General Discussion

I'd gladly give up on some of the shinies to have better game play.

Originally posted by Thedrizzle

Those who say graphics don't matter and gameplay is everything are full of shit. Graphics matter equally as much as game play. 

If graphics don't matter then everyone should go back and play Ultima Online.

You so wrong. Graphics are important but gameplay is alot more important. Decent graphics with fun gameplay is what matters. I wander what game you are playing that has really top of line graphics and fun gameplay to go with it. Most of the most beautiful MMOs aren't that great in gameplay. The most popular game on the market right now  only looks decent graphically but alot people enjoy the gameplay.

So decent graphics at time of release but more importantly good gameplay is what truly counts.

Originally posted by Clyptso

Originally posted by Thedrizzle

Those who say graphics don't matter and gameplay is everything are full of shit. Graphics matter equally as much as game play. 

If graphics don't matter then everyone should go back and play Ultima Online.

 

You so wrong. Graphics are important but gameplay is alot more important. Decent graphics with fun gameplay is what matters. I wander what game you are playing that has really top of line graphics and fun gameplay to go with it. Most of the most beautiful MMOs aren't that great in gameplay. The most popular game on the market right now  only looks decent graphically but alot people enjoy the gameplay.

So decent graphics at time of release but more importantly good gameplay is what truly counts.

Thedrizzle has a very solid point.  Ultima Online is the ultimate sandbox that would meet the criteria of most of the sandboxers around here, myself included.  So why, when there is a game that fills every need for a seemingly huge tract of the population here that loves to lament linear MMOs, are they not playing it?

Because it's a graphically ugly game.  Same reason I don't play Anarchy Online right now but will return when the graphics get updated.  I can handle sub-par graphics but only to a point.

Originally posted by coffee

For me its "stylization" over "realisation", It takes much for skill and talent to hand draw.paint textures and to create buidlings and worlds not found in the real world (and make it look good), then it does to take a photo of a wall and slap it on a a model thats been modeled on a wall out side your window.

 

Yep. Gone are the days of just exchanging a .bmp, .pcx or .tga graphic. Now we have .dds which is a beast of a whole different color (along with ALL the options with bump and bitmapping). That texture folks want has to be UV wrapped even. Gone also are the days free 3D/UV mappers to do it all -- now we have to somehow afford to get 3DMax and/or Maya (anyone with 6k of RL gold to buy it????). And if it can even be ported back into the game (if the publisher/devs were so kind to provide the utility).

Oh, those animation also look pretty. Thing is animators themselves aren't making them. All those cute emotes? Suit up and process them, as an animator isn't drawing or keying all those frames out -- two artificial by hand.

Folks want AAA movie/studio quality trinkets. In other genres, with luck, there's modders who can help give folks their OPTIONS (but rarely the animations -- tooooooo much work). MMOs, the company owns the content, and changing it will just be overridden with updates. Holding out for corporate to change things, is the reason why game modding even existed.

We all say it, Gameplay before Graphics, but I think they both go hand in hand.  You need to have good graphics and good gameplay to make a truely good game.  It keeps things balanced. Ive said myself that I  Would rather have gameplay more that graphics but I know myself ive tried some games that graphics wernt that great and just couldn't bring myself to play the game cuz the visual aspect of the game couldnt keep my interest.

Graphics are sorta important to me...

I'd like to have somewhat of a balance. Good graphics and it's fun to play. Even if it was seriously fun to play, but had bad graphics- I'd eventually quit. Same way if it was the other way around, if it had awesome graphics but was dead boring (or had lag) then obviously I'd quit quickly.

Originally posted by cukimunga

We all say it, Gameplay before Graphics, but I think they both go hand in hand.  You need to have good graphics and good gameplay to make a truely good game.  It keeps things balanced. Ive said myself that I  Would rather have gameplay more that graphics but I know myself ive tried some games that graphics wernt that great and just couldn't bring myself to play the game cuz the visual aspect of the game couldnt keep my interest.

/agree

I can't bring myself to play 2D games anymore just for that reason.  I've got plenty of awesome 2D games with great gameplay sitting on the shelf, but I just can't get into them anymore.

There is a progression in graphics that I think is very important to making games.  You cannot overlook it and just focus or mostly focus on gameplay.

And to whomever says that WoW did not put much effort into their graphics, just look at the art direction.  That is a big part of it.  Those are some of the pretties that everyone is dissing over gameplay.  EQ2 just decided to use a different style in their realism, but they still put that effort in there.

There are some places in WoW where I walk into for the first time and just stand there and stare.  Same with EQ2.  I like that in a game. 

And also, as someone else mentioned already, I think a lot of people do not realize how important sound is.  I find that just as important as graphics!

I do. gameplay is more important, but as you can guess from my sig I am a graphics whore.

PS: I agree with above animations play a larger role. but most games with great graphics have great animations, so its easy to forget they are separant things.

Do I care about game graphics? Yes.

It's the first thing I see in a game, before gameplay, fun, commands. I remember trying Anarchy Online some 2 years ago. The outdated graphics made the other problems I had with the game much worse, and quickly I dropped it.

But it's not just textures - developers have to know what to do with them. Being a man in RL, female characters have to be sexy; armors and clothes must be varied; foes have to be original and different from each other (Korean MMOGs tend to fail on those last two items...).