As a person who has played video games since the very start of it all, I prefer good animation / sound design over super detailed graphics.
I know in a perfect world you would just have it all and call it good but in a place where resources are limited and have to be allocated accordingly this is what I would focus on as a game designer.
At first ultra detailed graphics are flashy but after I have played a game for a few hours I'm just numb to them... Great animations and sounds never get old for me at least.
I remember when EQ1 added idle animations to player characters and at the time it blew me away with how much that little change added to the game.
Taking weight into account when designing animations is important to selling me on the physics of the game world.
I'd like to see giant sized mobs that move like they actually weigh a lot instead of just skating around the landscape.
I don't want to see players swinging huge 2 hand swords like they are daggers.
Too much disrespecting physics makes a game feel floaty and a lot of games make this mistake.
If it was up to you... what would you choose ?
Thanks in advance,
Kiz~
As someone that grew up playing collecovision, intellevision, Atari and then Nintendo... graphics were never that big a deal for me as long as gameplay is there. Animations could even be janky as long as the gameplay is fun and engaging. Sound design though I'm big on. Some of those chip tune NES tracks I still hum to this day. So, I'd take sound design and music over anything graphical. Don't get me wrong, I have a 4k tv that I mainly use as my PC monitor and for PS4 pro but too many times games have put the lions share of their budget into graphics while serving up mediocre gameplay. Sadly, I think it's a generational thing. I haven't found many gamers 35+ that won't play a game and immeadiately write it off because of how it looks whereas I see it all the time with the younger crowd.
Sound makes no difference to me. I usually turn music and most sounds off.
Animations I would like to see done well, but at the end of the day most every game out has some wonky animations. This wouldn't bother me much.
Having graphics from 1999 is a complete turn off. If I start playing a game and the graphics are sub-par I will not stick with it long. WoW is cartoony garbage. Echo of Souls is cartoony garbage. TERA is starting to show it's age.
New games need to take advantage of new graphics potential. I don't want to play the game on my LG refrigerator, I want to play it on my $2000 gaming rig and I want it to take advantage of the power. This means high end graphics. Anything less is just a waste of my time.
Sound and music is nice but it doesn't need to be symphony hall quality just not ...bad.
Graphics are important but they don't need to be cutting edge either. More important to me than sound but I can live with "OK but not super".
Far more important to me is realism - not in the sense of looking as if it was actually caught on camera but in the sense of not being at all cartoon/anime looking. Few things will send me away faster than a game where the characters look like cartoon figures.
As most of us will likely agree - gameplay and story line is more important than sound or graphics but Pantheon does need to hit at least minimal levels of quality in both.
kellindil said:Sound makes no difference to me. I usually turn music and most sounds off.
Animations I would like to see done well, but at the end of the day most every game out has some wonky animations. This wouldn't bother me much.
Having graphics from 1999 is a complete turn off. If I start playing a game and the graphics are sub-par I will not stick with it long. WoW is cartoony garbage. Echo of Souls is cartoony garbage. TERA is starting to show it's age.
New games need to take advantage of new graphics potential. I don't want to play the game on my LG refrigerator, I want to play it on my $2000 gaming rig and I want it to take advantage of the power. This means high end graphics. Anything less is just a waste of my time.
The popularity of games like Minecraft, completely annihilate this perspective. Although I do sort of agree that state of the art technology should represent the canvas whenever possible. The true leaps forward come in physics simulations of all kind. A great game should hold up regardless of the visual style applied to it.