Gameplay vs Graphics

When people are making these kinds of judgment calls in beta. Then maybe I'll see some cause for concern. There aren't a lot of people who know how to gauge the progress of game development prior to beta release.

 

I wouldn't call the graphics "bad", they aren't at skyrim levels but it's not anywhere as bad as 80's and 90's. The character models could use some work. But overall it has a pleasent ultima feel.

 

I usually don't chime in on these subjects because for the most part, I agree with you all. The difference is I have the experience and internal dialogues to calm my aching eyes.

We are completely aware of the visual shortcomings, they will be addressed. Anyone can put together a good looking camera on rails, using sets of assets that all go together. Throw some color correction, finalized lighting, and post effects in there and it goes a long way in making scenes more visually consistent. None of which we have done yet. I wouldn't consider anything final, or even near final.

As far as the overworld map, that is the first pass. Consider it a rough draft.


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And as a first pass, it already looks superb! I want to reach out and grab it!

(future tabletop game in the works? *hint hint* )

 

I was already satisfied with the graphics; with oneandonly's statement only more so.

 

I think a few folks have touched on this already...

"Realistic" styles are the quickest to look dated. It takes a lot of work to meet today's standards of "realistic graphics," and even if you get there, in two years your graphics won't hold up anyway. There are also a lot of expectations that come with "realistic graphics" besides the textures... a realistic-looking world demands realistic physics and collision, for example - which are also a bundle of headaches.

It's a better choice to design a timeless style that meets your team's ability to create content. A "timeless style" is one that is memorable on its own merit - every aspect of it is in service to a chosen aesthetic, and rendering technology is subservient to it, rather than the other way around. In ten years the game visuals won't be a stumbling block for players. They'll say, "Ah... I still love the style of that old 'Another World' game...," rather than "Man, they couldn't do realistic graphics in the 90s, could they?"

 

I believe there should be a balance between gameplay and graphics and right now the graphics they are designed look more like the 1st round of games for the Xbox 360. Also I have seen games using the unity engine have nice graphics. Dreamfall looks pretty decent and it is another kickstarter game.

Right now the art style the characters look are not drawing me in and that is likely just me, but I was hoping for a world from Lord British that one looked forward to playing each day. I don't regret supporting the game, but I am going to have to wait to see how this game evolves and if there will be some higher graphic settings than what is available on pre-alpha.

 

I think graphics are a big element in the success of a game. To me graphics can be broken up into three tiers. Visual fidelity (polygons, etc.), Style, and animation. The problem I have with a lot of games that are released today (and they are claimed to be graphical masterpieces) are that they only have two of the three things I've mentioned. For whatever reason, most of the time the one that takes a hit is animation. To me, animation and style are much more important than visual fidelity, though visual fidelity is still great to have. To give an example of what I mean; look no further than any Bethesda game. Skyrim when it released looked great visually, style was decent (this can be subjective). The animations were atrocious.

This is the problem I have with most games. Of the three categories I'd like to see SOTA take, it'd be animation. There is nothing more immersion breaking than watching terrible animations in a game. Not having good animations to me is similar to me of the problem with frame rate stuttering or texture pop-ins. It completely breaks you out of the game. It's kind of like watching a movie, having the power go out and come back in. The momentum is lost. One of the reasons I love the Battlefield games (and in my opinion they are the best FPS) is that they knock all three categories right out of the park. There are other games such as Uncharted and the Batman games which also do a wonderful job of this and also get story and game play down to a tee. Animation to me is very important. I want to see the force of my sword or mace smashing an enemy. I want to see it get knocked back and my avatar display some sense of power in his swing. I hate it when games show crappy/sissy animations in combat. It really does detract from the experience. This is one reason why I give Blizzards Diablo 3 some credit. When I watch my character swing his great sword, he appears to be swinging for the fences! I also am another person who's pledged for Star Citizen. That game looks phenomenal. The thing is, if the animations for anything are crap. That will stick out like a sore thumb and detract from the experience.

The reason older games could get away with lower quality graphics was due to style. 2D and 3D isometric games lend themselves to not needing super high quality graphics. It's more about style than pixels/polygons. I can go back and play rpg's back in the early 90's and other games like Sonic or Mario, because they had a great sense of style to them. Even UO still holds up for the most part. This is the problem with 3D games in general when they take a 3rd person or 1st person perspective. If you don't have decent visual fidelity, they don't hold up over time like the classics. A couple brilliant 3D rpgs spring to mind. Shining Force 3 and Panzer Dragoon Saga were brilliant rpg's featuring amazing game play and stories, yet visually they look atrocious. RPG's on other similar consoles and pc's from the past suffer as well for it. This is one of the reasons I'd almost prefer that this game be in an isometric view, but I'm still more than happy to live with it being 3D. After all, for whatever reason I was probably one of the few who still got enjoyment out of Ultima 9 for all it's issues.

Someone mentioned earlier in this thread that graphics have no effect on game play. I disagree. It can in the form of environment destructibility and the consequences of that on the player having to adjust his thinking. Battlefield 3 is once again an example of this. There aren't too many games featuring this, probably because it'd be expensive. I can honestly live without this in SOTA.

In conclusion, I'd prefer they improve animations in this game over visual fidelity. I think this would help the game out more than hurt it. This will take more time to do. I don't think that they should sacrifice game play for visual fidelity.

 

Actually, after this last game-play weekend, I'm not only totally underwhelmed by the graphics, I felt the game play was very "old school" and not well thought out. For example, Guild Wars 2, FF XIV Reborn, and other MMOs systems, are moving towards a combination of systems where you can dodge/move like an FPS mechanic in addition to the tired, old, tab targeting mechanic of WoW. Even Dragon's Egg, with low end stylized graphics looked better and was more engaging than what I saw this weekend and had more engaging combat mechanics. In FF XIV, I had some of the best boss fights I've ever had in an MMO, because moving around positionally, blocking, dodging, etc, were all critical parts of game play. It made even healing, a typically not as engaging role, enormously rewarding.

Yes this is the latest Alpha and totally unpolished/unfinished, but aside from the enormous collection of game game bugs (expected), I saw some very uninspired tab targeting/combat mechanics reminiscent of the original EverQuest, with things like fireballs tracking after me through trees and right through hills, with a chance to hit solely based on percentages and not my position. And really, the graphics are just terrible.

I know the Shroud for the Avatar team is working hard, but quite frankly, the Unity Engine absolutely sucks. Maybe Unity 5 is fantastic, but I haven't seen one game/demo that can hold a candle to the graphic engines AAA titles are using. These graphics are not just dated, they are SERIOUSLY dated. Gameplay will have to be SO AMAZING I will jsut sit up in my seat and scream in shock and awe at how imaginative everything is to offset what I'm seeing ...and I'm just not seeing that kind of the game-play. The NPC quest system was an act of frustration, for example. It wasn't a Turing Test talking to them, it was like I was playing a Zork game from the 1980's.

Once again, I'll give everyone a bone and concede to the fact "it's an alpha". But I'm going to be honest here, there's some serious writing on the wall, and I'm really starting to wish I hadn't pledged. I have great fears I wasted my money, and if I could, I would immediately seek my money back. I was hesitant about Shroud of the Avatar, but jumped in for the Star Citizen cross bow and justified to myself that Shroud of the Avatar would be inventive because of Ultima Online ...but now I'm thinking that this dev team is too out of touch with what other MMOs have been doing and what they are doing, and their tools are too dated, and their group is too small. Jumping between this alpha and the EverQuest Next Landmark Alpha, and looking at the two in comparison, is just laughable. Honestly. Check out what people are seeing in EverQuest Next Landmark Alpha ...and it' snot even that great, but TOTALLY blows Shroud of the avatar out of the water. I'd like to tell everyone Shroud of the avatar has potential, but the reality is I have been telling my friends lately not to pledge.

 

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.

There is a small mailbox here.

 

Yeah, that's one attitude you can take. It's a pretty depressing one tho, and instead you could be swimming naked in a lake with nice people and or maybe failing really hard at trivia.

It's more fun to be optimistic than pessimistic.

I guarantee this will be a way better community than Grief Wars 8 or whatever its' called

 

SoTA is not an MMO

 

Selective Multiplayer, not Massive Multiplayer so maybe SMORPG?

 

It was so massively multiplayer today that we fell through the floor of the LOTM Castle lol

 

That would be a better description - but that's the only thing I could say without getting moderated ....

The comparisons are a tad off base ... and the comment seem condescending and not really constructive ... kinda like pouring salt on an open wound

Or saying the earth is round ... lol

 

I am definitely glad to hear that graphics are still going to see a lot of tweaks. I know graphics are not everything but they are still important. And no matter how great the game play is many people will not give SOTA try if the graphics are not good as well. Of course like I have said before people still need to keep their expectations reasonable. Comparing this game to AAA games with budgets that are massive compared to SOTA's is not very fair for instance. Of course though they should still do the best they can with their limited budget.

 

There is no hope of that occurring

 

Sad but true. When SotA proves itself I think a lot of people will be more forgiving but there will always be those who will judge it solely by what they see and move on. That's fine for them I suppose. We each have our own standards and what we want out of any game. I expect I'll be here for the duration.

My larger concerns are gameplay and I'm worried about the teams tendency to think of more gamey solutions than immersive ones that would do the same thing. Sure not everyone cares about immersion but if those people won't care either way than being more immersive can't hurt can it? Not a deal breaker for me but it'd be nice. I just don't want to come on here next year and be able to say "you see? I told you so!"

But just as we shouldn't judge graphics too harshly at this stage we should be just as careful not to read the 'writing on the wall' when the wall isn't even up yet. They've already started they don't want "twitch" combat that gives people with faster connections and the like an edge. So we shouldn't expect to actively dodge and block in multiplayer.

Right now they're just getting the very basic functionality in.

 

It is good that graphics are going to be tweaked and I will watch to see how well they look, along with gameplay. But at this time I will stay away from alphas and recheck it out at beta - hopefully their graphics and character models are place holders and their artist are looking at massively improving them.

 

You have to be tough to take alphas .
I am all for state of the art graphics as well... in my former gaming days and would not scorn them nowadays. But I have learned that the real immersion comes from your mind itself. Sure game mechanics have to allow this by giving you the most possible freedom and meaning in your actions. Also a deep and consistent story setting is very important if not vital. And this is what I trust Portalarium will succeed to do .