Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Does AAA graphics hinder MMORPG?
Vermillion_Raventhal
Member EpicPosts: 4,198
Curious do you believe that MMORPG sacrifice some multiplayer aspects to maintain good graphics? I know everyone wants high end graphics but trying to do large scale events it is more of hinderance with latency already being an issue.
I am good with graphics that are decent aesthetic representative of my character, diverse looks and fluid animations. I don't need ultra realistic especially if performance is the reason.
What is the must have need when it comes to graphics? What don't you tolerate?(like cartoonlike)
I am good with graphics that are decent aesthetic representative of my character, diverse looks and fluid animations. I don't need ultra realistic especially if performance is the reason.
What is the must have need when it comes to graphics? What don't you tolerate?(like cartoonlike)
![[Deleted User]](http://w2.vanillicon.com/v2/2fc0ebe1603ccbafd7a4776e9e89be08.svg)
Comments
I have almost nothing to add,
But I Ok with even less graphics, I'm playing Baldur's Gate and love the complexity. The focus was completely on game design....Something you don't see much of these days.
I explained that also ya-da-ya-da.
That was for starting the game only. In the post I faulted for not stressing that, it was a mistake I made. I TOTTLY RECOMMEND this method in a game made where character creation and how it's played is crucial to how the game unfolds.
The thing is :
You know this already, you read everything I say looking for faults to capitalize on.
This is how you are.....
@Jean-Luc_Picard
Now the bigger question is why are you intruding on an absolutely nice topic.
Your nasty
Aloha Mr Hand !
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
That's my main objection first person games: it's too hard for me to tell what is happening. Or to take another example, EverQuest II has animations that are completely disconnected from what your character is actually doing, which makes combat really hard to follow.
I'd rather have graphics that look nice than look bad, of course. It's just not the top priority.
That said I won't stand for cartoon graphics, we are beyond that now, but MMO's do not have to be hyper realistic for me. To give you an idea WoW is cartoony, Lotro is not.
I would add to it that as a game developer I can say most commercial engines optimize for what is most common. Mmo's have a number of edge cases not common to other games. For instance character animation. The approaches used by every single commercial engine do not scale well. There are more complex approaches that do and perform significantly better, but you need to pretty much implement the animation system from the ground up yourself to get there.
Particle effects are another major area that doesn't scale well using what commercial engines give you.
You just run into case after case like this where commercial engines optimize for the common case and where many of their core features don't scale well. The thing is it's not a hardware limitation in most cases, it's an architecture limitation. They never designed it from the ground up to be concurrent which is the first step to being able to scale well.
I'm not a fan of 1st person, because 3rd person helps me compensate for the senses I lose playing a video game. Also, why take time create a character model if you only see it while in your inventory?
EQ 1 spell/ability effects messed me up quite a bit, with all those floaty, swirly, flashy motes from 5 or 6 things going at once. Did my Bard song hit? Let me scroll back up through my chat window to see.
It really boils down to how the game as a whole fits together. Graphics and animations need to fit with the rest of the game for me.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
Some games fail due to no players. It's possible that they could have had all the players they needed if they didn't focus so much on ramping up the graphics, boosting the game above what their potential player base was capable of accommodating.
Once the game starts getting old, and has bled players, it makes it hard for even those players to get into it, because MMORPGs really depend on a large player base for maximum viability (as a means of entertainment... not just to stay alive, themselves).
A lot of the games in the 90s that had buggy, awful launches suffered due to the obsession with "AAA graphics" on the developers' parts...
- EverQuest II: They really lost out with this, because WoW got millions of players who otherwise likely would have played EQ2. Players complained well before release about this.
- Vanguard SoH: Cited as an issue by developers.
- Warhammer Online: Game was immediately a laggy mess on release, unless your PC was a monster.
- Age of Conan: Too many issues to list.
- FFXIV 1.0: Cited as an issue by developers.
- Aion: Engine still sluggish. CryEngine was not designed for MMORPGs.
You also have the issue of disparity in visuals between beefed up rig and a mid-range rig being stratospheric.
For example, if you cannot run the Depth of Field and Blur Effects at good frame rates in Guild Wars 2, the game instantly becomes VERY ugly to look at.
I will remain of the opinion that MMORPGs should be designed for mid-range specs, with Console-level graphics; even on PCs. Because of the markets they go after, and the fact that AAA-level graphics do not scale well in a multi-player game (never mind a massively multiplayer game) unless you are targeting and selling your game predominantly to elite gamers with $2,000+ gaming PCs.
It also hurts when games tend to optimize for one platform over another. Intel + Nvidia is pretty strong in the market, and a lot of MMORPGs were designed to run on that type of hardware combination. They would have specific performance-eeking optimizations for Core and GeForce hardware that simply didn't exist for AMD/ATI hardware; so people who saved money on an AMD/ATI setup would end up with monumentally worse performance (especially true when multi-core was a newer thing).
EQ2 was [graphically] incredible compared to Classic WoW. The issue with EQ2 was that the graphics brought with it some massive system requirements. Even current systems can have issues trying to run EQ2 on max settings. Imagine trying to do this in 2005/6 on a machine with nothing but a Pentium 4 CPU and an AGP8x GPU with 128-256 VRAM. That was an $800+ PC back in 2004. A laptop with similar specs was running $1,500-1,800.
As a result, most people's experience on EQ2, until fairly recently was on Balanced or Performance settings. The game looks (obviously) worse on those settings than on the higher quality settings.
WoW's low system requirements were it's biggest competitive advantage over EverQuest II. All the players moving on from EQ, DAoC, UO, etc. that wanted something that was more modern in look and gameplay, really didn't have much of a choice re: where to go. Newer players taking their "average" PCs into the MMORPG market, didn't really have a choice, either (and they weren't about to play EQ, which was already quite aged - and still VERY grindy - by then). They all went to WoW. That's how WoW became so freaking huge. SOE made a huge mistake while developing EQ2, which basically created a sort of vacuum in the market.
Maybe there was FFXI out, by then (not sure), but it's deader than EQ in the West, at this point; which says enough.
Nothing extra was needed for WoW. You just installed the game and off you went.
The latency is real when the graphics overwhelm the client (i.e. while doing group content or raiding) as the display will start to lag, stutter, or freeze (sometimes for several seconds) as a result...
Unless you run on bare lower (if not lowest, depending on your PC) settings; which kind of defeats the point of having AAA graphics...
Graphics don't matter if only 10% of the player base is going to enjoy them in all their glory. We aren't paying for press renders.
Things happen, but you don't see then until later because of the processing bottleneck. Sometimes the action freezes, sometimes its delayed. Sometimes it freezes and then fast forward to catch up. Sometimes it lags and stutters until it catches up. Sometimes it just slows down.
It can actually cause disconnects, as well.
I know what network latency is. Not even sure why that merits discussion, as what I am referring to is plainly obvious.
Latency is nothing hit the disparity between the input and the resulting action. Network latency is not the o ly type of latency that exists. There can be latency at the client end only, caused by processing bottlenecks. There is a connection between the PC and the co opponents, and your keyboard and the PC.
All are at risk to latency, even though there is no network connection (in the "internet" sense) involved.
It balloons development costs, creating the need for pubs and devs to squeeze more dollars out of one title.
As such, we could all do better to avoid hyping a product based on it's pretty pictures and, instead, on how enjoyable it is to engage with.
I retired retroactively..Haha
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests