Personally I do think the characters are a bit boxy looking and the animations are a bit stiff, but the overall art design and environments are great and lend to the feel of the game. 

It looks and feels desolate as you wander around, dead broke, looking for a copper deposit so you can make more ammo for your zip gun while whacking bandits to death with a 2x4 because they stand between you and your goal.

It's not shiny, but it does look good. 

Graphics are ok; Animation needs allot of work though ...especially death animation.
One thing I don’t like is when you go first person it looks like you have child hands

Originally posted by Hypodermica

So, before I bought this game a week ago I came to MMORPG.COM to see what the fuss is about.  I read the professional reviews and checked out the MMORPG user's ratings.  Here and there I noticed quite a few complaints about the graphics.  Hell, I've even read a few loyal fans of the game say things like "if you can get past the graphics, the gameplay is awesome". 

I was turned off.  I read that the graphics engine was made by some small, unknown company and that the engine is dated.  I was sad to see this.  Being someone with a 42 inch LCD and a nice rig, along with a full surround sound system... I was loosing interest real fast!  Now I know I know... graphics are not everything but it sure is sad to see a sexy setup like mine not getting to use it's full potential, especially when the game just came out!  Well, they say you shouldn't believe everything you read.

Well, what the heck.  I'm just not interested in many other MMO's and I need something unique, sci-fi, and involving.  So, I've given Fallen Earth a chance.

I installed, patched up, grabbed a cup of coffee along with a fresh new pack of smokes and devoted an evening to this so called "bad graphics" and "good gamplay" MMORPG... Fallen Earth.

So, what do I think of the graphics?  

 

:::::THE GRAPHICS DO NOT SUCK::::::::

 

No, i'm not some in-denial fanboy thankyouvermuch.  I'm a realist and sometimes a pessimist.  But when I read the following quotes from MMORPG's Rating section on this here game, I get confused:

wolf11223 writes:  Graphics are horrible.

markt50 writes:   ... it's graphics look dated...

Getalife writes:   If you can get past dated graphics...

 

Well... I figured I should try to figure this problem out.  Maybe it's just a perception issue. 

To figure it out I took screen shots off of MMORPG from 6 of the most popular/top-rated games and put them all into one big PNG file.  Here are the games I chose:

1.  Lord of The Rings Online (Voted #1 here on MMORPG)

2.  Atlantica (Voted #2 and I've seen it #1 a few times)

3.  Fallen Earth (Voted #3 Currently and #2 most popular based on the number of hits)

4.  EVE Online (Voted #4 but has been as high as #1)

5.  Aion (Voted #5 and #1 most popular based on hits)

6.  WoW (The most finacially successful MMO ever made)

So... we have some of the biggest, best, most successful, newest, and highly beloved games.  Have a look at them all together, side-by-side like a bunch of bimbos at a beauty pagent and you tell me that Fallen Earth's graphics are an epic failure sitting right next to the super-stars.

HERE is the Flickr link to the 2.83mb PNG file showing all 6 MMO's.  I highly recommend you download the full sized image and take a good hard look...

I know it's really, just a matter of opinion but FE looks fantastic next to the others.  Aion looks great, but for me it's not realistic looking and the style is not to my taste.  WoW is horrible, nuff said.  EVE looks great, but in it's own kind of way.  Atlantica doesn't impress me... are his feet floating above the ground? Seems like the character models don't meld well with the ground textures to me.  LOTRO looks "good" and you can't go wrong with Tolkien's imagination.  As far as realism goes, FE wins.  As far as detail and style, FE / EVE / Aion win.

Either way, even if you think a couple of the other games have better graphics... I see no validity to the complains about OMG HORRIBLE GRAPHICS!!  FE looks great, and on my 42ihnch LCD, I'm truly in the grand canyon, and the world I'm in is a beautiful, disgusting, real, and gritty world!

If all you look for is graphic's in a MMO then your only real options are going to be Aion/Aoc/War. Graphic dont make a game good, AoC is one good reasion to look at that.

I think the graphics in FE are just fine. It's the sound and animations that need work.

Originally posted by nightbird305

But all in all mate, you have no idea how game engines and databases work it seems. Displaying unique clothing on characters is not the hard part, the thing which takes the longest is loading the actual textures for the clothes, which is something that several engines already have a solution for (refer to unreal 3 playable mesh).

So its not the clothes that take the work to display its the textures on those clothes...

You do realize that you can't really have clothing without textures right?

Sorry I actually read your run on paragraph and I can say without a doubt you have no idea what you are saying yourself.

Originally posted by Laughing-man

Originally posted by nightbird305

But all in all mate, you have no idea how game engines and databases work it seems. Displaying unique clothing on characters is not the hard part, the thing which takes the longest is loading the actual textures for the clothes, which is something that several engines already have a solution for (refer to unreal 3 playable mesh).

 

So its not the clothes that take the work to display its the textures on those clothes...

You do realize that you can't really have clothing without textures right?

Sorry I actually read your run on paragraph and I can say without a doubt you have no idea what you are saying yourself.

Sir, do you know what a mesh is? Meshes are the skeletons for everything graphical, and textures are pictures, pictures which are loaded and put onto meshes.

My point was that meshes take less time to load compared to textures (since they are rendered), and more and more game engines allow the user to play with characters whose textures arn't fully loaded yet (the textures appear like a low res images). This is apparent in games like mass effect where armor textures may be loaded while playing the game (mainly apparent on slower PCs and on the Xbox 360). All in all, this technique of loading the textures on the go allow for a more fluid performance, and is ideal for scenarios where you have a lot of characters (Such as MMO's).

I'm not sure how I could make this any clearer.

So you are saying that the Mesh and Texture are different.  Which I completely agree with and understand, however you are splitting hairs I'm afraid, you said that its not the clothing that is taking so long to render its the texture of the clothing, you can't have one without the other.

My point is when you said "its not the clothing that is difficult to load"  you were wrong, it is in fact the clothing, because the Mesh and the Texture BOTH make up the clothing, so yes, making specific clothing with specific details will be harder to render and therefor take more computing power.

Why argue semantics? 

I mean can you have clothing without mesh?  Can you have clothing without Texture?  No...

Hence he was correct in saying that detailed clothing was what would cause extra computing time / extra work to create.

 Alright I'm not gonna bother going on cause you've all clearly  lost the point of the original discussion. My overall point was that high end graphics, the ones you see in single player games, are achievable in MMOs and are currently being developed as we speak. 

The some examples of this include Stargate online with the unreal 3 engine and Aion with the Farcry 1 engine. 

Originally posted by Laughing-man

So you are saying that the Mesh and Texture are different.  Which I completely agree with and understand, however you are splitting hairs I'm afraid, you said that its not the clothing that is taking so long to render its the texture of the clothing, you can't have one without the other.

My point is when you said "its not the clothing that is difficult to load"  you were wrong, it is in fact the clothing, because the Mesh and the Texture BOTH make up the clothing, so yes, making specific clothing with specific details will be harder to render and therefor take more computing power.

Why argue semantics? 

I mean can you have clothing without mesh?  Can you have clothing without Texture?  No...

Hence he was correct in saying that detailed clothing was what would cause extra computing time / extra work to create.

 

You are still missing my point. The point is not whether or not the overall process of loading clothing takes a long time, it is that the actual task of loading the clothes will not occur at once but rather over a period of time, allowing the computer to take its time to load what it needs, without having to stress the cpu/gpu to the max, which is very fitting for a scenario where the computer has to load of lot of characters. 

As mentioned by another user "What would you rather have? Long load times to cache each texture, or short load times with dynamic caching of the textures as needed? Not to mention, it affects more than just load times, including in-game fps, time to go from one area to another, detail of the environments, etc."

Tbh I think my attempt to explain it at a non technical level is what brought us here, but in the end what I'm saying is not bullshit but rather a technique that's actively being used. I'm also sorry if all my text has been confusing, but it tends to happen when these discussions just go on and on :).

Honestly, it isn't the graphics... eye candy wise...

What the underlying problem is visually is the animation, ui and overal clunky feel to the moving and selecting items, etc.

The game went leaps and bounds from closed beta to open beta/stress... but still...  Expections are what they are from folks.

Originally posted by afoaa

I wonder how many of the badmouthers have actually tried to tweak up their graphic settings, the game automatically starts at low settings no matter how good a rig you got and you have to manually set the settings up to a lvl your computer can handle.

I got a 2.67 Ghz I7 with a GTX 260 card and a 32 bit XP (for 3 weeks more) and still it set my settings to low, but once everything was maxed to 100% and all turned on, all of a sudden you had dynamic shadows playing across persons and any surface, the light was amazing, the visual range much longer than most other MMOs and the details damn!

The only MMO I have ever played that have had better graphics is AoC, anything else is behind FE in quality (and no I haven't played Aion).

Edit: Check out this vid if you badmouth the animations: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj6tHgLWMMc

Dude I seriously thought this was some animators demo video.

Damn thats issome really nice character animations

Originally posted by nightbird305

My point was that meshes take less time to load compared to textures (since they are rendered), and more and more game engines allow the user to play with characters whose textures arn't fully loaded yet (the textures appear like a low res images). This is apparent in games like mass effect where armor textures may be loaded while playing the game (mainly apparent on slower PCs and on the Xbox 360). All in all, this technique of loading the textures on the go allow for a more fluid performance, and is ideal for scenarios where you have a lot of characters (Such as MMO's).

 Alright I'm not gonna bother going on cause you've all clearly  lost the point of the original discussion. My overall point was that high end graphics, the ones you see in single player games, are achievable in MMOs and are currently being developed as we speak. 

The some examples of this include Stargate online with the unreal 3 engine and Aion with the Farcry 1 engine. 

Like done in this image. You are alse admitting with the thing I underlined in the first quote that there is more into what you said in the second quote. Yes they do look fine when they finally are loaded. On the other hand this is actually done on characters in FE aswell.

Originally posted by Laughing-man

So you are saying that the Mesh and Texture are different.  Which I completely agree with and understand, however you are splitting hairs I'm afraid, you said that its not the clothing that is taking so long to render its the texture of the clothing, you can't have one without the other.

My point is when you said "its not the clothing that is difficult to load"  you were wrong, it is in fact the clothing, because the Mesh and the Texture BOTH make up the clothing, so yes, making specific clothing with specific details will be harder to render and therefor take more computing power.

Why argue semantics? 

I mean can you have clothing without mesh?  Can you have clothing without Texture?  No...

Hence he was correct in saying that detailed clothing was what would cause extra computing time / extra work to create.

 

Thanks, this was precisely my point, but I did not take the breath to explain, as the young fellow will always be completely right, and we will be wrong.

I know, I was the same at that age :)

Peace out!

DB

Originally posted by nightbird305

 Alright I'm not gonna bother going on cause you've all clearly  lost the point of the original discussion. My overall point was that high end graphics, the ones you see in single player games, are achievable in MMOs and are currently being developed as we speak. 

The some examples of this include Stargate online with the unreal 3 engine and Aion with the Farcry 1 engine. 

I can believe that top edge graphics is possible in MMO's, but I also believe there must be a reason why all current MMO's have much less spectacular graphics than single player games. I still refuse to accept that the same can be achieved for both, and I also believe the reasons are technical, both on direct and deeper levels (direct being programming and technological level, like the background mesh/texture loading methods you talked about, and deeper, less direct ways like the general time it takes to develop an MMO.). Not all companies can licence the famous U3 technology, but again: tell me one currently released MMO that is on the same gfx level as Crysis, or just, say, Mass Effect? Yes, those MMO's will come, thankfully, but by that time, single players game will already be on the next level. This was my point, and it will be, you can argue as much as you want but unless it is proven otherwise by life (said MMO is nott released), it is what it is.

DB

Edit: BTW, if you wish to argue and also sound creditable, i advise not to make fun of obvious typo's, also not keep banging your chest saying how good you are in what you are talking about.... it's called e-peen, and it's just lame, that's all (and you'll never know who you're arguing with) :)

Originally posted by DonnieBrasco

Originally posted by nightbird305

 Alright I'm not gonna bother going on cause you've all clearly  lost the point of the original discussion. My overall point was that high end graphics, the ones you see in single player games, are achievable in MMOs and are currently being developed as we speak. 

The some examples of this include Stargate online with the unreal 3 engine and Aion with the Farcry 1 engine. 

 

I can believe that top edge graphics is possible in MMO's, but I also believe there must be a reason why all current MMO's have much less spectacular graphics than single player games. I still refuse to accept that the same can be achieved for both, and I also believe the reasons are technical, both on direct and deeper levels (direct being programming and technological level, like the background mesh/texture loading methods you talked about, and deeper, less direct ways like the general time it takes to develop an MMO.). Not all companies can licence the famous U3 technology, but again: tell me one currently released MMO that is on the same gfx level as Crysis, or just, say, Mass Effect? Yes, those MMO's will come, thankfully, but by that time, single players game will already be on the next level. This was my point, and it will be, you can argue as much as you want but unless it is proven otherwise by life (said MMO is nott released), it is what it is.

DB

Edit: BTW, if you wish to argue and also sound creditable, i advise not to make fun of obvious typo's, also not keep banging your chest saying how good you are in what you are talking about.... it's called e-peen, and it's just lame, that's all (and you'll never know who you're arguing with) :)

All of this comes down to one thing, are mmos with high graphics achievable? And the answer still is "yes". 

There are several reasons why a company doesn't use high end graphics though, perhaps they, like you said, dont have the money to license an engine and thus make their own (Fallen Earth), or perhaps they wanted to use an older, cheaper engine (Aion). I think one of the major reasons why people believe that high end MMOs aren't released, is due to most people not having a PC powerful enough to run them. It's a fair assumption, but tbh, looking at out past we have several companies who have licensed high end engines, but they all seem to go bankrupt before they can finish/release them. If only one of these companies had released their game, then we wouldn't be having this conversation :P. 

The engine in crysis is currently one which is constantly being optimized to fit lower end PCs, without losing too much eye candy. The engine, in it's original state, would never have worked in an mmo since you would've lagged like f*"** :). But yeah, Crysis is near the peak of this gens graphics,and yep there are no MMOs on that level just yet, though NCSoft has licensed the CryEngine 2 for one of their upcoming MMOs (Blade and soul). All in all, MMOs with high end graphics are right around the corner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-y20gIDHlE 

NB

BTW: lol? Make fun of typos? You said "But even if it was, name one successful indepentend multiplayer shooter game (besides CS, lol)....", I'm sure you ment to say "Independent", but even then I wasn't sure what you ment by indenpendent shooter, so I just gave you a list of games. Maybe You should be clearer?
Banged my chest? Hahaha. I have a background in this field, everything I've been saying has been legit, I'm sorry if you have trouble believing it :)

Originally posted by Orphes

Originally posted by nightbird305

My point was that meshes take less time to load compared to textures (since they are rendered), and more and more game engines allow the user to play with characters whose textures arn't fully loaded yet (the textures appear like a low res images). This is apparent in games like mass effect where armor textures may be loaded while playing the game (mainly apparent on slower PCs and on the Xbox 360). All in all, this technique of loading the textures on the go allow for a more fluid performance, and is ideal for scenarios where you have a lot of characters (Such as MMO's).

 Alright I'm not gonna bother going on cause you've all clearly  lost the point of the original discussion. My overall point was that high end graphics, the ones you see in single player games, are achievable in MMOs and are currently being developed as we speak. 

The some examples of this include Stargate online with the unreal 3 engine and Aion with the Farcry 1 engine. 

 

Like done in this image. You are alse admitting with the thing I underlined in the first quote that there is more into what you said in the second quote. Yes they do look fine when they finally are loaded. On the other hand this is actually done on characters in FE aswell.

Yeah this is exactly what I ment. The original point of bringing this up was to show that there are techniques out there that make high end games more feasible in mmos, even though it does make the game look like shit :P.

Originally posted by nightbird305

Originally posted by DonnieBrasco

Originally posted by nightbird305

 Alright I'm not gonna bother going on cause you've all clearly  lost the point of the original discussion. My overall point was that high end graphics, the ones you see in single player games, are achievable in MMOs and are currently being developed as we speak. 

The some examples of this include Stargate online with the unreal 3 engine and Aion with the Farcry 1 engine. 

 

I can believe that top edge graphics is possible in MMO's, but I also believe there must be a reason why all current MMO's have much less spectacular graphics than single player games. I still refuse to accept that the same can be achieved for both, and I also believe the reasons are technical, both on direct and deeper levels (direct being programming and technological level, like the background mesh/texture loading methods you talked about, and deeper, less direct ways like the general time it takes to develop an MMO.). Not all companies can licence the famous U3 technology, but again: tell me one currently released MMO that is on the same gfx level as Crysis, or just, say, Mass Effect? Yes, those MMO's will come, thankfully, but by that time, single players game will already be on the next level. This was my point, and it will be, you can argue as much as you want but unless it is proven otherwise by life (said MMO is nott released), it is what it is.

DB

Edit: BTW, if you wish to argue and also sound creditable, i advise not to make fun of obvious typo's, also not keep banging your chest saying how good you are in what you are talking about.... it's called e-peen, and it's just lame, that's all (and you'll never know who you're arguing with) :)

All of this comes down to one thing, are mmos with high graphics achievable? And the answer still is "yes". 

There are several reasons why a company doesn't use high end graphics though, perhaps they, like you said, dont have the money to license an engine and thus make their own (Fallen Earth), or perhaps they wanted to use an older, cheaper engine (Aion). I think one of the major reasons why people believe that high end MMOs aren't released, is due to most people not having a PC powerful enough to run them. It's a fair assumption, but tbh, looking at out past we have several companies who have licensed high end engines, but they all seem to go bankrupt before they can finish/release them. If only one of these companies had released their game, then we wouldn't be having this conversation :P. 

The engine in crysis is currently one which is constantly being optimized to fit lower end PCs, without losing too much eye candy. The engine, in it's original state, would never have worked in an mmo since you would've lagged like f*"** :). But yeah, Crysis is near the peak of this gens graphics,and yep there are no MMOs on that level just yet, though NCSoft has licensed the CryEngine 2 for one of their upcoming MMOs (Blade and soul). All in all, MMOs with high end graphics are right around the corner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-y20gIDHlE 

NB

BTW: lol? Make fun of typos? You said "But even if it was, name one successful indepentend multiplayer shooter game (besides CS, lol)....", I'm sure you ment to say "Independent", but even then I wasn't sure what you ment by indenpendent shooter, so I just gave you a list of games. Maybe You should be clearer?
Banged my chest? Hahaha. I have a background in this field, everything I've been saying has been legit, I'm sorry if you have trouble believing it :)

 

I think we are somewhat closing to a common understanding on the original topic, although will not agree on some points, but that is fine - life would be boring otherwise. :) On the PS part though, you don't actually realize what you're doing, so I'll not explain it again. I have never said I don't believe in what you say or what you know, I just said that this kind of thing does not validate your posts here. At all. On the contrary.... makes it just worse...:) Take it or leave - this is just a forum anyways!

DB

Originally posted by DonnieBrasco

Originally posted by nightbird305

Originally posted by DonnieBrasco

Originally posted by nightbird305

 Alright I'm not gonna bother going on cause you've all clearly  lost the point of the original discussion. My overall point was that high end graphics, the ones you see in single player games, are achievable in MMOs and are currently being developed as we speak. 

The some examples of this include Stargate online with the unreal 3 engine and Aion with the Farcry 1 engine. 

 

I can believe that top edge graphics is possible in MMO's, but I also believe there must be a reason why all current MMO's have much less spectacular graphics than single player games. I still refuse to accept that the same can be achieved for both, and I also believe the reasons are technical, both on direct and deeper levels (direct being programming and technological level, like the background mesh/texture loading methods you talked about, and deeper, less direct ways like the general time it takes to develop an MMO.). Not all companies can licence the famous U3 technology, but again: tell me one currently released MMO that is on the same gfx level as Crysis, or just, say, Mass Effect? Yes, those MMO's will come, thankfully, but by that time, single players game will already be on the next level. This was my point, and it will be, you can argue as much as you want but unless it is proven otherwise by life (said MMO is nott released), it is what it is.

DB

Edit: BTW, if you wish to argue and also sound creditable, i advise not to make fun of obvious typo's, also not keep banging your chest saying how good you are in what you are talking about.... it's called e-peen, and it's just lame, that's all (and you'll never know who you're arguing with) :)

All of this comes down to one thing, are mmos with high graphics achievable? And the answer still is "yes". 

There are several reasons why a company doesn't use high end graphics though, perhaps they, like you said, dont have the money to license an engine and thus make their own (Fallen Earth), or perhaps they wanted to use an older, cheaper engine (Aion). I think one of the major reasons why people believe that high end MMOs aren't released, is due to most people not having a PC powerful enough to run them. It's a fair assumption, but tbh, looking at out past we have several companies who have licensed high end engines, but they all seem to go bankrupt before they can finish/release them. If only one of these companies had released their game, then we wouldn't be having this conversation :P. 

The engine in crysis is currently one which is constantly being optimized to fit lower end PCs, without losing too much eye candy. The engine, in it's original state, would never have worked in an mmo since you would've lagged like f*"** :). But yeah, Crysis is near the peak of this gens graphics,and yep there are no MMOs on that level just yet, though NCSoft has licensed the CryEngine 2 for one of their upcoming MMOs (Blade and soul). All in all, MMOs with high end graphics are right around the corner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-y20gIDHlE 

NB

BTW: lol? Make fun of typos? You said "But even if it was, name one successful indepentend multiplayer shooter game (besides CS, lol)....", I'm sure you ment to say "Independent", but even then I wasn't sure what you ment by indenpendent shooter, so I just gave you a list of games. Maybe You should be clearer?
Banged my chest? Hahaha. I have a background in this field, everything I've been saying has been legit, I'm sorry if you have trouble believing it :)

 

 

I think we are somewhat closing to a common understanding on the original topic, although will not agree on some points, but that is fine - life would be boring otherwise. :) On the PS part though, you don't actually realize what you're doing, so I'll not explain it again. I have never said I don't believe in what you say or what you know, I just said that this kind of thing does not validate your posts here. At all. On the contrary.... makes it just worse...:) Take it or leave - this is just a forum anyways!

DB

Fair enough :)

Originally posted by Orphes

Like done in this image. You are alse admitting with the thing I underlined in the first quote that there is more into what you said in the second quote. Yes they do look fine when they finally are loaded. On the other hand this is actually done on characters in FE aswell.

This image perfectly illustrates one of the reasons why people feel this game's graphics suck.  I think the reasons for not liking the graphics are summed up in the following:

1.  Textures look bad and are not rendered quickly enough until you are standing right in front of them.  Textures are vastly important.

2.  The graphics and animations do not justify the system requirements needed to put this game on "high" settings.

3.  The world of FE occurs in a location that lacks color, vibrance, and variety.  Especially true in the first areas of the game designed for lower level players.  Sector 1 and most of Sector 2.

4.  The graphics run through an unappealing filter when you turn on "Post FX"  in the graphics/settings menu and this filter strips some of the vibrance and color out of the imagery. 

5.  Animations are not where they should be in terms of quality or even quantity.  They lack in complexity, beauty, and are choppy.

I think that sums it up.  Still, I think the opinions being expressed are sometimes over-exaggerating the problem.  Those who complain are:

A.  Using a system that will not allow for higher quality graphical settings.  In part this is not the person's fault, but due to an unjustified high-end system requirement.

B.  Do not like the "style" of dirty, dusty, apocolyptic desert-like environments as opposed to the bright and vibrant colors found in games such as Aion.

C.  Have not experienced enough of the game to see the other areas which would give the critic a better taste of what's in the game.

My proposed solution to this complaint along with the problems reported in system-side lagging are:

1.  Optimize the games graphics engine.  It's not utilizing resources properly or is using too many

2.  Kill the "Post FX" filter which dulls the world around you.

3.  Add weather and environmental effects such as, rain, sleet, dust storms, or even snow.

4.  Add seasonal affects.

5.  Add more color to items in the game such as cars where the paint on them is dull,  how about bright red, trashed stop signs, armor paints, small hidden oasis-like valleys with water, flora, and other stuff.   The list could go on and on.

6.  Improve animations in general.  I think they are too simple and plain.  Add some variety.  Does everyone always die in the same manner?  

7.  Add some blood!  Cmon man, this isn't a kiddy game!  Where are the blood and guts!?  

What do you guys/gals think?