Ezrael said:
Grimseethe said:
People saying the art style is fine are like NFT bag holders.
Just your own opinion, you can’t accept that other people like other things, you see the world with blinkers on.
Sharing such a limited and unintelligible point of view so often only makes your posts more diminutive. Though, it’s not as if you were a particularly positive or interesting poster even during the best of times.
eunichron said:
Too many people conflate good graphics with realistic graphics. There is a lot more to making a game's graphics good than just the art style. To harken back to OP, that is textures, lighting, character design, etc.
To this day I still contend that Super Metroid is one of the best looking games ever made graphically. Obviously it's not one of the most graphically advanced games ever made, even for the time there were more graphically challenging games for the Super Nintendo. However, in terms of character design, animations, environment design, colors, all that, it is one of the few games I have played where I feel the graphics accurately convey the feeling of the game. The graphics match the lore of the Metroid universe and the world of Zebes.
World of Warcraft is another game that I include in that short list of games that really nail the relationship between lore and aesthetic. In spite of what I've seen a lot of people in this community say about the game on the forums and in Discord over the years, WoW is not a kids game, and judging it as such based on its stylized graphics only shows your ignorance. That can be said for most of Blizzard's games made prior to 2007- their art team in that era were masters of character and particularly environment design.
That being said, I don't think the art style change has helped Pantheon's graphics much so far. There is still a lot of room for improvement, let's hope they do.
Tralyan said:
But don't just scrap the whole idea and decide on a whole other direction, especially when they knew (THEY KNEW) that direction would be universally hated by the general player-base and those who've been following the game.
That general principal applies to any other game direction - mechanics, combat, art, etc.
Sad days indeed.
eunichron said:
Too many people conflate good graphics with realistic graphics. There is a lot more to making a game's graphics good than just the art style. To harken back to OP, that is textures, lighting, character design, etc.
Atarius said:
eunichron said:
Too many people conflate good graphics with realistic graphics. There is a lot more to making a game's graphics good than just the art style. To harken back to OP, that is textures, lighting, character design, etc.
This doesn't make any sense to me. Graphics and Art Style are different and Art Style is everything. Realism is an art style, graphics are whether or not it's displayed properly in a given system.
People that like EQ vanilla typically like a semi-realistic look. A fantasy world come to life in the sense of recognizable and thus relatable shapes and forms while adding in some exaggerations for the fantasy side. Photo realism is "good" in terms of graphics if you have the processing power to handle something that approaches true photo-realism, it's an art style that demands the highest performance at whatever present moment. Nobody is asking for that in an MMORPG.
Cartoony art styles are terrible. They look cheap, they are cheap, on production and implementation. A fantasy world that is about depth and immersion can't afford to come off as a dollar store when it's supposed to be high end for the most discerning of palettes.
Art Style sets tone, mood and subsequently immersion. Without a proper art style you don't have anything that follows. Form precedes function, to paraphrase Roger Scruton, if something is beautiful people will find a use for it, if it's ugly people tend to have no use for it. From beauty comes purpose, not the old "form follows function" approach and that's what we see here. Cheaper graphics that are easier to work with, function over form, ugliness that people won't find a use for or in this case time to devote to playing.
Prevenge said:Atarius said:I'm curious. Could you be happy with it, if they do find a balance with the new art style that actually makes it look darker and more mature? Sure it will never be what you wanted it to be, I get that, I think most of us feel the same way. But when they've balanced the look. Added some grit to the world, fixed the lighting to bring it back to life, shaders are in for everything to give the world a little more depth, fix the character models so they look decent, if they pull all that off, can you be happy enough with it to enjoy playing Pantheon? I do want to get into 247 ASAP to see if it still feels immersive or not. The night time screenshot that Joppa posted and a couple of the shots, just the way they are framed make me think the game is still going to feel immersive.eunichron said: Too many people conflate good graphics with realistic graphics. There is a lot more to making a game's graphics good than just the art style. To harken back to OP, that is textures, lighting, character design, etc.This doesn't make any sense to me. Graphics and Art Style are different and Art Style is everything. Realism is an art style, graphics are whether or not it's displayed properly in a given system. People that like EQ vanilla typically like a semi-realistic look. A fantasy world come to life in the sense of recognizable and thus relatable shapes and forms while adding in some exaggerations for the fantasy side. Photo realism is "good" in terms of graphics if you have the processing power to handle something that approaches true photo-realism, it's an art style that demands the highest performance at whatever present moment. Nobody is asking for that in an MMORPG. Cartoony art styles are terrible. They look cheap, they are cheap, on production and implementation. A fantasy world that is about depth and immersion can't afford to come off as a dollar store when it's supposed to be high end for the most discerning of palettes. Art Style sets tone, mood and subsequently immersion. Without a proper art style you don't have anything that follows. Form precedes function, to paraphrase Roger Scruton, if something is beautiful people will find a use for it, if it's ugly people tend to have no use for it. From beauty comes purpose, not the old "form follows function" approach and that's what we see here. Cheaper graphics that are easier to work with, function over form, ugliness that people won't find a use for or in this case time to devote to playing.
That's an interesting question, it certainly would help how I feel.
However, the problem lies not so much in how the game looks, (as a for instance I strongly dislike WoW's art style but really enjoyed WoW when it first came out), it's what the art change indicates more than the art itself. The gas bat and other things look abysmal, but they could rework that, or scrap those worst parts etc. etc.
This late in development changing something that will ultimately render most of what came before as useless, essentially creating a second day zero. Back to square one after all this time without reaching Alpha, suffering staff shortages, people leaving or being fired, engine problems, money problems, Brad passing and so on. It was a tough row to hoe before, and this has only compounded the difficulty incredibly. Where are the mechanics and zones that were presented previously? Getting doors working is a milestone again? Things are bad in terms of anything that's functional to even perform actual tests on. Never mind the fact that data that's going to be collected via 247 wouldn't in my mind have direct relation to data needed for an MMO. I'd need to see the overlap of how that would work. Unless it's what we fear and it's a ad hoc game mode created to satisfy the pledges and be a dual purpose thing, avoid potential lawsuits and possibly save Pantheon.
Bearing in mind the estimates of the workload that will be taken up by this mode alone seems like doublespeak when considered with what else is being said.
"We want to speed up when we release the game" + "This will take resources we need away from Pantheon".
It's the definition of a "Hail Mary pass" in the best light.
chenzeme said: To be fair, they said <=10% is taken away from Pantheon for 247, after which full development will revert back to Pantheon.
That is fair, however it's 10 percent of a development work force that is currently stretched incredibly thin. So we'll lose 10 percent now to get that 10 percent back later which at present isn't enough and hasn't been for the entire time of development.
We're temporarily robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Atarius said:
chenzeme said: To be fair, they said <=10% is taken away from Pantheon for 247, after which full development will revert back to Pantheon.
That is fair, however it's 10 percent of a development work force that is currently stretched incredibly thin. So we'll lose 10 percent now to get that 10 percent back later which at present isn't enough and hasn't been for the entire time of development.
We're temporarily robbing Peter to pay Paul.
fazool said:
whats the most popular game in history?
oh yeah its minecraft.
/fini
EQ is a good example of the difference between art style and graphics.
Graphics are awful - very low resolution, very low polygon count , little sense of proportions and lighting.
Art style is very good - semi realistic characters (PC and NPC), dark and foreboding zones. Kithicor by night puts the fear of God in you, the foggy halls of Najena speak of danger and death at every corner, Lower Gukk you almost feel the slimy greenish cold walls and wonder what might lurk in the shadows just behind the next corner. Every zone has its character and conveys feelings that match the spirit and the story of the zone. One sees that the art designers had clearly the immersion as priority and they were very good at finding immersive art styles which made you feel like really being part of Norrath. That is the reason (beside the good game play) why so many players still play this 24 years old game and "don't care about the bad graphics"
Now imagine EQ in cartoon style - Lavastorm in happy pinks and blues, Innoruuk looking like Mario in a striped tee shirt , smiling dark elves with big eyes and mouths ... It is more than likely that nobody would play that game anymore. That's how I feel about the "new" art style of Pantheon.
Prevenge said: I also think that VR could still make this hand painted style work and I do believe they are trying to bring it more in line with people's expectations. I do believe based on what Joppa said during the Q&A that VR is indeed trying to make it more dark, gritty and mature. If this is the case, I would love to see more of it. A more continuous flow of screenshots and or video. Currently it feels like we, the community, are very much disconnected from what is going on with Pantheon and I think that's a large part of the problem. Make us part of the discussion, again. Show people that you are listening to the feedback and trying things with the art to try to bring it more in line with the old realistic style graphics and darker atmosphere.
Do I like the current art style over the previous art style? No. Is the new art style a deal breaker for me? No. Would I like the style to get more dark, gritty, and mature? Yes
As Prevenge said, I would love to see more screenshots and/or videos. I would love for the community to feel like we are part of the discussion again.
NegativeNRG: I would love for the community to feel like we are part of the discussion again.
I watched all of Nathan's 8.5 hour stream. It didn't make me like the graphics any more. But what it did do is show me that regardless of how little I like the graphics I quickly forgot about them entirely as I got immersed in the community and game play (vicariously). Not to mention about 50% of the time you can't see anything anyway. XD
Heebs said: I played a pretty fun Indie game one time but the graphics were pretty basic so I dropped it. I forget what it was called. Minecraft I think? Anyways, no idea what happened to it but it probably failed since it looked so cartoony. It's a shame cause it was otherwise pretty fun.
I think you are right about Minecraft, it probably failed at launch, along with so many other low graphics games like:
Terraria
Wow
Dwarf Fortress
Old School Runescape
StarDew Valley
Vampire Survivors
Among Us
Tetris
Dont Starve
Dota 2
Rimworld
Factorio
So many of these games might have succeeded if only the graphics were better. Instead games with low graphics flop everytime.
Unlike High Graphics games like Anthem, Marvel Avengers, Agony, Man of Medan and Order 1886. These games are huge successes strictly because of graphics. When will all the game studios learn that graphics is the most important part of a game, its all the people care about.