2"" style. But in the end, when one immerses oneself into the art design for SWToR you sort of stop noticing it.
The game then relies on everything else to see it through. Whether it's successful or not is another thing entirely.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Graphic is rendered on the user's end and as such does not cause lag. The Quality of a game's graphics is dertemined by the game engine it is using and if your videocard / computer can render it on high setting and still get high frame rates.
Lag is something totally seperate.
This is only partly correct. You are leaving out the fact that the more your card/system has to render, the slower it gets. It is simple math really. This effect is called "graphical lag" by the way.
So, if your are referring to internet latency, that is one thing, but other latencies (lags) exist.
On topic: To each his / her own when it comes to what you like to look at. The graphics in this game are stylized though, so it is hard to criticize them for not being "photorealistic". It was not what they were going for, but if it was, I am sure it would be fairly close.
The cartoonish graphics don't save any money. It takes just as long to make an animated artistic style of graphics look good as it does to make a realistic artistic style look good.
There's a reason that the cities in Skyrim are instanced though. It's so that your machine (even if it's one of the best machines) doesn't grind to a halt when all those people show up at once. Adding 50 to a 100 players would make it that much worse. This is 2011 but Skyrim's graphics in an MMO wouldn't work unless it was heavily instanced. This is assuming that the graphics actually look good and you don't get the weird it almost looks real but something is very off here kind of feeling.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I am playing SKYRIM on my pc with a high end nvidia graphic card. The graphics in the game are amazing!! The attention to detail, the trees, rocks, water all come alive in this game. Then I saw a video demo of SWTOR. Now before you post the usual responses of --- "Hey dummy it's a single user game and not a MMO, a MMO couldn't handle those type of graphics", let me say this...
Why the hell not!!!!
Honestly, figure out a way around the lag issues with high end graphics and change the game. The graphics in SWTOR are horrible, cartoonish, and appear outdated. People, my dad survied a complete heart transplant. Scientist are on the age of discovering particles that travel faster then the speed of light. IT'S 2012 and we continue to accept that mmo's have to have low end sub par graphics because why exactly? I've read excuses like, "it would not be profitable for the gaming company to invest in expensive server and graphics cards to sustatin their MMO so they design their games with low end graphics, and also becasue most pc's can't play high end graphics."
Well, if a people still have VCR's, does that mean we don't use DVD'S.
COME ON GAMEING COMPANIES, STOP IT WITH THE CARTOONISH GRAPHICS TO SAVE MONEY! WE DEMAND BETTER IN 2012. STAR WARS IS AN AWESOME IP, AND IT'S A SHAME TO CREATE AN MMO USING THIS IP BUT WITH CARTOONISH GRAPHICS. ABSOULUTELY HORRIBLE!!!!
It's time for the MMO graphics to evolve with the rest of the gaming world, otherwise, it may go the way of the VCR.
Well I think the answer should be obvious unless your unbelievably stupid . When your playing Skyrim your playing a solo game if you put in graphics like this to an mmorpg you would be faced with the prospect of only several thousands of people playing it because the average person with the average pc cant run it .
Considering these games are aimed at a mass audiance they have to be played by a mass audiance to be successful .
Maybe you think everyone has a powerful pc like yours ??? You really don't live in the real world if you think that .
But it does illustrate what I've been saying for a long time before mmos can become graphically more up to date either an mmo friendly console needs to be developed or streamed online "cloud" gaming will become a reality ( allowing the internet and not your PC to handle the processing power of a game .
Other than that all I can say about StarWars TOR without breaking the NDA like you have just done with your silly little hissy fit is I disagree with you .
You can not have high end graphics in MMO's, there are simply too many people running around. Every model uses resources, the higher the polygons the more people that won't get to play without $2000 rigs.
FFXIV proves you wrong. My PC cost 800 Euro and i run it at max effects in 1920x1080.
So what was that about a MMO can not have high end graphics?
Maybe but your PC would either stuggle with an open world mmo with graphics like Skyrims or wouldn't be able to play it .
I think the funny thing is when single player games push the .boundries and many people upgrade the systems to use that game as a benchmark its fine ie crysis. but suggest it the push and people dont think its feasible or will make money
Originally posted by PKJackCrow I think the funny thing is when single player games push the .boundries and many people upgrade the systems to use that game as a benchmark its fine ie crysis. but suggest it the push and people dont think its feasible or will make money
I agree. I suggest it the push all the time and everyone tells me that it's not feasible and that it won't make money.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
First of all, I completely disagree with you about the graphics in SWTOR. They are actually quite good in my opinion and even stunning in places.
Secondly, you really can't write off the technical limitations imposed by an MMORPG. The amount of players that will inevitably be drawn on the screen at the same time in certain areas of an MMO will create massive lag if the graphics are too high-end. The ultimate goal is a good looking game that is accessible to a wide range of hardware. The smart way to go is to favor art direction over polygon count like Bioware has done with this game.
Comments
I kinda disagree on that one, at least for wow. How old is wow 6-7 yrs now so that means blizz was building that engine way before that....so around 10 years ago is when they started making the engine for wow. Exactly what was considered high end back then?
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Yeah, that sounds resonable.
Hopefully will TSW be better optimized at release and still be great looking.
But you can get good graphics and still run the game on mid range computers, it is just harder to code. GW2 can run on the same computers than run TOR and looks a lot better. Part of it is about using art, color and effects right, but great doding can do miracles.
Still, you don't buy Bioware games for it's pretty graphics, and people never have. All games have adbantages and disadvages.
Wow is BTW rather unfair to use as an example for bad graphics, it is ancient and looked fine enough at launch even if it never been one of the best games graphicwise.
Are you sure about that? Would you describe Mass Effect and Dragonage as average in terms of graphics, because I wouldn't. At the time they had among the best graphics the market had to offer.
And WoW looked dated even since the time of the BC expansion. Right now it looks prehistoric. But that's a discussion for another thread.
FFXIV proves you wrong. My PC cost 800 Euro and i run it at max effects in 1920x1080.
So what was that about a MMO can not have high end graphics?
set the game to high noob, the demo vids are all set to low and compressed to upload to youtube, the quality is shit, go look at skyrim youtube vids, they look like shit too, duh, your brain must be shit.
AOC also has very amazing graphics but it sacrificed a lot in other departments to get those nice graphics
I can't disagree with you Sov, very nice write-up here. I agree with all counts especially in regard to Morrowind and the idea that realism isn't always important. Like I opened with I think TOR's graphics are fine, they do a decent job of catching the feel of the IP while at the same time, the flair adds to their own interpretation of it. Good art design can take something a lot farther than a simple texture pack can. Good art design adds a soul that pure bells and whistles can not.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I wonder why people actually use Final Fantasy XIV as and example of a good looking MMO, when there was so much wrong with that game and still is. So what if a game is graphically amazing; doesn't matter if the game looks boring and isn't fun to play. I mean what would you prefer; an MMO that looks graphically amazing but can only have about a dozen or two players on-screen fighting before even the best machines suffer from framerate dips, or a decently looking MMO that can have hundreds of players sieging a castle before the best mechines suffer from framerate dips?
For me the answer is simple, because Gameplay > Graphics.
I personally enjoy some games that use cartoony graphics... I play CoH, loved the look of TCoS, and liking what I see of Wildstar. They don't make or break a game for me. Any art style thats done well gets my attention, and that certainly doeen't have anything to do with with gfx card it's being run on.
Personally I think it comes down to animation. All these games I mention have great model animation... SWtoR dosen't. The characters look stiff and disjointed.
At leat they did, they may have been polished. I will judge them again if I cba to do the next beta weekend.
As a side note though, SWtoR does have great environments visually speaking, something I have always agreed with.
Games are made with lower graphics so that more people can play them, WoW would not of been half a popular if it hadnt been made to run off a Corn Flakes box with a mouse attached, finding that balance is hard, as you want the game open to as many people as you can but you want it to look good to.
I'm definitely not a graphics junkie...but i have to say when you have a game that is claiming it has spent more than any other game and the graphics aren't top notch, it has so many of the same features of other populars games, and there doesn't seem to be what i consider a wide selection of race/class. it kinda makes you wonder what all this money was spent on?
Bioware already has answered this a year ago. Simple answer, is they want as many people able to run the game. Higher graphics means beefy rig = less people playing. Not everyone can afford upgrading or purchasing a $2000 rig.
I think the character models in swtor are very poor.
Yeah probably not worth your time, play skyrim.
Yeah that's a good way of saying it.
If someone were to ask me wheher I'd prefer more of a "Mass Effect 2" style for SWToR or what it currently has I would say "Mass Effect 2"" style. But in the end, when one immerses oneself into the art design for SWToR you sort of stop noticing it.
The game then relies on everything else to see it through. Whether it's successful or not is another thing entirely.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
This is only partly correct. You are leaving out the fact that the more your card/system has to render, the slower it gets. It is simple math really. This effect is called "graphical lag" by the way.
So, if your are referring to internet latency, that is one thing, but other latencies (lags) exist.
On topic: To each his / her own when it comes to what you like to look at. The graphics in this game are stylized though, so it is hard to criticize them for not being "photorealistic". It was not what they were going for, but if it was, I am sure it would be fairly close.
The force is not strong with this one.
The cartoonish graphics don't save any money. It takes just as long to make an animated artistic style of graphics look good as it does to make a realistic artistic style look good.
There's a reason that the cities in Skyrim are instanced though. It's so that your machine (even if it's one of the best machines) doesn't grind to a halt when all those people show up at once. Adding 50 to a 100 players would make it that much worse. This is 2011 but Skyrim's graphics in an MMO wouldn't work unless it was heavily instanced. This is assuming that the graphics actually look good and you don't get the weird it almost looks real but something is very off here kind of feeling.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Some people need to learn how to spell...
Well I think the answer should be obvious unless your unbelievably stupid . When your playing Skyrim your playing a solo game if you put in graphics like this to an mmorpg you would be faced with the prospect of only several thousands of people playing it because the average person with the average pc cant run it .
Considering these games are aimed at a mass audiance they have to be played by a mass audiance to be successful .
Maybe you think everyone has a powerful pc like yours ??? You really don't live in the real world if you think that .
But it does illustrate what I've been saying for a long time before mmos can become graphically more up to date either an mmo friendly console needs to be developed or streamed online "cloud" gaming will become a reality ( allowing the internet and not your PC to handle the processing power of a game .
Other than that all I can say about StarWars TOR without breaking the NDA like you have just done with your silly little hissy fit is I disagree with you .
Maybe but your PC would either stuggle with an open world mmo with graphics like Skyrims or wouldn't be able to play it .
I think the funny thing is when single player games push the .boundries and many people upgrade the systems to use that game as a benchmark its fine ie crysis. but suggest it the push and people dont think its feasible or will make money
I don't actually like Skyrim graphics. They are grim and bleak and I hate snow. I would much more prefer something shiny and colorful.
I agree. I suggest it the push all the time and everyone tells me that it's not feasible and that it won't make money.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
First of all, I completely disagree with you about the graphics in SWTOR. They are actually quite good in my opinion and even stunning in places.
Secondly, you really can't write off the technical limitations imposed by an MMORPG. The amount of players that will inevitably be drawn on the screen at the same time in certain areas of an MMO will create massive lag if the graphics are too high-end. The ultimate goal is a good looking game that is accessible to a wide range of hardware. The smart way to go is to favor art direction over polygon count like Bioware has done with this game.