Will this be the new norm for ESO?

Aardappelboom

EnerG wrote: »

pklemming wrote: »

Maybe lower poly count for performance, rather than addressing the hardware issues.

The hardware issues are getting adressed, theyve stated this, gods how many times? It's not an easy process, and not a quick one when large corporations run on 10 okeys, 20 signed papers research by interns and all other manner of corporate hoops for 1 decision.

Graphics have nothing to do with the server hardware, or connectivity performance. It's your own computer or console that does the work in rendering and showing the assets.

If your game has low fps or generally runs sluggish than it's because the device can't keep up, skills not firing and lag spikes, among others things, are due to server perfomance.

There's no reason to dumb down graphics at all since all consoles have smart delivery and pc's can toggle settings.

I did watch a few more screenshots and video's and the zone definitely looks better than the screenshots here, I'm very curious how it'll look on xbox series x, can't wait and still excited.

Cireous

Of note, I did spend some time on the second island yesterday and it is a very different, more vibrant biome than the first island. Most of the beaches are not accessible, but those that are have the rocks and coral, broken ships and clutter that would not have you questioning at all if landscape was "finished" or not. So, there's that.

xaraan

Disappointing looks like the the roadmap for zos. It's been downhill for a few years now, both Greymoor and Blackwood were lackluster.

Bad enough they are adding specific features in that only a portion of the players like (looking at you card game) but seeing the basics drop in quality year after year is just sad for me. Add onto this that pvp is broken and either a ghosttown in some versions or so laggy it doesn't work.

As long as it's making money though, nobody will higher up will seek to change the way zos is doing things. Oh well, the game is ok for me, but that's all it will ever be, and it's a shame someone wasn't running things that could take it to its full potential.

xgoku1

I agree with the general sentiment of this post. In my opinion Amenos is the right size, but High Isle seems like they feel obligated to create a huge zone because it's a Chapter. It doesn't even make sense with pre-existing lore maps (which they hand-waved away saying Lore maps are inaccurate).

Not saying every beach in the world IRL is an absolute banger either. But it seems like ZOS wanted to go for a "White Cliffs of Dover" and Mediterranean beach vibe, but the sand textures have zero body to them and are kinda badly colored. It looks like a North Sea beach in the UK.

Somewhat similar situation with the grass, they did this with Blackwood too, they have a small grass asset that is copy pasted wherever there are empty fields but it's not dense enough and stands out as low effort. You can see this in Amenos, the jungle seems more filled out because the foliage assets are bigger.




And for all the screentime they spent talking about Sunflowers in the Preview Event, those assets are really small too and don't stand out all that much IMO. It's not endless fields of sunflowers, just some splotches here and there.

But this won't really matter to 90% of players as the areas around PoI are better arranged. Overall, I like it more than Blackwood.

Umbro100

Xinihp wrote: »

So this is the first ESO expansion since the sale to Microsoft and personally I have been very eager to see what they do with the game. Seeing the new zone on PTS just over 1-month from release however, I find myself deeply concerned for the future. After exhaustively touring the small islands added in the expansion, I am sad to report what appears obvious to me to be a fairly massive drop in overall quality of world design, in terms of complexity, attention to detail, texture quality and blending, "living world" feel, and just about every other metric.

I almost feel it is too close to release to do anything about it at this point, but I felt compelled to share my experience.

What I would really like to know is 1) Does anyone else not see (from my posted screenshot comparisons) this huge drop in quality? and 2) Is this the new norm we can expect from Microsoft moving forward? In the past ESO has been able to keep its Q2 release schedule AND quality level, even during covid. Further, this map definitely seems significantly smaller than Summerset and other expansion zones.

So I am left with the simple question, what happened?

Just read the whole 4 pages of comments after your initial post, got curious and downloaded the pts content.Sadly I must admit, you were right. Started at the docs,went up on a long wooden structure made of stairs and platforms from the docks to the above cliffs.That is a long walk.The platforms where people are supposed to be working, fishing, loading, unloading stuff from the boats in reality have - ropes, fishing nets,barrels, boxes, small objects like discarded tools, pieces of wood,nails,bottles, general debris,old shirts,leftover food,a stray dog or cat, all sorts of things that pile up where people work and spend a lot of time.But no, it is empty, just totally and completely barren.Like when you buy a house in eso and go in for the first time and start planning how you will decorate all this huge empty space ! This is sad. I love the eso universe.Whoever thinks this is it, well, I feel sorry for you

Fizzyapple

I think you might want to take a closer look at the pts notes.

ADarklore

Have you all seen this post... look at the number of 'Lead' and 'Senior' level openings they have!! Some thought perhaps it was for a new IP, but the intro says, "Have you ever thought about what it might be like to work on #ESO?" This indicates that these positions ARE for ESO. So with so many positions open, it makes me wonder if this is why the Chapter and game itself are in the state that it's in.

Grizzbeorn

Here we go with the conspiracy theories...

ADarklore

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

Here we go with the conspiracy theories...

How is it a conspiracy? You did read the post about openings, right? Those are facts. There's also a big difference between speculation and conspiracy theories.

Aardappelboom

Fizzyapple wrote: »

I think you might want to take a closer look at the pts notes.

Sorry but can you tell us what's in the notes related to this topic? I checked them but couldn't really find anything, is the zone on PTS unfinished or what can we expect?

SerafinaWaterstar

xgoku1 wrote: »

I agree with the general sentiment of this post. In my opinion Amenos is the right size, but High Isle seems like they feel obligated to create a huge zone because it's a Chapter. It doesn't even make sense with pre-existing lore maps (which they hand-waved away saying Lore maps are inaccurate).

Not saying every beach in the world IRL is an absolute banger either. But it seems like ZOS wanted to go for a "White Cliffs of Dover" and Mediterranean beach vibe, but the sand textures have zero body to them and are kinda badly colored. It looks like a North Sea beach in the UK.

Somewhat similar situation with the grass, they did this with Blackwood too, they have a small grass asset that is copy pasted wherever there are empty fields but it's not dense enough and stands out as low effort. You can see this in Amenos, the jungle seems more filled out because the foliage assets are bigger.




And for all the screentime they spent talking about Sunflowers in the Preview Event, those assets are really small too and don't stand out all that much IMO. It's not endless fields of sunflowers, just some splotches here and there.

But this won't really matter to 90% of players as the areas around PoI are better arranged. Overall, I like it more than Blackwood.

May have utterly missed the point, but these pics look lovely!

Grizzbeorn

ADarklore wrote: »

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

Here we go with the conspiracy theories...

How is it a conspiracy? You did read the post about openings, right? Those are facts. There's also a big difference between speculation and conspiracy theories.

You're right. I apologize, both for tone and misusing the term.

I've had a lot going on the past few days and it has put me in a reactionary, combative mood, and a video game forum is the wrong place to be at such a time.
Time for a break.

And again, I'm sorry.

SeaGtGruff

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

Ilumia wrote: »

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

Re: size I have to disagree with OP; Summerset is tiny, and has big chunks of mountain that are impassable or nearly so. Anyone else remember this?



While High Isle also has a lot in the way of mountains, so far all the ones I’ve come across have had paths running through them so you can explore them. (I do acknowledge I haven’t been over the entire map yet.)

Yes, the size of summerset with those huge dead mountains and too little land to roam is a real shame. Summerset is beautiful though, which does make up in some way I suuppose. But to be honest it feels more and more like corners are cut and we are paying the same for less and less content. I feel a bit dirty for still falling for it and putting money into the hands of a company that I don't feel cares enough.

Summerset was 10 dollars cheaper too ..

Have you been shopping lately? It takes more 2022 dollars to buy things than it took with 2018 dollars. Prices are up all over, and I'm not talking about the in-game economy.

TechMaybeHic

Would it be cherry picking to also include the list of added features as well?

They did say, however; that they were slowing down development last year because of the pandemic. Think it will take time to ramp back up.

richieh99

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Would it be cherry picking to also include the list of added features as well?

They did say, however; that they were slowing down development last year because of the pandemic. Think it will take time to ramp back up.

There are less features in the Chapter this year. ZOS has said they are working on re-writing the code to hopefully fix PvP and increase server performance. If this work is also underway surely that could be another possible reason for slightly less content changes than normal.

Hopefully with things returning to a new normal and the code updates ZOS is working on concluding in the future, they will be able to add many of the requested features in chapters to come.

I remain extremely excited for High Isle and believe that the zone looks amazing. I am looking forward to it launching in early June.

Reverb

Each expansion has brought less value than the one before it. I’m not surprised at all that High aisle continues this trajectory.

Looking past Morrowind, the initial chapter, Summerset was a smaller map, uninspired story, but beautiful and very detailed from a design standpoint. The big gameplay draw was jewelry crafting and the Psijic line.

Elsweyr appeared to be a big map, but much of it was dead space, untraversable cliffs and purely decorative terrain rather than playable; the big gameplay draw was the Necromancer class. And dragons, for some. Story was decent. In all the “year of!” hype it was clear that development shifted away from the chapter as the big dev effort and towards thematic content, perhaps diminishing work on the expansion.

Greymoor served up heaps of nostalgia, and while the overland map is smaller than previous chapters, there’s the large Blackreach playable area. Story was formulaic and the tie in to the location felt forced. The big gameplay draw was antiquities, I guess. There was speculation online that the shift to working remotely at the height of the pandemic led to the lack of finishing details and polish by the Zeni team, as it was a general letdown compared to previous chapters.

Blackwood was the smallest map to be delivered in a chapter, even when factoring in the portals to the Deadlands. The big gameplay draw was companions. That’s it. Nothing noteworthy about the story, it’s a rehash of stories we’ve done over and over, just a different daedra.

High Isle gives us another small map of playable area, and zero new gameplay elements. There’s very little that distinguishes it from a mid sized DLC adventure zone, and nothing that justifies the price point IMO. I don’t think any of the preview streams have made a case for it being worth buying vs. waiting until next year when it’s included in ESO+.

Malthorne

I took a tour of both isles. The OP’s assessment of the first isle was accurate. The second isle had a much more dense biome, more detailed, but still looked faded and washed out.

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Would it be cherry picking to also include the list of added features as well?

They did say, however; that they were slowing down development last year because of the pandemic. Think it will take time to ramp back up.

If they are slowing down development, why not just delay the releases? I’d rather have a quality chapter that’s a month or so later than planned over a clearly rushed product that had to meet a stubborn release cadence. FFXIV delayed Endwalker by 6 months because of pandemic difficulties and it was 100% worth the wait.

It really feels like the ESO leadership doesn’t really have a passion for making a great elder scrolls game..

ADarklore

Malthorne wrote: »

I took a tour of both isles. The OP’s assessment of the first isle was accurate. The second isle had a much more dense biome, more detailed, but still looked faded and washed out.

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Would it be cherry picking to also include the list of added features as well?

They did say, however; that they were slowing down development last year because of the pandemic. Think it will take time to ramp back up.

If they are slowing down development, why not just delay the releases? I’d rather have a quality chapter that’s a month or so later than planned over a clearly rushed product that had to meet a stubborn release cadence. FFXIV delayed Endwalker by 6 months because of pandemic difficulties and it was 100% worth the wait.

It really feels like the ESO leadership doesn’t really have a passion for making a great elder scrolls game..

Problem is, you're comparing a eastern MMO compared to western... and everyone knows the west is more concerned about appeasing their investors and generating revenue than the players. FFXIV also has a very passionate game director who has much more control over the game than ZOS leadership does.

buttaface

Didn't read whole thread. Seems like this thread OP is more "not as good as Summerset" than "new chapter is not as good as the rest of the game in the landscape department." Also, based on the atrociously bad balance, continued "snowglobe shaking" of bad design decisions, and other crucial, obvious flaws in ESO, I doubt MSFT is all that hands on yet. Just a hunch.

FeedbackOnly

xgoku1 wrote: »

I agree with the general sentiment of this post. In my opinion Amenos is the right size, but High Isle seems like they feel obligated to create a huge zone because it's a Chapter. It doesn't even make sense with pre-existing lore maps (which they hand-waved away saying Lore maps are inaccurate).

Not saying every beach in the world IRL is an absolute banger either. But it seems like ZOS wanted to go for a "White Cliffs of Dover" and Mediterranean beach vibe, but the sand textures have zero body to them and are kinda badly colored. It looks like a North Sea beach in the UK.

Somewhat similar situation with the grass, they did this with Blackwood too, they have a small grass asset that is copy pasted wherever there are empty fields but it's not dense enough and stands out as low effort. You can see this in Amenos, the jungle seems more filled out because the foliage assets are bigger.




And for all the screentime they spent talking about Sunflowers in the Preview Event, those assets are really small too and don't stand out all that much IMO. It's not endless fields of sunflowers, just some splotches here and there.

But this won't really matter to 90% of players as the areas around PoI are better arranged. Overall, I like it more than Blackwood.

I want to know if anyone thinks those sunflowers are pretty though? I was disappointed that they are not even sunny yelllow more more a dirty yellow.

Jaraal

Malthorne wrote: »

If they are slowing down development, why not just delay the releases?

Because it's not profitable. There's more money to be made in selling new content than there is in fixing old content.

Besides, they will need the money to pay all the new senior and lead hires!

Cireous

xgoku1 wrote: »

These are beautiful screenshots. I'm assuming you're using a reshade? If so, which one? I am looking to dump Neat Perfection as it's too dark and I'm tired of bumping into things while thieving within the buildings of Leyawiin. Also, I'm glad to see the sun does come out in High Isle on occasion

xgoku1

Cireous wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

These are beautiful screenshots. I'm assuming you're using a reshade? If so, which one? I am looking to dump Neat Perfection as it's too dark and I'm tired of bumping into things while thieving within the buildings of Leyawiin. Also, I'm glad to see the sun does come out in High Isle on occasion

Yes it's just default ReShade preset with some changed values

Curves.fx
0.100 Contrast

DPX.fx
0.200 Strength (default)

Lumasharpen.fx
3.000 Sharpening strength (max)

Vibrance.fx
0.600 Vibrance

Cireous

xgoku1 wrote: »

Cireous wrote: »

xgoku1 wrote: »

These are beautiful screenshots. I'm assuming you're using a reshade? If so, which one? I am looking to dump Neat Perfection as it's too dark and I'm tired of bumping into things while thieving within the buildings of Leyawiin. Also, I'm glad to see the sun does come out in High Isle on occasion

Yes it's just default ReShade preset with some changed values

Curves.fx
0.100 Contrast

DPX.fx
0.200 Strength (default)

Lumasharpen.fx
3.000 Sharpening strength (max)

Vibrance.fx
0.600 Vibrance

Awesome. I should look into how to manipulate that myself at some point. I love how the tree's really stand out in one of those screenshots.

*Oh wow, I just discovered that Nvidia Geforce has it's own little built in reshade thingie now called Freestyle. Probably not as precise, but I was able to push around a bunch of sliders and make things prettier and less dark than what I had before

Marginis

Xinihp wrote: »

Marginis wrote: »

Problems:

1 - There's nothing to say Microsoft purchasing Zenimax Media which owns Bethesda Softworks which owns Zenimax Online Studios which makes Elder Scrolls Online in which the new DLC is in, a single facet of which is graphical fidelity... has anything to do with how nice the graphics look. Microsoft is so far removed, and game development takes so much time, with so many people involved, one cannot draw a simple line and say one thing directly caused the other. If you're reaching for answers as to why the DLC looks that way, may I suggest the worldwide pandemic as a more realistic cause.

2 - Your graphics comparisons are a bit biased. It seems you are deliberately finding the most flattering existing shots to compare to the least flattering new shots. That is to say, that hardly seems a fair comparison.

3 - Different styles does not equal better or worse. You may prefer the colorful flamboyant Summerset look, but I personally prefer the "everything is bluish gray" hills of Western Skyrim, and I know some people love the featureless sands of Elsweyr.

4 - One of the big concerns I have (and I'm sure ZoS shares) with any new DLC is performance. A lot of players had trouble loading into new zones when older DLCs first came out, because the game just couldn't handle a certain amount of detail in an MMO. Seems like a good thing, exploring a style less performance intensive.

I hate to come across as someone white-knighting for ZoS, but this is a pretty bad faith criticism.

1) The owner/board/investors set the financial agenda. The financial agenda determines the budget to different departments and the roadmap for achieving it. It also determines the overall goal for the game. The budget and roadmap goals determine the quality of what is produced.

2) Find me a single example in Summerset of a bland, featureless mass of zone with no trees, no grass, no rocks or small details, and no living environment. I dare you. I tried.

3) Actually it does. If my "style" is to not add rocks along paths, or plants around trees, or DETAILS to the scene, that is objectively a LESS DETAILED SCENE. In terms of graphical fidelity that is universally recognized as "worse graphics." We're not talking about WoW's cartoon art style vs. realism. This is the literal ABSENCE OF DETAILS.

4) No one was complaining about graphics performance in PVE zones. This is specious. The complaints have ALWAYS been about SERVER performance in PVP. Something that still has not been fixed. Cutting back details in PVE content does nothing to address performance. If someone had such a potato they can't run ESO, then they couldn't run Summerset or content from 3+ years ago either. Should they be making the game worse for lower end hardware as time moves forward? Because that is literally the opposite of every other gaming company on the planet Earth. Quite an anomaly.

I suppose this warrants a response -

1 - I understand how financials are connected between Microsoft and Elder Scrolls Online. What I said is that they are so indirectly connected, it's increasingly far-fetched that anything Microsoft did would have had such an immediate impact on the game. And ON TOP of that, game development takes a long time; this DLC was almost definitely in development before MS acquired ESO as indirectly as they did, in which case it is not just unlikely, it is impossible they could have made the impact you claim.

2 - I'm sure there are less flattering shots of Summerset and more flattering shots of the DLC area - as shown by others in this thread. But it's not just Summerset. Think - why did you choose Summerset to compare instead of another DLC? Would not Morrowind be a better comparison? I mean, you complained specifically about lava, but chose to compare High Isle to Summerset instead of Morrowind, where Morrowind has great examples of lava. And that's just one example. My point is, intentional or not, your choice of screenshots shows plenty of disregard for trying to be unbiased.

3 - The original post in this thread speaks about "quality" not "details". Quality is qualitative - number of details is quantitative. Specifically, there was no mention of numbers - no polygon counts, no count of shaders, no decal resolutions. What your post was complaining about was that it looked lower quality, which is in the eye of the beholder. Even taking "absence of details" as granted, which I don't know if I'd agree with, that's still quite relevant to style. Minecraft has literally fewer details than Call of Duty, but that does not make for one style being better than the other. Some prefer Minecraft graphical style, and some prefer Call of Duty graphical style.

4 - There were a lot of people complaining that the game would crash when they tried to load in with some DLCs, like Wrothgar, Elsweyr, and Summerset, so far as my memory serves me. I was there, and furthermore I was one of them - I would know. Maybe you haven't heard of those complaints, but that does not mean they weren't there. I mean, going into the zone, the game crashing, and not being able to log in to that character again, is a pretty big deal.

It's especially important for console players, as they have hardware constraints beyond PC players. You see, while catering to the lowest end PCs isn't strictly necessary, it's a much bigger deal when the newest DLC doesn't run on a lower spec console that a large portion of the playerbase is still using. This is why some games - Sea of Thieves being another big example, off the top of my head - don't introduce content that only high spec consoles can run. SoT could very easily expand their map, or put more players in a server... if they wanted to abandon all the players on launch xboxes, so instead they're focusing on changing and updating existing content.

ESO on the other hand has historically taken the approach of putting out more performance intensive software and then toning it down to make it work, rather than the other way around, but this comes with understandable problems, like the aforementioned people not being able to load into the new zones on launch.

But most important of all for this last point, and I think this is telling, is that you seem to think the game should cater to you. You sound like you have great hardware, so the game should be the best it can be for that. You prefer a colorful screen full of noise like in Summerset, so the game should do more of that. But that's not how things work.

Other people play this game, who have different preferences, and are in different situations, so sometimes the game will not cater completely to you, if just as an accommodation for a large chunk of players.

It's understandable that you have an opinion, and it's good to share it - maybe ZoS will take it into account - but don't try to pass it off as fact. And for the record, this doesn't make you the bad guy - if anything it just makes you human. Or elven, or a beast race, or something, since this is Elder Scrolls afterall.

EmEm_Oh

ADarklore wrote: »

Problem is, you're comparing a eastern MMO compared to western... and everyone knows the west is more concerned about appeasing their investors and generating revenue than the players. FFXIV also has a very passionate game director who has much more control over the game than ZOS leadership does.

Yeah pretty much this. But I don't think Microsoft has a lot of involvement at this point. I won't say openly here what the issue definitively is, but for example when you have somebody who has their mind stuck a few decades in the past, the development of a game won't go anywhere.

Microsoft may have to actually get involved.

FeedbackOnly

Marginis wrote: »

Xinihp wrote: »

Marginis wrote: »

Problems:

1 - There's nothing to say Microsoft purchasing Zenimax Media which owns Bethesda Softworks which owns Zenimax Online Studios which makes Elder Scrolls Online in which the new DLC is in, a single facet of which is graphical fidelity... has anything to do with how nice the graphics look. Microsoft is so far removed, and game development takes so much time, with so many people involved, one cannot draw a simple line and say one thing directly caused the other. If you're reaching for answers as to why the DLC looks that way, may I suggest the worldwide pandemic as a more realistic cause.

2 - Your graphics comparisons are a bit biased. It seems you are deliberately finding the most flattering existing shots to compare to the least flattering new shots. That is to say, that hardly seems a fair comparison.

3 - Different styles does not equal better or worse. You may prefer the colorful flamboyant Summerset look, but I personally prefer the "everything is bluish gray" hills of Western Skyrim, and I know some people love the featureless sands of Elsweyr.

4 - One of the big concerns I have (and I'm sure ZoS shares) with any new DLC is performance. A lot of players had trouble loading into new zones when older DLCs first came out, because the game just couldn't handle a certain amount of detail in an MMO. Seems like a good thing, exploring a style less performance intensive.

I hate to come across as someone white-knighting for ZoS, but this is a pretty bad faith criticism.

1) The owner/board/investors set the financial agenda. The financial agenda determines the budget to different departments and the roadmap for achieving it. It also determines the overall goal for the game. The budget and roadmap goals determine the quality of what is produced.

2) Find me a single example in Summerset of a bland, featureless mass of zone with no trees, no grass, no rocks or small details, and no living environment. I dare you. I tried.

3) Actually it does. If my "style" is to not add rocks along paths, or plants around trees, or DETAILS to the scene, that is objectively a LESS DETAILED SCENE. In terms of graphical fidelity that is universally recognized as "worse graphics." We're not talking about WoW's cartoon art style vs. realism. This is the literal ABSENCE OF DETAILS.

4) No one was complaining about graphics performance in PVE zones. This is specious. The complaints have ALWAYS been about SERVER performance in PVP. Something that still has not been fixed. Cutting back details in PVE content does nothing to address performance. If someone had such a potato they can't run ESO, then they couldn't run Summerset or content from 3+ years ago either. Should they be making the game worse for lower end hardware as time moves forward? Because that is literally the opposite of every other gaming company on the planet Earth. Quite an anomaly.

I suppose this warrants a response -

1 - I understand how financials are connected between Microsoft and Elder Scrolls Online. What I said is that they are so indirectly connected, it's increasingly far-fetched that anything Microsoft did would have had such an immediate impact on the game. And ON TOP of that, game development takes a long time; this DLC was almost definitely in development before MS acquired ESO as indirectly as they did, in which case it is not just unlikely, it is impossible they could have made the impact you claim.

2 - I'm sure there are less flattering shots of Summerset and more flattering shots of the DLC area - as shown by others in this thread. But it's not just Summerset. Think - why did you choose Summerset to compare instead of another DLC? Would not Morrowind be a better comparison? I mean, you complained specifically about lava, but chose to compare High Isle to Summerset instead of Morrowind, where Morrowind has great examples of lava. And that's just one example. My point is, intentional or not, your choice of screenshots shows plenty of disregard for trying to be unbiased.

3 - The original post in this thread speaks about "quality" not "details". Quality is qualitative - number of details is quantitative. Specifically, there was no mention of numbers - no polygon counts, no count of shaders, no decal resolutions. What your post was complaining about was that it looked lower quality, which is in the eye of the beholder. Even taking "absence of details" as granted, which I don't know if I'd agree with, that's still quite relevant to style. Minecraft has literally fewer details than Call of Duty, but that does not make for one style being better than the other. Some prefer Minecraft graphical style, and some prefer Call of Duty graphical style.

4 - There were a lot of people complaining that the game would crash when they tried to load in with some DLCs, like Wrothgar, Elsweyr, and Summerset, so far as my memory serves me. I was there, and furthermore I was one of them - I would know. Maybe you haven't heard of those complaints, but that does not mean they weren't there. I mean, going into the zone, the game crashing, and not being able to log in to that character again, is a pretty big deal.

It's especially important for console players, as they have hardware constraints beyond PC players. You see, while catering to the lowest end PCs isn't strictly necessary, it's a much bigger deal when the newest DLC doesn't run on a lower spec console that a large portion of the playerbase is still using. This is why some games - Sea of Thieves being another big example, off the top of my head - don't introduce content that only high spec consoles can run. SoT could very easily expand their map, or put more players in a server... if they wanted to abandon all the players on launch xboxes, so instead they're focusing on changing and updating existing content.

ESO on the other hand has historically taken the approach of putting out more performance intensive software and then toning it down to make it work, rather than the other way around, but this comes with understandable problems, like the aforementioned people not being able to load into the new zones on launch.

But most important of all for this last point, and I think this is telling, is that you seem to think the game should cater to you. You sound like you have great hardware, so the game should be the best it can be for that. You prefer a colorful screen full of noise like in Summerset, so the game should do more of that. But that's not how things work.

Other people play this game, who have different preferences, and are in different situations, so sometimes the game will not cater completely to you, if just as an accommodation for a large chunk of players.

It's understandable that you have an opinion, and it's good to share it - maybe ZoS will take it into account - but don't try to pass it off as fact. And for the record, this doesn't make you the bad guy - if anything it just makes you human. Or elven, or a beast race, or something, since this is Elder Scrolls afterall.

To be fair we were promised more color this time in high isle. If you look at the sunflowers in high isle. They aren't normal shade of yellow for sunflowers. They should be colorful

TPishek

The northern island is absolutely gorgeous, probably prettier than Southern Elsweyr (which is my personal favorite zone).

DagenHawk

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

Nice cherry-picked display.

Bingo

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go play the game some folks live to hate on.

Marginis

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

Marginis wrote: »

Xinihp wrote: »

Marginis wrote: »

Problems:

1 - There's nothing to say Microsoft purchasing Zenimax Media which owns Bethesda Softworks which owns Zenimax Online Studios which makes Elder Scrolls Online in which the new DLC is in, a single facet of which is graphical fidelity... has anything to do with how nice the graphics look. Microsoft is so far removed, and game development takes so much time, with so many people involved, one cannot draw a simple line and say one thing directly caused the other. If you're reaching for answers as to why the DLC looks that way, may I suggest the worldwide pandemic as a more realistic cause.

2 - Your graphics comparisons are a bit biased. It seems you are deliberately finding the most flattering existing shots to compare to the least flattering new shots. That is to say, that hardly seems a fair comparison.

3 - Different styles does not equal better or worse. You may prefer the colorful flamboyant Summerset look, but I personally prefer the "everything is bluish gray" hills of Western Skyrim, and I know some people love the featureless sands of Elsweyr.

4 - One of the big concerns I have (and I'm sure ZoS shares) with any new DLC is performance. A lot of players had trouble loading into new zones when older DLCs first came out, because the game just couldn't handle a certain amount of detail in an MMO. Seems like a good thing, exploring a style less performance intensive.

I hate to come across as someone white-knighting for ZoS, but this is a pretty bad faith criticism.

1) The owner/board/investors set the financial agenda. The financial agenda determines the budget to different departments and the roadmap for achieving it. It also determines the overall goal for the game. The budget and roadmap goals determine the quality of what is produced.

2) Find me a single example in Summerset of a bland, featureless mass of zone with no trees, no grass, no rocks or small details, and no living environment. I dare you. I tried.

3) Actually it does. If my "style" is to not add rocks along paths, or plants around trees, or DETAILS to the scene, that is objectively a LESS DETAILED SCENE. In terms of graphical fidelity that is universally recognized as "worse graphics." We're not talking about WoW's cartoon art style vs. realism. This is the literal ABSENCE OF DETAILS.

4) No one was complaining about graphics performance in PVE zones. This is specious. The complaints have ALWAYS been about SERVER performance in PVP. Something that still has not been fixed. Cutting back details in PVE content does nothing to address performance. If someone had such a potato they can't run ESO, then they couldn't run Summerset or content from 3+ years ago either. Should they be making the game worse for lower end hardware as time moves forward? Because that is literally the opposite of every other gaming company on the planet Earth. Quite an anomaly.

I suppose this warrants a response -

1 - I understand how financials are connected between Microsoft and Elder Scrolls Online. What I said is that they are so indirectly connected, it's increasingly far-fetched that anything Microsoft did would have had such an immediate impact on the game. And ON TOP of that, game development takes a long time; this DLC was almost definitely in development before MS acquired ESO as indirectly as they did, in which case it is not just unlikely, it is impossible they could have made the impact you claim.

2 - I'm sure there are less flattering shots of Summerset and more flattering shots of the DLC area - as shown by others in this thread. But it's not just Summerset. Think - why did you choose Summerset to compare instead of another DLC? Would not Morrowind be a better comparison? I mean, you complained specifically about lava, but chose to compare High Isle to Summerset instead of Morrowind, where Morrowind has great examples of lava. And that's just one example. My point is, intentional or not, your choice of screenshots shows plenty of disregard for trying to be unbiased.

3 - The original post in this thread speaks about "quality" not "details". Quality is qualitative - number of details is quantitative. Specifically, there was no mention of numbers - no polygon counts, no count of shaders, no decal resolutions. What your post was complaining about was that it looked lower quality, which is in the eye of the beholder. Even taking "absence of details" as granted, which I don't know if I'd agree with, that's still quite relevant to style. Minecraft has literally fewer details than Call of Duty, but that does not make for one style being better than the other. Some prefer Minecraft graphical style, and some prefer Call of Duty graphical style.

4 - There were a lot of people complaining that the game would crash when they tried to load in with some DLCs, like Wrothgar, Elsweyr, and Summerset, so far as my memory serves me. I was there, and furthermore I was one of them - I would know. Maybe you haven't heard of those complaints, but that does not mean they weren't there. I mean, going into the zone, the game crashing, and not being able to log in to that character again, is a pretty big deal.

It's especially important for console players, as they have hardware constraints beyond PC players. You see, while catering to the lowest end PCs isn't strictly necessary, it's a much bigger deal when the newest DLC doesn't run on a lower spec console that a large portion of the playerbase is still using. This is why some games - Sea of Thieves being another big example, off the top of my head - don't introduce content that only high spec consoles can run. SoT could very easily expand their map, or put more players in a server... if they wanted to abandon all the players on launch xboxes, so instead they're focusing on changing and updating existing content.

ESO on the other hand has historically taken the approach of putting out more performance intensive software and then toning it down to make it work, rather than the other way around, but this comes with understandable problems, like the aforementioned people not being able to load into the new zones on launch.

But most important of all for this last point, and I think this is telling, is that you seem to think the game should cater to you. You sound like you have great hardware, so the game should be the best it can be for that. You prefer a colorful screen full of noise like in Summerset, so the game should do more of that. But that's not how things work.

Other people play this game, who have different preferences, and are in different situations, so sometimes the game will not cater completely to you, if just as an accommodation for a large chunk of players.

It's understandable that you have an opinion, and it's good to share it - maybe ZoS will take it into account - but don't try to pass it off as fact. And for the record, this doesn't make you the bad guy - if anything it just makes you human. Or elven, or a beast race, or something, since this is Elder Scrolls afterall.

To be fair we were promised more color this time in high isle. If you look at the sunflowers in high isle. They aren't normal shade of yellow for sunflowers. They should be colorful

Do you have any reference for that? I'm going into High Isle blind, but that sounds like it might be kind of interesting. I mean, some of the screenshots in this thread look beautiful, but if there are ways the place is supposed to look by lore and stuff, that might be cool to look into.