ESO is beautiful ... but

SantieClaws

Does this sometimes make the game feel less realistic?

I've been watching some twitch streams of the new witcher game. Reminded me of Baldur's Gate in some ways.

Baldur's Gate was a game I played when I was a young un. It ooooozed atmosphere. Really felt like a world you might be in.

I got the same sense when watching the witcher. I was trying to put my finger on exactly what gave me this feeling and I think I have it.

It is imperfection.

Grot, waste, ugliness - the human effect on a city. Rubbish, decay, dirty streets. Badly maintained buildings put down in any old place, poorly thought out campfires, open drains, uneven streets. People wearing rags and looking dirty.

ESO is a tremendous game visually but sometimes it feels too clean. Too perfect. There is no rubbish anywhere. No bits of food waste on the streets. No fires burning in braziers on the city streets at night with thick smoke and dangerous sparks. No stinking drains. All the cities seem perfectly planned and too clean. There are very few beggars also considering the war has displaced so many people and we all wonder what has happened to the children of tamriel.

I know I have asked before for lootable rubbish tips and things like that. Do you agree with me that imperfection creates a more atmospheric and believable world? Would you like to see more of that sort of thing in ESO?

Epona222

I've often felt that because there are no toilets, anywhere, the cities should not look as clean as they do.
Wayrest Sewers? How does the 'waste' get down into the sewers exactly?

Heromofo

Underbelly is always needed looove it but then again they cant handle putting in capes and cloaks in the game i dont think they can handle this
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/171150/improving-on-eso-s03e04-underbelly-of-eso-pet-accessories-and-a-need-to-rest?new=1

LMar

But there are burned buildings, people walking around in rags, fog coming in, light rays coming through fog, mice crowding the warehouses and the docks etc etc. I think perhaps you feel that way because the textures sometimes are too clean or a bit too small

Heromofo

LMar wrote: »

But there are burned buildings, people walking around in rags, fog coming in, light rays coming through fog, mice crowding the warehouses and the docks etc etc. I think perhaps you feel that way because the textures sometimes are too clean or a bit too small

Read my link above it should let people see what part of the community wants.

Like did you know there is a Prostitute guild?.

Insane beggers
Skooma
Certain style bar wenches are apart of the lore

Elsonso

Epona222 wrote: »

I've often felt that because there are no toilets, anywhere, the cities should not look as clean as they do.
Wayrest Sewers? How does the 'waste' get down into the sewers exactly?

I would actually prefer if the game did not answer this question...

Tavore1138

Heromofo wrote: »

LMar wrote: »

But there are burned buildings, people walking around in rags, fog coming in, light rays coming through fog, mice crowding the warehouses and the docks etc etc. I think perhaps you feel that way because the textures sometimes are too clean or a bit too small

Read my link above it should let people see what part of the community wants.

Like did you know there is a Prostitute guild?.

Insane beggers
Skooma
Certain style bar wenches are apart of the lore

Prostitue Guild?? What do the active and passive skills do?

Heromofo

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

Heromofo wrote: »

LMar wrote: »

But there are burned buildings, people walking around in rags, fog coming in, light rays coming through fog, mice crowding the warehouses and the docks etc etc. I think perhaps you feel that way because the textures sometimes are too clean or a bit too small

Read my link above it should let people see what part of the community wants.

Like did you know there is a Prostitute guild?.

Insane beggers
Skooma
Certain style bar wenches are apart of the lore

Prostitue Guild?? What do the active and passive skills do?

Lol funny as i pictured that but in the lore.

Pallmor

Epona222 wrote: »

Wayrest Sewers?

They were left over from the First Era, before Tamriel discovered how magic could be used to eliminate the need to ever poop again, or the need for sleep unless you just want a rested bonus.

Pallmor

wenxue2222b16_ESO wrote: »

Does this sometimes make the game feel less realistic?

I've been watching some twitch streams of the new witcher game. Reminded me of Baldur's Gate in some ways.

Baldur's Gate was a game I played when I was a young un. It ooooozed atmosphere. Really felt like a world you might be in.

I got the same sense when watching the witcher. I was trying to put my finger on exactly what gave me this feeling and I think I have it.

It is imperfection.

Witcher 3 can afford more variety and more complex environs because it's a single player RPG (Dragon Age Inquisition looks better than ESO too). An MMO requires a lot of CPU muscle just to handle all the random players running around doing stuff all around you. So, on average, MMO's are probably never going to look as good as comparable single player games.

And ESO is a HUGE world too. If you added up the sheer space in 12 large zones, Coldharbor, Cyrodiil, Carglorn, a ton of delves, etc. I'm pretty sure it would dwarf the land mass in Witcher 3. It would be very hard to customize each one of those areas with a ton of detail work. ESO is an incredibly complex game when you really get into it, and ZOS only had so much time, money, and staff to spare. It was probably a pretty low priority to make every area look more lived-in and add in complex detail work that was going to make the game even more laggy than it already is.

That said, ESO still looks a lot better than WoW and most other MMO's.

Elsonso

wenxue2222b16_ESO wrote: »

ESO is a tremendous game visually but sometimes it feels too clean. Too perfect. There is no rubbish anywhere. No bits of food waste on the streets. No fires burning in braziers on the city streets at night with thick smoke and dangerous sparks. No stinking drains. All the cities seem perfectly planned and too clean. There are very few beggars also considering the war has displaced so many people and we all wonder what has happened to the children of tamriel.

The Elder Scrolls game worlds tend to be fairly clean and orderly. Even when they are not clean, it is done in an orderly manner. I think that they deliberately design for a "neutral" feel, since this best fits into any scenario. There is a distinct look and feel that screams Elder Scrolls. I think ESO has pulled this off pretty well. Anyone who has spent time in an Elder Scrolls world from Morrowind on will recognize the game world as being Elder Scrolls.

Now, we could say that Fallout 3 is too clean and perfect. It looked like someone took a clean and orderly TES world and messed it up a little. The suggestions above would fit well into the Fallout world.

Armitas

You know now that I think of it yeah. Every city is a shinning example of a perfect city. There's no atmosphere to a city, it's just a walled quest hub. Every wall is clean, every house spotless. The cities really do lack their own unique life.

The outside world is pretty unique though, there are so many ruins you can explore with notes revealing the mystery.

SantieClaws

I could sort of excuse the excessive perfection in Auridon maybe - write it off as an elf thing. It doesn't really suit Glenumbra or Stormhaven or places like that though. Cities just don't spring up as perfectly formed, perfectly planned places with every building built in the same style and from the same materials. They are messy, dirty and muddled.

I do hope we at least see a bit of disorder and mess in Wrothgar. I have never really seen orcs as being that concerned with town planning or sanitation.

Also lordrichter I do totally take your point about what you can do in a single player game and what you can do in an MMO. They are quite different beasts but I still can't help but feel just a little disorder here and there - the occasional building in a town that isn't exactly the same style as all the others - would bring things to life a bit.

Moonscythe

No, I'm playing in a fantasy world I am familiar with and if I wanted a different fantasy world I would play in that one instead. I am vastly uninterested in the potty habits of Tamriel and don't want to be forced to walk across it's grimy underbelly doing some sordid quest. Just because the real world is gritty doesn't mean every game world should be also.

Every time I walked across the world of Fallout 3 I could not believe that there was that much stuff lying around when resources were scarce. In Skyrim, there were mammoth poachers taking snouts and tusks but there were tusks lying on the ground waiting to be picked up. Animals are killed by people or other animals and just left lying around. Let's make sense of the "atmosphere" that's there before introducing latrines no one needs to use and debris that is only there to be debris.

Zanen

I dunno, most of the time I wish the cities were a little more planned and orderly and the bank was closer to the anvil.

I would personally enjoy a little more grit in the environments but ES aims for a wider audience than a game like witcher that's aimed squarely at adults.

Sunver

Thats a very good remark. Agree.

I am also playing The Witcher and I am amazed by they way world looks. ESO is already 18+ so I see no obstacle to put in game some waste, drunkards, potheads, courtesans(cant use the "w" word) and sick to make ESO world look more like medieval world with magic.

But lets face it, Altmers are the most civilized of the people of Tamriel, so I suppose their cities would look pretty much the same with this spicy addition I mentioned. Same goes with Wood Elves - the keepers of nature.

The most slobby people? Orcs, Nords, Argonians, Khajiit, Redguards, Dunmers, Imperials, Bosmers, Altmers - in this order imo.

NewBlacksmurf

Maybe it's intentional as TES IMO wasn't beautiful without mods while this is exactly the opposite

I'm still ROFL about the toilets comment above tho

Gidorick

Bethesda touched on this concept in some of their creation kit videos. Making the world messy takes work. ESO is HUGE. They didn't prioritize that aspect of content creation.... they've done it in some places but others, not so much.

Robotmafia

well it doenst bother me really but this is a very interesting observation.. goes along with the lack of children... also strange xD

Pallmor

Moonscythe wrote: »

Every time I walked across the world of Fallout 3 I could not believe that there was that much stuff lying around when resources were scarce. In Skyrim, there were mammoth poachers taking snouts and tusks but there were tusks lying on the ground waiting to be picked up. Animals are killed by people or other animals and just left lying around. Let's make sense of the "atmosphere" that's there before introducing latrines no one needs to use and debris that is only there to be debris.

Not to mention the fact that none of these ancient dungeons have ever been looted before *I* just happened to arrive...or the fact that the denizens of Tamriel are absolutely incapable of doing anything on their own. Molag Bal is attacking the entire world and the armies all just stand around while their leaders send in a single stranger to fight every battle.

And I'm strongly beginning to suspect that "holding your arm and breathing heavily" is universal Tamriel sign language for "I'm about to get this sucker to do all my hard work for me":

"I would help you save my family. But this arm really hurts, you know."

"But I have a whole stack of healing potions right here. And I'm a healing Templar."

"No, I'm just going to stay here and read a book. But do let me know if you rescue my family from those trolls. I've got a piece of vendor trash laying around here somewhere that I'll give you for reward."

"So you're not even coming with me?"

"CAN'T YOU SEE THAT I'M OUT OF BREATH???"

TheSunAlsoRises

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

Heromofo wrote: »

LMar wrote: »

But there are burned buildings, people walking around in rags, fog coming in, light rays coming through fog, mice crowding the warehouses and the docks etc etc. I think perhaps you feel that way because the textures sometimes are too clean or a bit too small

Read my link above it should let people see what part of the community wants.

Like did you know there is a Prostitute guild?.

Insane beggers
Skooma
Certain style bar wenches are apart of the lore

Prostitue Guild?? What do the active and passive skills do?

i'd guess they would be disease based.

Raash

That wasnt a really fair way to see it.

Witcher is like listening to a classic masterpiece while ESO is more of a justin bieber thing... Or watching the movie gladiator/blade Runner/terminator/lotr etc(witcher) and try compare it with some Adam Sandler-comedies or some face melting action movies.

They are not in the same league... and while there probably is lots of more people that prefer bieber over a classical masterpiece there is a distinct difference between them in regards of "quality".
In the end there is a place for everything and sometimes something easy and shallow like ESO is prefered over a deep story singel player adventure like The Witcher-games.

Gidorick

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

Heromofo wrote: »

LMar wrote: »

But there are burned buildings, people walking around in rags, fog coming in, light rays coming through fog, mice crowding the warehouses and the docks etc etc. I think perhaps you feel that way because the textures sometimes are too clean or a bit too small

Read my link above it should let people see what part of the community wants.

Like did you know there is a Prostitute guild?.

Insane beggers
Skooma
Certain style bar wenches are apart of the lore

Prostitue Guild?? What do the active and passive skills do?

No actives. Just passives. Things like allure, enchant, beguile... I've touched on this previously in some other threads.

Endurance

wenxue2222b16_ESO wrote: »

Does this sometimes make the game feel less realistic?

I've been watching some twitch streams of the new witcher game. Reminded me of Baldur's Gate in some ways.

Baldur's Gate was a game I played when I was a young un. It ooooozed atmosphere. Really felt like a world you might be in.

I got the same sense when watching the witcher. I was trying to put my finger on exactly what gave me this feeling and I think I have it.

It is imperfection.

Grot, waste, ugliness - the human effect on a city. Rubbish, decay, dirty streets. Badly maintained buildings put down in any old place, poorly thought out campfires, open drains, uneven streets. People wearing rags and looking dirty.

ESO is a tremendous game visually but sometimes it feels too clean. Too perfect. There is no rubbish anywhere. No bits of food waste on the streets. No fires burning in braziers on the city streets at night with thick smoke and dangerous sparks. No stinking drains. All the cities seem perfectly planned and too clean. There are very few beggars also considering the war has displaced so many people and we all wonder what has happened to the children of tamriel.

I know I have asked before for lootable rubbish tips and things like that. Do you agree with me that imperfection creates a more atmospheric and believable world? Would you like to see more of that sort of thing in ESO?

they have realistic environment mods like that for skyrim but dont count on it being in ESO.. the armor sets look plain enough

Davadin

wenxue2222b16_ESO wrote: »

Does this sometimes make the game feel less realistic?

I've been watching some twitch streams of the new witcher game. Reminded me of Baldur's Gate in some ways.

Baldur's Gate was a game I played when I was a young un. It ooooozed atmosphere. Really felt like a world you might be in.

I got the same sense when watching the witcher. I was trying to put my finger on exactly what gave me this feeling and I think I have it.

It is imperfection.

Grot, waste, ugliness - the human effect on a city. Rubbish, decay, dirty streets. Badly maintained buildings put down in any old place, poorly thought out campfires, open drains, uneven streets. People wearing rags and looking dirty.

ESO is a tremendous game visually but sometimes it feels too clean. Too perfect. There is no rubbish anywhere. No bits of food waste on the streets. No fires burning in braziers on the city streets at night with thick smoke and dangerous sparks. No stinking drains. All the cities seem perfectly planned and too clean. There are very few beggars also considering the war has displaced so many people and we all wonder what has happened to the children of tamriel.

I know I have asked before for lootable rubbish tips and things like that. Do you agree with me that imperfection creates a more atmospheric and believable world? Would you like to see more of that sort of thing in ESO?

...let's start with little NPC kids running around.

Davadin

TheSunAlsoRises wrote: »

SuraklinPrime wrote: »

Heromofo wrote: »

LMar wrote: »

But there are burned buildings, people walking around in rags, fog coming in, light rays coming through fog, mice crowding the warehouses and the docks etc etc. I think perhaps you feel that way because the textures sometimes are too clean or a bit too small

Read my link above it should let people see what part of the community wants.

Like did you know there is a Prostitute guild?.

Insane beggers
Skooma
Certain style bar wenches are apart of the lore

Prostitue Guild?? What do the active and passive skills do?

i'd guess they would be disease based.

You, sir, won the Internet for today.

Moonshadow66

Just recently I've arrived in Velyn Harbor again (a character new to Malabal Tor), and I thought exactly the opposite is the case. I only saw chaos and was totally annoyed (because I don't like chaos^^). I guess the ground textures, roots from trees and such increase the impression of a chaotic state of this town, but also some burned buildings, people in danger, and combat everywhere. I wouldn't say it's too clean everywhere. But I know what you mean.
But, as @Pallmor wrote already, the other games are single player games.

TheShadowScout

I kinda have to agree with the OP on the matter...

Yes, the game does have its share of "chaos". Some places got damaged to set the stage for our character to herald the rescue, etc. And some places are ruins to start with. There is rubble, there are burning fires, there are even some bones lying around on occasion...

...but...

...it's still too tidy!

Whenever you rescue some "survivors", they are just normal people in normal clothes. No bandages, no torn clothing, not covered in ash or dust despite just being dug out from under some rubble or saved from a burning building...

Whenever you come upon some "seriously injured" NPC, they are just normal people lying or sitting around, at best holding their bellies. No blood, no bruises, no open wounds, no lost limbs... no ripped and torn clothes/armor, etc.

Whenever you come upon some "corpses", they either are just the very same normal people lying on the ground, or already skeletons. Nothing of the gruesome options in between. Even the zombies look more like do-it-yourself halloween makeup then the shambling dead...

Whenever you come upon some beggars, they are normal people wearing low class clothing. No rags, little dirt, no cripples (real or pretend, as many stories have medieval beggars do to seem more pitiful), etc.

Whenever you come upon any dwelling place, it is indeed missing the outhouses that I always enjoyed seeing in "Fallout" for making the world seem more alive. And while there are occasional piles of garbage or run down buildings, even they often seem too "clean"

Whenever you walk through any settlement, you feel something is missing, and eventually notice there are no children to be found. Even in quests where the plot has one "kid" that needs rescue, it turns out to be a full grown person. One quest remarks upon this, but the "yeah, my mom still treats me like a child" thing only works once, not half a dozend times.

And whenever you sneak through a dungeon or castle at night, you'll find them well lit despite the fact that most medieval lighting systems were decidedly suboptimal by modern standards of brightness...


I think all those details add a great deal of atmpshere,, something we are missing out on with them lacking. Now ESO is great as far as it goes... and I could see them being a bit reluctant to add all the stuff I thought about above back before their rating went to "M", but... I'd really love to see some upgrades in the future. I mean, they updated the redguard and orc armors, there's more that could be improved...

LegacyDM

Robotmafia wrote: »

well it doenst bother me really but this is a very interesting observation.. goes along with the lack of children... also strange xD

In addition to lack of children, how about fat, ugly, and sickly people? Why does everyone have to be hot and in shape?

Preyfar

Sunver wrote: »

ESO is already 18+ so I see no obstacle to put in game some waste, drunkards, potheads, courtesans(cant use the "w" word) and sick to make ESO world look more like medieval world with magic.

And given the 18+ rating skooma is pretty much missing from the game, along with the skooma addicts. It's mentioned in a few rare discussions, but is otherwise not present in ESO.

Elsonso

joshdm2001_ESO wrote: »

Robotmafia wrote: »

well it doenst bother me really but this is a very interesting observation.. goes along with the lack of children... also strange xD

In addition to lack of children, how about fat, ugly, and sickly people? Why does everyone have to be hot and in shape?

They all want to look like me.