Graphics or gameplay? Which one is it? You can't have it both ways.

Some people say you can have both. They are wrong. What people consider "good graphics" nowadays is something like what Age of Conan has. The problem is that with todays technology it's just not going to happen. There are no 300vs300 epic battles in AoC, or not even 100vs100. You know why? Because the engine, servers and users computers can't handle it. There would be huge lag and crashes, it would be unplayable.

Seeing people here complain about DF graphics really pisses me off. I've seen many here say how they prefer gameplay over graphic but once we see a new video what is the first thing they complain about? Yes, graphics. This is so dumb.

I do agree with most people that Aventurine needs to work on the animations. I hate it when in the videos all the characters had this "bounce" in their running. Hope they can fix that.

If you want to see what happens when an MMO is all graphics and no gameplay, I suggest you go subscribe to Age of Conan. Sure the game looks pretty but is mostly a boring, instanced, single player game which has no soul. You really want that?

We don't know much about the gameplay in DF but if they can make it fluid and fun, graphics are acceptable. At least for me.

Im just looking for a sandbox MMO. I dont play themepark games.

So i must say gameplay. Either Darkfall, Fallen Earth or Earthrise.

I think most of the people who bash the graphic of Darkfall ain't thinking in the term of "a whole game" when they bash it. They look at the graphics without thinking about what's needed to be able to play the game without problems and comments on that alone.

And yes, if we look at the graphic alone we've all seen better :)

IMO most people who post here and complain about graphics are trolls who simply like to throw shit at DarkFall  and using graphics just as excuse for doing this...

They started as Vaportrolls and now changed to talk shit about graphics, tomorow they will pick  on something else...

Don't take them seriously ...

I agree with you.

Sure the graphics are a bit dated looking, but they look like that for a reason and the Devs have not been shy telling you why that is.

Busting on the games graphics when its pretty much always been known that the graphics wont be top notch is a bit futile i think.

Im fine with the graphics Darkfall has as long as its a good game that runs well.
Im really interested with this automatic graphic setting changes to prevent lag that the devs were talking about. That sounds like an excellent idea to me, i just dont see how they can make it work.

Originally posted by Scaredgirl

Graphics or gameplay? Which one is it? You can't have it both ways.

Some people say you can have both. They are wrong. What people consider "good graphics" nowadays is something like what Age of Conan has. The problem is that with todays technology it's just not going to happen. There are no 300vs300 epic battles in AoC, or not even 100vs100. You know why? Because the engine, servers and users computers can't handle it. There would be huge lag and crashes, it would be unplayable.

Seeing people here complain about DF graphics really pisses me off. I've seen many here say how they prefer gameplay over graphic but once we see a new video what is the first thing they complain about? Yes, graphics. This is so dumb.

I do agree with most people that Aventurine needs to work on the animations. I hate it when in the videos all the characters had this "bounce" in their running. Hope they can fix that.

If you want to see what happens when an MMO is all graphics and no gameplay, I suggest you go subscribe to Age of Conan. Sure the game looks pretty but is mostly a boring, instanced, single player game which has no soul. You really want that?

We don't know much about the gameplay in DF but if they can make it fluid and fun, graphics are acceptable. At least for me.

Just what we needed, yet another apologist thread for why it's ok that Darkfall looks so sub-par. The reason the graphics are ugly in this game has less to do with the "physical impossibility" of having both decent quality art and decent quality fluidity with large numbers of players, and more to do with the fact that Aventurine is a small dev team with no MMO experience working with the old, clunky code they wrote eight years ago on an indie game designed to appeal to UO fans who'd be happy with 8bit sprites and flashing lights so long as they're still allowed to loot, skin, rape and dance gleefully on the corpse of the guy they just ganked.

AoC took MMO graphics to the extreme, presumably in an attempt to make a game that would stand the test of time visually and thus continue to hold appeal for potential new players for some time to come. They failed for a variety of reasons, and misread the processing power of contemporary gaming machines (which they would have been trying to predict some years in advance when writing their code). But there's no reason why some satisfactory middle ground can't be found without having to look quite as B-grade as Darkfall currently seems to.

The real tragedy here is that most DF fans seem willing to sacrifice visual appeal so long as it guarantees that gameplay will be smooth with these mass 300+ vs 300+ (or whatever) battles everyone keeps talking about, and while that's not my personal preference it's certainly a legitimate choice to make. Yet while we've seen plenty of evidence of the graphics and animation being low-poly and dated, we have yet to see anything that might suggest that the promised mass battles will in fact be smooth, or even possible. On the contrary, the amount of skipping and glitching on display from that Italian vid of the beta with just one player fighting against one NPC mob in a completely empty zone presumably across an internal network is most certainly cause for concern.

This is absurd, graphics are quite good. What needs to be improved are the animations and that woman's ass!

Yeah, the graphics were all right. I was skeptical after seeing the 17 min trailer that the landscape would be too barren - there are some areas in the trailer that just seemed lifeless. I like the forests shown in this new vid though, the view distances were respectable and it seemed packed with flora.

The abundant grass and dynamic shadows changed it from mediocre to decent in my eyes. WAR has sad little patches of grass dotted about and no dynamic shadows apart from on your own character, so getting full fields of grass and dynamic shadows on everything is a real selling point for Darkfall (not least of all because they affect the stealth portion of the game dramatically). Cut those two out though and I think the lower res textures and low poly meshes wouldn't be up to scratch today.

The animations of the women running was terrible, of course. The rest of the movements seemed fluid enough, if not particularily realistic. Blood decals were crap too - some floating in air after a hit had been delt. Ugh.

But overall, gameplay wins out. I think the longest I've played an MMO before setting all the graphics sliders to 'low' was EVE, after one week. There those settings stayed for the next 3 years. All MMOs look like ass to me, because they're always at lowest settings.

I wonder if we'll be seeing threads like this once people have actually played the game and aren't basing their opinions on Darkfalls graphics on screenshots and a few low-quality videos? I doubt it very much.

Originally posted by GeniusSage

I wonder if we'll be seeing threads like this once people have actually played the game and aren't basing their opinions on Darkfalls graphics on screenshots and a few low-quality videos? I doubt it very much.

Perhaps, perhaps not. I wonder how many threads we'll see with players howling with rage when the servers lag causing them to be killed and looted by those who live closer to Europe than they do, because Aventurine didn't feel they needed to do any actual massive load testing since they had plenty of AI bots running around and figured that was enough.

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

Originally posted by Scaredgirl

Graphics or gameplay? Which one is it? You can't have it both ways.

Some people say you can have both. They are wrong. What people consider "good graphics" nowadays is something like what Age of Conan has. The problem is that with todays technology it's just not going to happen. There are no 300vs300 epic battles in AoC, or not even 100vs100. You know why? Because the engine, servers and users computers can't handle it. There would be huge lag and crashes, it would be unplayable.

Seeing people here complain about DF graphics really pisses me off. I've seen many here say how they prefer gameplay over graphic but once we see a new video what is the first thing they complain about? Yes, graphics. This is so dumb.

I do agree with most people that Aventurine needs to work on the animations. I hate it when in the videos all the characters had this "bounce" in their running. Hope they can fix that.

If you want to see what happens when an MMO is all graphics and no gameplay, I suggest you go subscribe to Age of Conan. Sure the game looks pretty but is mostly a boring, instanced, single player game which has no soul. You really want that?

We don't know much about the gameplay in DF but if they can make it fluid and fun, graphics are acceptable. At least for me.

 

Just what we needed, yet another apologist thread for why it's ok that Darkfall looks so sub-par. The reason the graphics are ugly in this game has less to do with the "physical impossibility" of having both decent quality art and decent quality fluidity with large numbers of players, and more to do with the fact that Aventurine is a small dev team with no MMO experience working with the old, clunky code they wrote eight years ago on an indie game designed to appeal to UO fans who'd be happy with 8bit sprites and flashing lights so long as they're still allowed to loot, skin, rape and dance gleefully on the corpse of the guy they just ganked.

AoC took MMO graphics to the extreme, presumably in an attempt to make a game that would stand the test of time visually and thus continue to hold appeal for potential new players for some time to come. They failed for a variety of reasons, and misread the processing power of contemporary gaming machines (which they would have been trying to predict some years in advance when writing their code). But there's no reason why some satisfactory middle ground can't be found without having to look quite as B-grade as Darkfall currently seems to.

The real tragedy here is that most DF fans seem willing to sacrifice visual appeal so long as it guarantees that gameplay will be smooth with these mass 300+ vs 300+ (or whatever) battles everyone keeps talking about, and while that's not my personal preference it's certainly a legitimate choice to make. Yet while we've seen plenty of evidence of the graphics and animation being low-poly and dated, we have yet to see anything that might suggest that the promised mass battles will in fact be smooth, or even possible. On the contrary, the amount of skipping and glitching on display from that Italian vid of the beta with just one player fighting against one NPC mob in a completely empty zone presumably across an internal network is most certainly cause for concern.

actully the code is alot newer than yout hink more like 2003 if not newer by now. i dont think dynamic shadows came until 2007

Originally posted by downtoearth

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

...The reason the graphics are ugly in this game has less to do with the "physical impossibility" of having both decent quality art and decent quality fluidity with large numbers of players, and more to do with the fact that Aventurine is a small dev team with no MMO experience working with the old, clunky code they wrote eight years ago on an indie game designed to appeal to UO fans who'd be happy with 8bit sprites and flashing lights so long as they're still allowed to loot, skin, rape and dance gleefully on the corpse of the guy they just ganked.
 

actully the code is alot newer than yout hink more like 2003 if not newer by now. i dont think dynamic shadows came until 2007

It's pretty naive to assume that they completely flushed everything they'd done so far down the toilet back in 2003 when they changed their name and location. Sure many of the art assets and post-production effects will be newer, but these elements are probably just bolted onto the old groaning framework from 2001 or whenever this project first moved from paper to code.

But anyway, that was just an incidental comment forming part of the bigger problem - that visual sacrifices have been made, but we have yet to see (or even hear) confirmation that this has in fact enabled the smooth gameplay and mass battle action that DF fans constantly tout as key features of this game.

Video games reached the graphic level that is more than enough for me long time ago. It may look like EQ I i do not mind as far as I will have a real rpg  - meaning I will be force to make gameplay-driving choices in the game over those that are being serve in every mmorpg so far: do I take the quest to kill 20 wolfs or not...

This can lead to diferent reviews on games. For example:

- Game A review: the graphics are stunning and amazing. I really felt like I was walking inside the forest and stuff, but meh, the gameplay is horrible. There is no huge battle and I couldnt get past 30 minutes of play due to lack of gameplay.

- Game B review: the graphics are good, not a top end graphics if compared to Game A, but if compared to the medium games in market, it does it job. And man! The gameplay is amazing! I was in a huge battle with 500 on each side and I could feel what I felt when I was reading that epic book. Playing this game is so awesomesauce, it got me right on the toes! The interactivy, the character development, the monster AI all gets me stuck.

Now, is it possible to name Games A and B?

 I hope game B will come out soon 

I have complained a little about the graphics before, but what I really meant was the animations.They really need to work on those. Gameplay is always more important than graphics, the problem is we have not seen that much gameplay in the videos shown thus far. Hopefully that will be fixed soon.

Graphics are extremely low on my list of needs.

I want a good game. Well-thought mechanics, with lots of potential and opportunities.

Based on the nature of technology (i.e. Rock's Law), the smart developer upgrades graphics slowly,  after the game has been released, and only as soon as the average computer can handle it.

Age of Conan made a huge mistake. They limited their player base to people who had high-end graphic systems. WoW was smart, just about anybody can play their game. Luckily for AoC, as time progresses, we should all be able to play their MMO easily...assuming it still exists.

Darkfall, to me, is about open possibilities. I'm not limited to a class or a skillset. I can become whatever I like, so to speak. I just like the fact that it's concept is based on letting me create my character the way I like. And I gurantee you, that if the game works good, they can use their revenues to pay off more artists and graphic designers. And viola, better graphics.

I think darkfalls graphics aren't that bad compared to other MMOs, but compared to modern games of other genres they are horrible. I just think MMOs in general seem to have pretty poor graphics for some reason.

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

Originally posted by downtoearth

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

...The reason the graphics are ugly in this game has less to do with the "physical impossibility" of having both decent quality art and decent quality fluidity with large numbers of players, and more to do with the fact that Aventurine is a small dev team with no MMO experience working with the old, clunky code they wrote eight years ago on an indie game designed to appeal to UO fans who'd be happy with 8bit sprites and flashing lights so long as they're still allowed to loot, skin, rape and dance gleefully on the corpse of the guy they just ganked.
 

actully the code is alot newer than yout hink more like 2003 if not newer by now. i dont think dynamic shadows came until 2007

 

It's pretty naive to assume that they completely flushed everything they'd done so far down the toilet back in 2003 when they changed their name and location. Sure many of the art assets and post-production effects will be newer, but these elements are probably just bolted onto the old groaning framework from 2001 or whenever this project first moved from paper to code.

But anyway, that was just an incidental comment forming part of the bigger problem - that visual sacrifices have been made, but we have yet to see (or even hear) confirmation that this has in fact enabled the smooth gameplay and mass battle action that DF fans constantly tout as key features of this game.

WHEN did i say they flushed everything? and they completly redid there engien so it can be upgraded much easyer. hence why i say 2003 because to do that you have to rewrite most of the code
 you missed that august vid that showed decent size battles ?

you cant just tack on wya better gfx to an old engine why do you think AO has to upgrade there engine for there new gfx update. you just CANT

Good Graphics would be nice, but I'm not picking a game based on best graphics.  I want something that lets me play how I want to play .   I need more flexability in a game then the typical "Theme Park" dubted games.

Originally posted by FE|Tachyon

Good Graphics would be nice, but I'm not picking a game based on best graphics.  I want something that lets me play how I want to play .   I need more flexability in a game then the typical "Theme Park" dubted games.

the gfx are fine its just some animations but really if the game is fun and stable and smooth why does it matter?

Originally posted by downtoearth

Originally posted by FE|Tachyon

Good Graphics would be nice, but I'm not picking a game based on best graphics.  I want something that lets me play how I want to play .   I need more flexability in a game then the typical "Theme Park" dubted games.

 

the gfx are fine its just some animations but really if the game is fun and stable and smooth why does it matter?

I'm fine, with OK,  Graphics.   I just need a good game.

Originally posted by FE|Tachyon

Originally posted by downtoearth

Originally posted by FE|Tachyon

Good Graphics would be nice, but I'm not picking a game based on best graphics.  I want something that lets me play how I want to play .   I need more flexability in a game then the typical "Theme Park" dubted games.

 

the gfx are fine its just some animations but really if the game is fun and stable and smooth why does it matter?

 

I'm fine, with OK,  Graphics.   I just need a good game.

yea heh
 

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

Originally posted by downtoearth

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

...The reason the graphics are ugly in this game has less to do with the "physical impossibility" of having both decent quality art and decent quality fluidity with large numbers of players, and more to do with the fact that Aventurine is a small dev team with no MMO experience working with the old, clunky code they wrote eight years ago on an indie game designed to appeal to UO fans who'd be happy with 8bit sprites and flashing lights so long as they're still allowed to loot, skin, rape and dance gleefully on the corpse of the guy they just ganked.
 

actully the code is alot newer than yout hink more like 2003 if not newer by now. i dont think dynamic shadows came until 2007

 

It's pretty naive to assume that they completely flushed everything they'd done so far down the toilet back in 2003 when they changed their name and location. Sure many of the art assets and post-production effects will be newer, but these elements are probably just bolted onto the old groaning framework from 2001 or whenever this project first moved from paper to code.

But anyway, that was just an incidental comment forming part of the bigger problem - that visual sacrifices have been made, but we have yet to see (or even hear) confirmation that this has in fact enabled the smooth gameplay and mass battle action that DF fans constantly tout as key features of this game.

they have said many times the graphics are optomized for large battles and scale. Though yeah, I wish they did more play testing to account for REALL PEOPLE lag instead of test with AI and 10 payed beta testers.

However Gni said something like American servers up by January, so it won't be THAT big of a deal

Originally posted by rageagainst

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

Originally posted by downtoearth

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

...The reason the graphics are ugly in this game has less to do with the "physical impossibility" of having both decent quality art and decent quality fluidity with large numbers of players, and more to do with the fact that Aventurine is a small dev team with no MMO experience working with the old, clunky code they wrote eight years ago on an indie game designed to appeal to UO fans who'd be happy with 8bit sprites and flashing lights so long as they're still allowed to loot, skin, rape and dance gleefully on the corpse of the guy they just ganked.
 

actully the code is alot newer than yout hink more like 2003 if not newer by now. i dont think dynamic shadows came until 2007

 

It's pretty naive to assume that they completely flushed everything they'd done so far down the toilet back in 2003 when they changed their name and location. Sure many of the art assets and post-production effects will be newer, but these elements are probably just bolted onto the old groaning framework from 2001 or whenever this project first moved from paper to code.

But anyway, that was just an incidental comment forming part of the bigger problem - that visual sacrifices have been made, but we have yet to see (or even hear) confirmation that this has in fact enabled the smooth gameplay and mass battle action that DF fans constantly tout as key features of this game.

 

they have said many times the graphics are optomized for large battles and scale. Though yeah, I wish they did more play testing to account for REALL PEOPLE lag instead of test with AI and 10 payed beta testers.

 

However Gni said something like American servers up by January, so it won't be THAT big of a deal

theres alot more testers than that tho it mite only be 10-50 public testers but count allt eh devs /multiplae clients per computer plus ai i think they know whats gooing on but probly have a few more things to work on