HDR broke on xbox since wolfhunter? EDIT: Patch coming early october

Valrien

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know there’s more than a little bit of concern from our Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro players who take advantage of the HDR modes on those consoles. For those that are unaware, HDR is a graphics mode that allows the game client to far more subtly render colors to make scenes with a lot of detail almost lifelike. It is really cool and makes ESO look amazing, especially in scenes where there is a lot of color and detail, like sunsets. In the latest update, we made a change that altered the way HDR support in ESO works by “normalizing” lighting and color values, which led many players who use HDR believe it makes the game look bland.

The explanation for what happened here is illuminating, as it gives some insight into our development process, especially how we treat bugs vs. how we treat new art assets and shaders.

On the development side, we have a strict policy to never change art assets once they have been in the live game, except – and this is important – if they are obviously “wrong”. Think bad animations, shoulder pads clipping through armor, weapons hanging too far off a character model’s hip – that kind of thing. This “no change” policy has been in effect since the Redguard Female Armor Debacle of 2015. This was where we updated the visuals of one type of Redguard Female armor and pushed it live without thinking of the consequences of players who liked the way it looked and had been using it for over a year. This caused a lot of – very much merited – criticism from players that liked the older style much better. That’s when we started our “no change” policy. Even if we think an asset needs to updated because it doesn’t fit ESO’s established art style or the artist responsible thinks they could have done better, we no longer change live assets because players are used to the way the game and their characters look, and that is more important than what WE think.

Funny story about this – and I’m sure you are all seeing where this is going – we have a backlog of art bugs and issues that we address over time. If these are flagged as low priority, it can take a long time to get to them. Just after our HDR versions of ESO launched, we flagged an HDR issue where some assets were not responding correctly to our HDR renderer – their color values were not configured properly and were “blown out”, meaning they were far too bright for the established ESO art style. This was entered as a bug, and sat there (not high priority) on the bug list for a few years. Eventually it was addressed and made its way into the build that launched with Update 19 (Wolfhunter).

A side effect of this change is that it changes how our HDR “slider” bar displays HDR changes – on some TVs, you won’t notice any change after moving the slider 10-15%. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

Short story: It was flagged as a bug, not an “art asset change”, so it never came to the attention of the Art Director (or me) until it went live. Obviously this should have been seen as an “art change”, not a bug fix. We should not have changed it, even if we think that the change is merited, due to our “no change once live” policy.

So now this leaves us in a sticky situation: if we change it back, there will be players that like the new way better than the old. And they will be correct, just as are the ones who like the old way – this is subjective. We are now in a no-win situation, which is why we haven’t given you guys much information up until this point. What we need to do is step back, look at our options, and figure out what is the best thing to do that makes the highest number of players happy. I’m not 100% sure what this is yet, but hang tight and we’ll let you know.

And my sincere apologies for rolling this out with no information, no background, and no heads-up. We take this very seriously, and we’ll make some process changes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future, just like we did during the Redguard Female Armor Debacle.

Even if I personally don't think the whole HDR thing is a huge deal, a response from Matt is always nice to see regarding anything.

dotme

@ZOS_MattFiror Thank you - Good response and it makes sense.

I can only speak for myself, but after the update the load screens still look great while the game world looks washed out (not nearly as colorful as the load screens, maps etc). It's like things went too far in the other direction.

If the saturation level is a client-side setting, would there be any chance of a slider under Video options that would allow us to put a bit more oomph back in the in-game color if we want to? Something we can customize, like the three Ouroboros brightness control?

happyhughes2001

@ZOS_MattFiror thank you for the response.

I find it hard to believe that anybody thinks the current version is better than the previous version.

I cannot remember anybody posting about HDR pre update.

Roll it back and do small updates from there.

I really appreciate the information. Thank you very much.

Krayl

@ZOS_MattFiror

Those of us who understand HDR know is finicky. Would it be possible to allow us to choose "mode 1" or "mode 2" in our video settings, flipping between pre-and-post wolfhunter settings?

As it is now I have to disable HDR on my tv before i load up the game so it doesn't switch itself. I'd rather give up color depth than have a game that just looks dirty and washed out.

pattyLtd

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know there’s more than a little bit of concern from our Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro players who take advantage of the HDR modes on those consoles. For those that are unaware, HDR is a graphics mode that allows the game client to far more subtly render colors to make scenes with a lot of detail almost lifelike. It is really cool and makes ESO look amazing, especially in scenes where there is a lot of color and detail, like sunsets. In the latest update, we made a change that altered the way HDR support in ESO works by “normalizing” lighting and color values, which led many players who use HDR believe it makes the game look bland.

The explanation for what happened here is illuminating, as it gives some insight into our development process, especially how we treat bugs vs. how we treat new art assets and shaders.

On the development side, we have a strict policy to never change art assets once they have been in the live game, except – and this is important – if they are obviously “wrong”. Think bad animations, shoulder pads clipping through armor, weapons hanging too far off a character model’s hip – that kind of thing. This “no change” policy has been in effect since the Redguard Female Armor Debacle of 2015. This was where we updated the visuals of one type of Redguard Female armor and pushed it live without thinking of the consequences of players who liked the way it looked and had been using it for over a year. This caused a lot of – very much merited – criticism from players that liked the older style much better. That’s when we started our “no change” policy. Even if we think an asset needs to updated because it doesn’t fit ESO’s established art style or the artist responsible thinks they could have done better, we no longer change live assets because players are used to the way the game and their characters look, and that is more important than what WE think.

Funny story about this – and I’m sure you are all seeing where this is going – we have a backlog of art bugs and issues that we address over time. If these are flagged as low priority, it can take a long time to get to them. Just after our HDR versions of ESO launched, we flagged an HDR issue where some assets were not responding correctly to our HDR renderer – their color values were not configured properly and were “blown out”, meaning they were far too bright for the established ESO art style. This was entered as a bug, and sat there (not high priority) on the bug list for a few years. Eventually it was addressed and made its way into the build that launched with Update 19 (Wolfhunter).

A side effect of this change is that it changes how our HDR “slider” bar displays HDR changes – on some TVs, you won’t notice any change after moving the slider 10-15%. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

Short story: It was flagged as a bug, not an “art asset change”, so it never came to the attention of the Art Director (or me) until it went live. Obviously this should have been seen as an “art change”, not a bug fix. We should not have changed it, even if we think that the change is merited, due to our “no change once live” policy.

So now this leaves us in a sticky situation: if we change it back, there will be players that like the new way better than the old. And they will be correct, just as are the ones who like the old way – this is subjective. We are now in a no-win situation, which is why we haven’t given you guys much information up until this point. What we need to do is step back, look at our options, and figure out what is the best thing to do that makes the highest number of players happy. I’m not 100% sure what this is yet, but hang tight and we’ll let you know.

And my sincere apologies for rolling this out with no information, no background, and no heads-up. We take this very seriously, and we’ll make some process changes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future, just like we did during the Redguard Female Armor Debacle.

Thank you for your detailed explanation.

o_0

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know there’s more than a little bit of concern from our Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro players who take advantage of the HDR modes on those consoles. For those that are unaware, HDR is a graphics mode that allows the game client to far more subtly render colors to make scenes with a lot of detail almost lifelike. It is really cool and makes ESO look amazing, especially in scenes where there is a lot of color and detail, like sunsets. In the latest update, we made a change that altered the way HDR support in ESO works by “normalizing” lighting and color values, which led many players who use HDR believe it makes the game look bland.

The explanation for what happened here is illuminating, as it gives some insight into our development process, especially how we treat bugs vs. how we treat new art assets and shaders.

On the development side, we have a strict policy to never change art assets once they have been in the live game, except – and this is important – if they are obviously “wrong”. Think bad animations, shoulder pads clipping through armor, weapons hanging too far off a character model’s hip – that kind of thing. This “no change” policy has been in effect since the Redguard Female Armor Debacle of 2015. This was where we updated the visuals of one type of Redguard Female armor and pushed it live without thinking of the consequences of players who liked the way it looked and had been using it for over a year. This caused a lot of – very much merited – criticism from players that liked the older style much better. That’s when we started our “no change” policy. Even if we think an asset needs to updated because it doesn’t fit ESO’s established art style or the artist responsible thinks they could have done better, we no longer change live assets because players are used to the way the game and their characters look, and that is more important than what WE think.

Funny story about this – and I’m sure you are all seeing where this is going – we have a backlog of art bugs and issues that we address over time. If these are flagged as low priority, it can take a long time to get to them. Just after our HDR versions of ESO launched, we flagged an HDR issue where some assets were not responding correctly to our HDR renderer – their color values were not configured properly and were “blown out”, meaning they were far too bright for the established ESO art style. This was entered as a bug, and sat there (not high priority) on the bug list for a few years. Eventually it was addressed and made its way into the build that launched with Update 19 (Wolfhunter).

A side effect of this change is that it changes how our HDR “slider” bar displays HDR changes – on some TVs, you won’t notice any change after moving the slider 10-15%. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

Short story: It was flagged as a bug, not an “art asset change”, so it never came to the attention of the Art Director (or me) until it went live. Obviously this should have been seen as an “art change”, not a bug fix. We should not have changed it, even if we think that the change is merited, due to our “no change once live” policy.

So now this leaves us in a sticky situation: if we change it back, there will be players that like the new way better than the old. And they will be correct, just as are the ones who like the old way – this is subjective. We are now in a no-win situation, which is why we haven’t given you guys much information up until this point. What we need to do is step back, look at our options, and figure out what is the best thing to do that makes the highest number of players happy. I’m not 100% sure what this is yet, but hang tight and we’ll let you know.

And my sincere apologies for rolling this out with no information, no background, and no heads-up. We take this very seriously, and we’ll make some process changes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future, just like we did during the Redguard Female Armor Debacle.

Thank you for this clear information that really helps our understanding with how and why this happened. As this was flagged incorrectly, but acknowledged as an art issue and not a bug, wouldnt it still be within policy to revert the changes to where they were as it was implemented without going through proper processes, and readdress through proper policy and workflow as it was intended that would also allow for proper testing and adjustment?

Valrien

o_0 wrote: »

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know there’s more than a little bit of concern from our Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro players who take advantage of the HDR modes on those consoles. For those that are unaware, HDR is a graphics mode that allows the game client to far more subtly render colors to make scenes with a lot of detail almost lifelike. It is really cool and makes ESO look amazing, especially in scenes where there is a lot of color and detail, like sunsets. In the latest update, we made a change that altered the way HDR support in ESO works by “normalizing” lighting and color values, which led many players who use HDR believe it makes the game look bland.

The explanation for what happened here is illuminating, as it gives some insight into our development process, especially how we treat bugs vs. how we treat new art assets and shaders.

On the development side, we have a strict policy to never change art assets once they have been in the live game, except – and this is important – if they are obviously “wrong”. Think bad animations, shoulder pads clipping through armor, weapons hanging too far off a character model’s hip – that kind of thing. This “no change” policy has been in effect since the Redguard Female Armor Debacle of 2015. This was where we updated the visuals of one type of Redguard Female armor and pushed it live without thinking of the consequences of players who liked the way it looked and had been using it for over a year. This caused a lot of – very much merited – criticism from players that liked the older style much better. That’s when we started our “no change” policy. Even if we think an asset needs to updated because it doesn’t fit ESO’s established art style or the artist responsible thinks they could have done better, we no longer change live assets because players are used to the way the game and their characters look, and that is more important than what WE think.

Funny story about this – and I’m sure you are all seeing where this is going – we have a backlog of art bugs and issues that we address over time. If these are flagged as low priority, it can take a long time to get to them. Just after our HDR versions of ESO launched, we flagged an HDR issue where some assets were not responding correctly to our HDR renderer – their color values were not configured properly and were “blown out”, meaning they were far too bright for the established ESO art style. This was entered as a bug, and sat there (not high priority) on the bug list for a few years. Eventually it was addressed and made its way into the build that launched with Update 19 (Wolfhunter).

A side effect of this change is that it changes how our HDR “slider” bar displays HDR changes – on some TVs, you won’t notice any change after moving the slider 10-15%. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

Short story: It was flagged as a bug, not an “art asset change”, so it never came to the attention of the Art Director (or me) until it went live. Obviously this should have been seen as an “art change”, not a bug fix. We should not have changed it, even if we think that the change is merited, due to our “no change once live” policy.

So now this leaves us in a sticky situation: if we change it back, there will be players that like the new way better than the old. And they will be correct, just as are the ones who like the old way – this is subjective. We are now in a no-win situation, which is why we haven’t given you guys much information up until this point. What we need to do is step back, look at our options, and figure out what is the best thing to do that makes the highest number of players happy. I’m not 100% sure what this is yet, but hang tight and we’ll let you know.

And my sincere apologies for rolling this out with no information, no background, and no heads-up. We take this very seriously, and we’ll make some process changes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future, just like we did during the Redguard Female Armor Debacle.

Thank you for this clear information that really helps our understanding with how and why this happened. As this was flagged incorrectly, but acknowledged as an art issue and not a bug, wouldnt it still be within policy to revert the changes to where they were as it was implemented without going through proper processes, and readdress through proper policy and workflow as it was intended that would also allow for proper testing and adjustment?

The way he describes it, it was miscategorized but as a result of their no-change policy there are some people who actually prefer this (such as that one artist in this thread who noticed more subtle color after the change) so it's not necessarily a no-brainer for them anymore since the players who prefer this new subtle mode are no more or less important than players who prefer the more saturated (slightly-cartoony) mode.

dotme

Valrien wrote: »

The way he describes it, it was miscategorized but as a result of their no-change policy there are some people who actually prefer this (such as that one artist in this thread who noticed more subtle color after the change) so it's not necessarily a no-brainer for them anymore since the players who prefer this new subtle mode are no more or less important than players who prefer the more saturated (slightly-cartoony) mode.

Agreed. Maybe they should split the difference and restore 50% of the prior saturation levels. Either that would please everyone, or torque everyone off, but it's a middle-ground

stargazer69

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

The HDR10 standard is supported by both Sony and Microsoft, and it appears to be the baseline for HDR.

It appears that people who spent many times the cost of my HDR 4K TV (which played stramed world cup matches in UHD for £400) are also having problems.

If the games displays to HDR10 standars, the it will look the same on all displays that support that standard.

FWIW, I thought it looked a bit garish before the patch, but now it looks just bland and lifeless, and I've had to turn HDR off on my PS4Pro to paly the game (I don't play in 4K mode as I prefer enhanced 1080p with reflections, etc).

Krayl

I would like to hear from someone who thinks it's better now. I'm not denying the exist. Perhaps this is a case where we are a vocal minority. But so far I don't know anyone whom either prefers the 'after'. Seems people are either indifferent or unhappy with the change.

IMHO you should revert and then find a better way to re-implement the new 'fix' as an option for people who want it. Nobdoy was complaining before, were they?

It's very annoying that our game play experience has been ruined over a few minor art bugs that were apparently low priority.

o_0

stargazer69 wrote: »

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

The HDR10 standard is supported by both Sony and Microsoft, and it appears to be the baseline for HDR.

It appears that people who spent many times the cost of my HDR 4K TV (which played stramed world cup matches in UHD for £400) are also having problems.

If the games displays to HDR10 standars, the it will look the same on all displays that support that standard.

FWIW, I thought it looked a bit garish before the patch, but now it looks just bland and lifeless, and I've had to turn HDR off on my PS4Pro to paly the game (I don't play in 4K mode as I prefer enhanced 1080p with reflections, etc).

HDR10 in itself is a standard, but there is no standard for how its applied to content and that is arbitrary. A standard for how its applied needs to be set for all to use it the same way, such as they did with gamma and BT.1886.

Valrien

Krayl wrote: »

I would like to hear from someone who thinks it's better now. I'm not denying the exist. Perhaps this is a case where we are a vocal minority. But so far I don't know anyone whom either prefers the 'after'. Seems people are either indifferent or unhappy with the change.

IMHO you should revert and then find a better way to re-implement the new 'fix' as an option for people who want it. Nobdoy was complaining before, were they?

It's very annoying that our game play experience has been ruined over a few minor art bugs that were apparently low priority.

Someone literally posted about it in this thread.

(And I STILL think "ruined" is far too strong to use for this change but to each their own)

It doesn't necessarily matter if people weren't complaining before, when now there would be people who would complain about it...which was a large part of Matt's point

stargazer69

o_0 wrote: »

HDR10 in itself is a standard, but there is no standard for how its applied to content and that is arbitrary. A standard for how its applied needs to be set for all to use it the same way, such as they did with gamma and BT.1886.

HDR10 seems to have quite a few guidelines according to wikipedia (yes, I know..)

"HDR10 Media Profile, more commonly known as HDR10, was announced on August 27, 2015, by the Consumer Technology Association and uses the wide-gamut Rec. 2020 color space, a bit depth of 10-bits, and the SMPTE ST 2084 (PQ) transfer function – a combination later also standardized in ITU-R BT.2100.[35] It also uses SMPTE ST 2086 "Mastering Display Color Volume" static metadata to send color calibration data of the mastering display, such as MaxFALL (Maximum Frame Average Light Level) and MaxCLL (Maximum Content Light Level) static values, encoded as SEI messages within the video stream."

I have no idea what that means for a developer to transform their colourspace, but quite a few other games have managed it without issue.

blunned

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know there’s more than a little bit of concern from our Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro players who take advantage of the HDR modes on those consoles. For those that are unaware, HDR is a graphics mode that allows the game client to far more subtly render colors to make scenes with a lot of detail almost lifelike. It is really cool and makes ESO look amazing, especially in scenes where there is a lot of color and detail, like sunsets. In the latest update, we made a change that altered the way HDR support in ESO works by “normalizing” lighting and color values, which led many players who use HDR believe it makes the game look bland.

The explanation for what happened here is illuminating, as it gives some insight into our development process, especially how we treat bugs vs. how we treat new art assets and shaders.

On the development side, we have a strict policy to never change art assets once they have been in the live game, except – and this is important – if they are obviously “wrong”. Think bad animations, shoulder pads clipping through armor, weapons hanging too far off a character model’s hip – that kind of thing. This “no change” policy has been in effect since the Redguard Female Armor Debacle of 2015. This was where we updated the visuals of one type of Redguard Female armor and pushed it live without thinking of the consequences of players who liked the way it looked and had been using it for over a year. This caused a lot of – very much merited – criticism from players that liked the older style much better. That’s when we started our “no change” policy. Even if we think an asset needs to updated because it doesn’t fit ESO’s established art style or the artist responsible thinks they could have done better, we no longer change live assets because players are used to the way the game and their characters look, and that is more important than what WE think.

Funny story about this – and I’m sure you are all seeing where this is going – we have a backlog of art bugs and issues that we address over time. If these are flagged as low priority, it can take a long time to get to them. Just after our HDR versions of ESO launched, we flagged an HDR issue where some assets were not responding correctly to our HDR renderer – their color values were not configured properly and were “blown out”, meaning they were far too bright for the established ESO art style. This was entered as a bug, and sat there (not high priority) on the bug list for a few years. Eventually it was addressed and made its way into the build that launched with Update 19 (Wolfhunter).

A side effect of this change is that it changes how our HDR “slider” bar displays HDR changes – on some TVs, you won’t notice any change after moving the slider 10-15%. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

Short story: It was flagged as a bug, not an “art asset change”, so it never came to the attention of the Art Director (or me) until it went live. Obviously this should have been seen as an “art change”, not a bug fix. We should not have changed it, even if we think that the change is merited, due to our “no change once live” policy.

So now this leaves us in a sticky situation: if we change it back, there will be players that like the new way better than the old. And they will be correct, just as are the ones who like the old way – this is subjective. We are now in a no-win situation, which is why we haven’t given you guys much information up until this point. What we need to do is step back, look at our options, and figure out what is the best thing to do that makes the highest number of players happy. I’m not 100% sure what this is yet, but hang tight and we’ll let you know.

And my sincere apologies for rolling this out with no information, no background, and no heads-up. We take this very seriously, and we’ll make some process changes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future, just like we did during the Redguard Female Armor Debacle.

Thank you very much for the detailed reply. It is great to hear processes will be changed to ensure something like this doesn’t happen in the future. I would argue this is not a sticky situation, however, because prior to making the changes there was almost nobody complaining about the visuals. I even did research prior to buying an Xbox one x and could find nothing but praises for the visually enhanced state of the game. A mistake was made not flagging this as an art asset. To correct that mistake, the change should be reverted and it’s as simple as that. Of course, you may anger a select few, but it sure seems the preference leans in the other direction. These things take time, but your response should have been the first one to come out after the “we are looking into it” post. I have already canceled my subscription secondary to many aforementioned issues with how console players are treated (specifically the many QoL issues that have not been addressed), and this current issue doesn’t seem like it will be fixed anytime soon, but I will keep an eye on this game just like I kept an eye on Destiny 2 and will come back when I see the changes I am hoping for. Thanks again for the post. I know with how much attention this was getting you probably didn’t have a choice, but it’s nice nonetheless.

happyhughes2001

Hopefully it will be reverted to the previous version pre update.

At least we have had a good response and update.

Thanks again @ZOS_MattFiror

stargazer69

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

And my sincere apologies for rolling this out with no information, no background, and no heads-up. We take this very seriously, and we’ll make some process changes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future, just like we did during the Redguard Female Armor Debacle.

And you promised the same thing with the spyware you planted on our PCs a few months ago (yes, some of us play both PC and console).

Nova Sky

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know there’s more than a little bit of concern from our Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro players who take advantage of the HDR modes on those consoles. For those that are unaware, HDR is a graphics mode that allows the game client to far more subtly render colors to make scenes with a lot of detail almost lifelike. It is really cool and makes ESO look amazing, especially in scenes where there is a lot of color and detail, like sunsets. In the latest update, we made a change that altered the way HDR support in ESO works by “normalizing” lighting and color values, which led many players who use HDR believe it makes the game look bland.

The explanation for what happened here is illuminating, as it gives some insight into our development process, especially how we treat bugs vs. how we treat new art assets and shaders.

On the development side, we have a strict policy to never change art assets once they have been in the live game, except – and this is important – if they are obviously “wrong”. Think bad animations, shoulder pads clipping through armor, weapons hanging too far off a character model’s hip – that kind of thing. This “no change” policy has been in effect since the Redguard Female Armor Debacle of 2015. This was where we updated the visuals of one type of Redguard Female armor and pushed it live without thinking of the consequences of players who liked the way it looked and had been using it for over a year. This caused a lot of – very much merited – criticism from players that liked the older style much better. That’s when we started our “no change” policy. Even if we think an asset needs to updated because it doesn’t fit ESO’s established art style or the artist responsible thinks they could have done better, we no longer change live assets because players are used to the way the game and their characters look, and that is more important than what WE think.

Funny story about this – and I’m sure you are all seeing where this is going – we have a backlog of art bugs and issues that we address over time. If these are flagged as low priority, it can take a long time to get to them. Just after our HDR versions of ESO launched, we flagged an HDR issue where some assets were not responding correctly to our HDR renderer – their color values were not configured properly and were “blown out”, meaning they were far too bright for the established ESO art style. This was entered as a bug, and sat there (not high priority) on the bug list for a few years. Eventually it was addressed and made its way into the build that launched with Update 19 (Wolfhunter).

A side effect of this change is that it changes how our HDR “slider” bar displays HDR changes – on some TVs, you won’t notice any change after moving the slider 10-15%. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

Short story: It was flagged as a bug, not an “art asset change”, so it never came to the attention of the Art Director (or me) until it went live. Obviously this should have been seen as an “art change”, not a bug fix. We should not have changed it, even if we think that the change is merited, due to our “no change once live” policy.

So now this leaves us in a sticky situation: if we change it back, there will be players that like the new way better than the old. And they will be correct, just as are the ones who like the old way – this is subjective. We are now in a no-win situation, which is why we haven’t given you guys much information up until this point. What we need to do is step back, look at our options, and figure out what is the best thing to do that makes the highest number of players happy. I’m not 100% sure what this is yet, but hang tight and we’ll let you know.

And my sincere apologies for rolling this out with no information, no background, and no heads-up. We take this very seriously, and we’ll make some process changes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future, just like we did during the Redguard Female Armor Debacle.

The explanation is appreciated, as are the insights.

My thoughts, though, regarding going back to the pre-Wolfhunter look or staying with the post-Wolfhunter look are relatively simple:

In your advertising, you state that between 10 million and 11 million accounts have been created on ESO, all *before* the Wolfhunter changes to HDR. These ladies and gentlemen — aka customers — bought into a colorful, vibrant world. Surely, in the mere *weeks* since HDR was hit in the Wolfhunter update, you haven't picked up enough new customers to offset the millions who were invested in a more colorful and vibrant ESO (and there would still be several million, I'd wager, even if you limit the account base to those on consoles only).

So, to me, it seems to be a fairly cut-and-dry issue: Millions of accounts enjoyed ESO before the Wolfhunter update, with seemingly few complaints about HDR. From a financial perspective, I think it'd be wise to switch back to the previous model of ESO, and go forward from there tweaking assets as warranted to get them "in line" with what you expect of ESO's color and vibrancy scheme.

ForMalacath

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know there’s more than a little bit of concern from our Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro players who take advantage of the HDR modes on those consoles. For those that are unaware, HDR is a graphics mode that allows the game client to far more subtly render colors to make scenes with a lot of detail almost lifelike. It is really cool and makes ESO look amazing, especially in scenes where there is a lot of color and detail, like sunsets. In the latest update, we made a change that altered the way HDR support in ESO works by “normalizing” lighting and color values, which led many players who use HDR believe it makes the game look bland.

The explanation for what happened here is illuminating, as it gives some insight into our development process, especially how we treat bugs vs. how we treat new art assets and shaders.

On the development side, we have a strict policy to never change art assets once they have been in the live game, except – and this is important – if they are obviously “wrong”. Think bad animations, shoulder pads clipping through armor, weapons hanging too far off a character model’s hip – that kind of thing. This “no change” policy has been in effect since the Redguard Female Armor Debacle of 2015. This was where we updated the visuals of one type of Redguard Female armor and pushed it live without thinking of the consequences of players who liked the way it looked and had been using it for over a year. This caused a lot of – very much merited – criticism from players that liked the older style much better. That’s when we started our “no change” policy. Even if we think an asset needs to updated because it doesn’t fit ESO’s established art style or the artist responsible thinks they could have done better, we no longer change live assets because players are used to the way the game and their characters look, and that is more important than what WE think.

Funny story about this – and I’m sure you are all seeing where this is going – we have a backlog of art bugs and issues that we address over time. If these are flagged as low priority, it can take a long time to get to them. Just after our HDR versions of ESO launched, we flagged an HDR issue where some assets were not responding correctly to our HDR renderer – their color values were not configured properly and were “blown out”, meaning they were far too bright for the established ESO art style. This was entered as a bug, and sat there (not high priority) on the bug list for a few years. Eventually it was addressed and made its way into the build that launched with Update 19 (Wolfhunter).

A side effect of this change is that it changes how our HDR “slider” bar displays HDR changes – on some TVs, you won’t notice any change after moving the slider 10-15%. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

Short story: It was flagged as a bug, not an “art asset change”, so it never came to the attention of the Art Director (or me) until it went live. Obviously this should have been seen as an “art change”, not a bug fix. We should not have changed it, even if we think that the change is merited, due to our “no change once live” policy.

So now this leaves us in a sticky situation: if we change it back, there will be players that like the new way better than the old. And they will be correct, just as are the ones who like the old way – this is subjective. We are now in a no-win situation, which is why we haven’t given you guys much information up until this point. What we need to do is step back, look at our options, and figure out what is the best thing to do that makes the highest number of players happy. I’m not 100% sure what this is yet, but hang tight and we’ll let you know.

And my sincere apologies for rolling this out with no information, no background, and no heads-up. We take this very seriously, and we’ll make some process changes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future, just like we did during the Redguard Female Armor Debacle.

Appreciate the response! Cheers!

LadyLethalla

It's great to finally see a response - and a very detailed one @ZOS_MattFiror.
Goes a very long way to mending cred in my book.
Just one small point about the HDR slider: I have a Sony KD55X9000e; $2.1k in AUD when I bought it almost a year ago. The HDR slider does nothing whatsoever - and mine is definitely not a cheap television.

SirBobbyDanger

MattFiror's quote in spoiler tags to avoid thread bloat:

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

I know there’s more than a little bit of concern from our Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro players who take advantage of the HDR modes on those consoles. For those that are unaware, HDR is a graphics mode that allows the game client to far more subtly render colors to make scenes with a lot of detail almost lifelike. It is really cool and makes ESO look amazing, especially in scenes where there is a lot of color and detail, like sunsets. In the latest update, we made a change that altered the way HDR support in ESO works by “normalizing” lighting and color values, which led many players who use HDR believe it makes the game look bland.

The explanation for what happened here is illuminating, as it gives some insight into our development process, especially how we treat bugs vs. how we treat new art assets and shaders.

On the development side, we have a strict policy to never change art assets once they have been in the live game, except – and this is important – if they are obviously “wrong”. Think bad animations, shoulder pads clipping through armor, weapons hanging too far off a character model’s hip – that kind of thing. This “no change” policy has been in effect since the Redguard Female Armor Debacle of 2015. This was where we updated the visuals of one type of Redguard Female armor and pushed it live without thinking of the consequences of players who liked the way it looked and had been using it for over a year. This caused a lot of – very much merited – criticism from players that liked the older style much better. That’s when we started our “no change” policy. Even if we think an asset needs to updated because it doesn’t fit ESO’s established art style or the artist responsible thinks they could have done better, we no longer change live assets because players are used to the way the game and their characters look, and that is more important than what WE think.

Funny story about this – and I’m sure you are all seeing where this is going – we have a backlog of art bugs and issues that we address over time. If these are flagged as low priority, it can take a long time to get to them. Just after our HDR versions of ESO launched, we flagged an HDR issue where some assets were not responding correctly to our HDR renderer – their color values were not configured properly and were “blown out”, meaning they were far too bright for the established ESO art style. This was entered as a bug, and sat there (not high priority) on the bug list for a few years. Eventually it was addressed and made its way into the build that launched with Update 19 (Wolfhunter).

A side effect of this change is that it changes how our HDR “slider” bar displays HDR changes – on some TVs, you won’t notice any change after moving the slider 10-15%. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

Short story: It was flagged as a bug, not an “art asset change”, so it never came to the attention of the Art Director (or me) until it went live. Obviously this should have been seen as an “art change”, not a bug fix. We should not have changed it, even if we think that the change is merited, due to our “no change once live” policy.

So now this leaves us in a sticky situation: if we change it back, there will be players that like the new way better than the old. And they will be correct, just as are the ones who like the old way – this is subjective. We are now in a no-win situation, which is why we haven’t given you guys much information up until this point. What we need to do is step back, look at our options, and figure out what is the best thing to do that makes the highest number of players happy. I’m not 100% sure what this is yet, but hang tight and we’ll let you know.

And my sincere apologies for rolling this out with no information, no background, and no heads-up. We take this very seriously, and we’ll make some process changes to ensure something like this doesn’t happen again in the future, just like we did during the Redguard Female Armor Debacle.

Thank you for the response. I am definitely among the people who thought HDR was flat-out broken or disabled when Wolfhunter launched, hence the bug reports.

I have a growing number of Xbox One X Enhanced games that offer several options for how the end user would like enhancement to work (and it sounds like PS4 Pro enhanced games have a similar option). Monster Hunter: World, for example, lets you choose between prioritizing frame rate, resolution, or draw distance/shading (or something like that).

Would it be possible to offer 2-3 presets to let people figure out the HDR effects best for them?

Even though I very much dislike the new presentation, I recognize (and acknowledged in my previous post), that it has improved the graphical fidelity of some assets, especially 2d icons, at the expensive of draining color from the world.

In a perfect world, I'd love an HDR solution that mixes the previous bright colors from before Wolfhunter with the greater clarity brought in post Wolfhunter.

So maybe the winning solution is to allow a choice between: 1) the bold and bright colors from before Wolfhunter, 2) the new settings from post-Wolfhunter (admittedly it's unclear from the messaging if the new settings are working as intended but making a number of us unhappy, or if additional configuration/tooling needs done to achieve the intended result), or 3) a middle ground that attempts to merge the strengths of both approaches.

Regardless, thank you for the insightful and thorough response.

P.S. I have a 2017 LG OLED TV and the HDR Brightness slider has produced minimal visible effect, both before and after Wolfhunter. If that's a low end HDR TV, then where are they hiding the high-end HDR TVs?

P.P.S. And Kudos to everyone in the thread who avoided arguing over which console is better

Davor

I like to say thank you for the response. All I ask is please keep us updated.

Beardimus

Thanks @ZOS_MattFiror this update is hugely appreciated, thank you for the time to explain this to us.

I hope a solution will be choice, as honestly I don't think many like the broken HDR, and it's not just budget screens, most ive spoken too have the issue with decent screens bough for HDR spec with gaming in mind. But a choice option would be sweet.

Nonetheless thanks for the update, please keep us updated as decisions are made and timings. It's a game changer for our sanity!

Krayl

ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

A side effect of this change is that it changes how our HDR “slider” bar displays HDR changes – on some TVs, you won’t notice any change after moving the slider 10-15%. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is no commonly accepted HDR standard for TVs – cheaper HDR TVs tend to be dimmer with not as much control, and higher-end TVs have a large range of brightness. You’ll definitely notice a difference after our change, especially if you have one of the lower-end TVs.

Just as an update, and to test after @ZOS_MattFiror gave us his welcomed information, I tried the game on a brand new sony QLED that we purchased for work and the HDR slider doesn't do anything (or at least nothing noticeable to my eye and I am a photo/video editor and have done 3D assets in the past).

So, while I recognize that my mid-range set may have some limitations, it's definitely not limited to 'cheap' TVs.

swirve

Krayl wrote: »

Just as an update, and to test after @ZOS_MattFiror giving us his welcomed information, I came back into the office and tried the game on a brand new sony QLED that we purchased and the HDR slider doesn't do anything.

So, while I recognize that my mid-range set has some limitations, it's definitely not limited to 'cheap' TVs.

Ive got a highend OLED 4K... ZoS gone and buggered things up... fact

crjs1

Great reply from Matt. (Though makes me weep we will never see old assets revamped - looking at you big stitches on low level Altmer robes...)

I am one of those people who really did not like how HDR was implemented prior to the patch. In my opinion it was FAR FAR too cartoonish especially with the reds, blues and green, while also being incredibly dark.

I am sure I am not in the majority but a simple search of the forums and google show a lot of other people also were unhappy eg. https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/379058/ps4-pro-hdr-looks-like-crap-fix

With that said, I would personally like a compromise between what we had then compared to now, as now it’s gone too far the other way. But if forced to choose I would take what we have post patch. I personally like the world to look ‘realistic’ (yeah I know Tamriel is not exactly realistic but hey..) it’s one of the reasons I am not a fan of the sparkling mounts etc - but as I say that is a personal preference.

If possibly the best solution would be a saturation/colour slider so we can choose our own preference.

happyhughes2001

I hope we go back to the look pre update. It looks terrible in comparison now.

PrairieMcChicken

I own a 55" LG B7T which was one of the highest rated OLED TV's for 2017 running on a PS4 Pro. After the wolfhunter change the HDR brightness slider has no visible effect and there is no visible difference when I turn HDR on or off on the console. The visuals were a bit over saturated before the patch, however they were much better than the current state.

Vanthras79

Thanks @ZOS_MattFiror ! I appreciate the care you guys are taking in handling this situation. I do miss the old style of the rendering myself, and I wonder if there could be like a toggle feature for the old rendering v. the new rendering? A Settings option may help you guys solve this debacle.

Thanks for your time!

DreadKnight

ESO is an immersive Fantasy MMO, colours should be slightly oversaturated imo. It's part of the immersion into a not-so-real fantasy world where things don't look drab and grey like they do in a lot of the real world.

Please change it back to the way it was - it looks positively drab and lifeless as it is now.

As others have pointed out - there were almost no players complaining before about colour saturation or the way the game looked in HDR - only positive comments. It's also easier to turn down saturation on TV controls if needed than it is to turn them up in a way that is balanced and visually pleasing imo.

Thanks to Matt for the detailed response. Again though, it shows that there is zero QA testing on console before release - and that continues to be ZOS's achilies heel - and the main source of the many, many complaints and bugs on console.

@ZOS_MattFiror

Bizzquik

That's a great reply from Matt.

I agree with others that say reverting to pre-Update 19 HDR methodology now makes the most sense - if for no other reason than console players are just ten days into this new version: better to nip it in the bud now, make changes to the new HDR version in testing, then roll out a corrected version later .... versus letting the divide settle in for player tastes as this drags out.

My biggest gripe as I play today is the character selection screen; drab and devoid of color. That's not the ESO I love. That's how I know there is a legitimate problem - before I've even started playing, the game feels markedly off.

Here's hoping the team reaches a decision soon.