So in theory, what would would need to be done for ESO to change engines?

billp_ESO

There is no way ESO could change engines. I doubt Zeni has many engine coders left anyway.

It would be interesting to see the effect of removing CP and AOE proc items.

Probably the other bottleneck is hack/cheat detection.

Rain_Greyraven

Okay...couple of points.

The ESO engine which is it's own engine, not a Frankenstein of Hero, uses RAD Tools, and Havok for Physics, isn't a bad engine...it is a undeveloped engine.

Every engine Unreal, Cry ,Snowdrop have all been where the ESO engine currently is, the good news is it appears that Zenimax online is hiring more engineers and coders to "achieve vision and " Turn Engine architectural goals into reality" The foundation of the ESO engine fortunately allows fro a wide spectrum of animation and allows for Havok and RAD to be replaced.

I think we should wait to see what happens with this current Engine before we throw the baby out with the bath water, a couple years ago Zenimax Online was more concerned with diversity hires, and how every intersectional microbe was "respectfully represented" now it seems they are paying less attention to corporate virtue signaling and more attention to what their customers actually want.

Time will tell.

AhPook_Is_Here

Imma go with "an alternate universe", for $5 plz Alex.

nafensoriel

Casowen wrote: »

I will be honest, I am at something of a lose for words in what I am trying to explain. Yes graphical fidelity and story is important, but what I am really trying to emphasize is that tactile environmental feedback I would get in say BDO, FFXV, warframe, etc. Im not disputing eso's world density, but it lacks that finite play-ability in games that I mentioned, partly due to having an environment with a constant physics engine. I do think this game could have both the immersion and fidelity I am saying, but given the politics, the engine will ever be enhanced again to compete with BDO or FFXV in the area of environmental tactileness simply because zenimax are not interested in that, mainly due to the history of making this game, and the fact that the current engine just isnt efficient enough like DX11/12 applications, or exponentially more work as you called it. If it where me, I would have focused my resources on this over blowing money on blur video. That failed hard with swtor in the eternal empire saga

Ahh, I think I finally get where we failed at communication!
Ok you want a more varied world with a Z-axis and world physics but inside ESO. Can this happen? Actually yes. Engines are really agnostic to what they can do. The limit is your coders and expected user performance needs(the latter is are you marketing to the low end, high end, extreme end for minimum specs?)

I'm going to talk about the last one since by nature you will never have a perfect coder. Every time you sit down to do a project you learn something.

Why might ZOS have not included much Z-axis physics or world physics? Again performance cost. You seem to have the mistaken idea that the independent parts do not demand a price on your software. If you want more physics you have to take that performance from something else. Game design is like those old RTS games with unit caps. Depending on how you built your forces in those games you could have a glaring weakness. With game design its not a weakness its a performance issue.

So say we have a game that wants a little bit of everything and they "distribute" those "100" performance "points" around like this:
Physics:20
Graphics:20
Sound:20
Lighting:20
Story:20

You would get a mediocre game to a gamer. It would look "ok" have "ok" story and "ok gameplay".
What if your game(let us pick on red alert) didn't need much physics because you are restricting everything to two axis and due to that can make significant shortcuts in other categories. Your "point" expenditure now looks like this:
Physics:5
Graphics:35
Sound:15
Lighting:10
Story:35

You've used your awesome art department to animate common "physics" effects for far less performance cost than actually letting a physics engine do those tasks and now have the budget to make the game look absolutely fantastic. It looks so fantastic and your art guys did such a good job you realize you can trim down sound quality and lighting heavily because no ones going to care with all that eye candy. There is also plenty left in the budget to make the story well above average.

Which is exactly what happened with red alert when it was released.(minus physics. it's just there for a category)

You CAN get what you want. The engine doesn't care remember? To add those things, however, means you lose something else. BDO has those physics because they did not do something else. The way they designed the game makes you not notice these missing elements immediately but if you pause and start doing a closer inspection you will notice the lack.
For ESO it is unlikely they will make massive structural redesigns simply because it would not support the vision or narrative they want. Improvements will be when the minimum specs can be bumped and when someone has a brilliant idea to clean up or add efficiency that otherwise didn't exist. The games will never be "the same" feature wise because that is the fundamental nature of how a game is developed.

For ESO I expect future improvements will be density, lighting, and general texture fidelity as these are the areas our computers have advanced in over the years.

nafensoriel

Rain_Greyraven wrote: »

Okay...couple of points.

The ESO engine which is it's own engine, not a Frankenstein of Hero, uses RAD Tools, and Havok for Physics, isn't a bad engine...it is a undeveloped engine.

Small correction. ESO is Hero. It might be a gutted and recoded hero but it is still Hero.
Frankly, Hero Engine wouldn't be legally able to put ESO as a "hero game" otherwise.

zyk

In many ways, the game already uses a different Engine than it started with because it's under continuous development. There have been many major changes over the years.

It's implausible that they will switch engines. They will continue to adapt the current engine to suit their needs as necessary.

And no, it's not a fact that ESO uses Hero Engine. ZOS has stated multiple times it is not. I am aware of what the exec of the company that owns Hero Engine posted, but they did not even join that company until years later. ZOS is the subject matter expert on their product, I am going to take their word for it.

It's kind of irrelevant though. Whatever its roots are, it's a very distinct engine. ZOS owns all of its strengths and shortcomings. They are the only party responsible for it.

Ydrisselle

Casowen wrote: »

Ogou wrote: »

You keep saying that you eant it to run more like BDO. What do you mean by that? Are you talking about the graphics, the combat? Do you just want cape physics?
All of those should be possible on the hero engine given enough time and money. At the end of the day, unless what your suggesting fits ZOS' idea of what ESO should be I don't see them spending time and money to make it happen.

nafensoriel wrote: »

Casowen wrote: »

Ok, let me reword it then, can the current hero engine be "suped up" to run more like something you would see in say BDO? Im not a fan of the current hero engine foundation either, whether its the lack of a physics engine or just that "last decade" style of mmo as I call it. I want to say the long answer to this question is just simply no, but I could be wrong.

Thats oddly a very complex question with a very simple answer.
Yes.
but...
It might require exponentially more work than one might expect.

--Could the ESO art team drop 1.5m poly models into the game tomorrow?
Yep. I highly doubt the engine would care or even need an upgrade to do this.
However, it would also probably be incapable of running at any reasonable performance.
Now the question becomes can you adjust other things to get that performance back into spec? FFXV is capable of pushing an absolutely absurd amount of polygons per second but to do that it needs to get that performance back in other categories. Its a perfect counter comparison to development choices.
FFXV Example
ESO Murkmire Example
In one image we see developers who want the absolute best single quality imagery they can get. To get this they have to leave the image space fairly empty though and reduce polygons anywhere there isn't an "active focus". In some ways, this works great. High poly grass doesn't really matter when you are riding a horse and its flying by at 25mph for an example. The main challenge is that your world is very very empty looking. BDO suffers from this in many aspects as well.

In the other image, we see developers more interested in the world telling part of the story. The image space is filled with innocuous and frankly "useless" to a gameplay perspective item like mugs, traps, barrels, plants, etc. The density of ESO cities is actually really high compared to just about anyone else due to this focus. It's more comparable to a scene in witcher3 with the number of innocuous items laying around just for effect. It's equally as performance intensive but you can't have any one element be extremely taxing to do this. Your compromise is immersion for graphical fidelity.

ESO can increase its graphical fidelity yes. The engine will do whatever the art team throws at it in many cases. The users' performance won't, however. So for a moment put yourself in their shoes and become the lead developer. Decide if you want a main character who is physically gorgeous and one or two mobs who are equally as gorgeous but they all sit in a room that's basically a box... or do you want the fully immersive "the world tells a story" setting ESO currently gives you?

I will be honest, I am at something of a lose for words in what I am trying to explain. Yes graphical fidelity and story is important, but what I am really trying to emphasize is that tactile environmental feedback I would get in say BDO, FFXV, warframe, etc. Im not disputing eso's world density, but it lacks that finite play-ability in games that I mentioned, partly due to having an environment with a constant physics engine. I do think this game could have both the immersion and fidelity I am saying, but given the politics, the engine will ever be enhanced again to compete with BDO or FFXV in the area of environmental tactileness simply because zenimax are not interested in that, mainly due to the history of making this game, and the fact that the current engine just isnt efficient enough like DX11/12 applications, or exponentially more work as you called it. If it where me, I would have focused my resources on this over blowing money on blur video. That failed hard with swtor in the eternal empire saga

Well, FFXV multiplayer and Warframe are co-op games, with 4 players. They can be compared with an ESO dungeon, but not with the open world.

Casowen

zyk wrote: »

In many ways, the game already uses a different Engine than it started with because it's under continuous development. There have been many major changes over the years.

It's implausible that they will switch engines. They will continue to adapt the current engine to suit their needs as necessary.

And no, it's not a fact that ESO uses Hero Engine. ZOS is stated multiple times it is not. I am aware of what the the exec of the company that owns Hero Engine posted, but they did not even join that company until years later. ZOS is the subject matter expert on their product, I am going to take their word for it.

It's kind of irrelevant though. Whatever its roots are, it's a very distinct engine. ZOS owns all of its strengths and shortcomings. They are the only party responsible for it.

Switching engines as it seems what the wrong way of wording it, a better word might be enhance.

So could the current engine be enhanced enough to compete on a level of visual and environmental interactivity that something like BDO offers? I think for all intents and purposes the long answer is no, but the possibility of it intrigues me.

Rain_Greyraven

nafensoriel wrote: »

Rain_Greyraven wrote: »

Okay...couple of points.

The ESO engine which is it's own engine, not a Frankenstein of Hero, uses RAD Tools, and Havok for Physics, isn't a bad engine...it is a undeveloped engine.

Small correction. ESO is Hero. It might be a gutted and recoded hero but it is still Hero.
Frankly, Hero Engine wouldn't be legally able to put ESO as a "hero game" otherwise.

Ugh back to this again, I respect Sarrene Grant, but she is more of a Community relations/Graphics designer than a hands on coder and I have to disagree on her assertions, that Hero is under the hood, I did some consulting with Simutronics, just like she did/dose with Idea Fabrik, and it was widely know that ZoS did much more than just gut Hero...of course the argument can be made if one line exists, then "Technically" it's Hero, but I don't subscribe to that rationale. Also it's obvious that Fabrik/Simutronics claims games that doesn't use it's engine, look at the in development Dark Relic mmo, it is being developed in Unreal, but hero claims it because they used it for a very short test bed in their proof of concept stages.

Elsonso

Rain_Greyraven wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

Rain_Greyraven wrote: »

Okay...couple of points.

The ESO engine which is it's own engine, not a Frankenstein of Hero, uses RAD Tools, and Havok for Physics, isn't a bad engine...it is a undeveloped engine.

Small correction. ESO is Hero. It might be a gutted and recoded hero but it is still Hero.
Frankly, Hero Engine wouldn't be legally able to put ESO as a "hero game" otherwise.

Ugh back to this again, I respect Sarrene Grant, but she is more of a Community relations/Graphics designer than a hands on coder and I have to disagree on her assertions, that Hero is under the hood, I did some consulting with Simutronics, just like she did/dose with Idea Fabrik, and it was widely know that ZoS did much more than just gut Hero...of course the argument can be made if one line exists, then "Technically" it's Hero, but I don't subscribe to that rationale.

Well, according to the people responsible for Hero... in 2014 Bioware/Zenimax launched Elder Scrolls Online to the public.

Rain_Greyraven

lordrichter wrote: »

Rain_Greyraven wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

Rain_Greyraven wrote: »

Okay...couple of points.

The ESO engine which is it's own engine, not a Frankenstein of Hero, uses RAD Tools, and Havok for Physics, isn't a bad engine...it is a undeveloped engine.

Small correction. ESO is Hero. It might be a gutted and recoded hero but it is still Hero.
Frankly, Hero Engine wouldn't be legally able to put ESO as a "hero game" otherwise.

Ugh back to this again, I respect Sarrene Grant, but she is more of a Community relations/Graphics designer than a hands on coder and I have to disagree on her assertions, that Hero is under the hood, I did some consulting with Simutronics, just like she did/dose with Idea Fabrik, and it was widely know that ZoS did much more than just gut Hero...of course the argument can be made if one line exists, then "Technically" it's Hero, but I don't subscribe to that rationale.

Well, according to the people responsible for Hero... in 2014 Bioware/Zenimax launched Elder Scrolls Online to the public.

They also claim that Dark Relic is a hero game, and that is a flat out lie, Dark Relic uses Unreal, and always has since the very earliest post proof of concept stages.

1mirg

Casowen wrote: »

Switching engines as it seems what the wrong way of wording it, a better word might be enhance.

So could the current engine be enhanced enough to compete on a level of visual and environmental interactivity that something like BDO offers? I think for all intents and purposes the long answer is no, but the possibility of it intrigues me.

Quote:

Black Desert Online uses Pearl Abyss' own "Black Desert" engine specifically created to handle the fast rendering required for its seamless world and large-scale castle sieges

The 'hero engine' on the other hand while a decent engine is not a strong 'foundation' for an engine that is meant for an MMO. If you want good graphics and solid gameplay then things will have to change.

Ydrisselle

Casowen wrote: »

zyk wrote: »

In many ways, the game already uses a different Engine than it started with because it's under continuous development. There have been many major changes over the years.

It's implausible that they will switch engines. They will continue to adapt the current engine to suit their needs as necessary.

And no, it's not a fact that ESO uses Hero Engine. ZOS is stated multiple times it is not. I am aware of what the the exec of the company that owns Hero Engine posted, but they did not even join that company until years later. ZOS is the subject matter expert on their product, I am going to take their word for it.

It's kind of irrelevant though. Whatever its roots are, it's a very distinct engine. ZOS owns all of its strengths and shortcomings. They are the only party responsible for it.

Switching engines as it seems what the wrong way of wording it, a better word might be enhance.

So could the current engine be enhanced enough to compete on a level of visual and environmental interactivity that something like BDO offers? I think for all intents and purposes the long answer is no, but the possibility of it intrigues me.

Yes, it can be done, but it would make ESO unplayable - or ZOS should reduce the variety of the elements of the world. I like the current one, and I don't want an emptier Tamriel.

Casowen

1mirg wrote: »

Casowen wrote: »

Switching engines as it seems what the wrong way of wording it, a better word might be enhance.

So could the current engine be enhanced enough to compete on a level of visual and environmental interactivity that something like BDO offers? I think for all intents and purposes the long answer is no, but the possibility of it intrigues me.

Quote:

Black Desert Online uses Pearl Abyss' own "Black Desert" engine specifically created to handle the fast rendering required for its seamless world and large-scale castle sieges

The 'hero engine' on the other hand while a decent engine is not a strong 'foundation' for an engine that is meant for an MMO. If you want good graphics and solid gameplay then things will have to change.

nafensoriel wrote: »

Casowen wrote: »

I will be honest, I am at something of a lose for words in what I am trying to explain. Yes graphical fidelity and story is important, but what I am really trying to emphasize is that tactile environmental feedback I would get in say BDO, FFXV, warframe, etc. Im not disputing eso's world density, but it lacks that finite play-ability in games that I mentioned, partly due to having an environment with a constant physics engine. I do think this game could have both the immersion and fidelity I am saying, but given the politics, the engine will ever be enhanced again to compete with BDO or FFXV in the area of environmental tactileness simply because zenimax are not interested in that, mainly due to the history of making this game, and the fact that the current engine just isnt efficient enough like DX11/12 applications, or exponentially more work as you called it. If it where me, I would have focused my resources on this over blowing money on blur video. That failed hard with swtor in the eternal empire saga

Ahh, I think I finally get where we failed at communication!
Ok you want a more varied world with a Z-axis and world physics but inside ESO. Can this happen? Actually yes. Engines are really agnostic to what they can do. The limit is your coders and expected user performance needs(the latter is are you marketing to the low end, high end, extreme end for minimum specs?)

I'm going to talk about the last one since by nature you will never have a perfect coder. Every time you sit down to do a project you learn something.

Why might ZOS have not included much Z-axis physics or world physics? Again performance cost. You seem to have the mistaken idea that the independent parts do not demand a price on your software. If you want more physics you have to take that performance from something else. Game design is like those old RTS games with unit caps. Depending on how you built your forces in those games you could have a glaring weakness. With game design its not a weakness its a performance issue.

So say we have a game that wants a little bit of everything and they "distribute" those "100" performance "points" around like this:
Physics:20
Graphics:20
Sound:20
Lighting:20
Story:20

You would get a mediocre game to a gamer. It would look "ok" have "ok" story and "ok gameplay".
What if your game(let us pick on red alert) didn't need much physics because you are restricting everything to two axis and due to that can make significant shortcuts in other categories. Your "point" expenditure now looks like this:
Physics:5
Graphics:35
Sound:15
Lighting:10
Story:35

You've used your awesome art department to animate common "physics" effects for far less performance cost than actually letting a physics engine do those tasks and now have the budget to make the game look absolutely fantastic. It looks so fantastic and your art guys did such a good job you realize you can trim down sound quality and lighting heavily because no ones going to care with all that eye candy. There is also plenty left in the budget to make the story well above average.

Which is exactly what happened with red alert when it was released.(minus physics. it's just there for a category)

You CAN get what you want. The engine doesn't care remember? To add those things, however, means you lose something else. BDO has those physics because they did not do something else. The way they designed the game makes you not notice these missing elements immediately but if you pause and start doing a closer inspection you will notice the lack.
For ESO it is unlikely they will make massive structural redesigns simply because it would not support the vision or narrative they want. Improvements will be when the minimum specs can be bumped and when someone has a brilliant idea to clean up or add efficiency that otherwise didn't exist. The games will never be "the same" feature wise because that is the fundamental nature of how a game is developed.

For ESO I expect future improvements will be density, lighting, and general texture fidelity as these are the areas our computers have advanced in over the years.

Im just curious, since I made this post purely on the basis on an engine swap, and most replies being about that, would doing another post on the basis of an enhanced hero engine with a Z axis be a more viable route for ESO? Apart from better shading, AA, and lighting, this is really what I was wanting to say, rather then jumping on the "Bash the hero engine" bandwagon. Who knows how much work or cost it would be, but I would be curious to know, and to me that would just make the game

eso_lags

Anotherone773 wrote: »

They use a heavily modified( in house modified) version of the Havok engine. The game is typically built around the engine. You can upgrade the engine to a degree sort of like you can upgrade your pc to a degree. But it still limited to the tech it was built with for the most part. Also the engine was newish when they started using it. This game wasnt built in a few months, it was being built for a few years before release.

Replacing the engine is not really feasible and is not cost effective. Nor does the engine need to be replaced. What would be more likely is that they make ESO 2 with a newer engine set in a different time period and take away lessons learned( we hope) on this one.

As for your issue you assume it is the engine that needs to be fixed. The engine isnt that bad, ZOS just isnt very good at coding. You also rule out your PC/graphics card. If you are talking about the blur i think you are, that isnt the engine, that is just bad coding. And ZOS does fix things unless until they are a big problem. They havent figured out you cannot keep stacking new code on old bad code because it makes the new code also bad and the old code harder to fix. You need to fix the current problems before adding new problems code. I am hoping they learn by ESO 2.

So since you seem pretty knowledgeable.. What makes you say the engine doesnt need to be replaced? Is zos just not maintaining or dealing with their own engine correctly? Because one thing I am sure of is that this game has a massive issue when a lot of people end up in the same zone.

This issue shows most in cyrodil, mainly in vivec because its usually at its pop limit with a que, even at non prime times. Shor usually isnt so bad but its usually nowhere near as populated. But this is all on xbox, and its bad. Like the worst ive ever seen in this game or any mmo ive played. It doesnt seem as bad when I play on PC NA but vivec is still rough.

But its not just pvp, even a couple months back a couple hundred people went into craglorn on xbox for some guild thing or some reason (i forget) and it was unplayable for everyone in craglorn. Or even during certain events you see varying performance issues for most people. Is this not something wrong with their game engine? Or are issues like that something to with the game server and nothing to do with the game engine? Or something different?

Siohwenoeht

eso_lags wrote: »

Anotherone773 wrote: »

They use a heavily modified( in house modified) version of the Havok engine. The game is typically built around the engine. You can upgrade the engine to a degree sort of like you can upgrade your pc to a degree. But it still limited to the tech it was built with for the most part. Also the engine was newish when they started using it. This game wasnt built in a few months, it was being built for a few years before release.

Replacing the engine is not really feasible and is not cost effective. Nor does the engine need to be replaced. What would be more likely is that they make ESO 2 with a newer engine set in a different time period and take away lessons learned( we hope) on this one.

As for your issue you assume it is the engine that needs to be fixed. The engine isnt that bad, ZOS just isnt very good at coding. You also rule out your PC/graphics card. If you are talking about the blur i think you are, that isnt the engine, that is just bad coding. And ZOS does fix things unless until they are a big problem. They havent figured out you cannot keep stacking new code on old bad code because it makes the new code also bad and the old code harder to fix. You need to fix the current problems before adding new problems code. I am hoping they learn by ESO 2.

So since you seem pretty knowledgeable.. What makes you say the engine doesnt need to be replaced? Is zos just not maintaining or dealing with their own engine correctly? Because one thing I am sure of is that this game has a massive issue when a lot of people end up in the same zone.

This issue shows most in cyrodil, mainly in vivec because its usually at its pop limit with a que, even at non prime times. Shor usually isnt so bad but its usually nowhere near as populated. But this is all on xbox, and its bad. Like the worst ive ever seen in this game or any mmo ive played. It doesnt seem as bad when I play on PC NA but vivec is still rough.

But its not just pvp, even a couple months back a couple hundred people went into craglorn on xbox for some guild thing or some reason (i forget) and it was unplayable for everyone in craglorn. Or even during certain events you see varying performance issues for most people. Is this not something wrong with their game engine? Or are issues like that something to with the game server and nothing to do with the game engine? Or something different?

Those are more likely server and server/client communication. The engine handles rendering, physics etc.

aaisoaho

eso_lags wrote: »

Anotherone773 wrote: »

They use a heavily modified( in house modified) version of the Havok engine. The game is typically built around the engine. You can upgrade the engine to a degree sort of like you can upgrade your pc to a degree. But it still limited to the tech it was built with for the most part. Also the engine was newish when they started using it. This game wasnt built in a few months, it was being built for a few years before release.

Replacing the engine is not really feasible and is not cost effective. Nor does the engine need to be replaced. What would be more likely is that they make ESO 2 with a newer engine set in a different time period and take away lessons learned( we hope) on this one.

As for your issue you assume it is the engine that needs to be fixed. The engine isnt that bad, ZOS just isnt very good at coding. You also rule out your PC/graphics card. If you are talking about the blur i think you are, that isnt the engine, that is just bad coding. And ZOS does fix things unless until they are a big problem. They havent figured out you cannot keep stacking new code on old bad code because it makes the new code also bad and the old code harder to fix. You need to fix the current problems before adding new problems code. I am hoping they learn by ESO 2.

So since you seem pretty knowledgeable.. What makes you say the engine doesnt need to be replaced? Is zos just not maintaining or dealing with their own engine correctly? Because one thing I am sure of is that this game has a massive issue when a lot of people end up in the same zone.

This issue shows most in cyrodil, mainly in vivec because its usually at its pop limit with a que, even at non prime times. Shor usually isnt so bad but its usually nowhere near as populated. But this is all on xbox, and its bad. Like the worst ive ever seen in this game or any mmo ive played. It doesnt seem as bad when I play on PC NA but vivec is still rough.

But its not just pvp, even a couple months back a couple hundred people went into craglorn on xbox for some guild thing or some reason (i forget) and it was unplayable for everyone in craglorn. Or even during certain events you see varying performance issues for most people. Is this not something wrong with their game engine? Or are issues like that something to with the game server and nothing to do with the game engine? Or something different?

That is mostly not an issue from the engine itself. You have hundreds of players in the same place, every single visible player needs to be updated constantly. What this means is: your client and the server constantly sends messages between each other, since there is hundreds of players loaded on your screen, there's going to be a lot of messages sent. (players' location, character info, actions etc.) And on top of that huge message exchange, your client needs to render everything on screen.

zyk

Modern engines have been highly modular for decades. Zenimax has the talent and financial resources to develop the ESO engine in any way they choose. They are only limited by their need to support existing content and by how much they are willing to spend on it.

ZOS would only switch engines to save money. For example, a future subsidiary of Zenimax may have an engine so similar that it makes sense to save money by merging the projects.

Casowen

eso_lags wrote: »

Anotherone773 wrote: »

They use a heavily modified( in house modified) version of the Havok engine. The game is typically built around the engine. You can upgrade the engine to a degree sort of like you can upgrade your pc to a degree. But it still limited to the tech it was built with for the most part. Also the engine was newish when they started using it. This game wasnt built in a few months, it was being built for a few years before release.

Replacing the engine is not really feasible and is not cost effective. Nor does the engine need to be replaced. What would be more likely is that they make ESO 2 with a newer engine set in a different time period and take away lessons learned( we hope) on this one.

As for your issue you assume it is the engine that needs to be fixed. The engine isnt that bad, ZOS just isnt very good at coding. You also rule out your PC/graphics card. If you are talking about the blur i think you are, that isnt the engine, that is just bad coding. And ZOS does fix things unless until they are a big problem. They havent figured out you cannot keep stacking new code on old bad code because it makes the new code also bad and the old code harder to fix. You need to fix the current problems before adding new problems code. I am hoping they learn by ESO 2.

So since you seem pretty knowledgeable.. What makes you say the engine doesnt need to be replaced? Is zos just not maintaining or dealing with their own engine correctly? Because one thing I am sure of is that this game has a massive issue when a lot of people end up in the same zone.

This issue shows most in cyrodil, mainly in vivec because its usually at its pop limit with a que, even at non prime times. Shor usually isnt so bad but its usually nowhere near as populated. But this is all on xbox, and its bad. Like the worst ive ever seen in this game or any mmo ive played. It doesnt seem as bad when I play on PC NA but vivec is still rough.

But its not just pvp, even a couple months back a couple hundred people went into craglorn on xbox for some guild thing or some reason (i forget) and it was unplayable for everyone in craglorn. Or even during certain events you see varying performance issues for most people. Is this not something wrong with their game engine? Or are issues like that something to with the game server and nothing to do with the game engine? Or something different?

Well the TLDR consensus of that was that hero engine is completely technically able to have a physics engine and a "Z axis" direction in game play rather then animations that give purely the illusion of that, and a example of a limitation of not having a Z axis is you cant go under water. Hero Engine is completely able to have this and a functional physics engine, and hence we could get gameplay similar to what we see in BDO, FFXV, or that sort of unreal/unity engine feel. however the real question is this, What would it take to add it to the game? IN terms of "Engine fixes" swtor has this issue where its a slide show, and even 8v8 pvp is bad.

Diminish

It really is not that difficult to change engines. Sure, it would take time, but it doesn't require a complete code rewrite, and is more of a porting process. All of the logic remains, and that is what is time consuming when writing code. Porting existing code, not so much. I wont get into a bunch of detail, but in my opinion I think it would be best to allot resources to fixing what they have, and moving to another engine with their next project.

nafensoriel

Casowen wrote: »

Im just curious, since I made this post purely on the basis on an engine swap, and most replies being about that, would doing another post on the basis of an enhanced hero engine with a Z axis be a more viable route for ESO? Apart from better shading, AA, and lighting, this is really what I was wanting to say, rather then jumping on the "Bash the hero engine" bandwagon. Who knows how much work or cost it would be, but I would be curious to know, and to me that would just make the game

Who says it doesn't have a Z axis?
All those hills and buildings kinda require a functional Z axis to exist otherwise you'd be a 2D game.

What I am expecting you to actually be asking is "Why don't they allow swimming below water?" and "Can swimming below water be added post production?".

The answer to both I can only give speculation on but not being able to swim down is just a design choice. The water in many areas is certainly deep enough they have just elected to stop your character from going there. Nothing in hero or especially a modified version of hero prohibits swimming either.

I suspect it was opted out because... well frankly swimming is usually a terrible idea for games. Designing underwater requires entirely different thoughts and ideas and even the way combat would be done would have to fundamentally change.
Would swimming be worth having to do two sets of animations for every character action? Would your currently selected weapons(ie bow) make logical sense in the world you are creating if you had swimming combat? Is it worth it to deal with the non-insignificant minority of players who absolutely will not play a swimming level unless forced(see Zelda for this interesting trend in people)?

Take a look at Oblivion for an example of how swimming is just a "bolt on concept" and how it being done poorly can actually be harmful to the quality of the end product. A gamer 10 years ago would accept the janky animations and weird combat behaviour in oblivion water but it would still be a complaint point you could have avoided.

As to "can it be done"? Yes. Probably quickly. The parts that make it not look terrible take longer.
Would it be good for the game? Probably not. Unless you really want to see an army of argonians swimming around IC rivers like crocodiles.

SgtSilock

WoW pretty much runs on an entirely different engine to it the original, due to the sheer amount of changes that were made.

If you look at screenshots from vanilla to screenshots of BFA, you can tell. You only need to look at the new character models as proof of this. Arguably the best models in any MMO, even rivalling many triple A single player games with their animations and facial expressions.

Siohwenoeht wrote: »

It would need to be an entirely new set of code as I understand it. So best bet for an elder scrolls mmo on a different engine would be when/if they made eso2.

Afaik, Wow still runs the on the same engine but it has been modified over the years. They could probably do this and have certainly done some updating to the current ESO engine over the years, but just replacing the engine in whole would mean migrating all the player characters which would mean recoding them among other things to make it work.

Krayl

the engine for a 5 year old game is not gonna get updated. lol.

They really should have an intro to gave development and intro to business video play before you're allowed to sign up to these forums. That would erradicate like 90% of the posts by people who have no concept of what's involved.

nafensoriel

SgtSilock wrote: »

WoW pretty much runs on an entirely different engine to it the original, due to the sheer amount of changes that were made.

If you look at screenshots from vanilla to screenshots of BFA, you can tell. You only need to look at the new character models as proof of this. Arguably the best models in any MMO, even rivalling many triple A single player games with their animations and facial expressions.

Art assets do not equal engine. Engine powers art. Art is just art.
You can upgrade art assets without touching an engine if the hardware that powers that same engine has say... 10 years of time to improve!

Please keep this in mind! It's very damaging to gaming as a whole when people assume an engine is responsible for bad or poorly explained art choices! The hatred engines gets makes investors and publishers avoid project choices that could yield a better game! If gaming was all UE4 you would be extremely disappointed in the absolute lack of choices open to you and bad art choices would still be making games look like poo.

Casowen

nafensoriel wrote: »

SgtSilock wrote: »

WoW pretty much runs on an entirely different engine to it the original, due to the sheer amount of changes that were made.

If you look at screenshots from vanilla to screenshots of BFA, you can tell. You only need to look at the new character models as proof of this. Arguably the best models in any MMO, even rivalling many triple A single player games with their animations and facial expressions.

Art assets do not equal engine. Engine powers art. Art is just art.
You can upgrade art assets without touching an engine if the hardware that powers that same engine has say... 10 years of time to improve!

Please keep this in mind! It's very damaging to gaming as a whole when people assume an engine is responsible for bad or poorly explained art choices! The hatred engines gets makes investors and publishers avoid project choices that could yield a better game! If gaming was all UE4 you would be extremely disappointed in the absolute lack of choices open to you and bad art choices would still be making games look like poo.

ESO's art aesthetics and design is by far my favorite, which is something of the reason I am wanting either an engine change or Significant enhancement. What specifically are you referring to in regards to engine hate and lack of investment? If I understand that correctly, that mainly is EA games with their biggest turkey being swtor at a development budget of over 200 million, and an unknown number for advertisement, which is believed to total 400+ million.

Casowen

SgtSilock wrote: »

WoW pretty much runs on an entirely different engine to it the original, due to the sheer amount of changes that were made.

If you look at screenshots from vanilla to screenshots of BFA, you can tell. You only need to look at the new character models as proof of this. Arguably the best models in any MMO, even rivalling many triple A single player games with their animations and facial expressions.

Siohwenoeht wrote: »

It would need to be an entirely new set of code as I understand it. So best bet for an elder scrolls mmo on a different engine would be when/if they made eso2.

Afaik, Wow still runs the on the same engine but it has been modified over the years. They could probably do this and have certainly done some updating to the current ESO engine over the years, but just replacing the engine in whole would mean migrating all the player characters which would mean recoding them among other things to make it work.

I hope this game does something similar in the direction im hoping. Im not disputing ESO textures and art as its my favorite of any game, though it could seriously use better post processing. Even swtor looks better, and thats on hero engine too.

Casowen

Krayl wrote: »

the engine for a 5 year old game is not gonna get updated. lol.

They really should have an intro to gave development and intro to business video play before you're allowed to sign up to these forums. That would erradicate like 90% of the posts by people who have no concept of what's involved.

Most of the time, thats kept secret for each individual production, but otherwise I would gladly study or watch up whatever is the closest equivalent for this game.

Nyladreas

The fact that anyone even considers the thought/possibility of "ESO2" just made my heckin day.

Every time I read that acronym I laugh.

mocap

it's not about engine, it's about art: textures, objects density and detail, animations and lack of cut scenes.
If you could add art from Witcher 3, for example, to ESO engine, then it will looks almost same as in W3.

You can clearly see overal graphics difference between, let's say, Cyrodiil and Summerset.

Art >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Engine.

Casowen

mocap wrote: »

it's not about engine, it's about art: textures, objects density and detail, animations and lack of cut scenes.
If you could add art from Witcher 3, for example, to ESO engine, then it will looks almost same as in W3.

You can clearly see overal graphics difference between, let's say, Cyrodiil and Summerset.

Art >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Engine.

Higher resolution Textures and Far FAR better post processing is something this game could seriously use. Even a hero engine game like Swtor for all its calamity has a way better subsampling and Post processing without relying on questionable addons.

If you look at the advertising images of ESO

You can tell they go out of their way to add that, so im not sure why its not better incorporated in game. In short, I do think if they wanted to they could enhance this all to get a sort of unity/unreal engine feel.