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I'll take a content rich, pretty 2D game over 3D any day!
LadyEuphei
Member UncommonPosts: 223
I have been thinking lately, I would play a pretty 2D game with alot of feature more than a 3D game with none. Now maybe this is because I am a girl, but I like my characters to look pretty. One of my problems with Wizardry is it is so brown. Now games like Fiesta have tons of colors and really draw my eye, but they are 2D. So, I guess for the sake of this post, pretty = colorful.
Now to the point, I would rather play a pretty 2D game with tons of features then what we are usually given as 3D games. I would even choose one over a pretty 3D game. What I am saying is that alot of the games that get released today are 3D and lack alot of the "world building" qualities I want. I want to make and design a house, in the actual world, make communities with my friends in the game world (not an instance), farm, fish, whatever in the real world.
I believe that when we went to 3D games alot of the assests of the game started going to 3D modeling and textures. I believe this because everytime you see a indie 3D game, the color palette consists of grey, red, and an ample amount of brown. So they must be cutting corners on making good textures and models cause they cost to much.
MMO's have come a long way in looking good, but I think we can all agree that we have hit a wall with features. A common excuse for this is, we do not have the technology available to support it. Well why dont we down scale all our pixel and polygons and just flatten them? Lets go back to 2D and make a really great game. No one will not be able to play it and if you make the world really interactive than why not?
Thanks for reading this far, sorry for the rant 
*If you skipped everything else*
I personally would play a really feature rich, totally alive, good looking 2D game over what we have been getting as 3D games. The point of this post is why dont we see really feature rich 2D mmos that can do everything since they dont have to waste time on graphics as much? Why do we need 3D? Would you also play a 2D game with everything over the 3D games we get with nothing?
Comments
2D?...no thanks. Even fixed camera 3D games (like Diablo) piss me off. I'll suffer the banality of any WoW clone before i go back to 2D games.
Nope I 100% agree. The first problem with a 3D game is that devs are worried people will get lost in it. Because of this fear they make mountains and ridges that force you to follow a set path.
I refer to the above as a guided tour. Now the only possible way of putting content on a guided tour is to make it a theme park.
I've honestly had more fun on games like Helbreath (Don't try it, it's extinct now, like 65 active players who all hate eachother and try to get eachother killed IRL lol), Luminary, Oldschool runescape. They were great.
3D MMO game companies need to take a step back and realize there's a whole world of gamers that don't need their hand held and don't mind getting mowed down by a level 40 mob because they found the mobs location 39 levels early
Lady-Euphei - Check out www.antilia-game.com it is the foundation of what a 3d content rich game could be, but it's in alpha. The dev lets people play the alpha tho.
so you actually think colors cost money?
it's just some digits, not alot of money to spend here.
(it's not like they need to get outside and find the incredients needed for royal red)
and neither do alot of colors equal beauty ^^
i totaly agree on the social aspect tho, no idea what's so hard at giving us housing and stuff, daoc did it in 2000 ^^ 12 years ago. the tec was there and actually still is.
in wow's case the excuse is "it's the world of WARcraft, you dont build houses in war" (not that i've seen any real war going on there lately, unless it was the boss-first-kill-race)
and since wow has no housing, the rest is thinking "uh we don't need housing or social stuff to get 9 million subs. lets not do it either..."
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
That makes another good point. They take away the learning curve, which is half of the fun really. I like joining a game and not knowing anything and having to figure it out slowly. With modern games, these learning curves are very short, which makes the game more or less disposable because you feel like you know everything after a few days.
I do not acctually think colors cost money. It was more of a joke at the colors that 3D games get now adays which consists of grey and brown. Just a suggestion we could use more color and less bloom.
I fully agree with OP. Would love a UO-like game with nice artistic visuals and modern effects (that aren't anime or cartoonish), if only it lets some indy company with great ideas to utilize their money for implementing all their ideas the right way, instead of pumping all their money in good and shiny models and graphics.
Edit: Sorry, just wanted to clear something out. I'm all in for a 2d game with simple graphics and great and unique world mechanics, as long as it lets indy developers to cut costs and release the game the way the want it and without bugs. Yet, I personally HATE bright colored games and shiny pink colors in my fantasy worlds.
"Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted.
Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world."
Hans Margolius
kk, i can agree on that one. i miss being able to actually CHOSE the color of my armor and clothings.
(and again, it was done before, so it SHOULD be possible, or those older devs have just been better hehe)
"I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!"
Now I will admit that as a guy, when I log into a blossoming beautiful world with fantasy music I just want to puke.
That was actually my personal reason for quitting TERA.
Half of what keeps players on a game is the mystery and allure of finding new things and finding a better way to do something they struggled through. The quicker a game shows you everything it has to offer, the quicker you move on.
Probably a good reason why EVE is such a good game and still around, takes for ever to get through that learning curve and once you do you realize it will take you forever to learn all the little things. I can not believe you do not like rainbow unicorn puke on your games... guess its a girl thing.
So what you really want is a world that looks kind of like this?
I haven't built the houses yet, but the preferred wallpaper for that race is going to be variations on my avatar.
The color palette that you use is a design choice, and doesn't make games cheaper or more expensive.
What I think you're really after is more features. And there, 2D doesn't really offer you any advantages over 3D unless you're going to really, really skimp on the art assets and make the game world hideous. Older games commonly used 2D because that was necessary to make it run on much hardware. But today, even low end hardware can run 3D just fine, unless it's the graphics that get packaged with Intel Atom, but those can't run anything just fine. The tools and APIs and hardware are all built for 3D, to the degree that even if you want to make a 2D game, there's a good case for making the underlying methods 3D.
Absolutely agree.
I remember when EQ came out. Was so excited for it. Yes, it was beautiful and yes it was 3rd/1st person. But after playing a while, it felt like despite all its prettiness, it lost something Ultima Online had. Something big.
I feel that EQ was the very first step in the wrong overall direction of the genre. Don't get me wrong, it was a great game. But it wasn't nearly the game UO was.
The problem is when devs are making cheap 3D games,what makes you think the yare going to make a content rich 2D game?
The other problem is that even if we get a developer to create tons of content,will players actually play it?I have found players are VEDRY shallow in their FUN FACTOR.They think the fun is joining a MMO to gain levels,the faster they get levels the better.
FFXI for example has more content than any of these games,i won't even get int oa debate,it is FACT.Guess what,players don't use it,they simply try to speed level and look for the very best loot.If that best loot can be attained with the spin of a dice,that is what players would spend their entire time doing.
That is why pvp has become so popular,players don't care about content or the game,they simply want the best loot,then to pvp to show it off.
I feel the real problem is the market,the TRUE MMORPG gamers are VERY few,so the market is catering to the MAJORITY ,who are NOT MMORPG gamers.When Wow jumped to 16 million,those were NOT MMORPG gamers,heck the entire genre did not have that many players throguhout all the games,that si why Wow had as high as 65% of the total share.
So who were all these gamers?Command NConquewr/Starcraft/FPS's/COD/Unreal/Quake and a ton of new kids with their brand new DSL looking for soemthing to use it on.The same as people joining Facebook and see this Farmville as a social way to interact on FB.The game itself is atrocious yet made millions off of bored people looking for soemthing to interact with their friends on an easy platform.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I've only dabbled into it a few times now because its F2P up to about level 10 or 20 I believe, but Wakfu is a pretty cool 2D mmorpg. The art is actually pretty awesome. The graphic effects can be really nice, and from what I have seen there is a TON of content. Of course, its all due to the sandboxy nature of the game though.
At first I was turned off by the game and had no interest to download it. That is because at first I thought it was a game geared towards those weird furry ear anime loving types of people. When I first played the rabbit shoes and bunny ears that were given to me did not help that opinion... However, it was just gimmicky and I actually see no one running around with those items on anyways. I think it is worth at least a look considering that most MMO's now a days are just a copy of something else.
Also, I think the combat is pretty cool. Its more of a tactics kind of style. Its a nice change of pace for me at least. Also, if you choose to sub its only about 6 bucks.
Does it even matter how much content a game has, if it's buried behind so much grinding that you'll never see it?
I beg to differ. 3D, especially with first person perspective, brought a new level of immersion. Instead of looking down on the map and directing your little avatar from above, you can now see the game world through the eyes of your avatar. Big improvement.
This said, I think the ever growing efforts in making the graphics more realistic are nice to have but not really needed. Games like Half-Life 1 or Everquest 1 had graphics that were fully sufficient to support the gameplay. Crysis level graphics are a luxury, not a necessity.
First person perspective usually doesn't let you see what is going on well enough to make a decent game out of it. Some people may like the "but everyone is crippled by a bad camera view, so it's fair" approach, but I sure don't.
But that's okay, because 3D doesn't have to be a first person perspective.
I totally disagree with your point on a "new level of immersion" being brought in with 3D games. I would say that it is just a different type of immersion. Most 2D games aren't hindered by the restrictions that a 3D world brings, just as 3D games aren't hindered by the restrictions of a 2D game. To this day, I place a certain 2D MMO and certain 3D MMO on the same level when concering immersion.
3D does not equal better. Nor does it equal worse. People only have their preferences because they either missed out on a chance to try a good version of one or the other.
And what exactly are the restrictions that a 3D world brings? Needing hardware from sometime in the last 12 years or so? Anything that you can do with 2D, you can also do with 3D. Isometric overhead camera view? Easy, and you can even let the player rotate the camera while keeping an isometric view. 2D sprites moving around on the screen? Most 3D games already do this to display a lot of user interface components.
I could try to get into details, but we are going to have to agree to disagree as I feel me and you just have 2 different mind sets. That, and I don't think your opinion is wrong (or mine).
It's not an opinion, or different mindsets. It's a factual matter. Every 3-dimensional vector space has 2-dimensional subspaces. Anything you can do in a 2D game world, you can do in a 2D subspace of a 3D game world, and hence in a 3D game world.
There are things that game designers making a 2D game world would tend to do that game designers making a 3D game world would tend not to do. But that's not because the latter can't. It's because they choose not to.
That's why we hear sooooo much about 2d games. Dude, I can't name one 2d game. I got a Santa list of 3d in my head. Why? No one likes 2d so we never talk about them.
Go on. Name the best 2d games in existance.
You are definitely in the minority OP....Especially in this day and age.
A game has to look good for it to work. Playing an ugly game with horrible graphics, no customization etc is painful.....
Mario Bros......
Donkey Kong