Graphics are dumb >:3

[Digits]

Note: This is a thread about the role graphics play in the MMO industry, nothing else. Other factors exist for the success and failure, mostly failure, of the industry and they can be discussed in other threads. This is a thread to point out how graphics have been a destructive factor in mmos since the launch of Luclin.

Let's consider the fact that only three mmos have launched with good graphics that performed relatively well and scaled down well. Those being Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft and Aion. And I'm not even sure if Aion counts because it was made by a Chinaman. Every other mmo launched in the past 10 years has had serious graphics issues. Vanguard had such a shit design philosophy when it came to graphics that it almost ripped a hole into another universe. Warhammer, even after a year of optimizations, appears fundamentally fucked (big surprise there lol). EQ2 still suffers from awkward character models and animations, despite outsourcing graphics to Asia. AoC was unplayable on the majority of computers until maybe 2-3 weeks before retail. Luclin was shit on infinity levels, but the worst aspect had to be the graphics. Verant tried to throw their shitty graphics engine into the next generation by upping polygon amounts without realizing they should have just left it the fuck alone. While WoW produces great graphics, Blizzard does so like nature produces mountains. Aion has great graphics as well, but the main selling point of the game (large scale pvp) forces players to reduce their graphics to borderline eq1 levels to get a decent frame rate (before promptly crashing). Even Eve, by and large the game with the simplest graphical setting (space) in the industry, has awful performance in large scale fights.

What is the point of all of this? Time and time again we have seen the destruction of a potentially good game in large part due to graphics. Companies keep falling into the same trap: Try to make it as pretty as a single player game, realize those graphics don't work in an online setting, spend years trying to fix their graphics while their graphics become ever more outdated and highly restrict their potential user base due to performance issues. Good graphics don't sell mmos, they destroy them.

Why are we pretending that good graphics can ever possibly satisfy the mmo industry's requirements for content? No one is benefiting from this current obsession over graphics. Developers waste mind boggling amount of resources and precious testing time getting 'good' graphics that can run well and don't cripple large scale interaction. Players constantly have to deal with glossy, polished games with little soul and substance to say nothing of the relative shit performance this industry provides. Investors capital is wasted as companies try to make their game look shitty compared to a single player game. Performance issues have outright destroyed several games (Vanguard, Age of Conan), crippled others (Warhammer, Everquest 2), and wasted years of development time on trying to get a good performance across the industry. There is a tremendous effort in every modern mmo to get performance up to par. It's embarrassing when an mmo company is still frantically working on performance, crashing and networking issues mere weeks from release. How much better would their time have been spent working with an 'inferior' graphics style that was stable a half year from release? Maybe they would focus on creating unique content as opposed to a homogenized failure of innovation?

I mean, it wouldn't have happened but at least we could play these pieces of shit easier.

Another side effect of the graphical revolution in mmos? It's stilted the creativity and daring of artists, and the overall variety game worlds provide for us. A perfect example of what could happen then versus what could happen now is the frenzied ghoul's room in lower guk. They fucking crucified a froglok and had his blood flowing into a fountain. That owned, and no recent mmo has had anything close to that (Although WoW and EQ2 had some great vanilla art, such as the upside down corpses hung from chains but that wasn't even official). The best part is that due to the simplistic graphics of EQ the frenzy room probably took all of a half hour to create.

Graphics philosophy is game philosophy. Simple is better than complicated, and this industry has been over complicated since the launch of Luclin both graphically and conceptually. What I want is a game that says 'Here are some cool monsters in a cool area, now go in there and beat the shit out of them and get some cool loot.' and not 'Here are some monsters that took several months to painstakingly render and animate. We apparently didn't have time to give them any unique abilities or loot so enjoy it when he drops Codpiece of the Owl'

I don't want creature hovels filled with meaningless clutter like glass beakers and dildos (I do want this actually). I want crucifictions, tales of dragon slaying written on the walls, great beasts turned into rugs, and vats of boiling liquid.

I don't want my character to don ancient armor etched with the wards and prayers in an ancient tongue to fend off blows both magical and physical alike. I just want distinctive variety that extends below the neckline.

I don't want to interact with the structure of my character's nasal synapse, as well as every other tedious curve of the face. I want to interact with the world.

I don't want triple rendered waterfalls splashing my character's face with a light mist before condensing into a low lying fog. I want Kedge Keep.

My point? MMo's should have stopped evolving graphically in the early 2000s. I'm not saying the industry should go back to EQ level graphics, but it's obvious that developers should be harassing the raw power of modern computers for things other than graphics. There is literally nothing stopping a company from making a simple, yet good looking game with today's computer muscle. Let's all face the obvious: This industry's graphical obsession is a major contributing factor to the stifling of creativity and the death of the real potential in this industry.

[Lenaldo]

Uhh... your whole post is about simple graphics and then you list WoW as one of the MMOs that launched with good graphics? Even when WoW was first released the graphics were pretty basic - remember all the fanbois with their "ITS THEIR ARTISTIC STYLE!!!!!!1111!".

Part of wow's success is that the graphics are "dumbed" down so that even "shitty" computers can handle it. So, your post is just what blizzard realized 10 years ago - grats.

The biggest problem with graphics is that it limits your customer base. If little johnnys Dell can't play your game because his pentium 90 Mhz can't handle the graphics; you lost a customer.

I'm personally a larger fan of "realistic" art than I am "creative" art. However, I would gladly sacrifice what I consider ideal art for better gameplay - this includes how the game runs.

Nothing is worse than a game that runs like shit. More so, a game that isn't fun - even with great graphics - is a wasted game.

[Sharmai]

tl;dr

As the saying goes "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"... Some people love EQ2 style graphics and how realistic it is. I personally feel like its varying shades of brown but that's just me. Usually when I hear a game is realistic looking it means varying shades of brown and grey with liberal usage of shadows. I do like other styles that are more colorful and less realistic like say Borderlands, WoW, Quake3, UT, Mario, Soul Reaver, Ninja G.,Torchlight, Crysis and more.

MoH, EQ2, and Vanguard look like they could have all be made with the same palette to me but that's my personal taste. I would however, prefer if fewer developers spent more of that time developing graphics instead on developing fun gameplay. I'll take a game that looks like dwarf fortress any day of the week if its fun as hell.

[Vorok]

Originally Posted by Digits

My point? MMo's should have stopped evolving graphically in the early 2000s.

The point you forget to assess is that graphix are like the cover picture of a book, they will play a significant part into consumer's decision to buy the product. That's even more relevant to MMOs where the developpment cost are so high you absolutely need to have the largest audience possible (obsolete graphix would only "appeal" to a small segment of gamers).

[Leviothan]

I totally agree with your post, whole heartedly. Being part of a high performance computer gaming company, I am constantly thrown into Betas of different games, mostly MMOs before their release and I can tell the moment I load in some of these games that they will fail. Why? The graphics are too intense. I thought the point of an MMO was to garner a multiplayer experience with an addictive environment in which you can interact and feel like you are a part of. I understand that seeing beads of sweat that show the reflective value of that which is in front of you drip from your character can feel like you are immersed in the world but I would rather be able to punch a door open, fling a car at someone, mount my enemies head on the wall with a lower poly count that needing to constantly upgrade my computer.

I know that World of Warcraft has done well because of their graphics. They spent less time worrying about their character's having a high poly count and more about content, play style, and above anything else, sheer stability. Most MMOs coming out or have come out haven't toppled because of lack of content but rather total shit engines and abusive graphics that push systems to their edge. It is a pain in the ass to force a player, who WANTS to be part of this MMO's world to upgrade their computer just to be able to play it but in the end it fails because no one else could afford to play it because of the need to upgrade.

Regardless of the need to upgrade, most games with high graphics just run like shit and crash. You don't see people knocking games on the Nintendo because of their graphics. People have fun with the DS because of the game play for many of the games are fun. The same could be said about Average Joe who plays with their IPhone's tower defense for hours on end. Graphics don't make a game, its their addictive qualities that allow it. MMO's are the perfect venue to add addiction since a lot of people enjoy playing multiplayer games over single player.

I'm not saying to make an MMO that looks like total shit but do something reasonable where your primary focus won't be about engine stability, blue screen fixes, and patch to fix graphical issues, but to focus more on the content, play style, and innovative substance to the game.

[Digits]

Originally Posted by Vorok

The point you forget to assess is that graphix are like the cover picture of a book, they will play a significant part into consumer's decision to buy the product. That's even more relevant to MMOs where the developpment cost are so high you absolutely need to have the largest audience possible (obsolete graphix would only "appeal" to a small segment of gamers).

That's what CGI is for, and good graphics only serve to limit a potential player base. Of all the industry's out there, this one has the most intense word of mouth campaigns. Decent graphics with good performance would serve a company far better than good graphics and decent performance. Proof? WoW versus EQ2.

Originally Posted by Lenaldo

Part of wow's success is that the graphics are "dumbed" down so that even "shitty" computers can handle it. So, your post is just what blizzard realized 10 years ago - grats.

Hmm, yes, a simpler graphics style did become the rule after WoW launched. I remember when games stopped suffering from crippling performance issues after 2004. Thanks for your post Lenaldo please continue

Edit: If anything WoW's success needs to hammered into the thick skulls of this industry. There is literally no benefit provided by 'good' graphics that isn't offset with by the negatives, or counterbalanced by the positives of having a performance focused graphics style.

[Chips]

While I didn't read the original post I must agree that graphics don't make the game.

I just got done playing through Torchlight and the entire game was around 500MB and the graphics were perfectly acceptable to me.

[Sithro]

I would like an MMO with an overhead graphical style like Diablo has.

I don't know why, I just find that appealing.

[Mist]

Even with WoW's shitty low poly graphics, it still performs awful in large scale fights, (see Wintergrasp, even some raid encounters.) It has nothing to do with the graphics.

Same for EVE, or WAR, all the lag in large fights in those two games can be attributed to poor server code.

AION has very good graphics, and it's not the graphics that cause poor performance in large fights, it's the poor memory management code on the client.

Given the capability of even OLD machines, reasonably 'good' graphics should not make performance suffer. An MMO doesn't have to look like something that ran on my Pentium II.

[TwiNCannoN]

I agree, good graphics are completely unnecessary. I can safely say that none of my fondest memories in MMOs have anything to do with graphics and everything to do with atmosphere/setting.

It actually goes beyond that, to the point of which when graphical "improvements" have ruined games for me. Two easy examples are UO and EQ. Luclin literally made me quit EQ because of the new and foreign graphics. The game didn't feel the same and I hated the fact that there was a chance people were rendering me in the new, terrible stick-up-the-ass SoL model. The original EQ player models may have been lacking polygons but they had a ton of style and familiarity. UO... well, that's a no brainer. That 3d client tore the heart and soul right out of the game (although it was gameplay stuff that made me stop playing). I do admit that Kingdom Reborn actually looks pretty good today, but those original 2d graphics are still just so gorgeous to me that I can't see any need to waste time replacing them. And they definitely stand the test of time with what people are doing on player run shards.

[Mist]

2D graphics are harder to render than 3D graphics these days, because no hardware is optimized for it. The fastest 2D card ever made was some Matrox card a long time ago. Modern graphics cards have 3D accelerated processing cores, some crap for a video decoder, and no 2D raster-based acceleration at all.

[Sharmai]

Originally Posted by Sithro

I would like an MMO with an overhead graphical style like Diablo has.

I don't know why, I just find that appealing.

Torchlight is coming out with an MMO just like that I think.

[Draegan]

On an artistic level, graphics make the game. If the game looks like shit, and is animated like shit, no one will want to play it.

On a tech level, if the graphics are too nut crunching then you won't get a lot of people to play it but the people who can run it will love it, assuming the game itself is good.

Your graphics don't have to be amazing, but they have to look good whether it's with a lot of pixels or very few.

[Lenaldo]

Originally Posted by Digits

Hmm, yes, a simpler graphics style did become the rule after WoW launched. I remember when games stopped suffering from crippling performance issues after 2004. Thanks for your post Lenaldo please continue

Guess I fail to see where I put in my post "ALL COMPANIES REALIZED THIS AND NOW ARE MAKING GAMES WHERE GRAPHICS ARE DUMBED DOWN". Douchebag.

This post is similar to papers that pop up all the time where someone makes some amazing claim without realizing that others have already done the same. Theres actually a relatively famous theorem in DSP that pops up about once every 10 years in papers as a "new" idea.

I guess I just don't see the point of this thread - it brings nothing new; it just reiterates what people have been saying about WoW vs other MMOs since 2004.

Guess what guys, I bet we can use the sun's energy to power electronics - we can call it... SOLAR POWER.

[TwiNCannoN]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

Torchlight is coming out with an MMO just like that I think.

is it really an mmo though? Honestly I don't consider stuff like diablo, hellgate, mythos to be MMOs at all. You may be able to interact with thousands of players throughout the span of your characters career but limiting it to only 4-8 at a time makes it feel more like FPS servers or something to me, even if there is a town hub in place of a lobby system.

of course that is kind of a can-o-worms topic right there since you could take that and spin it into "ok, so if those aren't MMOs, neither are DDO/guild wars/etc."