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Armor art, characters, and performance
Lienhart
Member UncommonPosts: 662
I'm trying really hard to get into this game because I got it a few years ago as a present (TSO expansion anyway).
But seriously:
Just what the hell was Sony thinking when they made this game? My 4.2 ghz i7 is choking on this game and doing research only points to "Sony made a bad engine". That's great, they never overhauled it?
Secondly, why is the armor detail so bland? I'm not asking for giant shoulder pads and 12 feet swords, but the facial details in this game are amazing....(on anything that's not human looking), then you look at the armor and just wonder wtf.
And lastly, just why the hell are the characters so ugly?
Oh, and why does Age of Conan run better than this when the graphics are clearly superior? =/
Comments
eq2 is like aoc , perhaps u have luck with your high end pc and both games run great or u re not very lucky and some 3 year old laptop got more fps than your i7 extreme pc
besides most of eq2 armory are shit , i like nice helmets and nice shoulders , helmets are always crap in eq2 , tanks and plate classes have some nice shoulders and yeah thats it...
and because its soe u can buy the best looking armorskins for 10 bucks per armor set ...lol
Retired : Daoc , Warhammer , WoW , Lotro , Tabula Rasa
, Everquest 2 , Aion, Eve , AoC , SW:Tor ( failwars ), Planetside 2
Waiting : Star Citizen
Playing : Star Citizen
FPS : Overwatch
Yt chan : https://www.youtube.com/user/raine187
YOU CAN BUY ARMRO SETS?! WTFBBQ?!?!?!?!
EQ2 is 6 years older than AoC. When it was made, the developers were making it for technology that didn't exist yet, so it wasn't well optimized. Whatever they expected the technology to be, it clearly didn't work exactly with what they made.
That being said, I know people with computers that run EQ2 perfectly. They're few and their computers cost five thousand bucks, but it works.
Anyhow, you're playing a six-year-old game that still has better graphics than pretyt much every game on the market other than the forementioned AoC, gotta live with it, it's too old to fix.
Here are some threads to give you an idea of what you can expect armor to look like:
This thread is defilers only:
http://www.eq2flames.com/defilers/22314-do-you-look-cool-me.html
This thread has random stuff (start at the end):
http://www.eq2flames.com/items-equipment/11375-cool-looking-gear-thread.html
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Regardless of how powerful or fast your CPU may be a game won't perform as you'd expect without a good GPU. What GPU do you have?
I didn't mention my GPU nor do I feel the need to when a game's engine takes NO GPU POWER AT ALL.
Who the hell overclocks an i7, or hell, overclocks period without a good gpu?
5970
i can totally relate to you man,regardless the amazing videos and reviews i saw about the game.
i quit after 2 hours of trial,
when something plays like crap (with a good PC) its time to move on,regardless of the huge amount of content that the game has to offer.you cant really enjoy it with 20 FPS.
If after 2 hours you didn't like the game enough to make basic adjustments to your settings, then you are right to quit.
I play on a 6-year-old Athlon 3800 machine and run EQ2 fine. It's very easy to adjust your settings to make it run well - especially on a good machine.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Sorry man. I work enough out side of games to not give a shit about a game that forces you to work to make it work =P
So - like i said - you were right to quit. Best of luck in your journeys.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Basically SOE tried to make EQ2 have cutting edge resource intensive graphics for its time and many years to come. Someone decided that removing graphic cards as a resource for the engine would allow EQ2 to capture the low end market of players who had budget computers with little to no GPU processing power.
I don't know what genious came up with that plan, but it was a pretty dumb idea. Graphic cards exist for a reason and removing them isn't the key to getting improved performance or higher poly counts. I think this also contributes to why the game hasn't implemented true multi core support and instead only pushes a few processes onto a second CPU.
that was the first thing i did to be honest,
it looks like a turd on a medium-low settings (feel free to disagree) where i was getting acceptable FPS (60) ,of course it is playable on 'old athlon machine' because it uses the single thing that was strong in it (in that age) the single core CPU,
but it leaves anything else in modern hardware wasted.
now you say that you run it fine , where the EQ forums are full of people crying about how shit is the expansion areas run,maybe you find low FPS acceptable as long as it doesnt stop.
i really admire the fanbase of Everquest,one tough bastards they are,but it doesnt change the fact that the game loses a lot of potential subscribers over this.
I can understand the anger about the engine but to me i am happy with just 30 fpsi play7ed with less and still had loads of fun/... MY pc is a pos to be honest duel core 1.6 ghz 2gb ddr2 ram i think with a asusa gefore 9500 graphics card. Did you try and take off shadows and some ofd the crap that slows pc down. Sometimes it can be just one orw two things that ruins your gameplay.
I hear ya.
My rig can run games like lotro on the top settings smooth as silk, EQ2 is struggles like mad.
Sure, i can turn down the settings and it's playable, but thats really not the point, it looks pretty crap on max settings anyway whereas lotro looks amazing.
It's just an old game and a real resource hog, shame really because it's a pretty good game to play. Problem is, these days it rates well below average in gameplay and graphics.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
The problem is that the presets aren't very good at all. And yes, running on straight low settings the game looks like crap.
Low FPS is NOT acceptable to me. These days, I'm raiding the majority of the time, that means 23 other people are counting on me making split-second decisions or we wipe. So when i say "it runs fine", i mean that it looks decently good while allowing me to play at high enough FPS without detracting from my enjoyment of the game.
If you want to try the (Very simple) settings i use, do this:
1. Set your settings to lowest possible level. (Extreme performance).
2. Set your Graphics Resolution and Lighting Resolution to Max (100)
3. Go "Textures". Set your Texture Resolution and Character resolution to Maximum. I have character LOD on med, but i don't know how much effect this one has.
4. Go to particles and if max spells results per character is set to anything other than 0, set it to zero.
5. Go to Model detail, set High Level Characters to Max (10).
Those are all the settings I have. This allows my game to look very decent and still run well even on raids. I can run the game on the High Quality setting while solo, but I find that my raid setting (above) leaves the game looking good enough that I no longer bother.
Here is a screenshot of me with those graphics. Keep in mind that screenshots lose some sharpness (everything is perfectly sharp in-game), but you get the idea about detail, etc. http://img816.imageshack.us/img816/6761/eq2000194.jpg
Once you do above config, if you enjoy your screen looking like fireworks, you can go back and adjust your Spell Effects to higher numbers. This will reduce performance and make it hard to see what's going on due to all the colours flying around, but it'll show you many more spell effects.
I am not saying that EQ2 is well-optimized - it's not. Or that it's going to look as good as AoC even on the best settings. I'm just saying it's pretty easy to get decent and playable settings that will let you enjoy your gaming experience, because honestly - no one is buying a 6-year-old game for amazing graphics.
Also, there are indeed a couple of zones that make the game lag terribly due to poor server design. These are the vast minority.
RE: LoTRO. I found that LoTRO's graphics quality is pretty poor and the animations are terrible. However, the game looks a lot better than EQ2 due to far superior art design and runs a lot better than EQ2 due to the use of lower quality graphics. In other words - yes, LoTRO looks better.
Though ultimately, if you want good graphics, every MMO on the market is garbage compared to AoC.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
i'm playing on a HP dv-7-3065x lap top and it runs fine on medium settings or a little less....
I think you are touching on one of the issues that really keeps new players from giving the game a serious try.
First if a player manages to get by the station launcher without any problems then they are immediately presented with the presets. The choices the presets seem to present is an option between poor looking graphics or poor performance and not somewhere in between. The expetation that a player will roll up their sleeves and dig into the graphics settings to experiment with what will find an acceptable level of quality and performance on their own.
These are elements that build the first impression a player is going to have and it really starts the game out in a fairly negative way. IMHO these things, along with the UI, should have been top priorities a long time ago.
No, you can buy armor that looks good but has no stats on the market place. Get over it.
What Nepulas is saying though is that the design of the armor is crappy so you can buy a cool skin in cs. Some see this as fluff not affecting gameplay but it results in ugly armors for those who don't go buy the pixels. It kinda affects those who don't want to buy.
the new ATI cards seems to have problems with EQ2, some say they run it nps with it, just by disable catalyst A.I. but have no diffrence meself. can still run the game but with short FPS drops now and then...this is the first PC Ive had that had any problems at all run the game....either way there is afew threads on the official support forum.
if you want to be a lazy arse and not read the support forum, then good luck in your next game...
EQ2 is not in any way GPU limited. When I has an nVidia 8800gts it sat at about 50% usage as seen by the monitor tools. Now with an ATi 4890 I sit around 30% usage at 1920x1200 on high quality. EQ2 is all about CPU single thread performance and now to some degree two thread performance.
To set the record straight, EQ2 was launched in 2004, developed long since before that and uses the same engine as SWG. The idea was to add DX9 features missing from EQ and make the zones, characters and so on look good now and later to avoid another engine update like EQ had. At the time GPU power was err not great and not really on an easy to predict roadmap. CPUs on the other hand were doing one thing... competing on GHz. The hope was for P4@5GHz a few years out... didn't happen CPUs went multi core and improved instruction sets with a... drop in GHz. We are pretty much just now getting back to where we were in 04 as far as straight brute force x86 instruction set computing.
Lesson learned... never ever release for tomorrow if you aren't a major player in what tomorrow brings
VG though also silly high requirements at time of launch was built with the Unreal 2.5 engine so it was a safe bet it would scale to whatever direction PCs went. Which is why in EQ2 I get ~40fps where in VG I get ~70fps and frankly preferences aside VG is technically more challenging in poly/texture but built on a better engine so... its better. Oh and armour sets looks great =P