ZOS_MattFiror wrote: »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beardimus wrote: »

Davor wrote: »

swirve wrote: »

Want to rebuy working HDR... please sell it in the crownstore

You already paid for it. You shouldn't have to rebuy it again. What they could do is leave it as is if that is what some people want and then for FREE people download it from the crown store if they want it in the game. This should make both parties happy.

He's joking to make a point...

However i WOULD pay for old HDR back actually.

Beardimus wrote: »

How does the new ESO HDR compared to other HDR games on PS4? I only have an Xbox and asked the question over there.

Some say old HDR was too colourful etc hence the change, but i'm curious how pre / post HDR ESO compares to other decent HDR games as a marker?

Cactus316000 wrote: »

Beardimus wrote: »

How does the new ESO HDR compared to other HDR games on PS4? I only have an Xbox and asked the question over there.

Some say old HDR was too colourful etc hence the change, but i'm curious how pre / post HDR ESO compares to other decent HDR games as a marker?

I'd say pretty good. I have HZD, Spiderman, Destiny 2, Assassins creed origins etc. and ESO pre Wolfhunter didn't seem more colorful than those. I thought the entire point of HDR was to display a greater range of colors Lol

Cactus316000 wrote: »

Heads up for everyone. We're getting pre Wolfhunter HDR back in a patch sometime in October

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey everyone,

After some investigation, we found the change to HDR was intended to aid in some overly-saturated assets found throughout the game, but it had some unintended consequences. We’re continuing to evaluate the changes that were made in yesterday's patch, and will keep everyone updated on the status.

Appo wrote: »

Has this been fixed on ps4? Mine is still all washed out!!