There needs to be a "Graphics and Environment Update" Eventually

ArchMikem

With consoles like the Playstation Pro and Microsoft's new mega hardware Project Scorpio coming I think it definitely wouldn't hurt ZOS to be developing something of a Graphics and Environment Update sometime in the future. One that would focus mainly on aesthetics, weather effects, and world building. Make the world more beautiful, and the playerbase will want to quest in it even more.

Granted ESO is already a pretty game. Many screenshots from us display that. But it still has several things about it that make me sigh in sadness as I pass by while playing. Such as flowing water travelling in one static direction regardless of where the flow should be going, or the Weather systems only having basically two settings, sunny, or rain with thunder. Or how wooded areas aren't dense in the slightest, or how every single shoreline touching the ocean has tranquil, calm seas, even though the ambiance audio is playing sounds of non-existent waves crashing around you.

I'm going to do something many of you will hate me for now. I'm going to compare this with the only other Elder Scrolls game I've experienced. Skyrim. *cowers from thrown fruit*

Skyrim has a PHENOMENAL sense of wilderness about it. The forests are thick, the terrain is ragged yet still not entirely impassable, the streams and rivers actually flow realistically. It was incredibly easy to take a few steps off the road to Riverwood and instantly feel completely lost. One day in-game I was walking through the forest somewhere near Falkreath, admiring the vegetation, the fog seeping through the trees and then a random Deer bolts in front of me. I was legitimately shocked. I wasn't prepared for it at all cause I was SO immersed in the environment around me. Even though really I was within 20 seconds from the nearest town, I had a legit sense of being in the middle of nowhere cause of how all the different environmental aspects came into play, and I'd love to feel that way in ESO. I don't want to just hop on my mount and bolt in a straight line from a Wayshrine over to a crafting station and get this one chore done quickly, I wan't to get completely lost on the way and find myself forgetting about the crafting station as I start to admire that flower bed here or that Elk grazing there while a beautiful stream runs nearby.

Emmagoldman

Just curious, if it took a 1/2 to a full year of full staff attention to remaster meaning no other content, would you be ok with that?

Personally, i think yes, at some point, but not this year. Make sure morrowind doesnt drop like an egg, test and test and retest warden, and add player created cities and defense instances!!!
Also, pvp in cryodil can use a lot of love. Im getting greedy lol.

notimetocare

Skyrim comparison is very bad. You can do far more on it as a sp game. You will never get the immersion a single player game in an MMO.

Darkstorne

I agree, but not about Skyrim being much better where forests are concerned - that game doesn't have any. Even Falkreath is just grassy hills and meadows with some scattered pines and spruces. You could always look up and see more sky than tree canopy. It's the same issue I have with Valenwood in ESO (not even REMOTELY what Valenwood should look like). There were mods to address that in Skyrim, but any that added more trees were performance killers thanks to the game engine, so mods that increased density and height of existing trees (like Skyrim Flora Overhaul) were the best happy-medium. I always found that weird given how well Oblivion handled forests, but then that game didn't have to worry about dynamic shadows or detailed LOD...

I think ESO needs to focus on foliage and draw distance most of all. The grasses are disgustingly spiky, and the trees use PS2-era flat planes for their canopy meshes. SpeedTree implementation would solve that, but I don't think they care enough about the core game and its engine to bother spending money on third party software, or time implementing it. They're all about the cash shop and gamble crates, ignoring engine bugs like the memory leak and jumping/falling problems for well over a year now. Draw distance could be improved fairly easily though. There's already a crude mod that disables fog in the game (which isn't a good looking solution) but pushing that fog back significantly further should improve the game's vistas without losing the atmospheric fogging.

Honestly I just don't think they care about the game enough to do this though. Content and cash shop updates galore until TES6 launches. Native 4k for the Pro and Scorpio is the only boosts consoles will see, perhaps with an unlocked framerate for Scorpio as well.

Mashille

The Problem is, Textures in the New dlc zones are superior to Original Zones.

For example go to Wrothgar and look at the Rock and Cliff textures, they're far better than zones from base game. Same with Zones like Hew's Bane and Gold Coast and I feel Morrowind will Eclipse them all, not just in Graphical quality but also zone quality.

In my opinion, at some point in the future I want them to overhaul all the base game zones to not just look as good as DLC zones, but also have the same quality of worse building behind them. I mean, zones like Grahtwood are just awful from my view and the quality of many original of the zones is rather bad compared to all the DLC zones, let alone how good Morrowind is going to be.

I'd be perfectly happy to have a year of no content after a big expansion and then have the game look far better and be of much higher quality.

AtAfternoon

Sort of related, they have gone back and changed old stuff when the new content included stuff that could be used to enhance the base game. The Argonian skeleton pirates and Orsinium soldiers in Rivenspire comes to mind.

SanderBuraas

Emmagoldman wrote: »

Just curious, if it took a 1/2 to a full year of full staff attention to remaster meaning no other content, would you be ok with that?

Personally, i think yes, at some point, but not this year. Make sure morrowind doesnt drop like an egg, test and test and retest warden, and add player created cities and defense instances!!!
Also, pvp in cryodil can use a lot of love. Im getting greedy lol.

@Emmagoldman

Half a year to a year? Don't make me laugh. Most of the bad visual aspects are simple to improve upon. For example, the infamous fog that dulls the game – could be removed and replaced with a more immersive one, as well as better distant objects.

Preyfar

I don't think there needs to be a graphics update per se, but there are definitely a lot of textures in game which are exceedingly poor (rock facings as mentioned) and even in the DLC areas (the Orsinium jail cell has painfully low textures).

I think they definitely need to improve a few things but I'm not holding my breath. There are tons of trees in the game which are floating above ground, or other hovering objects which have been overlooked since launch. I'm assuming that ZOS uses a placement editor similar to what we use for housing, which makes the idea of certain floating objects taking so long to be fixed almost painful... but I don't know if updating a few trees results in half a gig downloads.

ZOS pays a great attention to detail... except when they don't, and sometimes it's those little things that can stick out the most.

Faulgor

In contrast to Skyrim, I love that ESO has a much larger variety in trees. The areas that do have dense vegetation in ESO are absolutely splendid, there's just too few of of them.

Preyfar

Faulgor wrote: »

In contrast to Skyrim, I love that ESO has a much larger variety in trees. The areas that do have dense vegetation in ESO are absolutely splendid, there's just too few of of them.

ESO does have a wide variety of trees. Seriously, they look pretty good (I wish the alpha-textures for leaves were far better, as you the flat surfaces really stick out badly, but I can accept that for performance).

ArchMikem

I do apologize again for my comparison to Skyrim but that's my only other experience to go off of. I HAVE spent a few hours in Oblivion however, saw a little bit of that game's Cyrodiil and even though the detailing was obviously showing it's age and time, the forests however were lush and dense, which still gave me a great sense of deep wilderness.

And I will note that I have seen some maybe not massive but definitely noticeable improvements in the Environment from The Gold Coast and Hew's Bane. I can see that as ZOS continues developing for the game, their set design and attention to detail is climbing. It's just becoming more painfully apparent in the base game zones these days.

If the progress in those last two zones is any indication, combined with the teaser images we've seen, Vvardenfell is going to be a pretty beautiful place to explore. But even so I'd still really appreciate improvements to the ambiance. Vivid weather, dynamic sea water etc.

Theosis

the computer I use cant rock more than 20 fps on a good day... an update would possibly break my machine..

That said with all of the stuff turned down as much as I can accept it it could use a touch up.

AlexanderDeLarge

You're nostalgic for Skyrim because it was your first Elder Scrolls game and likely your first open world game.

Skyrim's scale is definitely worse than ESO and the technology being used in Skyrim is definitely inferior.

gamesandmoreb16_ESO

Character models and animations, add those to the update and I'll sign with a big o'l exclamation mark at the end.

Browiseth

skyrim looks terrible

this game barely runs on consoles as is, and i fully expect its graphics to age very well in the coming years

Emmagoldman

Skyrim looks great. Maybe I feel that way growing up with dos.

@smpetic why I give that time is I'm not sure how big their staff is and I, personally, would want them to go big or go home if they spend time on graphics, as in complete overhaul. I guess they could address one thing like fog, or prettier water.

For me, id rather have them work on craftable jewelry over fog. Or discovered costumes added to my costume list and dyable. Or the ability to change style for crafted gear. Even new activities for cryrodil. Player craftable cities with defense and instances. More housing options ect. But, im speaking personally

The original author is talking about new processors being released. At some point, yes, doing a massive overhaul would be great. Do people feel the gaming is lacking that much at this moment visually? For me game play is also more important then looks. Im not against graphic overall, i would just want to see it be massive and honestly havent looked at new releases to see if eso is competitive in the mmo realm. Otherwise you get a situation like 90% of games that are remastered and people complain.

Wifeaggro13

ArchMikem wrote: »

With consoles like the Playstation Pro and Microsoft's new mega hardware Project Scorpio coming I think it definitely wouldn't hurt ZOS to be developing something of a Graphics and Environment Update sometime in the future. One that would focus mainly on aesthetics, weather effects, and world building. Make the world more beautiful, and the playerbase will want to quest in it even more.

Granted ESO is already a pretty game. Many screenshots from us display that. But it still has several things about it that make me sigh in sadness as I pass by while playing. Such as flowing water travelling in one static direction regardless of where the flow should be going, or the Weather systems only having basically two settings, sunny, or rain with thunder. Or how wooded areas aren't dense in the slightest, or how every single shoreline touching the ocean has tranquil, calm seas, even though the ambiance audio is playing sounds of non-existent waves crashing around you.

I'm going to do something many of you will hate me for now. I'm going to compare this with the only other Elder Scrolls game I've experienced. Skyrim. *cowers from thrown fruit*

Skyrim has a PHENOMENAL sense of wilderness about it. The forests are thick, the terrain is ragged yet still not entirely impassable, the streams and rivers actually flow realistically. It was incredibly easy to take a few steps off the road to Riverwood and instantly feel completely lost. One day in-game I was walking through the forest somewhere near Falkreath, admiring the vegetation, the fog seeping through the trees and then a random Deer bolts in front of me. I was legitimately shocked. I wasn't prepared for it at all cause I was SO immersed in the environment around me. Even though really I was within 20 seconds from the nearest town, I had a legit sense of being in the middle of nowhere cause of how all the different environmental aspects came into play, and I'd love to feel that way in ESO. I don't want to just hop on my mount and bolt in a straight line from a Wayshrine over to a crafting station and get this one chore done quickly, I wan't to get completely lost on the way and find myself forgetting about the crafting station as I start to admire that flower bed here or that Elk grazing there while a beautiful stream runs nearby.

what your describing has nothing to do with the graphics, weather foliage and water effects is restricted for frame rates. you cannot achieve those thing and have a wide range of performance for all the different levels of hardware out there. and though you think the console can handle it , it cant even with upgraded technology. there is only so much you can push in that restricted space and not over heat the damn thing.

Skyrim is a single player game , you will not achieve the graphic quality of that level in a Massive online game. Frame rates would be horrid fo the majority of the gamers.

ArchMikem

AlexanderDeLarge wrote: »

You're nostalgic for Skyrim because it was your first Elder Scrolls game

That is true.

and likely your first open world game.

Very much nope. Though it was my first legit Role Playing Game though, unless the first Mass Effect counts, or The Legend of Zelda? Hell I think even Grand Theft Auto could be argued as somewhat of an RPG.

Skyrim's scale is definitely worse than ESO and the technology being used in Skyrim is definitely inferior.

I'm not discussing those points. I'm talking squarely on world building and environment detailing. Terrain quality and design, placement of vegetation and flora.

Chirru

I just would be happy with regular (short) maintenance of what is there; and with the fixing the many issues the game already has.

Getting sort of sick with : constant lag; lip synchronization not working; NPC's stuck in all sort of unsavory places; player mounts blocking merchants; Duels being allowed in the busiest places; player pets roasting in fires and sticking their heads where they do not belong (just so you get it - in player chars rear ends); and, and, and.

There so much more to fix that if they even started right now they would be busy for the next 5 years.
Naturally - the voices calling for bug fixes are voices calling in the wilderness (that is not in the game).


Have fun and not frustration.

mesmerizedish

I'd settle for grass rendering that isn't perpetually perpendicular to the camera's line of vision.

But, this would be a monumental task. People clamored and clamored for Blizzard to update vanilla WoW to meet the quality of Wrath of the Lich King. Cataclysm took two years, didn't do nearly a good enough job, and wasn't particularly well-received. Bethesda and Zenimax have a lot of money, but they do not have Activision-Blizzard money. The ESO team is probably a lot smaller than the WoW team. And the difference in quality between the base game and the DLC zones is not nearly so pronounced as in WoW's case.

I would welcome any and all visual/environmental updates ZOS could provide us, even at the expense of some "content," but I think I'm in the minority, and the bottom line is that ESO is a really pretty game already.

Kalfis

They did one, the lighting update, which completely destroyed Cryodiil performance. Cyrodiil has been a former shell of itself since then, ZoS's solution was significantly reducing the player cap and remove wildlife.......yet STILL there is performance and lag issues.

God knows what will happen if there is another graphical update. But ESO does not need one. The only improvement that would be worthwhile is increased view distance.

MLGProPlayer

I would just like a texture update.

Compare Hew's Bane to Stros M'Kai or Reaper's March. The textures have really improved since the game launched. If we could apply those to the rest of the game, that would be great.

Not sure it's a worthwhile endeavor though.

LtCrunch

Kalfis wrote: »

They did one, the lighting update, which completely destroyed Cryodiil performance. Cyrodiil has been a former shell of itself since then, ZoS's solution was significantly reducing the player cap and remove wildlife.......yet STILL there is performance and lag issues.

God knows what will happen if there is another graphical update. But ESO does not need one. The only improvement that would be worthwhile is increased view distance.

To be fair that update wrecked Cyrodiil performance because ZOS changed many client-side things to be calculates server-side, it wasn't due simply to improved lighting effects.

brandonv516

Get rid of grass in 2017. Thank you.

kyle.wilson

If you want a graphics upgrade, move to pc.

Banana

Multicore support would be a good start.