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Copy paste architecture?
DEAD.line
Member Posts: 424
Since i'm not playing the game, i'm asking you guys what you're seeing the in-game and the later level zones.
Ever since i've played beta and watched more and more videos to see cool stuff, i've been getting this vibe that most buldings and general constructions look very identical. At first, i actually had this opinion of the world and creatures, but that's turned around more, specially after beta.
But the more i see, the more the architecture looks the same across every zone, including Cyrodiil. This includes villages, houses, temples, Keeps, all the way to the way starways and pillars look
What i mean by copy-paste i mean how they feel very similar in style, which includes bland colour, usually lots of brown and grey, alot of "brick format" where you can see every stone and so forth.
For example, since i couldn't go to the capital cities in beta, i looked for videos and Wayrest and Mournhold look very alike, the main difference being Mournholds building "spikes".
On the other hand, i loved Coldharbour's design.
Comments
The outdoors zones have radically different looks, as do the different racial urban areas (e.g. bosmer is radically different from altmer which is different from nord, etc.) Each race has a distinctive style and the buildings are in that style (but not xeroxed.) There are a few types of interior dungeons (e.g. ancient elven or dwarven ruins) that are based around a similar floor plan. This may be what you're seeing in the videos.
The wilderness areas are vast and individually rendered. The visual style i's one of the best features of the game.
Its actually the exact opposite of what the last poster said.
I have no idea what he means by the wilderness being individually rendered..all assets in any game will be individually rendered in real time. Makes it sound like he has no idea what hes talking about.
Most of the assets in the game, buildings, trees, rocks... are nearly all the same, usually coming from some set of 3-4 variations. They make heavy use of tiled textures over everything. Visually the game feels more like something from a generation or two back. Most lootable objects in the game are the same thing throughout the entire world, its usually a set of 3 different types with their respective loot tables. Interiors are extremely copy and pasted throughout the game, it seems nearly every dungeon is either the same cave, deadric dungeon or dwarven ruin of some sort.
Visually the game is not diverse nor stunning, especially when you compare it to the games coming out of Korea (oddly enough, see black desert for example). Character rigs for animation are poor, character animation due to the rigs is poor.
Zones are not actually that varied, theres a combination of like 5-6 zone types throughout the game, and they rarely vary inside those zones. Its usually a monotonous style type once you enter it.
Most of the game has very little to offer in unique assets and design, they tried to hide it but its apparent after a bit of play. This is Zenimax's first attempt at a mmorpg and you can tell they make a lot of mistakes, they seem to put a minimal amount of effort into a 2014 mmorpg.
The only credit they deserve is in the form of having mobs not randomly walking on every inch of free space for no apparent reason, and for flushing their world full of book shelves for those who just want to read stuff.
If you don't find the game visually striking I feel sorry for you. It's a pretty common reaction to the game, and the people who don't are usually just being either hyper-picky or fixating on some quirk. It's like people complaining about rock textures in Skyrim or Oblivion without being able to appreciate how striking those games could be.
What I meant, of course, was that the different overland zones are not in any way copies of one another. Each has a different visual style and theme.
Graphically and artistic this game blows any korean MMO intoo the dust...
i know this is a matter of personal preference... But i still am convinced this is the best looking, most engaging and most challenging MMO since long...
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
For whatever reason, if I ask myself "what do you think is the best looking mmo" I always immediately think Tera. Maybe I just like a world where the girls are hot chicks and the guys are hot chicks. Not going to think too deeply on this...
I know people hate hearing it, but it's the reality, few games are any different in this regard. Anyone that's used the creation kit on SKyrim, Morrowind or Oblivion (same goes for the geck and fallout 3/NV) can tell you, assets are few and far between in terms of diversity. Most MMO's are the same, I don't play many Korean or Japanese games so I won't comment on those.
YEt in terms of US games, this is par for the course. At least in this case there are varying terrains, just about all types are covered in some regard, volcanic, forests, deserts, frozen tundra, etc...
SO in terms of standards I can't really selectively point fingers at Zeninax/Eso... As my understanding on the subject is more of the same is easier to draw/load/render... Which is the reason behind the practice.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
That's the thing, he's actually a "game artist" so he pays attention to the details that we mere mortals don't even care/don't know.
But thinking about ESO and other ES games there wasn't really a big variety of objects, neither it was some law-of-physics-breaking architecture. But they still managed to make beautiful games, ESO included
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Guys, i'm not talking about the world design, i'm talking about building and structure design.
Most villages or town or ruins i see, being it in beta or from videos, all seem to have been designed by copying the general style and only using small alterations. Like i meantioned with Wayrest and Mournhold. Besides the the spiky nature of building in Mournhold, they both felt very similar in the videos i've seen.
But again, this may be just me and i need to find more locations. I just have yet to see many buildings that just pop right at you and look completly different. Almost every mmorpg i can think of as it. I get that's it's suppose to be the TES universe, but maybe abit more variety wouldn't hurt.
Bachus,
I do love ESO but have you seen that Black Desert mmo? I mean... if its looks and eye candy you're after - ho-ly shit! That thing puts anything I've ever seen to shame...
Black Desert does look visually stunning
I am not the biggest fan of Korean mmorpgs, as their play styles and my own generally dont match...they also used to be the least developed of the bunch... but they have managed to change that around drastically... where as western mmorpgs have not even tried to keep up feature and visual limit wise.
Thats the fundamental difference here... Korean mmorpgs are trying to push the technology and visuals as far as possible, western mmorpgs, like ESO, are trying to get away with as little as possible. This is 2014, we have the tools and tech to get away with a lot more than whats being done in ESO.
Case in point, look at the armor on your characters. Instead of modeling the armor, they opted to have most of it literally just exist as a texture applied to the naked body (mesh) of the player.
I can understand the western publisher wanting to not push it, because that means more money, more risk, but thats not really an excuse I think is acceptable. Doing the bare minimum for max profit only ends up holding back the genre and well, it doesnt keep players interested for very long either. We have already been oversaturated with these types of games, expectations are much higher and aiming lower wont keep the player base for long.
The reason why ESO looks better to most people is because they can run it on a higher setting than most games. Run ANY decent MMO on ultra settings and its going to look as good or better than ESO does. Lotro and Rift are way better, and Age of Conan on max settings blows ESO away, and its ancient.
Yeah I know I know everyone has the best graphics card and the best processor made. So they run all those games as high as they can.... Save it.
As for the design of the stuff, I saw a bit and they have three styles for each faction but within the faction there is a lot of repeating. Rotating the same rock or wall or door in different ways trying to make it look different. But there is a lot of the same stuff getting used over and over again.
Not as bad or as obvious as some games but you notice the same floor plans and wall designs after awhile.
I don't disagree exactly, however, I think in the case of ESO and others it's a matter of trying to offer a balance of character customization (muscle/size/weight) as well as performance in mass PVP. Tech is moving forward, that's true, but there's still trade offs to consider. Korean games aren't exactly known for their body/face/hair etc.options.. Black desert may be different, I'm sure there are some trade offs there to, it's just hard to say when we have no product to really look at and examine thoroughly.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
You don't need every game to look like crysis 3 you know. Hell, GW2 requires a processor way faster than this game and ESO has combat of a larger scale than GW2. You don't need to look into every detail, the game looks good and runs great everywhere, that's enough.
This post is entirely correct. There are a ton of reused designs/architecture in this game. Only the lighting occasionally spices up the dullness of the surroundings.
GW2 has a much more fluid and robust game engine, as well as models just about everything attached to your character, and in terms of visuals actually tried to push the envelope when it released a year and a half ago as it was visually top-notch and everything was modeled, not plastered to your body with a cheap mesh. ESO is effectively running on a rubberband-amalgamation of several different engines and doesn't seem to do any one particular thing well but runs decently enough (still has terrible memory handling issues).
I'll take heavier CPU load and lower graphical settings over unresponsiveness of the base game.
Remember when culling plagued WvW? Or how long was it impossible to for you to play hide and seek in LA also due to culling? Remember those endless fights in stone mist? Those huge huge fights that ended because the server turned on the slow-mo because it couldn't handle the huge number of players and you died slowly to the lag? Or how theres still a limit to AoE to 5 players because if they removed the cap the servers would explode? Or how theres such a great disparity of processing power required between PvE and WvW? All that and ESO has a larger scale combat than GW2.
My point is, ESO was built around bigger scale combat, GW2 has so much detail the servers simply can't handle this type of large scale combat. So I will take body paint armor and devs that "cut corners" over a game that overestimated it's hardware capabitlities and burns my processor. If they don't fix unresposive combat I will just leave when my patience runs out, simple as that, but I won't go back to GW2, my patience with waiting for WvW fix and better optimization has run out.
+1
Make that +2.
This Rabenwolf dude obviously knows what he is talking about.