What EQNEXT should have looked like

to me this is what i think eqnext should have looked like....i belive that most of the people playing would agree , i mean the environment looks great ..but the Toons are jus that cartoons....from the realistic looking appeal of EQ1 and 2 to the change of eqnext that looks like some rehash of WOW....all i can say is i hope the game play can make up for the aweful look of the characters, ill give it a try as i do all the mmo's but im sure ill be playin AA, or this ..soe has lost my hope for eqnext bein the next eq2

While this looks nice, I think that medieval fantasy games are already on their way to looking very cookie-cutter in their ultra-realism. Take a look at Elder Scrolls online. Do we need 10 games that look identical to that? Skyrim knocked it out of the park with sales. Every other fantasy game will be scrambling to copy it.

If you're into first person shooters, can anyone tell the difference between this year's Modern Warfare/Call of Duty/Etc.? They all look like the same game now.

We've only seen a few of the races in Eqnext. It's the Kerra that are really standing out as the most cartoonish in their style. I actually found the pixar-esque facial features of the human mage to be fantastic. It's a style that won't age as terribly as Everquest 2's has. And I am certain that the more animated facial features are present to show more emotion on a character's face.Not only for SOEmote, which I don't particularly care about, but for interacting with NPCs and perhaps the quest building/dungeon building that will be present for the creative types to play with. I think it'll make story-telling even more impressive.

I can go outside if I want to see every blade of grass shift in the wind. Let me roam around in an extraordinary fantasy painting.

Honestly, while the EQ2 Models looked fantastic a long time ago? "Ultra Realistic" for that time? Look how they appear now...

A lot of them are terribly aged.

As I have posted to other forums, I'm not impressed with what I've seen so far on the character art for EQN.
I really wish they had followed their lineage of character design with improvements rather than taking a radical departure into toon land. I would have been really excited if the EQN game play looked more like the EQ2 trailer.
The sad part is they hit the environments and world perfectly and then completely missed he mark on character design.
This is just my opinion and there are several other areas of the EQN game design I'm not looking forward to so take this as you will.

@Loch I understand your concern with things looking alike however if we add the touted advanced AI, complete open world game play options, and a ton of races/classes that EQN is supposed to have AND we have graphics akin to black Pearl we then have an outstanding game. I do not drink from the SOE cool-aide cup that advances the idea that the cartoony/Pixar graphics will not age as poorly. While graphics are not everything they add to immersive gameplay and so far I have seen nothing that adds to my impressiveness with EQN - in fact they have been exceptionally slow at even updating the main site with any real information about the game.

Realism is "oudated", really? It seems to me that cartoon characters are the outdated critters.

If I remember correctly, animated cartoons have been around since Disney made Steamboat Willy in 1928 while visual realism in animation has only been achievable for about the last 15 years.

The oft-cited Uncanny Valley has to do with robots, not screen animation. But hey, why not cite this study if you are trying to justify cheap animation. Lots of folks have already done this so why not SOE too.

The Uncanny Valley does NOT just apply to robots, but is equally applicable to screen animation. Graphics aren't where they need to be yet for hyper realism in EQN, imo. They need to not just be so cartoony that Kerra look like Tony the Tiger. EQ2 is at a great spot with graphics if the engine just used GPU.

Darnit Coldmetal.

Why did you have to say something correct?

Hey folks,

I moved this thread. While I'm happy you want to discuss EQN (I'm Team Norrath; I've got love for all of our games!), please keep these conversations in Off Topic, since they're not about EQII gameplay.

Thanks,
Dexella

Unfortunately, Black Desert doesn't have publisher in the US or Europe at this time. Great graphics though.

"Bless" is slated for a 2014 roll out...(so they say)...darn good graphics on this one too. I'm watching both, as well as TESO in case I just can't stand the where EQ seems to be heading.



I really don't get the disconnect between the new graphics engine capable of Planetside 2 and what EQN seems to be headed for? The backgrounds are pretty good. The characters are...just.... disappointing.

That one looked good too - not super ultra realistic looking but definitely non childish fantasy immersive DnD type play.

Bless reminds me an awful lot of Tera for some reason.

In order to achieve ultra-realistic gameplay graphics with today's hardware (and tomorrow's for quite some time) you need to optimize quite a bit with what is given to the graphics card to render. This optimization can be done with controlled zone sizes (requiring loading pre-optimized assets as you move from location to location) and also a much more static world than what they are saying we'll get with EQ Next. This includes character models even more as they are typically the most dynamic aspect of what you see on your screen.

I'd rather have a game engine that can handle much, much more than 24 characters in an area without bogging down or eliminating effects/appearances (not talking about server lag, that's a different issue of course). I'd rather have a game engine that works with a realistic hardware spec and maintains a higher player base because of that (this is an MMO so we should want a lot of people to play it and keep playing it). I'm looking forward to the much more expressive faces in EQ Next rather than the stoic & serious faces we have in EQ2 and most other games (including the OP's video).

So far, we've only seen the female human and male lion-style kerran in game (they said other cat family types will be available IIRC). There are many other races and characters styles we haven't yet seen (in game) that I'm sure will put an edgier look to the overall player base than the simple demos they've shown (based on the concept art). Realism in video games is way over-rated. Gameplay is and always has been king for the sustained success of a game. SOE is doing this the right way IMO and I'm looking forward to playing the result.

Me too...but as an artstyle, I'd rather EQN had at least gone in that direction. That said, I would love to have seen what SOE scrapped (after 2 years) in favor of this style.

There is no reason to go with a cartoony look, to make a MMORPH run better.

A good GFX engine will just smooth out the images as the distance is greater. Its not going to completely render every character in full detail that is near you in the zone. So when people say a MMORPH cant have good looking characters and run smoothly on a PC, I completely disagree. There should be no difference in a MMORPH and a single player game when rendering the characters - that is all local to your PC.

As far a SOEmote <laugh> No one uses this, and even if it completely transfers ever single detail you express to your toon, - do you really want people watching you pick your nose while playing a game?

As far as looking aged - Its funny I don't hear anyone in game complaining about their characters looking aged. I could care less about this - as long as my character does not look like it was intended to make little kids giggle.

The only valid reason SOE has for making goofy Disney looking characters is to cater to a younger audience that they think is playing WoW. I understand this and believe it was purely a marketing decision with the above things listed as 'developer' cop-outs for not doing it the way EQ fans expected. I personally think its a bad move, they can get the wider audience by having a superior game - not just some goofy screen shots / characters. With the cartoony goofy look, they will loose another set of their target audience simply because they will not take the game seriously with it looking like that.

I think the Black Desert trailers look fantastic and I wish they would have moved towards that look also .. even if those characters graphics are years outdated ( compared to ???) by the time the game comes out.

I remember when SOEmote came out, everyone was doing it, now no one does, it's just one of those things that people don't have time for/care for. I personally like my toon to be super small, don't play in first person, so I am staring at his back most of the time, and he is around a pixel tall. I don't care how his face looks

I disagree and so do you in your next paragraph...

Realism and immersion do not go hand in hand. Many times, attempted realism interrupts immersion as your brain tries to figure out what is not quite right with what it is seeing. As an ultra-realistic graphics engine has to make sacrifices to render a more demanding scene, it will completely ruin your current immersion in the game since your brain is expecting to see something "realistic".

SOE is creating a style that is still quite enjoyable to look at but also works much better with current graphics rendering capability. They won't need to make sacrifices on rendering quality (or at least not as much) when there are more than a few people in an area. I want an MMO graphics engine that will handle dozens or even hundreds of players in a local bazaar without changing the look of what I expect to see.

Ya, SOEmote isn't my cup of tea either but interactions with NPCs and command style emotes to/from other players can be much more rewarding if the characters are designed to have the ability to show emotions and show them easily at a distance. Especially with the new AI going in, it adds a whole new level of interaction when you are talking to an NPC.

I think the trailer to Black Desert shows it well, when you zoom into a character you see all the detail ( including beautiful cloth and armor texture ) . Zoomed out, you see a massive amount of characters / mobs with very little detail. So the graphic detail does not make much difference when It comes to massive amounts of characters displayed.

I guess its just a matter of opinion if the visual experience with what we have seen with EQN is enjoyable or not. To me the characters and armor in EQN just look horrible in comparison to what we see with Black Desert. I believe the cartoony look of EQN interrupts the immersion much more then the characters in that Black Desert video, or even EQ2 for that matter.

I can say this, however. If they don't adjust the artwork to some degree towards the more serious side, I doubt I will ever experience "immersion" with the EQN characters. It will just be a game I play around with...with little invested in beyond moving a piece on a board or across a screen.

Because, right now...its like watching Saturday morning cartoons with my nephews when they were 5. (They're in their 20's now...but still)

Hey...maybe SOE will make an offer to Pearl Abyss and publish Black Desert in the states? Give us old fashioned malcontents something to occupy us?