It's time for a graphics update

EmEm_Oh

ESO looks amazing on an LG 48" C3. Saving up to get one. With the amount of filters and options available now in televisions, ESO can look really good. Some things do need updated, but a lot is with what kind of display and graphics card you're running.

kargen27

I screwed up with my post but was replying to @Dokolus with the video he posted. Part of what he said in quotes.

"I just feel like people would benefit more with their usage of reshade if they learn how colour grading works, or at least the basics of it (or you could even use a camera/phone to try taking irl shots to practice learning, as I have done so in the past with my cameras).

I am likely going to use that user's Reshade, as it sorts out quite a few issues I've had with ESO's overall colour scheme, but I also want to learn more from his personal choices (from one camera man to another, and as a guy who wants to draw again).

Here is the user's video side by side comparison if you'd like to take a gander:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-vX84xsGltw"

The reshade in the video looks nice. Might be my monitor settings but it appears to have a bit to much Magenta.

I was a commercial photographer for several years. I majored in photography and had courses in Gestalt principles and Ansel Adams zone system. I like spending time in game doing screen captures and try to apply rules like I would for scenic photography. I like the reshade settings I'm using but I do sometimes lose detail in the blacks.

kargen27

martygod12 wrote: »

TybaltKaine wrote: »

You have to consider that a major overhaul of graphics would impact members of the user base on lower end systems. ESO is already squeezing every last drop out of players, so to ask them to suddenly have to upgrade a computer, maybe drastically, in a time when graphics cards are wildly overpriced or lose access to their investment because of a non-critical issue like graphics seems a bridge too far.

There are plenty of avenues for the user to take to increase graphical fidelity without impacting the game for everyone else.

Cmon this cant be an issue to argue with anymore ... its a game from a 2014, I have 2080 which is average gpu these days and run it in 2k with everything maxed out and reshade on top of that and never go below 90FPS even in the performance heavy areas.

I get that not everyone can afford a PC upgrade or new PC, but on the other hand you cant expect to play all games forever with some 10-12yrs old PC ...

Game is 9 years old, so worrying someone cant run it should really not be even a topic.

Not to mention that I am sure,that all those "upgrades" would be 99% optional and toggable in the graphics settings.

The game has already had one upgrade that forced some players to either upgrade or leave the game. It isn't the 2014 game and shouldn't be thought of as the 2014 game.

Nic727

The only thing that I hate graphically is the armors looking like it’s painted on the character instead of a physical armor. Would love to see more character details.

couriersix

I think base game zones would benefit from newer meshes and textures, but player models, pets, mounts, and newer zones are fine.

Grizzbeorn

Arcturus wrote: »

Looks bad to me.

Of course it does. I saw that coming from a mile away.
And that's why having this conversation is pretty much pointless; it's completely subjective.
To the point that you, yourself, have different opinions about it...

Arcturus wrote: »

Imo the world doesn't look bad.

(all of my shots you commented on are world shots.)

Hotdog_23

Think at most ZOS will eventually drop support for the PS4 and Xbox One at most but even then I would not expect an upgrade or very expensive upgrades on the PC side of things. Since MS owns ZOS now, they will not place the system out of the Xbox Series S any time soon.

Even the new game Starfield is being made to work on Xbox Series S. Not that I expect ZOS to drop support for the original PS4 or Xbox One anytime soon.

Stay safe

Arcturus

Grizzbeorn wrote: »

Arcturus wrote: »

Looks bad to me.

Of course it does. I saw that coming from a mile away.
And that's why having this conversation is pretty much pointless; it's completely subjective.
To the point that you, yourself, have different opinions about it...

Arcturus wrote: »

Imo the world doesn't look bad.

(all of my shots you commented on are world shots.)

Beyond opinion and getting into facts, more than a few basegame zones keep recycling the same assets, and you can't even tell which zone you're at.
You're free to like a zone that looks dated, but that doesn't mean it lives up to current standards.
Older zones need graphical improvements and they need something to set them apart from one another asides from alliance, because that's about the only thing you can tell while there.
I, for one, have no idea if I'm in Glenumbra, Bangkorai or Stormhaven.

The topic of the thread isn't "Do certain zones need a facelift?" it's "Certain zones need a facelift, should we do it?

And I meant the world in general doesn't look bad (including EVERY zone as sort of an average "beauty" statistic), not specific zones. If I filltered out the newer zones then I would say the world looks awful.

Think about this, too: If a new chapter brings in a zone that looks just like a basegame one, people would riot.

I just wonder if it's really something we should bother doing, because frugal people are going to be frugal, players don't really travel around those zones much anymore and I think updating old classes' visuals is much more important and worthy of urgent attention.

Dokolus

kargen27 wrote: »

The reshade in the video looks nice. Might be my monitor settings but it appears to have a bit to much Magenta.

I was a commercial photographer for several years. I majored in photography and had courses in Gestalt principles and Ansel Adams zone system. I like spending time in game doing screen captures and try to apply rules like I would for scenic photography. I like the reshade settings I'm using but I do sometimes lose detail in the blacks.

Aye, there's nothing wrong with those shots of yours tbh, they look beautiful.

As for his Reshade, he did admit he uses a tinge of pink to help compliment the brightness increase he used in general, which also helped lend to slightly softer shadows (instead of the usual dark shadows that end up being crushed or worse, banded).

I'm going to try talking to him to see if there is another way his shader can be improved, or at least customised without the use of the pink hue (which I imagine was what you saw when you mentioned Magenta).

I have also noticed as well, like with older ES games, ESO suffers a bit with it's HDR and Bloom, in that some light sources, be it during day or night, end up giving off way too much of a glow, that it's almost like staring directly into the sun itself (but I feel like this is something only an ENB can sold via HDR/Bloom tweaks).

Ultimately I think my biggest pet peeves when it comes to Bethesda games, is issues with crushed blacks, HDR and bloom, because all 3 of those seem to be heavily or somewhat persistent in their games, going so far back as Oblivion (I don't remember Morrowind having big issues with HDR/bloom as much as Oblivion started to show when it came out).

Like I said, there are definitely some nice shaders out there, but at the same time, there are so many crushed black areas, increased HDR and even Bloom in some cases, and that ends up either saturating or overly brightening/darkening the final image, and while it may look stellar in screenshots, it doesn't seem to pan out all too well with gameplay (especially if you're doing dungeons/BG's, where you need to see everything and anything going on around you, and crushed black spots are going to be the players blindspot).

I do wish ESO would at least allow for a means to tweak the game's general saturation, and allow us to tweak the HDR/Bloom, instead of having Votan's addons and only having a toggle for bloom, because I feel like I'd get much more out of the game visually, if I could tweak those settings on the fly, instead of on/off, and having to muck around with my Nvidia control panel colour settings (and making my general desktop overly saturated, just to play one game, and all of Bethesda's games are like this with no saturation/bloom/HDR controls).

dcam86b14_ESO

Older zones look bland but even ZOS has stated that the newer DLC zones are graphically better than the others. Don't take my word just go to Auridon or the OG starter zones and then teleport to Blackwood or Telvanni peninsula and it's a glaring difference. If you're on an older PC your rig will agree as well.

YstradClud

Arcturus wrote: »

Take a screenshot of glenumbra or something with unmodded graphics lol.

Took your advice. Not too shabby by 2014 standards?

madman65

If you want improve looks of your game you may want to try this but make sure you have NVIDIA GRAPHICS CARD: 1.) Make sure you have Nvidia GeForce Experience installed. While in game, press ALT + F3 to open Nvidia Game Filter

2.) Hit "Add Filter" and apply these filters with the respective settings:

‎DETAILS:
Sharpen 28%‎‎
‎‎Clarity 19%‎‎ ‎
HDR Tone -16%‎‎ ‎
Overexposure 0%‎‎

‎‎COLOR:
Tint Color 20%‎‎
‎‎Tint Intensity 21%‎‎
Temperature 0.5%‎‎
Vibrance 50.7%‎‎

BRIGHTNESS / CONTRAST‎‎:
Exposure 19%‎‎
Contrast 31%‎‎
Highlights -64%‎‎
Shadow -30%‎‎
Gamma 0%

3.) Enjoy! You can easily disable this in Nvidia Game Filter (ALT + F3), even while in game, but you probably won't want to!

It can get to bright so you may want to adjust something yourself also when you update your software you will have to re-apply this.

Arcturus

YstradClud wrote: »

Arcturus wrote: »

Take a screenshot of glenumbra or something with unmodded graphics lol.

Took your advice. Not too shabby by 2014 standards?

Compare that to High Isle, Amenos or Galen.
You can tell if you're in either one of these because they distinguish themselves enough while looking beautiful.
You can't tell if you're in Stormhaven or Glenumbra and they look bad when put side to side with the zones mentioned above

alcoraptor

Overhauling the graphics engine to provide better physics, character models etc would be a massive job.
They could add sliders for it to mitigate performance issues on lower end systems, for sure - but it would still be a massive (and therefore very expensive) undertaking, fraught with problems and bugs.
Given the limited benefit it would provide, I can't see this happening (nice as it would be!).

Each chapter's zone is an improvement over the last, so there is clearly still a lot of scope in what can be done with the engine as it is - so I think it's fine as is.

It would be nice to see them go back and update all of the base-game zones and assets to Necrom-level quality, but I can't see this happening either to be honest - it would be another massive job that would have very little (monetisation) benefit.

Kappachi

No. The game, despite how it looks struggles greatly to run 240 FPS even on an RTX 3090 and i9-12900KS, we do not need a graphics update, if anything we need an engine update/sequel, but it's honestly not too bad as it is as long as graphics & performance hitting stuff stays where it's at.

Warhawke_80

I come from Everquest….


You guys are spoiled

Strixxe

If by graphics upgrade you mean draw distance and fog, then yes. Other than that idk.. Maybe animations needs to be updated, because compared to, lets say GW2, they feel way too rigid.

TaSheen

Strixxe wrote: »

If by graphics upgrade you mean draw distance and fog, then yes. Other than that idk.. Maybe animations needs to be updated, because compared to, lets say GW2, they feel way too rigid.

Before you ask for animations to be "upgraded" - look at what happened with Jabs and Flurry....

Bad idea, friend.

KaosWarMonk

On a grand scale, I'd really like the option to enable some sort of remastered graphics if I wanted to.

On a smaller scale, some of the older textures could really do with an update - Dunmer armour, Golden Saint and Dark Seducer costumes spring to mind.

Faulgor

An overhaul of the base game zones with (mostly) already existing assets and an upgrade to DX12 is all that's really needed imo.

Even Rich Lambert said several years ago that his team would like to do an overhaul of said zones, but so far they couldn't justify the dev work being taken away from just creating more zones. With the shift from story to system based content, I hope they reconsider - if we are going to spend more time in old zones with new systems, the old zones should be brought up to the level of the rest of the game.

Would make a great 10th birthday present.

Sarannah

The game is still looking great, and messing with the old zones(and character skills) may cause complications and costs money/time I'd rather have them spend on new zones/new things/new systems.

But, I do feel ZOS needs to have new/re-do all the older character models, older outfits, older pets, older costumes, older mounts, etc. Basically make a newer version of all the old stuff that is dated, but keep the old versions available. But they should not update zone graphics/character skills, just make new classes and new zones instead.

And I feel ZOS needs to make some massive changes to the way their storing data works, so we can have many more character slots/storage slots. There are often times I do not buy something from the store due to not being able to store(furniture for example) or use it(outfits for example, but also mounts/pets/skins/etc). There are also times where I had to skip buying stuff as I was already at the maximum amount, like character slots/outfit slots/etc.

Maybe releasing a 4k graphics/texture pack at some point would be nice though.

licenturion

Sarannah wrote: »

Maybe releasing a 4k graphics/texture pack at some point would be nice though.

Textures are not the problem, assets are

Especially rock, trees and vegetation assets

It is really bizarre they used the new ones back in the day for the first ever minor DLC and later but never ported them back to the base zones in the 9 years they got. Fixing those + armor/clothing would do a lot to get the game ready for the next decade

No wonder they don't drop new players or free trial players in the base zones because they would run off within 15 minutes with how outdated it looks.

Elsonso

martygod12 wrote: »

Cmon this cant be an issue to argue with anymore ... its a game from a 2014, I have 2080 which is average gpu these days and run it in 2k with everything maxed out and reshade on top of that and never go below 90FPS even in the performance heavy areas.

I get that not everyone can afford a PC upgrade or new PC, but on the other hand you cant expect to play all games forever with some 10-12yrs old PC ...

Game is 9 years old, so worrying someone cant run it should really not be even a topic.

Not to mention that I am sure,that all those "upgrades" would be 99% optional and toggable in the graphics settings.

They have changed the graphics requirements in the past, and not in a manner that was optional. People had to upgrade or simply not play the game.

My current thinking is that what is holding the game back definitely goes back to the legacy support for the older consoles. Once we can move everyone on console to PS5 and Xbox Series devices, I think that opens a door for them to make a lot of non-optional changes.

As for "options" and "toggles", all of that simply adds to the cost of the game. They do a lot of work to upgrade the graphics, but they still have to maintain and support the old ways. That costs money. I would not fault them for deciding not to go that route.

wilykcat

Along side with graphics update, they should make the animations better quality and add in more realistic physics.

UGotBenched91

I’d be happy if they just updated some of the outdated textures. Especially those on older armor and weapons.

Darkstorne

I'd love updates to the flora, and maybe some of the base game rock/mountain assets. But otherwise I think the game holds up really well, and Reshade shows how much potential there is for extra shader work to bring the game up a notch or two. Draw distance is probably the biggest improvement they could make for the game with relative ease. Already mods for that.

ClowdyAllDay

TaSheen wrote: »

I've already been through 2 graphics updates in other MMOs - which made my characters look nothing like I wanted them to look, and made the worlds even more cartoonish than they were to begin with, and which ultimately led to me cancelling numerous subs in both games, quitting them completely, and I've never been back to either one.

And considering the state of the "re-do" on templar jabs and DW flurry.... Please, no. Just leave the game alone.

dw flurry needed an update and that made sense templar jabs did not. DW flurry gave the same single animation which made sense for daggers and swords but not so much axes and not at all for maces. stabby stabby with an axe or esp a mace was surely dumb.

ClowdyAllDay

My gtx 1650 has all the grapchics it needs to play eso at 80-100fps at 1080p on a 40 inch tv and look very nice.

Working as intended.

Kendaric

ClowdyAllDay wrote: »

dw flurry needed an update and that made sense templar jabs did not. DW flurry gave the same single animation which made sense for daggers and swords but not so much axes and not at all for maces. stabby stabby with an axe or esp a mace was surely dumb.

While I agree DW flurry looked absolutely silly on axes/maces, they should have both animations in game. The new one looks utterly ridiculous on daggers/swords.
They should really have based certain animations on the weapon type used instead of having them skill-specific.

Pixiepumpkin

Nic727 wrote: »

The only thing that I hate graphically is the armors looking like it’s painted on the character instead of a physical armor. Would love to see more character details.

Ya, New World ruined me for character art. They have so much layering going on in their outfits. We are seeing a little bit of that here with new stuff, but not to the degree they do in that game. I'd love to see more layering in ESO.