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I think this game just looks really bad cause SOE can't be bothered.
Miffy
Member Posts: 244
All the new content I see it has really bad textures, a few trees dotted about and the place is mainly empty with no detail what so ever. They haven't made any effort with the lighting and they haven't hidden any east eggs. Frigging more often than not you'll get an empty room with an NPC or two standing in there.
It's like all that detail they put into the game at first is really nice and it looks great. However after launch or in their later content, they rushed it and it just ends up looking horrible. I look at that new dragon like race and it looks horrible compared to the Lizard race. It just has such a horrible texture for skin and like they paid no love to it.
See this alot in their games though.
Anything new Planetside got it had really really bad art to it like the flamethrower.
Anything new SWG gets is the same old cave or bunker with the same NPCs standing in there wearing random clothes. You see the same terminals over and over again. I think this game can look so good when you go to places like Jabbas Palace. However all this new stuff looks rushed and dated. TCG items look fantastic but that's the only thing, cause you have to pay thousands to get them.
Yet you look at Blizzard and their content just keeps getting better, more detailed and bigger.
Comments
WoW doesn't look any better (and in fact looks worse due to its anime cartoony nature). Its not about "not being bothered". Changing the graphics would cost major major cash and a large team of devs, not to mention that it took five years to develop it the first time, to change just the graphics would take at least half the time.
Its A FIVE YEAR OLD GAME. My god. Get over it.
It looks like crap because it was poorly put together to start with.
To get EQ2 looking great you need a monster of a machine due to the fact the graphics are primarily CPU based and not GPU, as very few ever get to see EQ2 in all its glory as it just doesnt run well devs stopped bothering.
the whole thing needs overhauled.
[quote]WoW doesn't look any better (and in fact looks worse due to its anime cartoony nature). Its not about "not being bothered". [/quote]
I'm not one to defend WoW (and this is not) but EQ2's graphics style is anime. WoW is not. Also, the graphics in EQ2 look like someone puked on a texture and added it to a bland model.
You are wrong. Thats all.
EQ2 can be very ugly graphically-wise however you can tweak a lot of the settings and once done correctly it's one of the best-looking games I've ever seen. There are a bunch of posts on this forum explaining the Display settings.
New Halas starting zone:
EQ2 graphically can be very eye pleasing, but the core of the engine was built on more powerful CPUs not Multicore and using the CPU to generate the graphics not a GPU.
So to get the eye color you need to mess with the UI and Display settings, as mentioned in the post above there are many guides to this.
Artorus Giltanus - Ranger EQ1 Retired
Arturien - 90 Deathknight WoW
Everquest II has some of the ugliest faces, hair styles, and armor I've seen in a game. It's like at some point, they just decided that character looks didn't matter and shoveled out what they had and expected people to like it. Maybe they spent too much having Heather Graham, Christopher Lee, and Dwight Schultz do voiceovers. Also, there's the whole second set of art they did for the Asian market, which is only marginally better.
EQII's invisible walls, zoning "bells", and boring zone design, combined with the difficulty of making a character that didn't look like a drooling idiot, made it very hard for me to stay interested. It just looks like they took too many shortcuts in their drive to beat WoW's release date and, in typical Sony fashion, they then focused on piling new content onto the game instead of fixing and refining what they released.
QFT. The actually changed thier entire gameplay about a year in to reflect some of World of Warcraft. (IE the Class System). You started off as a Fighter, Healer, Scout, Caster then did a quest to become your chosen class, that lasted about 6 months to a year.
Artorus Giltanus - Ranger EQ1 Retired
Arturien - 90 Deathknight WoW
I remember. It's another example of how they fixed something that actually worked decently and shouldn't have been a priority. At the same time they eliminated a bunch of the early quests that added so much flavor to the game and tried to "WoW-ify" the classes. I wish I could remember the name of the hungry female Troll merchant and the vain Ratonga who needed you to find her some "makeups". I loved those quests.
Despite the graphics, I loved playing my necromancer until they changed the pets to resemble the WoW warlock, a decision which eliminated the stitched ogre flesh golem that was gained by completing a quest and quickly became my favorite minion.
The original character designs really are awful - the barbie doll plastic look is just bleargh. The frogs are the only decent ones out of the set.
The Asian/SOGA models are a fair improvement, IMO. They don't look quite so lifeless, and have bright colors for hair, instead of the dull ones.
But even these designs pale in comparison to what you can do in almost any current MMO. SOE's decision to delay delay delay, then kill the skeletal revamp of the character models has proven a mistake. EQ2 is so far behind the curve on character design that it's not worth fixing anymore. They had a window of opportunity a few years ago to do so, and didn't take it.
So, in this case, and other things that SOE is (not) doing for EQ2, I agree with the OP - they can't be bothered, SOE has higher priorites to spend time and money on than EQ2.
Avatars are people too
Character design may not be to everyone's liking (I didn't like the Lotro character models for example) and that's okay, but we do get regular updates, additional content and expansions a LOT more often than many other games, and certainly more often if compared to that other gazillion-dollar game which didn't provide an expansion for over 18 months now.
I agree it had some to be desired. But comparing it to what was out at the time there was significant improvement. They just bet on the wrong method of CPU technology. Now to improve it, they will have to rewrite the code ... Hence EQ-Next
Artorus Giltanus - Ranger EQ1 Retired
Arturien - 90 Deathknight WoW
Anything about SOE on these boards will only ever be negative anyways as they all hate SOE because thats the way the boards here run.
Myself i like the graphics in EQ2 even tho the game is getting old.
Quantity is not greater than quality and the president of the soe even admitted that their rushed schedule of expansions hurt the quality of the product.
EQ2 always had a coding problem. Vanguard was made the same way, since the same devs made that game too.
Take note of both games :
They both have squared off shore lines ( they look like they were made with a straight edge ruler ). Buildings don't look quite 3D, rocks and trees sometimes look like they are floating above the ground. Trees and floral are spread apart as if it was too much work for them to add more. Nothing lush about both games.
People say that WoW looks like a cartoon, but I say bull. Have you ever done things like the swimming quest off the Wetlands shores ? Have you ever been in the Sunken Temple ? Have you ever quested in Swamp of Sorrows, Now that looks like a swamp !
I have to say that I've never seen an MMO that really looks better than WoW, however Warhammer Online seems to be made the same, and LOTRO probably has Blizzard beat.
People are screaming for better graphics, but who the hell do you people think you are ? Do you think it's easy to balance an MMO where people are all playing on the same screen, taking into account that not everyone has a super computer like you do ?.............It's because of you people that games fail like AOC. Funcom tried to give you what your screaming for ( good Graphics ) and look what we ended up with....A pile of garbage, that took two years to fix.
I'm looking for nice rich game play, and a game that's released as a full game. Well their are none, besides WoW, LOTRO, EVE, and EQ2.......And that's because they are trying to please you, with graphics.
EQ2 is still a good game, I don't play it because of the community, as they are all in clicks.
Everquest 2 dev team did not make vanguard.
It has its own style of graphics, sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt, the biggest detractor for me is that your characters always feel removed from the world - bits of snow flying about or leaving footprints, simple tricks like that seem to be missing (or missing on any graphics level my computer can cope with)
Absolutely. Besides the fact the engine runs like crap, even on good computers, it is the little things that are truly lacking. I recently did the trial again to see if the engine was running better with their new shader update. It was a brand new zone, Halas, and it was so very dissapointing. That freakin raft ride was what made me uninstall. The little things ya know. Ride that raft and tell me you think that is quality gaming.
The pic I posted was taken from near that raft, and I found it absolutely beautiful. The new shaders aren't yet fully functional and I still use the old shaders.
Display tweaking is necessary to fully enjoy the graphics, but of course it may not be appealing to everyone and that's rather personal taste.
I was one of the most active members here at mmorpg.com for years. I stopped posting months ago because of the personnel attacks and stupid post people make that are not based on any facts about the games. This is the post that I had to respond to. I love this crap about how bad EQ2 looks. Just because someone does not have the rig or is ignorant to how to adjust graphic does not mean they are bad. EQ2 still after 5 years has the best graphics, animations, and sound, currently out. Try doing your research before you open your mouth and complain about something you are ignorant about. I have made dozens of post about how to adjust your graphics try reading one. This is game play screen shot at 1920 x 1080 I get from 60 fps to over 200fps with this look. While it is close to maxed graphic it is not totally maxed.
Now you may not like the art style but to say these graphic are bad is plan ignorant. I have a pretty good rig but not top of the line. I play on an aquos 38 inch monitor by box is a windows 7 64 bit system with 16gigs ram (a bit over kill on the ram) i7quadcore with a ati 5800 series card. This box is a nice gaming box but not even close to top of the line and cost under 1000 bucks not including monitor. This rig play EQ2 extremely well and did not break the bank. So stop complaining about EQ2 graphic it is not SOE's problem you do not have a rig or take the time to educate yourself on EQ2 and it's graphic possibilities.
After 5 years it is still one of the best mmos out. As a note I also play LOTRO, WOW, and AOC. EQ2 stand strong graphically with all these games.
Here is another screenshot that shows how crappy EQ2 looks. How dare SOE present this crap as a game.
Perhaps your aggressive manner of posting, calling people stupid and telling them to shut up sort of invites replies that you then view as personal attacks. I'm just saying if you act so agressively you might find you get the same type of response in return.
That being said, I think the overall message of this thread is accurate. I'm not sure coming to mmorpg.com and reading a guide by eccoton should be a requirement to make a game look nice. Nor is saying that an i7 based computer not running something close to top of the line, or worth spending 1,000 just to fix an aging games problems. There are so many things that soe should have done already to make the game a better experience.
The default graphics of the game leave a very lot to be desired and I am being mild about this. I'm not sure why soe hasn't addressed that, because the game could and should offer a much better starting experience and not rely on players surfing the web just to find out how to make the game look decent.
It does suggest that soe just can't be bothered. Much like the game engine being an absolute pig and not getting updated. Just like they promised hair style update, the skeletal recamp, etc. All things soe planned to do and never really got around to. Also the game does feel like it has been rushed and corners cut.
EQ2 takes some mighty fine screen shots, but something about it just doesn't translate that same feeling in the game. It should, but it doesn't. On a technical level the graphics are pretty advanced even for a game this old, but when it comes to execution is where things falls short. That line seems to be getting blurred in this discussion, but they do share similar grounds so easy to see that happening.
I haven't posted in a long time, but I had to chime in here cause i am a bit sick of the negativity to what is actually one of the best if not the best MMO's of this generation. The original being arguably the best of all time.
There i said it.
Graphics have nothing to do with a good game, and the claims that eq2's graphics are horrible is just silly.
Believe me, i have played them all too. WOW, LOTRO, Warhammer, AION, Lineage 2, Guild wars, Vanguard, Champions online, AOC, been there done that, and the list goes on. As of now all my subscriptions are cancelled and I am back in Everquest 2.
No MMO of this generation can claim the amount of content and general polish this game has. The group system is almost perfect and you will never run out of content. WOW comes close but it's far to childish and easy-mode for my tastes and the community is terrible, classes are boring, and the world is deriative. Anyone who says the EQ2 community is worse than any of the above games need's their heads read, maybe it's cause they are all kids that cant handle the fact mainly adults play it.
May of the comments on this game in these forums are flat out ridiculous, here are some facts.
The engine was designed with future technology in mind, but.....
The game came out 5 years ago, and was built in this manner because intel advised SOE that CPU speed were just going to keep getting faster. This of course did not occur. At the time of release EQ2 on the right hardware was the best looking game on the market. Unfortunately very few had a machine which could show it's power.
The SOE team actually are valiantly fixing the engine, so more processes are pushed to the video card and recently it was updated to support Shader 3, and now it runs and looks a lot better. It really makes wow look like crap now.
Yes the character design is a bit crap, the flora is horrible but it still has some of the best graphics in particular creature models of any game bar Aion, and AOC but with much better gameplay. If you still think it looks bad you need to update your PC and spend some quality time in the graphics performance menu because if tweaked right it can look very nice.
All this aside, who cares about graphics anyway, you wont find a mmo on the market thats better value for money, and with staying power this game has The UI is the best the genre has to offer it has many features which have pushed the genre forward and subsequently badly stolen by other games. It's PVE content is second to none, and as for pvp really if you want to play pvp seriously play a proper competitive genre like tekken, streetfighter or an FPS like I do....
/soapbox.
flame on people. Hate this game all you like it's better than what you play.....
I'm really sorry man, but I just don't see what your seeing. I don't think it's art style...the game just looks terrible to me. I'm not saying your wrong, just saying I'm not seeing what your seeing in the slightest. I look at games like wow, aoc, aion, etc. and I see fluid graphics and multiple tone skin, living breathing worlds etc etc etc. I played EQ1 for like 8 years, gameplay is more important to me than graphics...to a certain degree. I don't feel immersed in EQ2 at all...
I am a HUGE fan of Everquest...the world, the lore, everything...but when I tried EQ2 I just felt so dissapointed. I think thats why there is so much hate. So many of us loved EQ1 so much and still have huge amounts of nostalgia towards it, then to jump into EQ2 just breeds disappointment.
I hope, I just hope that if EQnext is real which I assume it is...that they take their time and make it as innovative and immersive as EQ1 was in it's time.
SOE has said many time there will not e another EQ game. The post are there on the eq2 forums, and also on flames by well known soe employees. We are not goign to get eq next or eq3. Sony even said at E3 that there not working on EQ3 and article posted here on mmorpg.
Also letting go several of the instance design team like they did the other day tells me one thing, eq2 is being paced on the back burner. I have to call it like it is and I hate it. EQ2 is heading the same way as vangaurd, and when you start pulling off well know folks like traveling and others that should give you a heads up.
I don't know what soe is working on but its not EQ, I know a lot of folks ahve been asking for an eq3 for a while.
I find if funny folks complaining about the horible screen shots when we all know its your vid card, I know for a fact that if you set it on low quality graphics to run the game is going to looks like a pos, man look at how eq looks lol and folks complain about how bad eq looks. Besides I would rather have the gameplay that great graphics, look at some of the games with great graphics and horible game play.
I guess each to his own.