EQ Never

Daidraco_sl said:

Still relevant.

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Actual in-game EQ2 kerra looks like a human with a plastic cat-monkey mask on.. People actually like it? To each their own.. I personally hate the Chester Cheetah face, but am 100% on-board giving them feline legs with actual claws and a non-humanoid body/stance. The human models have slightly exaggerated features but by no means are they WoW humans with gigantic arms/legs with a barrel for a chest and massive hands and feet. Some exaggeration helps convey features without having your face pressed up against another player.

I actually liked the new Kerran quite a bit. It's very Lion King flavored but I thought that was fine honestly. I didn't care too much for the Dark Elf concepts, but those are already being changed too. The reality though is no matter what direction the team goes with, someone won't be happy. The key there is to allow enough customization to let people shape it more to their liking.

Laerazi_sl said:

Actual in-game EQ2 kerra looks like a human with a plastic cat-monkey mask on

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I bitched about this before EQ2 released, and people were defending it. You can't fix stupid. I hope they adhere to the cat posture and features, and do the animations some justice. If they're not interested in doing it well then they should postpone the species until later. SOE needs to grasp that a polished core is necessary to go big.

Mur_sl said:

I agree, I want good loot from quests, but I want quests to actually be "quests", not just stupid tasks. I still have dreams about Cazic Thule, and the long weeks of hunting Crusaders with every other SK on my server, for our Sol Ro armor quests. Then the epic quest(s). Thats the stuff I want to see again. Not kill these 10 hell hounds and get this insame flaming sword v2.5, which is just a bit better than the v2.0 you got from killing 10 vamprire flying squirrels.

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You realize that the average kid today with a smart phone demands constant and instant gratification... right?

But I'm witchu.

Agraza_sl said:

I bitched about this before EQ2 released, and people were defending it. You can't fix stupid. I hope they adhere to the cat posture and features, and do the animations some justice. If they're not interested in doing it well then they should postpone the species until later. SOE needs to grasp that a polished core is necessary to go big.

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Considering EQ2 has a smaller population than EQ1, that should say enough about that entire game. But when people said that the first iteration of the Kerran for EQ:Next was very disney like, they were hitting the nail on the head imo. Neither of them are pretty, but its undeniable that the EQ2 model has more more detail than that stylized Lion King face they first presented us. The animations being more animalistic is just common sense. Worgen wouldnt be the same if they were just humans with a Dog face. I really never saw why they couldnt do this as far back as EQ1. At least, from what I know about animations - it seems as though it would have just been a little bit more work to have them walk/run like the Worgen do in WoW.

Altogether, Im glad they are changing the Kerran look for EQ:N. Which is all I really ever wanted, even though Ill never play one.

These games were released in the same year. This is what they are trying to avoid. 'Detail' is not as important as 'style' in computer graphics when you are talking about a product that will be in use (and under competitive pressure) for the next 20 years. 2014's idea of 'detailed realism' will be an actual joke to the people of 2024, but EQN will still be facing new competitors with modern tech. The hardcore-fantasy-mads will just have to cram it with walnuts. Stylized art in MMORPGs is just smart business.

Perfect example, Windwaker had haters at first but it's one of the Gamecube games that to this day still looks great. Of course the HD version is better, but the original lasted much longer than most other games of the same generation.

Quaid_sl said:

These games were released in the same year. This is what they are trying to avoid. 'Detail' is not as important as 'style' in computer graphics when you are talking about a product that will be in use (and under competitive pressure) for the next 20 years. 2014's idea of 'detailed realism' will be an actual joke to the people of 2024, but EQN will still be facing new competitors with modern tech. The hardcore-fantasy-mads will just have to cram it with walnuts. Stylized art in MMORPGs is just smart business.

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For some reason I still think the SNES graphics have held up better than any other game system and graphics every made. This is mostly thanks to the polygon era that became dated rather quickly. Not sure how SNES pulled it off but my son recently got into some SNES games on his Wii U and games like Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Contra III, Megan Man X, Super Mario World., etc. look really good and colorful.

Maybe a little off topic but I think some of the games are backing themselves into a corner with their artistic direction. They risk becoming dated easily.

2D sprites didn't have to worry about resolution, shadows, lighting, or any of that special effects jazz. They simply were made to scale of the game's environment. You either go super awesome FFXIV detail mode or pick something very stylized that doesn't need a total realistic quality.

I know that the difference between now and 2004 is fucking HUGE in terms of graphical improvement over 10 years - but there has got to be a line drawn eventually where it just costs too fucking much to go any further.

For instance - Frostbite 3 Engine demo shot.

(Keep in mind this shot has went through a couple conversions)
If by 2024 we have games that make that look like shit, then I cant fucking wait.

-- I believe that we're getting pretty close to where graphics, development costs and perceived profits are going to keep games from going that much further. Much less, the power of the Titan Z graphics card right now is just absurd, and so is the price. I feel like game companies will start going side ways with advancement, and that will be a huge improvement. EQ:N is headed in that direction with Voxels, for example. Beautiful environments that are able to be destroyed realistically.

I don't completely buy that realistic graphics are not the way to go. Yea they can look dated more quickly, but when I play thru hl2 (which I do every so often) I am still quite satisfied with the look of the game and characters, 10 years later. If eqnext can do realistic graphics that last 10 years I'd consider that a success. Environment design and avoiding uncanny valley is more important in graphical realism than how many pixels you can shove into one spot(granted, avoiding the uncanny valley is related to graphical power to some degree but a lot of it is style).

It also depends on how you define 'realism'. To me, I find wow and wild star to be cartoony, stylized graphics. Tera and ffxiv are also stylized but somehow more 'realistic' I guess, so I guess I'd draw my line somewhere between those two categories of games

Pasteton_sl said:

I don't completely buy that realistic graphics are not the way to go. Yea they can look dated more quickly, but when I play thru hl2 (which I do every so often) I am still quite satisfied with the look of the game and characters, 10 years later. If eqnext can do realistic graphics that last 10 years I'd consider that a success. Environment design and avoiding uncanny valley is more important in graphical realism than how many pixels you can shove into one spot(granted, avoiding the uncanny valley is related to graphical power to some degree but a lot of it is style).

It also depends on how you define 'realism'. To me, I find wow and wild star to be cartoony, stylized graphics. Tera and ffxiv are also stylized but somehow more 'realistic' I guess, so I guess I'd draw my line somewhere between those two categories of games

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Ya, Halflife 2 aged pretty well all things considering. I still think Jak 3, Sly 2, and Viewtiful Joe look great to this day, though, and they were released the same year as HL2

Pasteton_sl said:

I don't completely buy that realistic graphics are not the way to go. Yea they can look dated more quickly, but when I play thru hl2 (which I do every so often) I am still quite satisfied with the look of the game and characters, 10 years later. If eqnext can do realistic graphics that last 10 years I'd consider that a success. Environment design and avoiding uncanny valley is more important in graphical realism than how many pixels you can shove into one spot(granted, avoiding the uncanny valley is related to graphical power to some degree but a lot of it is style).

It also depends on how you define 'realism'. To me, I find wow and wild star to be cartoony, stylized graphics. Tera and ffxiv are also stylized but somehow more 'realistic' I guess, so I guess I'd draw my line somewhere between those two categories of games

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I like "good" graphics that fit the game more so than games trying to approach the line of reality. To me it is all about executing the environment and capturing the immersion of the story the setting is try to tell. To me it is easy to say, "Let's just make the game as realistic as possible" rather than "Let's tell a story and create a world." I don't like WoW's graphics but without them it isn't WoW, it isn't Azeroth.

I don't buy the whole realism thing either. I'm not playing a game to be place right back into reality. I'm trying to enter a world and become fully immersed into a story.

Fps games tend to push the realism thing because there are only so many ways you can build a modern era shooter, so progressing the graphics is one of the few ways to be different besides feature bloat that the Cod series is currently dealing with.

To be blunt, people hate photo realistic games because they're like paintings. Think of all the reasons you hate photo realistic games and I bet one of them falls in the list below.

If we had a photo realistic game where you could ------- climb all over shit like you can in Assassins Creed. Where, animations work beautifully with the graphical doodad that they are placed on ie. If you're walking on stairs, your characters feet land on each individual stair. // If you're climbing a ladder, your characters feet land on each rung. Where shit that should be burnable is burnable and possibly chars. Where, when you swing a sword at something - it makes contact. Where, when you hit something - whether its an enemy NPC or when you're cutting down a tree - it leaves a realistic mark. Where you can realistically harvest a tree, not just stand in a spot swinging an axe with a progress bar going until you see a tree_fall_animation. This list could go on and on, but these are just some of my pet peeves with current photo-realistic games, or hell, games in general.

Ive played games where these are all able to be done to a varying degree and theyre almost always exclusive to shitty graphics. Its one thing to make a game realistic in its game play (which is often confused with realism in terms of graphics) but realistic game play is often boring as fuck. But a photo realistic world that I feel like I could actually live in, cast spells with a believable affect... Thats what I am most excited about. Thats the MMO I want to play.

When you have photo-realistic graphics unaccompanied by equally good animations, collision detection, and physics, your suspension of disbelief is broken. Cartoony graphics have a lower bar to hurdle to sustain your suspension of disbelief because your mind is more forgiving based on what your seeing. Not having top notch animations, etc. are less important to keep your mind from distraction.

Easier to make fantasy worlds in cartoony graphics i would imagine, especially as far as MMOs are concerned with large environments and large scale battles for PVP or PVE - Alot less engine scaling to show most of the detail on lower end systems than trying to push the bar to make it some visually detailed masterpiece. What wow did looked dumb but paid of big in the long run and i dont mind EQN taking that route so long as shit looks awesome.

I'm not saying its easier as in it would be hard to accomplish - i mean just imagine pushing the bar on a game to have photo realistic visuals and then having a large scale pvp match going on with 40+ people and shit just stuttering unless youre on a monster rig. It may not be a problem to some but its less practical of an issue to have when you can easily avoid it - The problem at hand is more taste than anything when people see that dopey looking tony the tiger dude and go "wtf is this?"