4 ms·

I am going to rant about graphics here. The graphics on this game look 8 years old. A game doesn't need to look fantastic to be good but surely a new game shoul

by bobsy 14y ago

I am going to rant about graphics here. The graphics on this game look 8 years old. A game doesn't need to look fantastic to be good but surely a new game should have good graphics. I am not talking about realistic graphics. Simply esthetically pleasing graphics. The graphics in the video look like something from runescape... Looking elsewhere. Is this game not called 'Ultima Online' because Garriot doesn't own the rights? A sequel in all but name? While the vision sounds promising I worry about broader appeal. Who is this game for? Tabula Rasa failed pretty badly. I don't quite see the appeal of this game. Most MMO's have a clear goal. Even if that is the same. "Level up, do quests, reach new areas, get gear." Perhaps I misunderstand but the goal of this game seems to be 'explore for yourself.' I don't think that is enough to pull people in. I have played the Ultima series. I still give Ultima Online a spin every couple of months and this new game doesn't pull me in.. The video left me feeling like the game is a time sink without getting the reward of getting little achievements like gaining levels and discovering new gear. The very things that make such games addictive. When I saw the title my first thought was "TAKE ALL MY MONEY NOW." After seeing the video I think perhaps there is a reason why EA didn't take the franchise further.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
moron4hire 14y ago
The quality of graphics that we see in modern games has more to do with art assets then with programming of the game engine. Take a close look at the surroundings in your next game session. Every single thing in the game at some point had to be modeled by a person. When you're just starting with a project, you don't have those various and detailed models available. What you saw here was the "programmer art" version, which is actually pretty good for programmer art. And apparently "explore for yourself" worked for Minecraft. Any style of game can be successful, it just takes a good gameplay element on top of it to make it.
- bobsy 14y ago
  Really? Everything is modeled by a person? I thought it was done with magic. I haven't heard of programmer art. Why would a programmer work on models? Perhaps the game demo is using stock models or something but it seems strange that you would have prototypes and a demo like this with no artistic direction implemented. I am not sure what exactly you think this has in common with Minecraft.
  - moron4hire 14y ago
    le sigh. I'm not even really sure how to reply to you, because there seems to be a complete lack of common ground here. Let me try again. Garriot programmer. Garriot not artist. Garriot no choose art direction. Garriot just want to make program. Garriot just use whatever model laying around on hard drive. No, it's not strange to create prototypes without choosing an art direction. Games are typically products of real substance. They aren't your random Rails+Illustrator startup making something flashy and pretty, banking on everyone being distracted by their "elegance" long enough to make a few bucks before the users realize they offer nothing of real substance. Art in a game is content. You can substitute any content into the game and the gameplay will be unaffected. If the game can stand on its own with unattractive content, then it will be even better with pretty content. If a game needs pretty content to catch your attention, then it's probably not a good game. And that is where game projects fail, when they don't offer anything of substance. My point about Minecraft was that your point about "exploring on your own" not being a good concept for a game didn't hold water. A game concept can be anything, if you make it substantial.
    - NuZZ 14y ago
      Yes but surely Garriot isn't completely naive as to think we won't judge the graphics and the game poorly as a result, as he doesn't choose to mention or confirm that said graphics are placeholder. I think the graphical engine they're using, the shading, the models, are trite, including the UX design - and it sucks, because if it doesn't improve the game won't be worth most peoples time. Runescape, graphically, in 2013 doesn't seem too appealing!
      - 14y ago
robertfw 14y ago
It has the word PROTOTYPE on the screenshots. I wish my prototypes looked that good!
roc 14y ago
> "The video left me feeling like the game is a time sink without getting the reward of getting little achievements like gaining levels and discovering new gear. The very things that make such games addictive." Those are the things that made DIKU MUDs addictive. And graphical MMOs have definitely been successful largely to the degree that they effectively incorporated such designs. [1] The largest MMO audience clearly prefers that experience. (And the popularity of F2P suggests the preference for that kind of design holds for more than just MMO games.) But that was never the attraction of UO [1]. Nor was it even a minor part of what attracted people to the Ultima series overall. And despite almost certainly being a minority, there remains a non-trivial segment of the potential MMO audience that at least claims to want an exploration-based world, rather than a DIKU-style amusement park. I can see where someone who prefers an 'amusement park' design wouldn't be interested in this. But I can't really see why anyone would expect that sort of thing from Garriott. The game described is pretty much exactly what I imagined when I read the headline. [2] [1] At least UO wasn't anywhere close to that when Garriott was even remotely involved. Though I'll admit I have no idea where the game went after the first couple years. [2] That said, I'm quite skeptical and bearish on its chances overall. The stated design reads like the same wish-list that a dozen games have started with. Each whittling down said list to a far more narrow scope, giving up on many hopes of 'another way' for tried-and-true DIKU-style elements, and ultimately still collapsing under the primary challenge of trying to balance the PvP experience to actually be meaningful without it being overwhelmingly defined by the griefing. PvP alone is the key feature such devs refuse to push off the launch feature list but almost universally kills these games before they deliver an acceptable design.
WA 14y ago
Yeah, the graphics should better be like 16 years old. God, I loved the look of the old Ultima Online in its pixel detail beauty.
adventured 14y ago
Imagine how poorly something like Minecraft would sell today. Minecraft was amazing when it was released with a 256 color palette in 1993, but nobody would go for that today. People want graphics, not great gameplay... No, they want great gameplay first, and great graphics second. That has always been true and will always be true.
- bobsy 14y ago
  What is wrong with the Minecraft? The game has a blocky style to it. The artistic direction of the game suits it perfectly. The issue I have is that this game appears to have no graphical style or artistic direction. It looks like an incredibly generic low poly-count 3d game. Sure these are only prototypes but surely you wouldn't get this far into development with models completely unrelated to the finished product?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - RobotCaleb 14y ago
    It was sarcasm.
- smrtinsert 14y ago
  Minecraft took an obvious stand against graphics, kind of like someone who purposefully doesn't comb their hair in the morning and it looks awesome. These graphics just look uninspired, like they never made the jump to modern lighting techniques or shaders. Even one man jobs have more interesting visuals. I agree, the graphics need to be updated.
- coopdog 14y ago
  Minecraft has pretty interesting terrain, whereas this kind of looks.... flat, like a table with a few objects added onto it, but you can still see the flatness. I still backed it, hopefully they shake the terrain up a little and add some more shrubs.

by bobsy 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

moron4hire 14y ago

The quality of graphics that we see in modern games has more to do with art assets then with programming of the game engine. Take a close look at the surroundings in your next game session. Every single thing in the game at some point had to be modeled by a person. When you're just starting with a project, you don't have those various and detailed models available. What you saw here was the "programmer art" version, which is actually pretty good for programmer art. And apparently "explore for yourself" worked for Minecraft. Any style of game can be successful, it just takes a good gameplay element on top of it to make it.

bobsy 14y ago
Really? Everything is modeled by a person? I thought it was done with magic. I haven't heard of programmer art. Why would a programmer work on models? Perhaps the game demo is using stock models or something but it seems strange that you would have prototypes and a demo like this with no artistic direction implemented. I am not sure what exactly you think this has in common with Minecraft.
- moron4hire 14y ago
  le sigh. I'm not even really sure how to reply to you, because there seems to be a complete lack of common ground here. Let me try again. Garriot programmer. Garriot not artist. Garriot no choose art direction. Garriot just want to make program. Garriot just use whatever model laying around on hard drive. No, it's not strange to create prototypes without choosing an art direction. Games are typically products of real substance. They aren't your random Rails+Illustrator startup making something flashy and pretty, banking on everyone being distracted by their "elegance" long enough to make a few bucks before the users realize they offer nothing of real substance. Art in a game is content. You can substitute any content into the game and the gameplay will be unaffected. If the game can stand on its own with unattractive content, then it will be even better with pretty content. If a game needs pretty content to catch your attention, then it's probably not a good game. And that is where game projects fail, when they don't offer anything of substance. My point about Minecraft was that your point about "exploring on your own" not being a good concept for a game didn't hold water. A game concept can be anything, if you make it substantial.
  - NuZZ 14y ago
    Yes but surely Garriot isn't completely naive as to think we won't judge the graphics and the game poorly as a result, as he doesn't choose to mention or confirm that said graphics are placeholder. I think the graphical engine they're using, the shading, the models, are trite, including the UX design - and it sucks, because if it doesn't improve the game won't be worth most peoples time. Runescape, graphically, in 2013 doesn't seem too appealing!
    - 14y ago

robertfw 14y ago

It has the word PROTOTYPE on the screenshots. I wish my prototypes looked that good!

roc 14y ago

> "The video left me feeling like the game is a time sink without getting the reward of getting little achievements like gaining levels and discovering new gear. The very things that make such games addictive." Those are the things that made DIKU MUDs addictive. And graphical MMOs have definitely been successful largely to the degree that they effectively incorporated such designs. [1] The largest MMO audience clearly prefers that experience. (And the popularity of F2P suggests the preference for that kind of design holds for more than just MMO games.) But that was never the attraction of UO [1]. Nor was it even a minor part of what attracted people to the Ultima series overall. And despite almost certainly being a minority, there remains a non-trivial segment of the potential MMO audience that at least claims to want an exploration-based world, rather than a DIKU-style amusement park. I can see where someone who prefers an 'amusement park' design wouldn't be interested in this. But I can't really see why anyone would expect that sort of thing from Garriott. The game described is pretty much exactly what I imagined when I read the headline. [2] [1] At least UO wasn't anywhere close to that when Garriott was even remotely involved. Though I'll admit I have no idea where the game went after the first couple years. [2] That said, I'm quite skeptical and bearish on its chances overall. The stated design reads like the same wish-list that a dozen games have started with. Each whittling down said list to a far more narrow scope, giving up on many hopes of 'another way' for tried-and-true DIKU-style elements, and ultimately still collapsing under the primary challenge of trying to balance the PvP experience to actually be meaningful without it being overwhelmingly defined by the griefing. PvP alone is the key feature such devs refuse to push off the launch feature list but almost universally kills these games before they deliver an acceptable design.

WA 14y ago

Yeah, the graphics should better be like 16 years old. God, I loved the look of the old Ultima Online in its pixel detail beauty.

adventured 14y ago

Imagine how poorly something like Minecraft would sell today. Minecraft was amazing when it was released with a 256 color palette in 1993, but nobody would go for that today. People want graphics, not great gameplay... No, they want great gameplay first, and great graphics second. That has always been true and will always be true.

bobsy 14y ago
What is wrong with the Minecraft? The game has a blocky style to it. The artistic direction of the game suits it perfectly. The issue I have is that this game appears to have no graphical style or artistic direction. It looks like an incredibly generic low poly-count 3d game. Sure these are only prototypes but surely you wouldn't get this far into development with models completely unrelated to the finished product?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- RobotCaleb 14y ago
  It was sarcasm.
smrtinsert 14y ago
Minecraft took an obvious stand against graphics, kind of like someone who purposefully doesn't comb their hair in the morning and it looks awesome. These graphics just look uninspired, like they never made the jump to modern lighting techniques or shaders. Even one man jobs have more interesting visuals. I agree, the graphics need to be updated.
coopdog 14y ago
Minecraft has pretty interesting terrain, whereas this kind of looks.... flat, like a table with a few objects added onto it, but you can still see the flatness. I still backed it, hopefully they shake the terrain up a little and add some more shrubs.