At last! Someone who has posted what I saw in game - crappy monsters, awful interiors, astoundingly bad water etc etc
Yes, some of the landscapes were pretty, but so much of my graphical experience was really bad. LOTRO simply blows this out the water.
Maybe it has more to do with what zones people levelled up in, but to the OP - right on! What you posted is at least some of the reason why I left the game. It was just shoddy.
I have a strange, sudden urge to make origami turtles.
Hehehe, unexpected and gave me a good laugh, thank you.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I like pretty graphics as much as the next guy, but without the extensive fun factor, what's the point of buying a new $300+ dollar graphics card to see them?
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I recently quit Vanguard and went back to City of Heroes after a 2 1/2 year hiatus. Know what I found? The graphics on a game created in 2004 were better than Vanguard's.
Also, the community sucked less. More support, less judgement.
I suppose I could have tolerated Vanguard more if it had a better community, and neither Sigil nor SOE can be blamed for that. However, as things stand, it's not worth the money. I mean, it takes half past forever to get anything done, and the crafting system, though interesting at first, is boring after the first level or two.
It was all trumped up to be this great, innovative game, and while it did successfully help me waste time, unlike the other MMOs I've played in the past, I never felt like I got anything done at all. At least with CoH/CoV I can say, "Hey, cool, I can fly now," and with WoW I could say, "Woot! Lewts!" With Vanguard, though, there was never any real payoff. It didn't wow me with sounds, jokes, or sights, so what's the point of sticking it out?
I noticed anyone trying to show off VG graphics get as high as they can and take some long distance shot of the horizon with a sunset. I saw this in game and it was pretty but how hard are sunsets? The OP showed what everday adventurers saw; Ugly mobs with little character and expansive areas of rocky barren terrain or sandy desert terrain. You can even see the emptiness in the "sunset" pictures too. You would run forever and then come across something and what do you know? It was a gray temple or a brown dungeon or a gray cave or a brown city. I know people ran the "it's too brown" in the ground during beta but when I look back on playing Vanguard I think dull muted bland colors with very little to pull you in or make you say "WOW".
I think it's awesome they pushed the clipping plane boundaries with VG but when you let people see for miles then put some stuff in to see. It agitates me a little bit in EQ2 now that everything is "hazy" past a certain distance but what's in front of me is interesting so I figure it's a worthy exchange.
To compare, this is a LOTRO shot with water; you are free not to like it, but IMVPO THIS is how I think a river or lake is supposed to look like.
Those are MAX settings, and on the same computer, meaning I can use max setting in LOTRO with a computer which barely was able to use balanced in VG. Oh and before you flame, again: VG has some very good parts and I hope it is reworked well since I want to play it again when its better, but some things HAVE to be pointed out for that!
I looked down on purpose to avoid the postcard look with 50% sky, which makes almost every screenshot beautiful in our eyes.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Seriously what kind of rig are you running to get screenshots like that? I run VG on Medium/high settings but by no means maxed out. Graghics are sweet and I have rarely seen anything that made me think omg that sucks. In fact I spend more time stopping and going omg that looks just gorgeous. I take multiple screenshots and send them to people who play WOW to wind them up. Even a few have decided to come over to VG because they realise how bad WOW looks. Personally I think its unfair posting crap screenshots and if it looks like that then you seriously need to upgrade.
I run it on 4400 dual amd. 2x 7600gt geforce 256, creative sound, 2 gig of ram, asus mobo. So its not mind blowing!
To compare, this is a LOTRO shot with water; you are free not to like it, but IMVPO THIS is how I think a river or lake is supposed to look like. Those are MAX settings, and on the same computer, meaning I can use max setting in LOTRO with a computer which barely was able to use balanced in VG. Oh and before you flame, again: VG has some very good parts and I hope it is reworked well since I want to play it again when its better, but some things HAVE to be pointed out for that! I looked down on purpose to avoid the postcard look with 50% sky, which makes almost every screenshot beautiful in our eyes.
Can you swim in that water?
A ride into CB 2 months after release. Taken with an x1300.
NPC models aren't optimised. WoW had the same problem when it was released. Something to do with using multiple skeletons for dif. models, and how they are loaded.
A 7950.
VG and L2 are the best looking MMO's on the market. CoH's next. No other game does enviroments as well as VG. Telon is the most realistic visual representation of a world, in my opinion.
Yes you can swim, and it has an alright swimming animation. There isnt any life in rivers or lakes I have seen tbh but I found the rivers more "vibrant", realistic or whatever you want. It gets a bit more transparent when you are in the water, and less reflectioning. But I dont want to litter a VG board with lotro screens, I think you can find plenty otherwise. ^^
What is good in VG is, the size of some trees is really realistic, not the "symbolic" trees most MMOs have, or I really loved the big cities New Torgonor and Aghram. Its really not that I hate VG. But everyone saying how great the graphics is, I really think it needed to be said "yes, but..." pointing at those things that, well just went wrong. Its mostly the textures and also the design, how things were placed and the layout of some regions I really didnt like at all in VG. I really try to keep the middle ground, talking against both haters and blind adorers. You may imagine how strenunous that is most of the time. =.=
Just to illustrate what IMPO was made good in the design of LOTRO I add somes screenies. I know some things are a matter of taste also. No need to spill hate. ^^
This is the Hall of Elrond in Rivendell (its from beta, so not high res yet). They dont have more polygons than the Hall of the King of Thestra in the VG shot, but they just had a damn good design team. I feel it so radiates atmosphere because of the design.
This one is my spider from monsterplay in the PVP area. I think the vista isnt too bad. (PVP is quite fun there btw.)
Just some forest, again IMO it shows the good design for atmosphere, I found only few forests in VG are that well designed. Its not something I can exactly place my finger at, but it just felt no so cold like several VG places did.
Again one of those vistas I can never get enough of. I dont think LOTRO is ahead of VG technically, likely they have less polygons than VG, but the textures and landscape design was just very well made. Again, just IMO.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Ok? What are you guys doing now, comparing the worst screenies from VG with good screenies from LOTR. Yep sounds fair enough
actually they are comparing what runs at 60fps in LOTRO vs. what runs as 60fps in Vanguard ..... LOL I'm just kidding. We all know Vanguard can't run at 60fps
I wish I could go on and take some low qualityt LOTRO pics but it looks terrible when you lower everything, I just don't have the time to do it. You'll probably have a LOTRO fan post now with a "low quality" screenshot that looks sem decent but take it with a grain of salt. LOTRO look pretty in pictures but even in action is has horrible animation and really awkward transitions from background into foreground because of the way they handle distances. That's why you get such beautiful skylines. In reality up close and without the bloom LOTRO isn't so pretty anymore. Mixed with the bad character, monster and skill animation and you have a really ugly game.
At least the screenshots look good.
Also to the OP your screenshots look as if you turned up the settings to something your system couldn't handle and it bugged out the graphics. Mainly the first and the last one.
P.S. People say they love the water in LOTRO, but I think it's some of the worst water in any game. It looks fake and plasticy, and the light reflecting off of it never seems right. In pictures it looks fine but in action it looks like liquid metal or something.
Originally posted by pb1285n I wish I could go on and take some low qualityt LOTRO pics but it looks terrible when you lower everything, I just don't have the time to do it. You'll probably have a LOTRO fan post now with a "low quality" screenshot that looks sem decent but take it with a grain of salt. LOTRO look pretty in pictures but even in action is has horrible animation and really awkward transitions from background into foreground because of the way they handle distances. That's why you get such beautiful skylines. In reality up close and without the bloom LOTRO isn't so pretty anymore. Mixed with the bad character, monster and skill animation and you have a really ugly game. At least the screenshots look good. Also to the OP your screenshots look as if you turned up the settings to something your system couldn't handle and it bugged out the graphics. Mainly the first and the last one. P.S. People say they love the water in LOTRO, but I think it's some of the worst water in any game. It looks fake and plasticy, and the light reflecting off of it never seems right. In pictures it looks fine but in action it looks like liquid metal or something.
Here is a low setting shot from LotRO I posted this in the LotR forum a few days ago..does not look ugly in the least to me.
Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. Lao-Tze
Originally posted by pb1285n I wish I could go on and take some low qualityt LOTRO pics but it looks terrible when you lower everything, I just don't have the time to do it.
No, it really doesn't look horrible, it actually looks pretty good. Vanguard OTOH, at lower textures looks hideous.
You'll probably have a LOTRO fan post now with a "low quality" screenshot that looks sem decent but take it with a grain of salt. LOTRO look pretty in pictures but even in action is has horrible animation and really awkward transitions from background into foreground because of the way they handle distances. That's why you get such beautiful skylines. In reality up close and without the bloom LOTRO isn't so pretty anymore. Mixed with the bad character, monster and skill animation and you have a really ugly game. Vanguard has terrible character models, and some of the worst spell effects in 10 years.
At least the screenshots look good. Also to the OP your screenshots look as if you turned up the settings to something your system couldn't handle and it bugged out the graphics. Mainly the first and the last one. P.S. People say they love the water in LOTRO, but I think it's some of the worst water in any game. It looks fake and plasticy, and the light reflecting off of it never seems right. In pictures it looks fine but in action it looks like liquid metal or something. The water in LotRO is beautiful. There are times I will just stop and look at it. And before you accuse me of being a LotRO fan-boy, I'm thinking of quitting because the game-play is rather boring. But graphics wise, it is very nice.
I don't want to get into the whole VG vs LotRO graphics thing here, but I did want to put in a little advice on the LotRO graphics fad. The water is done quite well, and the characters and landscapes (architecture) is very pretty. BUT I played LotRO for a while, and looking past the gameplay, and the terrible animations, if you REALLY look at those screenshots and at the detail in the game when you're playing, it is very flat. It's like looking at a really nice painting, but realizing there is no depth or detail to it.
Here's some examples of what I mean. The trees all look the same. It's like they made 5 models for trees and foliage, and just stuck them in a place alternating models. Placement and lighting are done quite well, but when you look at a tree, you could have sworn you've seen that exact same tree before, MANY times before. I realize this happens a lot in MMO's as you can't make 10,000,000 models for trees, but it's very noticable in LotRO for some reason. Also, just the foliage and grass is the same way. In most places the foliage is literally painted on the ground. It's like someone took a paintbrush and just painted a bunch of plants and foliage right on the canvas. It does look pretty, but very flat.
It's the same way with buildings. From a long ways, you can see the detail, and the designs and all the different lines in the bricks and wood. But when you really look at it, it looks like drywall in your bedroom with lines and designs painted on. The buildings are like those 3D puzzles you build with your kids that shows a beautiful, well designed building, but is just a piece of cardboard with a design painted on the outside. I like to see bricks stacked on top of each other. Wood splintered and knotted nailed together. Marble etched and reflective. Attention to detail.
The armor is just horrible in my opinion. No matter whether the armor is leather, metal, or cloth, it all looks like paper wrapped around a character with a design painted on it. It's like those t-shirts with the tuxedo design on them. The cloaks don't really flow, they just flap and the ripples in the fabric never change. I like to see that my character is actually wearing heavy armor, or flowing robes, or links of chain and plates that fasten on top, and overlap each other. That's the attention to detail I REALLY like. LotRO is missing a very important part of really making the world have depth and character.
Anyways, that's my thoughts on LotRO graphics, now back to our regularly scheduled program...
"Granted thinking for yourself could be considered a timesink of shorter or longer duration depending on how smart..or how dumb you are."
Originally posted by pb1285n I wish I could go on and take some low qualityt LOTRO pics but it looks terrible when you lower everything, I just don't have the time to do it.
No, it really doesn't look horrible, it actually looks pretty good. Vanguard OTOH, at lower textures looks hideous.
You'll probably have a LOTRO fan post now with a "low quality" screenshot that looks sem decent but take it with a grain of salt. LOTRO look pretty in pictures but even in action is has horrible animation and really awkward transitions from background into foreground because of the way they handle distances. That's why you get such beautiful skylines. In reality up close and without the bloom LOTRO isn't so pretty anymore. Mixed with the bad character, monster and skill animation and you have a really ugly game. Vanguard has terrible character models, and some of the worst spell effects in 10 years.
At least the screenshots look good. Also to the OP your screenshots look as if you turned up the settings to something your system couldn't handle and it bugged out the graphics. Mainly the first and the last one. P.S. People say they love the water in LOTRO, but I think it's some of the worst water in any game. It looks fake and plasticy, and the light reflecting off of it never seems right. In pictures it looks fine but in action it looks like liquid metal or something. The water in LotRO is beautiful. There are times I will just stop and look at it. And before you accuse me of being a LotRO fan-boy, I'm thinking of quitting because the game-play is rather boring. But graphics wise, it is very nice.
Vanguard did have some very nice postcard screenies. The problem was the mobs and the avatars looked blah and the space between "money maker" screenshots were few and far between. You could get a great horizon shot at sunset or at night because the sky was pretty impressive and the mountains we're high texture but basically you seldom saw anything "art direction" wise that competed with the dwarf cities in WOW and LoTRs. In 22 levels I never faced one mob in VG that made me say "Cool" like I have in LOTRs, WOW, or EQII. Animations are cruddy and design is rushed in most cases. Most dungeons I saw we're generic also.
I've seen screens of some impressive dungeons in VG but I think Brad forgot that people want to see Awesome before lvl 30. Especially in a game with a longer leveling progression. In EQI I waited patiently because it was the only game in town. Now I have 10 choices and some of those give you a nice nubee experience devoid of blah animal mobs and generic landscapes.
Before someone calls me a troll, I honestly wanted VG to be great. I left EQII to follow VG for several years before release. It just floors me that Brad made the same mistakes as EQII and he had three more years of development and could see the general reaction to EQII at release. The irony is that EQII now is popular and growing and VG is treading water (Bad graphic water at that).
Yes you can swim, and it has an alright swimming animation. There isnt any life in rivers or lakes I have seen tbh but I found the rivers more "vibrant", realistic or whatever you want. It gets a bit more transparent when you are in the water, and less reflectioning. But I dont want to litter a VG board with lotro screens, I think you can find plenty otherwise. ^^ What is good in VG is, the size of some trees is really realistic, not the "symbolic" trees most MMOs have, or I really loved the big cities New Torgonor and Aghram. Its really not that I hate VG. But everyone saying how great the graphics is, I really think it needed to be said "yes, but..." pointing at those things that, well just went wrong. Its mostly the textures and also the design, how things were placed and the layout of some regions I really didnt like at all in VG. I really try to keep the middle ground, talking against both haters and blind adorers. You may imagine how strenunous that is most of the time. =.= Just to illustrate what IMPO was made good in the design of LOTRO I add somes screenies. I know some things are a matter of taste also. No need to spill hate. ^^ This is the Hall of Elrond in Rivendell (its from beta, so not high res yet). They dont have more polygons than the Hall of the King of Thestra in the VG shot, but they just had a damn good design team. I feel it so radiates atmosphere because of the design. Hall of Elrond Awesome screenshot, things like this are indeed very well done in LotrO, this is where i feel some part of Vanguard should have had more light (sorry forgot the name atm but the area and building around Hathor Zhi are amazing but inside its far to dark to really enjoy it. And yes in some way LotrO looks more "solid with textures" but lets be realistic LotrO doesn't demand that much of a good system, like i said compare my 7900series screenshots with those using a 8800series card textures and renders already look much better, let alone know tech always is evolving so time will heal in most parts, but still i feel some of Vanguard more importent issues are not visual or performance wise. But i'm used to using /bug or support forums to discus this more often then on sites like this, call me oldfasion but still for the larger part consider sites like this to share fun info. Above to be honost looks bad especialy looking at the background, think you can up the setting as i played it and it was better looking in distance view then i see here and thought you had slighty a better system where i have a 7900GT you had/have a 7950 right? Just some forest, again IMO it shows the good design for atmosphere, I found only few forests in VG are that well designed. Its not something I can exactly place my finger at, but it just felt no so cold like several VG places did. What i do miss in Vanguards forrests or woods is foilage on the ground which you see nicely in LotrO though i must admt it sometimes looks abit strange and flat it is something that makes forrest looks somewhat more "forrest like". But i do like the variarity of trees in Vanguard which in LotrO looks like many many many the same kind of trees. Still nicely put down together i will admit no worry's, but only when upclose and within a forrest does it look good as forrest or tree lines from a distance in LotrO do not look that good to be honost below a pic of what i mean. In this Vanguard just shines and below from closer to it and then the forrest starts to shape and does look very nice Again one of those vistas I can never get enough of. I dont think LOTRO is ahead of VG technically, likely they have less polygons than VG, but the textures and landscape design was just very well made. Again, just IMO.
and as last to confirm what i said about bears in LotrO i especialy "liked" the effect on them when they "Roar" at you
In the end Vanguard still wins for me personaly as it has so manyy things i like in a mmorpg where LotrO for me personaly just felt like a game, sure fun no denying here, just not the mmorpg i would have liked it to be.
A big problem with the art assets in Vanguiard is the inconsistancy, like it's a blending of EQ quality assets with the current generation. Did they farm some work out overseas? Buy up the assets of some failed projects? Start with EQ quality design, realize they needed to do better, but still had a lot of low quality assets they didn't have time to redo? I don't know, could be any or all of the above. It kills the immersion though, unless your previous games looked as bad as vanguard at it's worst, then maybe you wouldn't find it as jarring.
I still think the biggest mystery of all of this is where did that money really go? I bet someone could right a book on it!
SOE probably could really fix the title, but I think they are more interested in aquiring some talent from the former Sigil team and putting them on other projects than they are in making this game what it could have been...
Originally posted by pb1285n I wish I could go on and take some low qualityt LOTRO pics but it looks terrible when you lower everything, I just don't have the time to do it.
No, it really doesn't look horrible, it actually looks pretty good. Vanguard OTOH, at lower textures looks hideous.
You'll probably have a LOTRO fan post now with a "low quality" screenshot that looks sem decent but take it with a grain of salt. LOTRO look pretty in pictures but even in action is has horrible animation and really awkward transitions from background into foreground because of the way they handle distances. That's why you get such beautiful skylines. In reality up close and without the bloom LOTRO isn't so pretty anymore. Mixed with the bad character, monster and skill animation and you have a really ugly game. Vanguard has terrible character models, and some of the worst spell effects in 10 years.
At least the screenshots look good. Also to the OP your screenshots look as if you turned up the settings to something your system couldn't handle and it bugged out the graphics. Mainly the first and the last one. P.S. People say they love the water in LOTRO, but I think it's some of the worst water in any game. It looks fake and plasticy, and the light reflecting off of it never seems right. In pictures it looks fine but in action it looks like liquid metal or something. The water in LotRO is beautiful. There are times I will just stop and look at it. And before you accuse me of being a LotRO fan-boy, I'm thinking of quitting because the game-play is rather boring. But graphics wise, it is very nice.
I would have to agree that the game looks like crap at low settings. VG has to do a lot more to the visuals to allow it to run on low systems then a lot of other MMO's though. But that's just the lowest settings. Balanced and up look great to me.
I disagree about the character models. At the moment VG has very few idle animations. Spell effects, and combat animations that I've seen are some of the best around. http://www.emotionfx.com/site/clients.php Warhammer will be using emotionfx, as does DAoC. I hope they add more fluff animations as time goes on. All I have to say is. /vomit.
At some point VG's waters will be populated with things like sea monsters, and pirates; it's not just there for looks. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to run VG with reflected images in water. I have never seen this much water in an MMO before. However, I wouldn't mind seeing some of the small rivers, and such beefed up a bit. I don't want to see the heavy reflections LoTRO uses, the ones EQ2 uses, on the other hand, wouldn't be to bad. Very subtle. VG is more realistic then LoTRO as well; you wouldn't have that much reflection in the water everywhere you go. Having light reflecting off of water is more realistic then having every body of water reflecting back it's surroundings all the time. They do need to work on the shore lines. The water is very jagged. I wouldn't mind seeing some water collision to.
A big problem with the art assets in Vanguiard is the inconsistancy, like it's a blending of EQ quality assets with the current generation. Did they farm some work out overseas? Buy up the assets of some failed projects? Start with EQ quality design, realize they needed to do better, but still had a lot of low quality assets they didn't have time to redo? I don't know, could be any or all of the above. It kills the immersion though, unless your previous games looked as bad as vanguard at it's worst, then maybe you wouldn't find it as jarring.
I still think the biggest mystery of all of this is where did that money really go? I bet someone could right a book on it!
SOE probably could really fix the title, but I think they are more interested in aquiring some talent from the former Sigil team and putting them on other projects than they are in making this game what it could have been...
Fix character models tbh they're the ugliest shit i've ever seen.
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SWG - PrePub9 Jedi mastered all professions - June 26th 2003 > Nov 15th 2005 EVE Online - 24 million SP - May 6th 2003 > Early 2005 PlanetSide - BR20 CR5 - May 23rd 2003 > Sept 2003
While WoW doesn't exactly have cutting edge graphics or high poly counts, the artwork and style is a great deal better than anything I had seen in VG. WoW just seems to have a more vibrant and alive world than VG.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
I play on medium settings and its nothing like that. Water looks awesome on my screen as does all mobs. Even my old pc on low settings werent this bad, really what r the specs of your pc? Did you just turn everything down as low as you could to see how bad you can get it?
I KNEW this question would come. You can only take my word, I had setting as high as I could. I was playing on intel duo 2 with 2gb ram and Nvidia card with 1 gb graphics ram. My setting were as high as I was able, especially in water, since I usually love water showing good. Believe it or not, but at that time I had not purpose to make VG look bad.
You my friend are a liar.
Being savy with computers I can tell you many things
1. My PC is Intel core 2 duo at 1.8GHZ, 8800GTS 640mb and 2g ram and I play MAX graphics 40fps in cities 50fps everywhere else, your fictional computer would kill mine with that fictional "1gig nvidia graphics card" so how do you play at medium?
2. Water looks amazing on medium settings for me
3. Your graphics card has 1g of ram!? REALLY!?! TO bad Nvidia does'nt make 1g ram video cards, unless your paying 2400$ for a EDITING QUADRO VIDEO CARD. Which I know you don't have
You get one apocalyptic point for your awesomeness sir, and i agree with someone else in here that you should NOT bash the graphics, they are the best on the market besides LOTRO.
Comments
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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At last! Someone who has posted what I saw in game - crappy monsters, awful interiors, astoundingly bad water etc etc
Yes, some of the landscapes were pretty, but so much of my graphical experience was really bad. LOTRO simply blows this out the water.
Maybe it has more to do with what zones people levelled up in, but to the OP - right on! What you posted is at least some of the reason why I left the game. It was just shoddy.
Hehehe, unexpected and gave me a good laugh, thank you.
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Originally posted by Jerek_
I wonder if you honestly even believe what you type, or if you live in a made up world of facts.
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Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
I recently quit Vanguard and went back to City of Heroes after a 2 1/2 year hiatus. Know what I found? The graphics on a game created in 2004 were better than Vanguard's.
Also, the community sucked less. More support, less judgement.
I suppose I could have tolerated Vanguard more if it had a better community, and neither Sigil nor SOE can be blamed for that. However, as things stand, it's not worth the money. I mean, it takes half past forever to get anything done, and the crafting system, though interesting at first, is boring after the first level or two.
It was all trumped up to be this great, innovative game, and while it did successfully help me waste time, unlike the other MMOs I've played in the past, I never felt like I got anything done at all. At least with CoH/CoV I can say, "Hey, cool, I can fly now," and with WoW I could say, "Woot! Lewts!" With Vanguard, though, there was never any real payoff. It didn't wow me with sounds, jokes, or sights, so what's the point of sticking it out?
I noticed anyone trying to show off VG graphics get as high as they can and take some long distance shot of the horizon with a sunset. I saw this in game and it was pretty but how hard are sunsets? The OP showed what everday adventurers saw; Ugly mobs with little character and expansive areas of rocky barren terrain or sandy desert terrain. You can even see the emptiness in the "sunset" pictures too. You would run forever and then come across something and what do you know? It was a gray temple or a brown dungeon or a gray cave or a brown city. I know people ran the "it's too brown" in the ground during beta but when I look back on playing Vanguard I think dull muted bland colors with very little to pull you in or make you say "WOW".
I think it's awesome they pushed the clipping plane boundaries with VG but when you let people see for miles then put some stuff in to see. It agitates me a little bit in EQ2 now that everything is "hazy" past a certain distance but what's in front of me is interesting so I figure it's a worthy exchange.
To compare, this is a LOTRO shot with water; you are free not to like it, but IMVPO THIS is how I think a river or lake is supposed to look like.
Those are MAX settings, and on the same computer, meaning I can use max setting in LOTRO with a computer which barely was able to use balanced in VG. Oh and before you flame, again: VG has some very good parts and I hope it is reworked well since I want to play it again when its better, but some things HAVE to be pointed out for that!
I looked down on purpose to avoid the postcard look with 50% sky, which makes almost every screenshot beautiful in our eyes.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Seriously what kind of rig are you running to get screenshots like that? I run VG on Medium/high settings but by no means maxed out. Graghics are sweet and I have rarely seen anything that made me think omg that sucks. In fact I spend more time stopping and going omg that looks just gorgeous. I take multiple screenshots and send them to people who play WOW to wind them up. Even a few have decided to come over to VG because they realise how bad WOW looks. Personally I think its unfair posting crap screenshots and if it looks like that then you seriously need to upgrade.
I run it on 4400 dual amd. 2x 7600gt geforce 256, creative sound, 2 gig of ram, asus mobo. So its not mind blowing!
Can you swim in that water?
A ride into CB 2 months after release. Taken with an x1300.
NPC models aren't optimised. WoW had the same problem when it was released. Something to do with using multiple skeletons for dif. models, and how they are loaded.
A 7950.
VG and L2 are the best looking MMO's on the market. CoH's next. No other game does enviroments as well as VG. Telon is the most realistic visual representation of a world, in my opinion.
Wish Darkfall would release.
Yes you can swim, and it has an alright swimming animation. There isnt any life in rivers or lakes I have seen tbh but I found the rivers more "vibrant", realistic or whatever you want. It gets a bit more transparent when you are in the water, and less reflectioning. But I dont want to litter a VG board with lotro screens, I think you can find plenty otherwise. ^^
What is good in VG is, the size of some trees is really realistic, not the "symbolic" trees most MMOs have, or I really loved the big cities New Torgonor and Aghram. Its really not that I hate VG. But everyone saying how great the graphics is, I really think it needed to be said "yes, but..." pointing at those things that, well just went wrong. Its mostly the textures and also the design, how things were placed and the layout of some regions I really didnt like at all in VG. I really try to keep the middle ground, talking against both haters and blind adorers. You may imagine how strenunous that is most of the time. =.=
Just to illustrate what IMPO was made good in the design of LOTRO I add somes screenies. I know some things are a matter of taste also. No need to spill hate. ^^
This is the Hall of Elrond in Rivendell (its from beta, so not high res yet). They dont have more polygons than the Hall of the King of Thestra in the VG shot, but they just had a damn good design team. I feel it so radiates atmosphere because of the design.
This one is my spider from monsterplay in the PVP area. I think the vista isnt too bad. (PVP is quite fun there btw.)
Just some forest, again IMO it shows the good design for atmosphere, I found only few forests in VG are that well designed. Its not something I can exactly place my finger at, but it just felt no so cold like several VG places did.
Again one of those vistas I can never get enough of. I dont think LOTRO is ahead of VG technically, likely they have less polygons than VG, but the textures and landscape design was just very well made. Again, just IMO.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Ok? What are you guys doing now, comparing the worst screenies from VG with good screenies from LOTR.
Yep sounds fair enough
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
anyone want to put some vids up of vanguard in action?i want to see what its like.
I wish I could go on and take some low qualityt LOTRO pics but it looks terrible when you lower everything, I just don't have the time to do it. You'll probably have a LOTRO fan post now with a "low quality" screenshot that looks sem decent but take it with a grain of salt. LOTRO look pretty in pictures but even in action is has horrible animation and really awkward transitions from background into foreground because of the way they handle distances. That's why you get such beautiful skylines. In reality up close and without the bloom LOTRO isn't so pretty anymore. Mixed with the bad character, monster and skill animation and you have a really ugly game.
At least the screenshots look good.
Also to the OP your screenshots look as if you turned up the settings to something your system couldn't handle and it bugged out the graphics. Mainly the first and the last one.
P.S. People say they love the water in LOTRO, but I think it's some of the worst water in any game. It looks fake and plasticy, and the light reflecting off of it never seems right. In pictures it looks fine but in action it looks like liquid metal or something.
Here is a low setting shot from LotRO I posted this in the LotR forum a few days ago..does not look ugly in the least to me.
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
Lao-Tze
I don't want to get into the whole VG vs LotRO graphics thing here, but I did want to put in a little advice on the LotRO graphics fad. The water is done quite well, and the characters and landscapes (architecture) is very pretty. BUT I played LotRO for a while, and looking past the gameplay, and the terrible animations, if you REALLY look at those screenshots and at the detail in the game when you're playing, it is very flat. It's like looking at a really nice painting, but realizing there is no depth or detail to it.
Here's some examples of what I mean. The trees all look the same. It's like they made 5 models for trees and foliage, and just stuck them in a place alternating models. Placement and lighting are done quite well, but when you look at a tree, you could have sworn you've seen that exact same tree before, MANY times before. I realize this happens a lot in MMO's as you can't make 10,000,000 models for trees, but it's very noticable in LotRO for some reason. Also, just the foliage and grass is the same way. In most places the foliage is literally painted on the ground. It's like someone took a paintbrush and just painted a bunch of plants and foliage right on the canvas. It does look pretty, but very flat.
It's the same way with buildings. From a long ways, you can see the detail, and the designs and all the different lines in the bricks and wood. But when you really look at it, it looks like drywall in your bedroom with lines and designs painted on. The buildings are like those 3D puzzles you build with your kids that shows a beautiful, well designed building, but is just a piece of cardboard with a design painted on the outside. I like to see bricks stacked on top of each other. Wood splintered and knotted nailed together. Marble etched and reflective. Attention to detail.
The armor is just horrible in my opinion. No matter whether the armor is leather, metal, or cloth, it all looks like paper wrapped around a character with a design painted on it. It's like those t-shirts with the tuxedo design on them. The cloaks don't really flow, they just flap and the ripples in the fabric never change. I like to see that my character is actually wearing heavy armor, or flowing robes, or links of chain and plates that fasten on top, and overlap each other. That's the attention to detail I REALLY like. LotRO is missing a very important part of really making the world have depth and character.
Anyways, that's my thoughts on LotRO graphics, now back to our regularly scheduled program...
"Granted thinking for yourself could be considered a timesink of shorter or longer duration depending on how smart..or how dumb you are."
Vanguard did have some very nice postcard screenies. The problem was the mobs and the avatars looked blah and the space between "money maker" screenshots were few and far between. You could get a great horizon shot at sunset or at night because the sky was pretty impressive and the mountains we're high texture but basically you seldom saw anything "art direction" wise that competed with the dwarf cities in WOW and LoTRs. In 22 levels I never faced one mob in VG that made me say "Cool" like I have in LOTRs, WOW, or EQII. Animations are cruddy and design is rushed in most cases. Most dungeons I saw we're generic also.
I've seen screens of some impressive dungeons in VG but I think Brad forgot that people want to see Awesome before lvl 30. Especially in a game with a longer leveling progression. In EQI I waited patiently because it was the only game in town. Now I have 10 choices and some of those give you a nice nubee experience devoid of blah animal mobs and generic landscapes.
Before someone calls me a troll, I honestly wanted VG to be great. I left EQII to follow VG for several years before release. It just floors me that Brad made the same mistakes as EQII and he had three more years of development and could see the general reaction to EQII at release. The irony is that EQII now is popular and growing and VG is treading water (Bad graphic water at that).
and as last to confirm what i said about bears in LotrO i especialy "liked" the effect on them when they "Roar" at you
In the end Vanguard still wins for me personaly as it has so manyy things i like in a mmorpg where LotrO for me personaly just felt like a game, sure fun no denying here, just not the mmorpg i would have liked it to be.
I still think the biggest mystery of all of this is where did that money really go? I bet someone could right a book on it!
SOE probably could really fix the title, but I think they are more interested in aquiring some talent from the former Sigil team and putting them on other projects than they are in making this game what it could have been...
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
I would have to agree that the game looks like crap at low settings. VG has to do a lot more to the visuals to allow it to run on low systems then a lot of other MMO's though. But that's just the lowest settings. Balanced and up look great to me.
I disagree about the character models. At the moment VG has very few idle animations. Spell effects, and combat animations that I've seen are some of the best around. http://www.emotionfx.com/site/clients.php Warhammer will be using emotionfx, as does DAoC. I hope they add more fluff animations as time goes on. All I have to say is. /vomit.
At some point VG's waters will be populated with things like sea monsters, and pirates; it's not just there for looks. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to run VG with reflected images in water. I have never seen this much water in an MMO before. However, I wouldn't mind seeing some of the small rivers, and such beefed up a bit. I don't want to see the heavy reflections LoTRO uses, the ones EQ2 uses, on the other hand, wouldn't be to bad. Very subtle. VG is more realistic then LoTRO as well; you wouldn't have that much reflection in the water everywhere you go. Having light reflecting off of water is more realistic then having every body of water reflecting back it's surroundings all the time. They do need to work on the shore lines. The water is very jagged. I wouldn't mind seeing some water collision to.
Wish Darkfall would release.
Wish Darkfall would release.
Fix character models tbh they're the ugliest shit i've ever seen.
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SWG - PrePub9 Jedi mastered all professions - June 26th 2003 > Nov 15th 2005
EVE Online - 24 million SP - May 6th 2003 > Early 2005
PlanetSide - BR20 CR5 - May 23rd 2003 > Sept 2003
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
You my friend are a liar.
Being savy with computers I can tell you many things
1. My PC is Intel core 2 duo at 1.8GHZ, 8800GTS 640mb and 2g ram and I play MAX graphics 40fps in cities 50fps everywhere else, your fictional computer would kill mine with that fictional "1gig nvidia graphics card" so how do you play at medium?
2. Water looks amazing on medium settings for me
3. Your graphics card has 1g of ram!? REALLY!?! TO bad Nvidia does'nt make 1g ram video cards, unless your paying 2400$ for a EDITING QUADRO VIDEO CARD. Which I know you don't have
4. Your just trying to make vanguard look bad
5. Your grammar sucks
NINJA EDIT FOR REAL VANGUARD MEDIUM GRAPHICS
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v333/paintballer9290/?action=view¤t=.my_first_widget.pbw
(its a slideshow)^^^
You get one apocalyptic point for your awesomeness sir, and i agree with someone else in here that you should NOT bash the graphics, they are the best on the market besides LOTRO.