Why western MMORPG developer obsess with 3D ?

iixviiiix

As the tittle said . Why ?

I enjoy a lots western 2D indle games , but when it come to western 2D MMORPG ... UO (1997)

I can't remember other good 2D western MMORPG ,

Sovrath

iixviiiix said:

As the tittle said . Why ?

I enjoy a lots western 2D indle games , but when it come to western 2D MMORPG ... UO (1997)

I can't remember other good 2D western MMORPG ,

For me, I'm looking for (and it's rare) a virtual world. 3d helps bring that to life.

I have no problems playing 2d games. Even pixelated 2d games. but for a virtual world I want an immersive experience and 2d is not going to do it.

Wellspring

John Smedley was making one called Hero's Song before Amazon gobbled him up.

Quizzical

Because the modern development tools are mostly built for 3D games.  It's not meaningfully harder to make a game 3D than 2D these days, so you do whichever one you'd prefer, rather than thinking of 2D as a way to cut costs.

Sovrath

I should add that there is a 2d mmorpg in development. They recently had an article about it. It's very stylized and the art design is amazing. 

ah found it. I'd play this though it wouldn't really give me the "world" feeling.

Quizzical

remsleep said:

People dont buy 3080s to play 2D games 

At the moment, people don't buy RTX 3080s at all.  But once they're available, people who buy them will use them to can post on forums like this one.

More seriously, you buy an expensive video card if some of the games you want to play require it, not necessarily all of them.  Refusing to play games that you would have liked because the programmers were too efficient and enabled the game to run on lower end hardware would be stupid.

Iselin

Probably for the same reason they're done in color instead of green on black like the old days

It's just a better visual experience than the 2D it replaced.

Asm0deus

Sovrath said:

I should add that there is a 2d mmorpg in development. They recently had an article about it. It's very stylized and the art design is amazing. 

ah found it. I'd play this though it wouldn't really give me the "world" feeling.

That looks quite interesting especially the art direction!

iixviiiix

Sovrath said:

I should add that there is a 2d mmorpg in development. They recently had an article about it. It's very stylized and the art design is amazing. 

ah found it. I'd play this though it wouldn't really give me the "world" feeling.

the texts are Korean

iixviiiix

Wellspring said:

John Smedley was making one called Hero's Song before Amazon gobbled him up.

I remember hero's song was RPG , So it was MMORPG ?

Bloodaxes

Sovrath said:

I should add that there is a 2d mmorpg in development. They recently had an article about it. It's very stylized and the art design is amazing. 

ah found it. I'd play this though it wouldn't really give me the "world" feeling.

Wish they had fully 3d character animations tough. That will be quite a huge "negative" for me.

Wellspring

iixviiiix said:

Wellspring said:

John Smedley was making one called Hero's Song before Amazon gobbled him up.

I remember hero's song was RPG , So it was MMORPG ?

I'm not sure TBH. I remember it being multiplayer, but maybe it wasn't an MMO.

But John Smedley is an example of a western MMORPG developer who was making a 2D game (at least for a short time).

Maybe something can be found in the failed development of that game that could give some insight as to why there are not more attempts.

Wizardry

It's called advancing your skillset.
Game develoeprs are studios full of talented people,artists,map designs,sound and music design,coding,networking etc etc.

By asking all those skilled people to design a 2D game your asking them to dumb down their skills.Early years of game design we had to endure 2D gaming but still was better than playing a board game "sort of",better visually.

Over the years we have attained tons of software,tools and like i said skilled people to deliver highly visual games.Then i have to ask WHY would you want something that looks worse,do you go out to buy the worst looking car,the worst looking pair of shoes,of course  not nobody does.

I am not going to tell people how to live their lives but I would HOPE people want to use their skills to the highest and if possible to learn even more over time and apply those skills.Geesh that is why people ...kids go to skill,to LEARN,better apply themselves,they are not going to teach kids to try and go backwards and not fully apply themselves.

if asking WHY you tend to see a trend or anything in gaming for that matter,there is only ONE thought process and that one thought is $$$,what game can we afford to make,how long can we afford to spend making it.Point is you are not seeing anything more logical than just dollar signs.

Bloodaxes

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

I find those graphics repulsive. I'd definitely rather play UO again.

Honestly, the art style is fine for me. I enjoyed a lot Darkest Dungeon when I played it, which this mmorpg is looking like. I also enjoy Tree of Savior's art style. 

Sovrath

Wizardry said:

It's called advancing your skillset.
Game develoeprs are studios full of talented people,artists,map designs,sound and music design,coding,networking etc etc.

By asking all those skilled people to design a 2D game your asking them to dumb down their skills.Early years of game design we had to endure 2D gaming but still was better than playing a board game "sort of",better visually.

Over the years we have attained tons of software,tools and like i said skilled people to deliver highly visual games.Then i have to ask WHY would you want something that looks worse,do you go out to buy the worst looking car,the worst looking pair of shoes,of course  not nobody does.

I am not going to tell people how to live their lives but I would HOPE people want to use their skills to the highest and if possible to learn even more over time and apply those skills.Geesh that is why people ...kids go to skill,to LEARN,better apply themselves,they are not going to teach kids to try and go backwards and not fully apply themselves.

if asking WHY you tend to see a trend or anything in gaming for that matter,there is only ONE thought process and that one thought is $$$,what game can we afford to make,how long can we afford to spend making it.Point is you are not seeing anything more logical than just dollar signs.

That's not really true.

First of all, "yes" artists do want to be the best at what they do but that can take many different avenues. 

Not everyone aspires to be a 3d artist or prefers it just as not every artist wants to be a sculptor over a being painter. Which is essentially what you just made up. Believe it or not we still have painters. and artists that just use colored pencil.

Some artists want to be the best weavers. Yup, people still consider that a viable and worthy art form.

I dated a graphic artist and though it was her job to realize a variety of logos and designs for companies she loved "illustration" which in her case was a 2d artform.

So "yes" artists want to be the best at their art but "no" not all artists want to be 3d artists.

Also, I strongly suspect the artists who are working on mad world or those who made darkest dungeon (and any number of 2d games) didn't lament that they couldn't make 3d art. They instead had discussions with the team and came up with the art design. 

Otherwise the head of the company would have said "oh, we can't have you working for us, we need a 3D artist!"

Sovrath

iixviiiix said:

Sovrath said:

I should add that there is a 2d mmorpg in development. They recently had an article about it. It's very stylized and the art design is amazing. 

ah found it. I'd play this though it wouldn't really give me the "world" feeling.

the texts are Korean

It's a Korean game. Hopefull it actually launches. I seem to remember them having a closed beta.

Nanfoodle

This is a great gem of a 2D game =-)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/251230/Livelock/

cameltosis

You can do more with 3D than you can with 2D - it's a whole other dimension!

3D is more realistic, and thus more immersive

Graphics sell games, so a 2D game is always going to sell like shit compared to a 3D game

3D is how we see real life, so 3D games allow gamers to get involved and understand it quicker, resulting in a better game experience.

To flip the question around: why would you want a 2D MMORPG instead of a 3D one? Is it purely because the dev costs would be lower and so you'd hopefully get more of them? Or is there a genuine reason?

Sovrath

I'll just leave this here ...

iixviiiix

cameltosis said:

To flip the question around: why would you want a 2D MMORPG instead of a 3D one? Is it purely because the dev costs would be lower and so you'd hopefully get more of them? Or is there a genuine reason?

Some people like me care more about style than unrealistic realistic .

I has yet to see a realistic 3D , the more detail they got , the more bad they become .

Also , performance. In most time 3D have more glitches than 2D .

Also 2D dev cost would be lower  ? I think you get it wrong here . Sometime 2D is more expensive than 3D . Specially when the among of frames is high .

You know why Disney drop 2D animation ? Cause it cost more than 3D .

If it was 15 years ago , you may right . But ever since 3D graphic at the perk at 2012 , it not the case anymore .

Ops . It may be the answer . 3D is cheaper compare to big 2D project like MMORPG .

Quizzical

Iselin said:

Probably for the same reason they're done in color instead of green on black like the old days

It's just a better visual experience than the 2D it replaced.

I don't think there's any real doubt that full color looks better than monochrome.  With 2D versus 3D, it's not so clear cut.  Badly done 3D can readily look worse than a lot of 2D games.

Iselin

Quizzical said:

Iselin said:

Probably for the same reason they're done in color instead of green on black like the old days

It's just a better visual experience than the 2D it replaced.

I don't think there's any real doubt that full color looks better than monochrome.  With 2D versus 3D, it's not so clear cut.  Badly done 3D can readily look worse than a lot of 2D games.

Well as a long time photography hobbyist I can say the same thing about bad color being worse than monochrome.

Regardless, adding the third dimension to gaming landscape is undeniably a worthy advancement just like color photography was when it became common.

I've been playing games on computers since the early '80s so I'm very familiar with what it was like to play without true 3D for 20 years and the 20 years since that became common.

I know that all things old are trendy these days but I see retro stuff for the niche curiosities they are. Actually preferring the older tech just seems to me like borderline neo-luddism.

BruceYee

Bloodaxes said:

Jean-Luc_Picard said:

I find those graphics repulsive. I'd definitely rather play UO again.

Honestly, the art style is fine for me. I enjoyed a lot Darkest Dungeon when I played it, which this mmorpg is looking like. I also enjoy Tree of Savior's art style. 

Tree of Savior destroys every PC I try to play it on otherwise I'd still be playing it.

If a 2D WESTERN MMO with Darkest Dungeon art style + deep progression system ever came out I would never stop playing it.

darkwolfe875

2D games is what we all had when nothing else was available. 2D is literally a relic of the past.

I love full 3D MMORPGs in part because they are immersive. I can't have that experience looking at flat sprites in a flat world, with only isometric views to suggest dimension. If a 2D game had fantastic art I might be interested, but all too often they are cartoony as well which puts me further off.

Amathe

I find 2d disorienting. 

Cryomatrix

If double D is amazing, then triple D must be to die for, i mean 2D and 3D.