EU Graphical Update Feedback - Hands and Feet

[TheDustyOne]

The main reason for the graphics downgrade going from 1.0 to 2.0 was because of accessibility; 1.0 at the time required a powerhouse of a PC to get going and that ultimately cuts into how many people can actually play your game. Of course, the fact that the original 1.0 team also wanted it on PS3 was.... I have no idea how they would've done that, but the visual 2.0 downgrade was the only real way to have a PS3 version that seemed viable. But still, the main reason wasn't just consoles, but also weaker PCs at the time.

It's also worth noting that 1.0, while it had higher polygon characters and objects, also didn't have proper lighting and shadows. There's a video from the Speakers Network youtube channel that goes over the major graphical differences in 1.0, and it shows just how poor the lighting actually was then; light sources weren't proper light sources, night-time amounted to a "blue tint" on the screen, shadows weren't really cast from those light sources, bloom was overused in places, etc. 1.0 was a buggy, unoptimized mess and even the supposed better graphics were a victim of that mess. The main thing it had over 2.0 was texture and polygon count, maybe a shader or two. I'll see if I can find the video at some point and edit the post with it.

Edit: found the video https://youtu.be/CJ9CmxaQ3q8?si=MhVQ9Msas5yrPVcl&t=464

[MsQi]

But still, the main reason wasn't just consoles, but also weaker PCs at the time.

You may find this hard to believe but you can have a single game that takes advantage the latest bleeding edge technologies and still runs smoothly on much older systems. They are applying a console mentality to the PC world.

[Rolder50]

You may find this hard to believe but you can have a single game that takes advantage the latest bleeding edge technologies and still runs smoothly on much older systems. They are applying a console mentality to the PC world.

Yep, it's called... graphics settings! Wow!

[MsQi]

Yep, it's called... graphics settings! Wow!

Exactly like I said! but if you look at the max vs min on this game it's not a huge difference, vs. a game like RIFT which allows you to really make it look like crap. This game could use some much lower settings. There was no reason to throw out all those beautiful models they had in the original game. Let those with high end machines see those, while others would have to use lower settings.

edit:

I just find it hard to take workload / storage space arguments seriously when every other modern game can have high / low graphics settings with no issues. Usually by having one set of textures/models that is upscaled/downscaled as needed based on your settings.

Edit: I also know of a mod that adds higher resolution fingers/toes for hundreds of items, so I went and checked the file size on that. It is a whopping 26.5 MB, so no it's not a storage space issue.

Agreed, a lot of other companies do the work. And it's also possible to have improved textures/models be an optional download. Maybe even for specific areas. Fingers and toes aren't much but an improved texture set for the whole game could be quite hefty. Maybe some player just care about characters and not the rest of the world?

[Rolder50]

Agreed, a lot of other companies do the work. And it's also possible to have improved textures/models be an optional download. Maybe even for specific areas. Fingers and toes aren't much but an improved texture set for the whole game could be quite hefty. Maybe some player just care about characters and not the rest of the world?

I was limiting my thoughts to hands and feet cause that was the original topic of the thread

[TheDustyOne]

You can only do so much however, if you want to include high poly and high res texture assets alongside the weaker systems, that also means having to have the storage space for both to swap between and making both assets with each patch. This effectively doubles workload to appease people who have high end PCs and still affects storage space for PCs that have less storage to take advantage of.

As for bleeding edge tech, while I don't disagree, we're still talking about a game that was rushed out after only 2 years of development (MMOs typically need 5). And a choice between having bleeding edge tech that only a small amount of players will be able to use that we can't properly QA with this short development period that won't even be used on one of our major platforms, and simply having uniform assets amongst the playerbase, yeah there's a reason that Square chose what they chose.

That's not to say we didn't get improvements however, HW I believe made the 64 bit version a thing, and DX11 with it, and that had a handful of extra graphical tweaks and additions. And of course the graphical update is about bringing in that tech after all this time. But that 32 bit version still had to exist, and as long as it existed, they were constrained by that version. The fact we could take advantage of 64 bit didn't fully give them extra advantages. It was only after we got rid of those low end PCs that we could move past that limitation, you can only go so far between high and low end PCs.

[Rolder50]

I just find it hard to take workload / storage space arguments seriously when every other modern game can have high / low graphics settings with no issues. Usually by having one set of textures/models that is upscaled/downscaled as needed based on your settings.

Edit: I also know of a mod that adds higher resolution fingers/toes for hundreds of items, so I went and checked the file size on that. It is a whopping 26.5 MB, so no it's not a storage space issue.

[TheDustyOne]

Edit: I also know of a mod that adds higher resolution fingers/toes for hundreds of items, so I went and checked the file size on that. It is a whopping 26.5 MB, so no it's not a storage space issue.

Models themselves are usually pretty small, even with hundreds of thousands of polygons, it's textures that you have to be more concerned over. I know one of the body mods goes into about 3GB purely because of the texture sizes.

[MsQi]

Things that have physical presence are the same dimensionally for everyone. That does not stop it from having more or less details on different screens. Things that are considered “ground clutter” have no substance. They may be there or not depending on settings. This is not some gotcha scenario. These have been par for the course as long as there has been 3D gaming.

[TheDustyOne]

They may be there or not depending on settings.

That's what I mean though, their presence can have some impact on gameplay, but they're superfluous enough that someone could legitimately ask to not have them rendered to help with their performance. How do you reconcile that?

Again, I'm not against the addition of these things, the amount of people running the game on potatos at 15fps on the lowest settings are... practically non-existent, I'm just saying that it does affect the minimum specs, and Square can only ever really design around that minimum they've decided on. Some scalability is needed of course, and the more options the better, I'm just saying that to take advantage of all the latest bleeding edge tech requires leaving behind people who haven't upgraded in a while, and there's still concerns around workflow when it comes to asset creation if we decide on having both high and low quality assets.


Anyway, I'll bow out of this debate. It isn't that I believe you guys wrong, you are right in the extra options, I'm in favour of extra options as you guys, my initial response was moreso playing devils advocate in regards to Squares situation in 2013. They wanted a game that was more accessible than 1.0, and in a much tighter schedule, lower quality assets was one of those compromises. We're now in a situation 10 years later where those limitations can be lifted and we can have higher quality assets than the ones from 2010.