11-11-2009, 06:33 PM
Vllad Wrote:So the question is can you make a game look good not to turn people off and still retain the pixel density of an EQ?That was basically the WOW formula: create a game that 4 year old computers can run perfectly smoothly. A lot of people complained that it was "too cartoony" but in the end they had 10 million subscribers, so, yeah, Blizzard can pretty well flip off the graphic whores while they wallow in piles of money.
I think it's actually the smart move whereas awesome graphics are actually a dumb move. Not only do low resolution graphics allow you to cram more people together with better performance but they make it so that everyone and their mother can play the game even with old systems. Newer, more awesome graphics engines also seem to run into more driver/hardware issues, as they try and use newer, fancier, less tested features of graphics cards. I forget what game it was some years ago where nVidia had to release a patch just for them. They proclaimed it like a badge of honor but it probably just means you're pushing the technology to the point that most people can't use it.
I think if I had a really sharp, crisp UI, I may be able to forgive a lot when it comes to graphical detail.
I say we take Planetside graphics and lock that in. Stick with those graphics and devote all future hardware improvements to cramming more people on screen rather than cramming the same number of people with more polygons and better textures.