I have one gripe with the graphics in UO and its NOT the engine.

Flywheel

I came back to UO a short while ago and I am enjoying playing it again, I am also looking forward to the graphics upgrade coming this year - I do think it will help the game somewhat.



One problem I do foresee with the graphics does not stem from the engine itself though - its the CUSTOM HOUSING. ever since it was introduced I believe that it has not helped the look of UO at all.



Dont get me wrong, there are some stunning looking player houses that are well thought-out, but for every one decent house there are dozens of tragic looking efforts that look like they were built by a 4-year old. These pitiful efforts range from cubes with no windows, to plots with little more than a few object on them to intricate designs that have gone badly wrong.



I think that no matter what happens to the actual graphics engine with so many bad houses lying around in the game it will still look awful in many locations (some areas are nothing more than housing estates which makes the bad housing stand out even more). Unfortunately other than putting the system back to choosing a house from pre-set styles there would not seem to be any way to fix this. Whatever the devs do to the game graphics engine it will never look really good again.



In any past game that has been given player made content its always the case that less than 5% of it is actually any good. Anyone else feel the same way about this ?

retrospectic

Originally posted by Flywheel

I came back to UO a short while ago and I am enjoying playing it again, I am also looking forward to the graphics upgrade coming this year - I do think it will help the game somewhat.



One problem I do foresee with the graphics does not stem from the engine itself though - its the CUSTOM HOUSING. ever since it was introduced I believe that it has not helped the look of UO at all.



Dont get me wrong, there are some stunning looking player houses that are well thought-out, but for every one decent house there are dozens of tragic looking efforts that look like they were built by a 4-year old. These pitiful efforts range from cubes with no windows, to plots with little more than a few object on them to intricate designs that have gone badly wrong.



I think that no matter what happens to the actual graphics engine with so many bad houses lying around in the game it will still look awful in many locations (some areas are nothing more than housing estates which makes the bad housing stand out even more). Unfortunately other than putting the system back to choosing a house from pre-set styles there would not seem to be any way to fix this. Whatever the devs do to the game graphics engine it will never look really good again.



In any past game that has been given player made content its always the case that less than 5% of it is actually any good. Anyone else feel the same way about this ?

 

My parents live in a subdivison.  All of the houses in the subdivision look the same.  Until custom housing came out, all player housing suffered from this suburan tendancy.  The idea that a player can build a small house into a two story without working about replacing the foundation is awesome, and I'd rather have an ever evolving, strange, and sometimes crappy row of housing than cookie cutter ones.

Although, some do need to be condemned.

Zitch

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Originally posted by retrospectic
Although, some do need to be condemned.

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LOL, yeah I can imagine.

Still the custom housing Idea offers players freedom. Even if some are'nt capable of excersising that freedom in such a way that other players can enjoy
Hardly a reason to take a step back.

UO has gone through some really terrible changes, and it's nothing I could ever see myself playing again. But they continue to do some things right, and housing was one of them.