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Preferred Style of Graphics in an MMO?
JB47394
Member Posts: 409
If you're playing an MMO, what kind of graphics do you prefer to see? Vivid, subdued, fanciful, realistic, organic, mechanical, lots of glowies, lots of blood, surrealistic, what?
I favor the brightness and fanciful appearance of World of Warcraft's alliance starting area or Lord of the Rings Online's Shire. I've been seeing some screenshots of Vanguard and EverQuest 2, and the games appear to use a rather dark and bland palette. An attempt at realism, I guess, and it looks just awful to me. Warhammer Online went the same general route: dark.
Another contrast that I'll mention (no pun intended) is FarCry 2 versus Crysis. FarCry 2 had more cartoony graphics that reminded me I was playing a computer game. With Crysis, things got rather too realistic for my tastes. I played the demo and that was enough to discourage me.
All that said, I've mentioned before that some of the wilderness scenes that the newest Crytek engine (and others, I'm sure) can generate are just phenomenal. But I sure don't want to hack and slash realistic opponents. I think Diablo III is retaining the cartoony style while making the display pretty crisp.
Comments
My preferd style of graphics are "Enjoyable".
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"Anyone posting on this forum is not an average user, and there for any opinions about the game are going to be overly critical compared to an average users opinions." - Me
"No, your wrong.." - Random user #123
"Hello person posting on a site specifically for MMO's in a thread on a sub forum specifically for a particular game talking about meta features and making comparisons to other titles in the genre, and their meta features.
How are you?" -Me
I like graphics that memic drawn or painted art, they don't have to be cel shaded and I don't mean cartoony,
Street Fighter 4 is a good example, as is Prince of Persia
I also prefer a deep full colored pallet, making things weakly colored or washed out is kind of bleh. I like to know that there was some art direction behind it.
I am not big into bump mapping either, I prefer a well made skin to a bump mapped surface, but a little is ok. Bloom is ok in moderation, games can get carried away with it though.
Ambient light can to wonders to set the moods in scenes and I think it is often overlooked in games. Bioshock did great in this aspect.
So basically drawn aesthetic, deep strong colors and strong use of light and shadow.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
My yard-stick is simple; it must play flawlessly on a mid-range system.
I only upgrade about every 2-3 years so I'm often in a position where my rig lags behind the "cutting edge" (lit. unnecessarily complex) games. I can't really say that I'm particulaly tolerant of a game that demands I upgrade hardware just so that the graphic artist can fully realise his vision of the prismatic refraction of sunlight through raindrops.
As we all know, graphics are secondary to gameplay .. they just have to be in-keeping with the setting of the game. I wouldn't want to see photo-realistic graphics in Hello Kitty Online, or cutesy japanime style visuals in EVE.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift
I prefer consistently high frame rates over low frame rates or erratic and sometimes bad frame rates. That is by far the most important feature of a game's graphics. If I have to turn some graphical settings down to get flawless performance, that's fine. If turning graphical settings down still leaves bad frame rates, that constitutes terrible graphics, no matter how nice the game looks in the screenshots.
One far less important criterion is that I prefer reasonably bright colors, comparable to what I might see outside (in real life) on a sunny day. I don't mean the insanely bright, so sugary they'll give you diabetes colors of, say, Hello Kitty Online. But trying to make night look like night with colors so dark that it's hard to see just looks terrible.
Another far less important criterion is that the weapons and armors that characters use (if applicable) should look like they could plausibly pass for weapons and armors. That doesn't need to be a medieval suit of armor; going to war far more lightly armored than that can make sense for reasons of mobility. But at least cover up your torso, put some pants on, and especially put a helmet on. There are reasons why some games make head shots especially damaging, and there's no excuse for going to war with your entire head completely uncovered. Conversely, don't make armor so spiky and awkward as to look dangerous to the wearer. Some of the shoulder pads in WoW are particularly egregious in this regard, making it look like the wearer will rip his own head off if he twitches slightly wrongly. If you want to make NPCs or players in towns where they're not going to have to fight dressed more lightly than that, fine, but when you're going to go to war, dress for war.
I prefer as realistic as possible but i draw the line at GTA IV and CoD5 if the game is brutal. Aside from that i do enjoy styles that suit the setting/genre so i am open to most styles.
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Surprisingly, graphics come in 4th in importance for what a player looks for.
Looking at the MMORPG Finder stats (> 13,000 searches) of what is listed as most important in a game, Graphics 4th. Gameplay is 1st and 2nd.
STATS
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
It must animate well. As long as the style is consistent and makes sense, I like it, realistic or stylized. WOW looked 50X better then EQ2, because every NPC and avatar looked like stoned dolls and moved like stiff robots, while everything is WOW moved naturally and smoothly. Conan although its pushing loads of polys and high rez textures just didn't look as good in motion. All that realism betrays you when a sword is floating above your back, you skate along the ground or run with a stick shoved up your a$$.
Games are played in motion so what looks good in a screen shot doesn't actually look all that great moving.
Mine is "appropriate to the genre". Seriously, I don't care about eye-candy, I care about content, gameplay and community. I'd play a text-only game if it had everything else I wanted.
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Looking at the graphics of Diablo 3 is pretty close to the type i prefer as well. I know everybody is complaining it isn't dark and goth enough but i like it.
Realism means i have to buy new hardware to keep up.
overall visual: i prefer bright and shine like lord of the rings online. spellborn are too dark for my visual taste. wow is too dark and colorful for my visual taste. age of conan is kindda dark as well. overall visual of aion is alot better than overall visual of age of conan in my opinion although aion is just dx9 and age of conan is more advance graphic technically.
character art style: i prefer eastern style. western style art in a mmo is kindda ugly ei, vanguard, eq2
diablo 3 visual is defnitely rock! it may be dark but it have that brilliant smooth color.
I still play Nethack from time to time and that game uses ascii as graphics.
whatever fits the theme
futuristic,realistic,gloomy and dark , cheerful...any of them is ok,as long as they dont break the atmosphere for the game (like cheerful for a Vampire:TM MMO or gloomy in a Hello Kitty-like game)
OK your intended fishing line hooked a Eve fan gratz.
I've been playing Eve for a very long time and this is the first time i;ve ever heard anyone refer to Eves graphics as "Cutesy".
as for the OP, as long as the graphics don't hinder gameplay preformance I dont care what sytle it is.
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
OK your intended fishing line hooked a Eve fan gratz.
I've been playing Eve for a very long time and this is the first time i;ve ever heard anyone refer to Eves graphics as "Cutesy".
i think you missed the point of his remark
OK your intended fishing line hooked a Eve fan gratz.
I've been playing Eve for a very long time and this is the first time i;ve ever heard anyone refer to Eves graphics as "Cutesy".
i think you missed the point of his remark
LOL!!!! i just reread that. yes I did and im sorry lol!
Ill keep it up there to show what kinbd of an ass you could make of yourself when you dont read a post fully.
Sorry Ilvaldyr
Playing: EvE, Ryzom
I like DAoC, Vanguard, and EQ2. Don't like WoW, way to cartoony for me.
I like the look of The Old Republic. Stylized, but not cartoony.
i'm fine with any kind of graphics ... just as long as it creates a living, breathing atmosphere ... but if i had to pick, im still waiting for a "Okami" styled graphics for an MMO (though upcoming LOVE MMO seems to be working in that sort of direction? meh)
OK your intended fishing line hooked a Eve fan gratz.
I've been playing Eve for a very long time and this is the first time i;ve ever heard anyone refer to Eves graphics as "Cutesy".
as for the OP, as long as the graphics don't hinder gameplay preformance I dont care what sytle it is.
You got the wrong end of the stick.
I wasn't saying that EVE's graphics are cutesy, or that Hello Kitty's are photorealistic. Neither is clearly true.
I was saying the opposite; and that I wouldn't want to see those games with cutesy/photorealistic graphics because it would not be in keeping with the spirit of the game.
LOL!!!! i just reread that. yes I did and im sorry lol!
No worries. :P
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift