Fires of Heaven Guild Message Board - View Single Post

Yago · 05-22-2009, 09:14 AM

My thought on this is what works within the setting, the developer's budget, and what fits the "theme" is what tends to do the best. Asian developers tend to get that formula just right.

One of the problems I have with EQ2 is that there is no coherent theme. Although I prefer the realistic style of EQ2 over WoW, I still want to see some sort of theme or artistic style. I have the feeling that a lot of EQ2's graphic are procedural textures and very little time was spent to manually "draw" the world.

Asian games tend to be heavily stylized through the eyes of the artist. It's almost as if they are given a canvas on which to draw on. I rarely see procedural texturing except perhaps on terrain. Almost all armors and weapons are hand drawn. Unpacking some of the textures reveals that someone actually took their time getting everything just right.

The problem with that sort of thing is cost. US titles like Everquest have significantly more resources than a game like Lineage 2. You can count the armors Lineage 2 has available to players, yet you need a database to even begin to imagine how many combinations of armors their are for EQ2. Given a lot of the armors are very similar in EQ, there are significantly more art resources there than in most Asian titles.

I see it as a tradeoff. Artistic beauty comes at a price. Do you want 100 armors available to the players at lower graphical fidelity? Do you want 10 armors available to the players at significantly higher graphical fidelity? It all falls on how you spend your budget.

The other thing I see missing in a lot of US and western titles is coherency. EQ2 is a good example of this. On the one hand you have some very beautifully done character models, but right next to it you have an aweful all white textured "spirit" model. There comes a time when the art director or assets manager needs to downright tell the artist that it looks wrong and needs to be redone, and I feel EQ2's art manager never really tightened the belt around the art team. In Asian games everything seems to fit the world; characters meld right into the background as opposed to sticking out like a sore thumb.

Now about animation, I'm sort of split on this. I've seen asian games with really nice graphics but aweful animations. Regarding western games? EQ2's animations are terrible, Age of Conan character's feet aren't anchored, Warhammer Online characters are choppy. All of that I feel is laziness, or the lack of cracking the whip by the art manager. WoW animations are fluid, just comparing the WoW griffon to the Everquest 2 one should tell you someone spent some time getting that bird just right.

Money doesn't buy that. Before someone says "well you need 100million or more to get things all nice", I've seen indy teams do solid graphics and animation at a fraction of the cost. I feel that in the west there's this belief that because it's an MMO you can get away with generic graphics and generic animations. Good graphics and animations seem to be relegated to single player games and consoles.

05-22-2009, 09:14 AM	#3 (permalink)
Yago Registered User Join Date: Aug 2006 Posts: 5 +3 Internets	My thought on this is what works within the setting, the developer's budget, and what fits the "theme" is what tends to do the best. Asian developers tend to get that formula just right. One of the problems I have with EQ2 is that there is no coherent theme. Although I prefer the realistic style of EQ2 over WoW, I still want to see some sort of theme or artistic style. I have the feeling that a lot of EQ2's graphic are procedural textures and very little time was spent to manually "draw" the world. Asian games tend to be heavily stylized through the eyes of the artist. It's almost as if they are given a canvas on which to draw on. I rarely see procedural texturing except perhaps on terrain. Almost all armors and weapons are hand drawn. Unpacking some of the textures reveals that someone actually took their time getting everything just right. The problem with that sort of thing is cost. US titles like Everquest have significantly more resources than a game like Lineage 2. You can count the armors Lineage 2 has available to players, yet you need a database to even begin to imagine how many combinations of armors their are for EQ2. Given a lot of the armors are very similar in EQ, there are significantly more art resources there than in most Asian titles. I see it as a tradeoff. Artistic beauty comes at a price. Do you want 100 armors available to the players at lower graphical fidelity? Do you want 10 armors available to the players at significantly higher graphical fidelity? It all falls on how you spend your budget. The other thing I see missing in a lot of US and western titles is coherency. EQ2 is a good example of this. On the one hand you have some very beautifully done character models, but right next to it you have an aweful all white textured "spirit" model. There comes a time when the art director or assets manager needs to downright tell the artist that it looks wrong and needs to be redone, and I feel EQ2's art manager never really tightened the belt around the art team. In Asian games everything seems to fit the world; characters meld right into the background as opposed to sticking out like a sore thumb. Now about animation, I'm sort of split on this. I've seen asian games with really nice graphics but aweful animations. Regarding western games? EQ2's animations are terrible, Age of Conan character's feet aren't anchored, Warhammer Online characters are choppy. All of that I feel is laziness, or the lack of cracking the whip by the art manager. WoW animations are fluid, just comparing the WoW griffon to the Everquest 2 one should tell you someone spent some time getting that bird just right. Money doesn't buy that. Before someone says "well you need 100million or more to get things all nice", I've seen indy teams do solid graphics and animation at a fraction of the cost. I feel that in the west there's this belief that because it's an MMO you can get away with generic graphics and generic animations. Good graphics and animations seem to be relegated to single player games and consoles.