Am I the only one who likes the visuals/graphics in this game?

DeltaForce64x

I keep seeing over the social media and almost everywhere that involves with MMORPGs that people keep arguing about graphics. Why? This isnt some multi billion holywood production, personally I'm fine with the graphics, I do like how it looks and I do like the armour textures as well as character textures. They are detailed enough to me satisfy my needs. I think people expecting way too much from technology nowadays, this isnt some ultra fast computer or a NASA cellphone, this is a game made in years ago and people acting like little children who lost his/her toy

Remember we came to this point from 286 and dial up modems and people already wanting super duper of everything. Calm, relax and chill, try to enjoy what we have, sure, I would like too more advanced graphics but thats just not going to happen anytime soon as far as I know, especially not when big corporations like Microsoft, Google etc are too high nose and arrogant, they think the dollars first than anything else, not your (or anyone's, I'm not blaming to anyone here) graphics taste.

Its just can use a bit more better shadows but thats it, its good enough to me and I do like how my character looks. Wish I could run on a better computer but thats all I can afford at the moment which is my problem,

Cheers

GenjiraX

No, I like ESO’s graphics, too. My friend called it a deal-breaker for him that it’s low-poly and low-res textures but I enjoy it for the gameplay and stories.

I’ve never been particularly visually stimulated, though. I walk round an art gallery and it’s the antiquity of the piece that affects me more than the aesthetic. Widescreen TV, HD, 4K - they looked great for about five minutes and then they just became normal. ESO on Xbox Series X is great for being 60fps but I’m not fussed about the graphics updates. Visually, it was fine on my Xbox One X.

markulrich1966

while it can't compete with new solo player games, the game is able to give a very convincing ambience, the atmosphere of the different regions is very immersive.
The depressing tristesse of Glenumbra, the holiday ambience of Auridon/summerset, the "western movie" style of northern Elsweyr.

I find it so convincing, that I feel no pressure yet to upgrade to the new xbox series X. Have watched comparison videos, yes, a little more detail, but the ambience is so convincing already now, that I am happy as it is.

I often just run around, exploring regions because of the nice look.
Or enter a house/compound I bought, to rest at places I created to gain a view on the terrific views (you can build on the water of the psijic villa to finally see the sun for example).

What adds up to the good illusion, is the great integration of sound. The music never annoying, matches the region. Sounds like footsteps differ depending on the ground you walk on. You usually do not notice them awaringly, but they are there and strengthen the feeling of "being there".
The sounds in Grathwood remind me of being teleported to the rainforrest of Kakamega in Kenya. Well done.
I just ordered a tube headphone amp with treble/bass knobs to be able to improve the good sound experience even a little more. (I use a Bose headphone, that sounds much much better than a standard xbox headset, the headset removes the immersive feeling).

corrosivechains

The argument for graphics was understandable back in the late 90's and through the 00's, but now it's just ridiculous stuff like subsurface scattering and godrays. Yeah, it looks pretty, but it's not groundbreaking leaps like it was seeing gaming go from pixel sprites to 3d, or from low poly to high poly. And it gets even more pointless since most games opt for stylized art over photorealism.

The graphics for this game on a technical level are fine. Some of the stylization I could personally tweak, but that's very subjective.

Red_Feather

A lot of the games I like are very artistic and I think they look nice but they don't have the fancy super graphics effects. When I was younger Connect 4 and Chinese Checkers were way more fun than Mouse Trap. It's all about the 'game' and not the way it looks.

ADarklore

I love the graphics in ESO... I have no complaints. I played recent AC games and found them similar to ESO in quality- Oddyssey was my fave btw, absolutely loved it... Valhalla not so much.

One of the reasons I keep playing is because of the quality of graphics and 'real life' aspect. Some games are just too 'cartoonish' graphic wise, and I really hate that. I've previously played DCUO for years and FFXIV as well and both had a more cartoonish/anime aspect to them. I love anime, don't get me wrong, but it takes away from being able to identify with your character when they are so different from myself; probably why I can only play a Breton or Imperial in the game.

SydneyGrey

I like the graphics, although it would be lovely if they did patch in some higher-res textures on the original game areas. The DLC areas look noticeably better than the original zones.

If people want to see a game that has absolutely TERRIBLE textures they should look at Sims 4. (Not an MMO, I know, but still ... every time I look at that game I cringe.)
I don't play any other MMO, so I can't compare.

Nirntrotter

There's a sizeable screenshot community on Instagram that seems to be pretty happy with ESO's visuals.

Sylvermynx

I like it a lot better than WoW (not that I've played that game lately - been gone since 2013). RIFT was about the same as WoW when I left it in 2016. ESO is "advanced" enough for me - I don't need fancy graphics and animations to enjoy a game. After all, I still play Oblivion! And Skyrim, without a whole lot of graphics mods.

Kiralyn2000

DeltaForce64x wrote: »

I keep seeing over the social media and almost everywhere that involves with MMORPGs that people keep arguing about graphics. Why?

People have been arguing everywhere that involves MMORPGs video games about graphics, for decades. Partially because they have to justify the money they spent on their Latest-Uber-GPU.

Also, some people are just graphics snobs (overlaps with the "bought the latest/greatest GPU" crowd) who need to have everything they run be using the Absolute Latest And Best Tech ("why isn't this using DX15 with <insert fancy graphics technique here>").



...reminds me of some stylized-graphics indie zombie game years ago, someone popped up on the forums wondering why it wasn't taxing his 1080Ti (near top of the line at the time). Um, because it's an indie zombie game with stylized/sorta-low graphics?


edit: I think the game is quite pretty. Prettier now, that I turned on multi-threaded rendering and turned up a few things in the options. While I definitely like a pretty game, it's not a deal-breaker for me. Personally, I've never spent more than $175 on a GPU (I've had 3 in the last ~10 years, currently an RX570), and I'm willing to turn down FPS for pretty options. I played Skyrim, FO4, Control, and Cyberpunk around 40fps, and enjoyed them. /shrug

danno8

Nirntrotter wrote: »

There's a sizeable screenshot community on Instagram that seems to be pretty happy with ESO's visuals.

And several threads on these forums as well.

The game is 8 years old, and was developed probably several years before that so for a 10+ year old game it looks pretty good.

I can't imagine a game without the very latest in graphics tech being a "deal breaker" for me. I look at games I've played recently like Outer Worlds and Outer Wilds (two different games) and they have good but not hyper realistic graphics.

So much more important (or at least equally important) is aesthetics, atmosphere, world building, content, story, gameplay etc...

Xandreia_

Eso graphics are nice but I put a reshade on mine and everything looks a million times better!!!

colossalvoids

A lot of more popular MMOs have way worse graphics options so not sure how there's can be any bashing involved. It's an old game that started it's development in what, 2007 or something? At least it can launch decently on really old hardware on pretty high settings still and be playable.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo

I think they are quite ok for the context of the game.
On the other hand, I think animations need to become a bit more fluid...NPC's..our characters..combat and movement.

Ballermfrau

I like it and i'm sure we are going to see many improvements in the future.

With the new multithreaded rendering I have lots of headroom. (The game runs at average 140fps in 4k even in trials)

Tho launch zones have a dated feeling but everything from wrothgar forwards looks great.

FFXIV doesn't even have proper AA...

Kalik_Gold

I absolutely love how this game looks..

JoDiMageio

I have an old computer and an old graphics cards and I still love the aesthetics of this game!!!

Maybe I'm easy to please, who knows, but I don't feel like I need to see every little snowflake on the ground or ripple in the water to enjoy the experience. If I wanted to see that, I would go out. You know, in the real world.

Soulshine

Xandreia_ wrote: »

Eso graphics are nice but I put a reshade on mine and everything looks a million times better!!!

THIS, 1000 times over.

I like the level of detail the developers took to add ambiance and a life like feel to the game, but I cannot go back to vanilla after using Reshade. It makes everything look a million times better.

Franchise408

No, OP, you're not the only one. I think that ESO looks great, and I think most people would consider ESO to be a good looking MMO.

The only real complaints I see about ESO's graphics are the visual pollution of so many effects going off and not being able to see what's actually happening. There can be so much graphical clutter in this game at times that it's more detrimental than not.

But the visual clutter is pretty

GenjiraX

Soulshine wrote: »

Xandreia_ wrote: »

Eso graphics are nice but I put a reshade on mine and everything looks a million times better!!!

THIS, 1000 times over.

I like the level of detail the developers took to add ambiance and a life like feel to the game, but I cannot go back to vanilla after using Reshade. It makes everything look a million times better.

Which one do you use?

Enemy-of-Coldharbour

Most people who complain about ESO's graphics are either running it on a low-end machine or have the graphics dialed down. They don't know what they are missing. I have graphics set to maximum and the zones are truly AMAZING. For example, Craglorn with graphics dialed down looks like a bleak boring desert, but with graphics set to maximum it becomes a semi-lush grassland with amazing details. ESO is probably the best looking MMO ever made.

akdave0

I like going to khentharis roost to watch the sunsets, best in the game.

daim

Eso has aged amazingly well imo. It still looks quite nice, obviously its far behind of current tech but still quite nice. I remember going back to wow a decade ago and just couldnt play it anymore because the graphics were so bad.

Folkb

You lost me at the armor textures looking good since most of them look like they were spray painted on because of how it bends when my character breathes.

ofalltheworlds

He only other MMO I've played is STO, so I was really happy with ESOs graphics, haha. But I also play with them on maximum.

Honestly,I think they're the right balance for me of not looking too cartoony for my tastes, but also not looking so realistic that they freak me out

Malprave

The base game zones are pretty rough looking but if I remember correctly they were done years before the game launched. I read an article that talked about the length of time ESO was in development. Wish I could reference it but that was quite a while ago.

Starting with Orsinium, which was pretty early on, I find the look of the new game zones to be awesome. Of course, if there’s an expectation that ESO is going to be able to compete graphically with single player games you’re bound to be disappointed.

Aelsioln

I've played WoW, ESO, and FFXIV. While I think each has nice graphics I gotta say that ESO is easily my favorite style.

DP99

ADarklore wrote: »

I love the graphics in ESO... I have no complaints. I played recent AC games and found them similar to ESO in quality- Oddyssey was my fave btw, absolutely loved it... Valhalla not so much.

One of the reasons I keep playing is because of the quality of graphics and 'real life' aspect. Some games are just too 'cartoonish' graphic wise, and I really hate that. I've previously played DCUO for years and FFXIV as well and both had a more cartoonish/anime aspect to them. I love anime, don't get me wrong, but it takes away from being able to identify with your character when they are so different from myself; probably why I can only play a Breton or Imperial in the game.

DCUO is the only other MMO that I play, and It was my first for years before coming to ESO. I think that the graphics in ESO are far nicer and more realistic for sure, and people are always bitching about how bad the graphics are in DCUO and how they need an update, blah, blah, blah. It’s a ten year old game and it was designed to fit the comics art style of Jim Lee, it fits because it’s a super hero game, it’s supposed to be that way. I love it personally.

Xargas13

As someone who started playing video games on the first consoles, like Dandy and Sega, I don't pay much attention to graphics. Graphics play a role of course, but I pay more attention to gameplay then graphics. For example I still play VTMB game that was out when windows XP was still rolling. And this is an old MMO, and by judging how old it is, it has nice a graphics. I still sometimes stop to enjoy the view in some places.

If you want bad graphics look at WoW, and to be honest, despite its graphics I would play WoW, but it takes too much time to gear up and just enjoy the game. WoW is never ending treadmill, by the time you gear up, new gear comes out. In ESO however, it's very easy to gear up, and it's much more solo friendly, since you can solo many dungeons. I like ESO because it doesn't put a heavy emphasis on gear, it's more playing for the sake of playing, and I like it that way. It's like Skyrim for example, you didn't play it to gear up, you were playing it for the sake of playing it, and this is the case here.

With that said, graphics is on the second or third place what I am looking for in the game. Gameplay always first.

Tenthirty2

I like them very much
Even being an older title\engine they manage to do some phenomenal looking zones.
Sure the models are lower poly than most recent titles (understandably) but I think their environmental design teams work very well together. Textures, models, lighting and sound give us some stunning views and details. They do amazing stuff for the constraints they have to work within.

I also like that there is a zone for pretty much any mood.
Feel like crunching around in the snow, exploring frigid tombs? Got that.
Twilight-spooky feels? Got that.
Deep jungles, swamps with Aztec\Mayan feels, desert plains and mountains? Yup.
Very diverse.

Vevvev

I love ESO's graphics as I came from games like Quake, the old Need for Speed games, Star Trek Online, and other low res games. If anything super highly detailed graphics for the sake of having super highly detailed graphics turns me off from a game. I'm more interested in the art style, sound design, and game play.