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[Column] General: Stylized Graphics
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Welcome back to another edition of Player Versus Player. This is the column where MMORPG.com writers come to square off on the issues you care about, even playing the devil's advocate to make sure each side is represented. It's an arena battle of wits and words where only you can decide the victor.
The ability to create realistic looking faces and an idealized vision of a hero that you want to be or look at is a great thing, and with the exception of one outlier (World of Warcraft) it’s the games with realistic graphics that tend to make their gaming presence better known to gamers than the myriad worlds filled with cartoon hamsters carrying hammers.
Read more of Chris Coke's and Victor Barreiro Jr.'s Player vs Player: Stylized Graphics.
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Comments
Smile
I dont see how "non-stylized" graphics have a place in MMORPGs just yet. If one wants these things, one can get them in games like BF4 or War of the Roses. To me MMOs are defined by the stylistical world that they create. While beauty is in the eye of the beholder some games manage to have a cogent style that permeates their world adding to the experience. WAR, WoW and FFXI are for me examples of classic games that succeded in matching graphics with the lore. Special shout out goes to TSW that has done a spectacular job of world creation. Elder scrolls is the only franchise that I can really associate with non stylized graphics and it looks like ESO is graphic step back from Skyrim ( duh!)
My only fear is that EQN will follow too closely in the steps of GW2 where the pretty graphics are not really backed up by meta game or the "world". To me GW2 is a prime example of how eye candy graphics cant replace actual interesting game play. As another example I ll mention DFUW where the graphics are simply attrocious (my imho) but that doesnt stop people from enjoying the game (same thing with games like Vanguard).
My 2 c
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Thomas Jefferson
Also more gnashing of teeth plz! Nobody even called anyone a dirty name! What do you think we are, civilized?
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Currently Playing EVE, ESO
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.
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Henry Rollins
For as much as I would like realistic graphics, I would like to play with people more. Unfortunately, that's something you can't do in Guild Wars 2 without the server slowing down to a snails crawl.
I too believe this to be true. While There is room for both styles however I think its a cop-out on the part of the developers to use stylized graphics as an excess for longevity.
If blizzard re designed their current WoW game is graphics upto par like FF14.
id revisit it.
Think of the "high end graphics and realistic" MMO's, now a days, or even semi recently.
Now list which ones are actually successful.
Now realize just how few there are and laugh a little..
-How would you like to order a great meal and a nice restaurant and find the cook used no seasoning on anything ?
Thats how I react to stylized graphics.
-Ever read a fantasy book where the author fails to paint a detailed picture of the world he's writing about ?
Since that world exists only in my mind I want more detail.
-Do you want a game that has great immersion...that pulls you in and makes you want to stay ?
For me thats a more detailed/realistic world.Not stylized
Lastly I feel I'm being taken for granted.Stylized graphics from a console game company.For me thats not a coincidence.
I invested in a powerful pc for a reason...performance...I do not/will not settle.
For me, it is not so much a matter of stylistic vs realistic as a question of detail. More specifically, the degree of configurable detail that can be applied to the player's avatar (not their equipment). In my experience, games with more stylized character graphics tend to be very restrictive in this area, or else rely on the application of numerous colouring and/or tattoo options to a small number of base avatars. That is inadequate.
My avatar is my connection to the game. If I'm not satisfied with my avatar then that connection is usually broken within a couple of weeks. When I look back to the games I've played that had very stylized character graphics, I find that the time I spent in those games (WoW, TOR, LoTRO) was considerably shorter than the time I spent in games that had a more realistic approach (EQ2, SWG, AoC, Vanguard). What little I have seen of EQN's character graphics so far has dampened my interest considerably.
and then Minecraft comes with 20 million players and says "whatever"
http://imgur.com/VGLM1MI
stylized graphics =/= less detail
What it does equal is an art style that is meant to make changes in technology less obvious. It also helps the game stand as being more visually iconic.
If you notice the stylized concept has drifted it's way into representing a more cinematic CG design. Many games are becoming almost like what you'd expect to see when you pop in a Pixar, Dreamworks, or other 3D video production studio's movie.
And there's a reason in general for this. Like in the case of TF2 it was stated early on that the goal of the style was to 'work with the polygons' rather than to approximate something unobtainable. Consequently they developed designs that outline and define a very distinctive character in the models and game world.
It's the same thing when handling MMOs and in some regards it's a necessary balance as much as it's an effort to create a distinctive feel. By looking to make the graphics work with a style that minimizes and plays 'with' the polygons rather than trying for a hyper-realistic style that ends up emphasizing the flaws (such as ostensibly round forms having visible faces and edges), it enables the developer to share out the complexity of the graphical design in a manner that keeps the game looking cleaner for a longer time on top of giving them the capability to extend the power of their system into other facets of the game than scene rendering (like in the case of EQN, expanding on the level of interactivity with the world).
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
The question is how a specific art direction fits a specific MMO and the case with EQ:N is that the choosen Character Art Direction fits the game not, it is not the slightest "Everquestish" and that is the point to discuss!
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
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Yer right!
This...
Totally looks just as good as this!
EDIT: Being less facetious, the plycount of games hasn't changed as dramatically as the rendering quality, textures, post processing, etc has. There is much more Fx dolling modern games up than the likes of AoC or other older titles possess, and that's where the bulk of the visual progression has gone.
It's pretty much the quote 'the devil is in the details' in action. The game is more subject to scrutiny as it's style aims to be more hyper-realistic, and every minor factor adds up when considering the graphical capacity of the game and the impact is has on the visual quality.
Stylized graphics does in general mask a lot of these details. Like when you look at Borderlands 1 and 2 you can see an improvement in the style, but the actual graphical quality isn't that far different from one another. That's because the game itself is developed on standards that cleans up or conceals some aspects of the graphics and allows them to focus on other gameplay mechanics playing well together (such as being able to more readily swap all the gun parts around).
Similarly you can look at a game like Team Fortress 2 and note that the game has allowed Valve to put the polys where it matters in keeping some models actually pretty smooth (though other parts are visibly chunky compared to modern character models) even now.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Amen to this, I would rather have 60 man raids with stylized graphics instead of 20 man raids with ultra realistic graphics.
I find it intresting that people keep claiming EQN graphics are bad, personally I am amazed that they are trying to bring these kinda graphics to a voxel based game, and how is looking like pixar a bad thing? basicly the world lead in animation movies..
I didnt like the oversized shoulderpads on the kitty, but that seems to have already been addressed..
Personally I like them both. If I had a preference it would be for realistic but it wouldn't keep me from playing a great game.
Really though I don't think there is much real debate to be had here. Some people don't like stylized graphics because they think they look cartoony and childish, other players like the look. It is really that simple.
Also I think the fact that stylized graphics don't age as quickly is a well known fact. However we are getting to the point technologically where graphics are real enough and improvements in graphics quality are becoming much less noticeable. However there are still tradeoffs that need to be made when we have a massive number of players taking part in a battle together, and I think those things are a bit easier to handle when you are dealing with stylized graphics that have less polygons.
Certain graphic styles works best for certain games.
Take Warcraft for example: It has had "stylized' graphics since its inception at Warcraft Orcs & Humans, and that kind of style has worked best for the series since . . . It made Warcraft into what it is, for good and ill. Now if you take, say Elder Scrolls graphics and used that - putting it into Warcraft - it may look neat, but it wouldn't be Warcraft anymore.
Same thing goes for "realistic" graphics: If you take Elder Scrolls and tried to use "stylized" graphics on it, it wouldn't be Elder Scrolls.
The point is, certain styles work for certain games. You can't just take one style and use it for everything, otherwise everything would start to look the same and be boring to look at.
And on a personal level, the longevity thing - I think - is just a bunch of bull crap. Age is age, nothing holds up after a certain point in time. It always was, and will be, a preference thing.
You know what's fun about chaos? I do, but I won't tell.
Yeh that was rather my point Rock. ^_^
The first image is Age of Conan, the second is an alpha shot of Black Desert.
The main things I had of value between those two images was nothing that the textures are sharper/less blurred, higher, the models themselves are a bit more complex, and the rendering is overall more complex.
There's a lot of little things that keep creeping onward and changing and they all lend progressively towards a more complex and detailed game world. AoC might still look ok at in comparison to new titles at a passing glance, but if you ever stop and contrast it to new titles you are going to find plenty of lacking details or places where they cut corners for performance.
MMOs in general are the worst market really to examine such things in though, as the genre itself moves more slowly than any other game around them. Their technology perpetually lags behind very simply because of the effort it takes to create it and bring it up to performance for play. Things like graphical quality are consequently sacrificed for client stability alongside the constant balance of how interactive the game is. The differences in visual quality becomes much more clear the moment you step outside MMOs and look at something like the upcoming Witcher 3 or it's kin. They get away with a lot more because the client isn't bouncing information between itself and some far off server to get anything done.
As for other people's commentary on age...
The simple consideration would be to think about super Mario 64 and then Goldeneye.
Or similarly, Okami in comparison to Tomb Raider Legend.
Okami is a great example of a game where the greatest improvement to it's graphics over time is only really to it's fidelity. Tomb Raider Legend in contrast would need a major revamp to it's world assets and models to come up to par with modern titles.
The stylization of Okami makes the game not only distinctive visually, but also lets it survive changes in time because you can pick up that game even now as it's art style is going to define it's quality considerably more than it's polycount.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
Is this not detailed enough for you?