The "shinny" factor...

[unmerged(76922)]

I think that the OP is convinced somehow that good graphics and good gameplay are mutually exclusive. Graphics are done by the art department mainly while the actual engine is done by the programmers, and UI done by the UI designers, etc. Now obviously when everything is integrated together, there is a lot of interaction, but I maintain that it is possible to have both good graphics and good game play ... in fact it is one of the hallmarks of a good game.

The mutually exclusive bit already came up, I already refuted it. Don't think that at all. What I'm talking/thinking about is something like this:
Total budget for game is 1000. 250 is allocated to graphics, 750 to 'rest' of the game. The 'rest' portion has issues, as we all clearly recognize at this point. Would shifting 50 or 100 from graphics to rest have allowed then to deal with the shortfalls in "rest"? Get both areas into the acceptable level rather then one at exceptional and one at fail? And I don't know the answer to the question. Its just something I wonder about. If I were designing a game, graphics beyond 'minimum to do the job' would be my lowest priority because I personally don't find them very important to my gameplay experience. That's not saying that the wouldn't BE a priority, just that they would be the lowest one. It also isn't to say that I wouldn't want the game to be as pretty as possible or that I think performance and pretty are contradictory. Its just that getting performance would always come first when I was picking between pretty and performance.

 

[CrazyElf]

Your views differ then from many others here. Good graphics is expected from most games these days and to be honest, 4X games generally tend to have the worst graphics around. I don't consider the graphics to be "exceptional" though either, as there are plenty of games (with larger budgets of course) that have better graphics. A lot of people here want cool-looking battles; myself included.

I don't think that shifting 5-10% of the budget would have radically improved stability. This thing is going to need months of debugging before it is in a state that it should have been released in. I think that the only way that there could have been stability is for the devs to have used a lot of the older assets over again, and that would have brought another bunch of complaints ... namely lack of originality. That would have required a much higher slashing of the budget than just 20-40% I fear. Debugging a project this big tends to take hundreds of man hours.

Graphics is becoming a scapegoat the way things are going.

 

[unmerged(76922)]

*shrug* Say 1 year development cycle, 10% shift times 12 months gives you 13.2, or an extra 1.2 months worth of work. Obviously its not that simple in terms of real world impact, the the effect might be more significant then you are assuming. And yes, there are better graphics in absolute terms in some games out there. But I can't think of an example of them in a non-cutscene ship to ship combat == This game is the best example I've seen within it specific genre, though that is an obvious subjective opinion.

 

[Baleur]

You play every game you ever own on minimum graphics, just because of principle? You think the gameplay of said games become automatically better because you lower the graphics options?
You sir, need to grow up and enjoy what the games have.
Gameplay has nothing to do with graphics, the graphics design teams are different from gameplay coder. Yet you are right about the budget, obviously more money was spent here on the graphics than the gameplay coding.

But frankly your statement makes me scratch my head. Beauty is not taboo nor is it childish. Why would you play every game on minimum graphics?

 

[s1234567890m]

probably low specs

 

[unmerged(76922)]

probably low specs

*bing bing bing* we have a winner. Mind, its rarely the case that I CAN'T run a game on higher specs. But its generally a situation that does at least produce a difference in performance level, which is more important to me then the pretty factor.

I guess the best way to sum it up for me if that while good graphics can make a good game better, they can't fix a bad game. So given a choice in the matter, focusing on the good game aspect of things should always come first.

 

[unmerged(402012)]

So what, you want bad graphics? Stop buying new titles. Sots1 looks better than 2? Really? What kind of a response do you expect to have to that?

Please stop playing stupid and no more of this "games need to look ugly" bs.

 

[s1234567890m]

*bing bing bing* we have a winner. Mind, its rarely the case that I CAN'T run a game on higher specs. But its generally a situation that does at least produce a difference in performance level, which is more important to me then the pretty factor.

I guess the best way to sum it up for me if that while good graphics can make a good game better, they can't fix a bad game. So given a choice in the matter, focusing on the good game aspect of things should always come first.

Your 'always use lowest settings' is a hardware limitation tho in general most games dont bother PC's on medium to high graphics... what are your specs btw?

 

[Chat]

I'm certainly in the 'gameplay is more important than fancy graphics' camp. But then this is also the Paradox Forums, and Paradox games generally eschew fancy graphics. Thus, that's the kind of person you're more likely to find here.

I do love a pretty picture and won't say no to eye candy. But they don't keep me playing a game, though they can keep me from playing it. You can't really put gameplay on the back of a box or catch a screenshot of it for the website though. When presented with two options, one with form but less function, and the other with function but less form, the average Joe is more likely to buy the one with form and are often even be willing to pay more. So graphics can really help to draw them in.

Trying to reinvent everything at once seemed to be beyond their project management capability.

They invented it all once before. Stands to reason that with a bit bigger team, that should be able to reinvent it all again. They were mostly there too, just could have done with another month or two before release. The gameplay and the graphics are all (mostly) there, it just really needs its polish.

 

[unmerged(76922)]

Your 'always use lowest settings' is a hardware limitation tho in general most games dont bother PC's on medium to high graphics... what are your specs btw?

For which computer vs which game at which time? Trying to match up if I 'needed' to run at lowest for any given game would be a mess, given the number of shifts my computer situation has gone though. But graphics are a minor enough point to me that I generally just don't view it as worth fiddling around with. Current spec-wise, this labtop is just a hair above the min specs for SOTS2. My tower is significantly better, but its in storage some 800 miles away right at the moment, so that's fairly moot.

 

[unmerged(357263)]

Speaking personally for myself, I've played every game (yes, literally every game) I've ever owned on the minimum graphic's setting.

Lol ? Like seriously ? You're doing it wrong.

So I find myself looking at SOTS2, which is gorgeous visually

We must be playing a different game then. Sots2 is OKish at best. It still looks much worse than Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, which is at this point a seven (!) year old game.

 

[unmerged(401472)]

I do think that better graphics improve the experience most people have with a game. Just like a nicely drawn character in a comic book better connects you to its story and universe than a faceless stick figure could ever do, no matter how good the dialog and general story would be, better graphics in games help to suck you in and make you forget about your surroundings.

 

[unmerged(374275)]

Lol ? Like seriously ? You're doing it wrong.



We must be playing a different game then. Sots2 is OKish at best. It still looks much worse than Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, which is at this point a seven (!) year old game.

Have you compared the complexity of the ship models on Nexus to SOTS ][? I can do, owning both titles, and yes Nexus is a brilliant game - but there is no way that the model complexity compared - go take a look at a Liir CnC cruiser - with all the moving parts - and then one of the Nexus ships.

 

[unmerged(402700)]

This game focused far too much on shiny rather than realistic or interesting looking... most the ships and sizes and layouts are pretty much the same and theirs no real flow or factoring of the style of that race if you look at it closely it just goes all out of sync without a pattern which wouldn't happen.

Nexus wasn't shiny but it was gorgeous... this is more shiny and gaudy than "gorgeous".

Also the color of stars all being the same is unrealistic and ridiculous and the fact the planets "city images" on the inhabited worlds actually ROTATE so as to make it seem that it's everywhere is just ridiculous. A lot of things need to be done... hell the images and event log icons REALLY need some variety for races and things.

 

[Marconius]

First of all, I'd like to thank the person who linked the graphics-aesthetics video; while it didn't really tell me anything new, it did clarify and sharpen things, so it was very educational.

Now then... here's my opinion; I'm gonna talk more generally about (audio)visual mediums, since my points are fairly general.

Okay, first of all, what makes a good movie, comic book, anime, game, etc.? I think we can all agree the most important parts are story, characters and (in the case of games) gameplay. It doesn't matter how pretty or technically superior you make a movie, if the plot and characters are terrible, people are going to hate it (case in point: Michael Bay). So I'd say looks are usually secondary.

That being said! Visuals (and audio, where applicable) cannot be ignored, since these are visual mediums. Would Alien have been nearly as effective without the iconic chestburst scene? Would action movies work quite as well without over the top stunts and explosions? What about Star Wars, would it really be as good if we couldn't see Luke blow up the Death Star?

Visuals are important; not equally important everywhere, of course: your average daytime soap won't need extensive amounts of CGI and a chess program won't need to run on the Havoc engine... heck, look at games like EU3, minimalistic visuals, but still great fun. However, also note that even in times long past, people made fancy chess sets to play their favorite game; today, grand strategy games like EU3 and Sengoku constantly update visually, creating a prettier map and a nicer interface.

And then of course there are the cases where visuals are important... where it's not just the story and gameplay you want, but the looks as well. You want a horror movie or game to be atmospheric, you want action movies to look nice and you want your space battles to be shiny, with chunks blowing off and giant bullets flying into ships, making holes! This was a thing many, many people complained about when Star Trek Online launched: ship damage was barely visible, just a few decals slapped on, then they just blew up when dying... we want more detail than that!

So yes, I'm happy SotS2 got a visual upgrade; not just more shiny technologies and Direxct X 10, but also more details, more physics, all that good stuff. And quite frankly, if they just released with the old SotS engine, I'd have been pissed and probably wouldn't have bought the game... I know I was incredibly annoyed when I saw the terrible (for its time) visuals in Starcraft 2, for example.

 

[unmerged(8351)]

Games would be better if they spent less time on graphics and more time on function.

BUT, pretty graphics will draw in new users and in marketing you are always chasing those marginal customers. Honestly Kerberos doesn't care about the business of people who love 4X games. These people will buy the game regardless. They are chasing the dollars of the people who play BF3 and Starcraft 2 and hoping to catch their eye with some pretty bling.

The same thing happens in every industry. They people most interested in it and least well served by it because the incentive is the service the people LEAST interested, not most interested.

It is all about those marginal $. A good reason fro everyone to take economics in college is so they can understand things like this.