"Feature" request: graphics enhancements

Octopuss · January 2020

First of all: the game IS pretty. I like the style, I like the graphics overall.
But, at the same time, some aspects of it are starting to look dated.
It's 2020, and I don't think we should see rectangular body shapes, 10 metres shadow draw distance, grass popping up directly in front of you and so on.

Certain parts of bodies have angular shapes, and the body texture is very blurry and low resolution, especially compared to faces.
For your viewing pleasure, one of my characters:

This is just wrong, I mean characters are integral part of the game. Don't tell me these couldn't be significantly improved without too much effort.

Then you have that weird thing about the game's renderer that makes faces look really fugly.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/386317/is-the-character-creation-tool-bugged-or-whats-wrong-with-the-game/p1
(thank you moderators for locking a thread because "it might be outdated" - WTF?)
(Ok, this one is more like weird design choice rather than "outdated quality", but it's related, so I'm including it)

Draw distance SUCKS.

(this example is even more ridiculous)
I do understand this cannot be extended without some serious improvements to the renderer though, because the engine is simply something ancient and noone wants to play at 20fps. But really... it shouldn't be like this in a game in 2020.
Also, where is the DirectX 12 client that was "promised" as early as 2016?

I understand the game has to run well on consoles and it's _probably_ already pushing it, but at the same time, why should PC players play a game that looks like ten years old?

There's definitely a resolution limit to textures on consoles, but why can't PC ecosystem have the choice to get something better? I'm not saying 4k everything, simply something optional, like the Skyrim "hires" texture pack. Is this going to happen? Probably not. Would it make the game look significantly better? Hell yea.

Some textures look to be of unreasonably low resolution though, like the large stuff (ironically some of the smaller items too, as if the thought process behind them was "it's too small, noone cares"), ground/rock/whatever game world parts, and quite often I am looking at a blurry mess that doesn't even look like a texture anymore (also, proper UV mapping anyone?)
A lot of objects could use a few more polygons. Some of the shapes are just so 2005...

P.S. Before anyone steps in and yells "this is nonsense, they should use the resources on fixing bugs/whatever" - no, there are several independant teams working on the game (any game), and whoever does textures does not do any gameplay coding etc. Also, in this time and age, there's no reason why a game shouldn't look AND play nice both at the same time. Yes, the gameplay is the most important. No, graphics are not unimportant. I'd love to play Dungeon Master again but I can't. It's just too 1987.

snoozy · January 2020

agree.
pc shouldn't be held back just bc consoles can't cope with the graphics.
rework is badly needed in some areas.

wild_kmacdb16_ESO · January 2020

Yes I think a graphics update is due when the next gen consoles release. These new visuals could be a toggle option for ppl with older computers.

My big thing is the character models; need more polys

Arrodisia · January 2020

Yes, and for goodness sake, please, clip the toenails on multiple character models. My high elf shouldn't look like she'll slit your throat with her foot. Have fun all

nafensoriel · January 2020

Octopuss wrote: »

/snip

It looks 2005 because it was made in.... 2005? At least the engine technology is about that old.
While improvements can be made it's not something that can be done to everything which leaves art teams with a dilemma... do they maintain the current art style and consistency or do they have elements that are modern mixed in with elements from 2005?

Changing all the art assets in ESO would take a very long time. Just updating the buckets would take a while. It would also, yes I know it sucks, utterly destroy consoles. Maybe with the new PS5, they will finally be able to start the long process of updating everything. Gotta remember though that would take years. The game was built with hundreds of hands but it is maintained by dozens. That is just game life and why it's so hard to redo things after release.

/edit Oh as to DX12... Please don't be one of those people.
DX12 is not a performance increase. It is a giant headache. The only time it is a performance increase is when you exceed draw calls for a given scene and only games like Planet Coaster where you can put an absurd amount of things on screen will this ever matter.

curtisnewton · January 2020

Colours in the game are constant while in reality they differ. The sun at noon makes real objects reflect light differently than a sun at morning for example. Objects can only reflect whats thrown at them. So there is no dark red object at night, or in purple early sun, all objects reflect some purple. At evening everything looks more golden. And At night colours should be less strong overall anyway. Some shaders for in room fogginess would be nice (look at fallout 76).

Maybe better light for shadows, raytracing?

In quake, a very old game from id, now bethesda it works wonders.

and 100% yes for a high res texture mod on PCs

Turelus · January 2020

I know when I spoke with ZOS at a round table during an event someone asked about a graphics update, especially for the zones.

Rich or Rob (forget which) commented how the art teams would love to do it, but they didn't have the time in their schedule for it.

I would imagine if the history of MMO games holds any evidence it will only be updated when it's truly behind the times.

wild_kmacdb16_ESO · January 2020

juttaa77b16_ESO wrote: »

Yes, and for goodness sake, please, clip the toenails on multiple character models. My high elf shouldn't look like she'll slit your throat with her foot. Have fun all

The foot model is probably the most outdated looking part of the anatomy of the player model. If you look closely its just a shoe with a mangled foot texture wrapped around it. We can have individual fingers but no toes , which is a shame considering the amount of sandals and so forth

Octopuss · January 2020

nafensoriel wrote: »

/edit Oh as to DX12... Please don't be one of those people.
DX12 is not a performance increase. It is a giant headache. The only time it is a performance increase is when you exceed draw calls for a given scene and only games like Planet Coaster where you can put an absurd amount of things on screen will this ever matter.

I'm no programmer and you probably aren't either, so we can't reliably comment on this, but a simple read of relevant Wikipedia article says that the main advantage of Dx12 is lowering driver overhead, lowering the load on the CPU, which in ESO's case seems to be exactly what's needed as the game is not as GPU intensive as it post probably is CPU-bound (and especially running the game with (lots of) addons).

I don't want this to derail into a Dx12 discussion though.

Chaos2088 · January 2020

There will be a base game update in graphics at some point, as to when well not for a few years at least, the guys/gals/goblins at Zos probably have their hands full for stuff for now with the next few years + more on content creating.

People can only do so much. They will have to pencil it in their vast plans at some point tho as we all noticed the difference between base game zones and new ones already.

They did update the NPC guards in Cyro with the new armours in one update recently, so maybe we migth see it bit by bit, but I doubt it. It will be wrapped up in a nice gift for us in an Update like one tam.

Royaji · January 2020

People should stop thinking that ZOS has an AAA-size team still working on ESO. They are currently working on a new project and the majorty of the team is helping with that. One of the "ambassadors" who go to meetups (I think it was Turelus? Might be wrong on that) has stated not so long ago that ESO has about 60 people working on it.

With a team this big they can either work on reworking older zones and models (which they can't sell) or new assets for the upcoming DLCs (which they can sell). The choice seems pretty obvious. I wouldn't expect any kind of graphical updates any time soon. It's not common for MMOs to get major visual overhauls, I don't think ESO will be an exception to this.

Octopuss · January 2020

I don't think you're wrong, unfortunately

It's what is, most likely. But even if we weren't getting any better textures, at least some of the existing stuff could and should be improved, like the character models and lighting.

Royaji · January 2020

Octopuss wrote: »

I don't think you're wrong, unfortunately It's what is, most likely. But even if we weren't getting any better textures, at least some of the existing stuff could and should be improved, like the character models and lighting.

It's exactly the opposite. We are already getting better textures on new stuff. Summerset does look better than Auridon. But there is very little chance any of the existing stuff is going to be overhauled soon. Because once again, they can't monetize it.

nafensoriel · January 2020

Octopuss wrote: »

nafensoriel wrote: »

/edit Oh as to DX12... Please don't be one of those people.
DX12 is not a performance increase. It is a giant headache. The only time it is a performance increase is when you exceed draw calls for a given scene and only games like Planet Coaster where you can put an absurd amount of things on screen will this ever matter.

I'm no programmer and you probably aren't either, so we can't reliably comment on this, but a simple read of relevant Wikipedia article says that the main advantage of Dx12 is lowering driver overhead, lowering the load on the CPU, which in ESO's case seems to be exactly what's needed as the game is not as GPU intensive as it post probably is CPU-bound (and especially running the game with (lots of) addons).

I don't want this to derail into a Dx12 discussion though.

I actually work with a different aspect of coding than games but it isn't really a complex discussion to answer. It can also be done without derailing!

While YES dx12 can have a lower overhead it requires a good bit more work to do the same task initially than dx11. This is partially because we have a ton of tools for dx11 and barely any for dx12 after all this time and partially because it takes more complexity to do something in DX12 for many tasks.
The issue is DX12 offers no practical performance improvement for the extra time it takes to go down the dx12 route. This is even excluding the fact that currently you cant just do dx12 so adding it is double the work.

The only functional advantage of dx12 over dx11 is the fact that some tasks(like drawcalls) can be split across multiple threads. There aren't many games right now that need that kind of horsepower except the aforementioned planet coaster and that is exclusively because its a sandbox that can be horrifically abused by the end-user.

/edit To further clarify you don't see anyone developing dx12 except as a "beta"(Creative Assembly/gearbox) for primary performance reasons. Civ6 has some advantages with using it but that is because anything that reduces cpu usage in civ6 is mint for turn times.
You see dx12 development because new features are coming out that exclusively use that threading function and other native benefits of dx12.

wild_kmacdb16_ESO · January 2020

Royaji wrote: »

Octopuss wrote: »

I don't think you're wrong, unfortunately It's what is, most likely. But even if we weren't getting any better textures, at least some of the existing stuff could and should be improved, like the character models and lighting.

It's exactly the opposite. We are already getting better textures on new stuff. Summerset does look better than Auridon. But there is very little chance any of the existing stuff is going to be overhauled soon. Because once again, they can't monetize it.

If the core game looks bad then the pool of players to buy new stuff will be significantly less

Royaji · January 2020

wild_kmacdb16_ESO wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Octopuss wrote: »

I don't think you're wrong, unfortunately It's what is, most likely. But even if we weren't getting any better textures, at least some of the existing stuff could and should be improved, like the character models and lighting.

It's exactly the opposite. We are already getting better textures on new stuff. Summerset does look better than Auridon. But there is very little chance any of the existing stuff is going to be overhauled soon. Because once again, they can't monetize it.

If the core game looks bad then the pool of players to buy new stuff will be significantly less

WoW looks horrible and still has quite a pool of players.

ESO looks decent for a modern MMO. The looks might turn off the minority of people interested in high visual fidelity but the silent majority will not have too many complaints. You don't come to ESO for 4K textures, HDR, RTX, photorealistic graphics and whatever else. There are over games for that.

Maxx7410 · January 2020

More than looks what is needed is ambient interaction. Think must broke if you attack, catch fire if you use fire, use the ambient to fight, etc.

KBKB · January 2020

You should look up reshade and use it game looks modern again

Octopuss · January 2020

Royaji wrote: »

Octopuss wrote: »

I don't think you're wrong, unfortunately It's what is, most likely. But even if we weren't getting any better textures, at least some of the existing stuff could and should be improved, like the character models and lighting.

It's exactly the opposite. We are already getting better textures on new stuff. Summerset does look better than Auridon. But there is very little chance any of the existing stuff is going to be overhauled soon. Because once again, they can't monetize it.

Maybe they are artistically better, but technically they seem to be exactly the same resolution, which makes sense from consistency point of view.
I really think new stuff just looks nicer because it's new, not necessarily because it's of higher quality. It would make sense as well, because after you spend a few years looking at the same stuff, you start to nitpick and notice details and whatnot.

KBKB wrote: »

You should look up reshade and use it game looks modern again

This is the worst suggestion ever. It doesn't fix anything, eats extra performance, and IIRC it only changes colours for different feel. No solution for anything.

nafensoriel wrote: »

While YES dx12 can have a lower overhead it requires a good bit more work to do the same task initially than dx11. This is partially because we have a ton of tools for dx11 and barely any for dx12 after all this time and partially because it takes more complexity to do something in DX12 for many tasks.
The issue is DX12 offers no practical performance improvement for the extra time it takes to go down the dx12 route. This is even excluding the fact that currently you cant just do dx12 so adding it is double the work.

The only functional advantage of dx12 over dx11 is the fact that some tasks(like drawcalls) can be split across multiple threads. There aren't many games right now that need that kind of horsepower except the aforementioned planet coaster and that is exclusively because its a sandbox that can be horrifically abused by the end-user.

/edit To further clarify you don't see anyone developing dx12 except as a "beta"(Creative Assembly/gearbox) for primary performance reasons. Civ6 has some advantages with using it but that is because anything that reduces cpu usage in civ6 is mint for turn times.
You see dx12 development because new features are coming out that exclusively use that threading function and other native benefits of dx12.

Oh I did read it was noticeably more work to implement than Dx11.
Are you also saying it's even more difficult to implement on existing product? That would make sense I guess.
No idea if Vulkan is any different from this point of view, but ESO might benefit from either. Since nothing new happened since 2016 though, I presume it's safe to say it's not going to happen ever.
All I know my addons add like 20 seconds to any loading, so having more CPU power available could definitely be beneficial.

KBKB · January 2020

Octopuss wrote: »

Royaji wrote: »

Octopuss wrote: »

I don't think you're wrong, unfortunately It's what is, most likely. But even if we weren't getting any better textures, at least some of the existing stuff could and should be improved, like the character models and lighting.

It's exactly the opposite. We are already getting better textures on new stuff. Summerset does look better than Auridon. But there is very little chance any of the existing stuff is going to be overhauled soon. Because once again, they can't monetize it.

Maybe they are artistically better, but technically they seem to be exactly the same resolution, which makes sense from consistency point of view.
I really think new stuff just looks nicer because it's new, not necessarily because it's of higher quality. It would make sense as well, because after you spend a few years looking at the same stuff, you start to nitpick and notice details and whatnot.

KBKB wrote: »

You should look up reshade and use it game looks modern again

This is the worst suggestion ever. It doesn't fix anything, eats extra performance, and IIRC it only changes colours for different feel. No solution for anything.

nafensoriel wrote: »

While YES dx12 can have a lower overhead it requires a good bit more work to do the same task initially than dx11. This is partially because we have a ton of tools for dx11 and barely any for dx12 after all this time and partially because it takes more complexity to do something in DX12 for many tasks.
The issue is DX12 offers no practical performance improvement for the extra time it takes to go down the dx12 route. This is even excluding the fact that currently you cant just do dx12 so adding it is double the work.

The only functional advantage of dx12 over dx11 is the fact that some tasks(like drawcalls) can be split across multiple threads. There aren't many games right now that need that kind of horsepower except the aforementioned planet coaster and that is exclusively because its a sandbox that can be horrifically abused by the end-user.

/edit To further clarify you don't see anyone developing dx12 except as a "beta"(Creative Assembly/gearbox) for primary performance reasons. Civ6 has some advantages with using it but that is because anything that reduces cpu usage in civ6 is mint for turn times.
You see dx12 development because new features are coming out that exclusively use that threading function and other native benefits of dx12.

Oh I did read it was noticeably more work to implement than Dx11.
Are you also saying it's even more difficult to implement on existing product? That would make sense I guess.
No idea if Vulkan is any different from this point of view, but ESO might benefit from either. Since nothing new happened since 2016 though, I presume it's safe to say it's not going to happen ever.
All I know my addons add like 20 seconds to any loading, so having more CPU power available could definitely be beneficial.

Hardly eats performance and it's completely customisable for every user. I've suggested it to many people who are all extremely happy with the results and can't believe they played without it.

What did you try like 2 shades and give up?

Tigerseye · January 2020

Got to love the fact that someone was trying to say (and was actually getting thumbed up for it!), on your closed thread, that it was due to different light sources, lol.

Obviously, different light sources can make us look slightly different, but they don't change the proportions of our face and the placement and size of our features.

Whereas, that is exactly what happens between the char creation screen and one's char ingame.

Perhaps to facilitate the sales of appearance change tokens, who knows?!

Your char's face had the proportions of a fairly typical male face, once ingame; not a female one.

Whereas, although it wasn't overly feminine in the char creation screen, it certainly wasn't unquestionably male, either.

Chars tend to have a narrower face, once ingame, so you generally have to choose a face that is wider than the one you want to end up with.

Same with the eyes - they tend to look closer set, ingame.

Noses will tend to look longer, too.

So, basically you need to make a wide face, with a short nose and slightly wider set eyes than normal.

Also, make sure you don't place the mouth too low, as men tend to have a longer philtrum (and shorter chin, relatively speaking) than women and I think the game tends to exaggerate that, too.

Bigger eyes are also perceived as more feminine, as are fuller lips.

Obviously, people can still look feminine without either, in real life, but real life has better and more consistent graphics...

...and yes, I agree that it would be nice if they updated the graphics a bit.

Tigerseye · January 2020

Royaji wrote: »

WoW looks horrible and still has quite a pool of players.

They updated the char models, in WoW, though.

Made them look worse, in some cases, but still.

Octopuss · January 2020

The most bizzare thing is that male characters seem to be largely unaffected by this, but females are like night and day difference. Just wtf?

Iccotak · January 2020

Wait, you guys don't have pointed ***?

Tigerseye · January 2020

Quote from the other thread, in answer to someone saying they couldn't see any differences:

Congratulations, you’re not OCD.".

"Not OCD" - previously known as totally unobservant.

Tigerseye · January 2020

...and another thing:

Like you, I also find it somewhat suspicious that male chars look more-or-less the same as they do on the char creation screen.

Whereas, female chars are made to look less pretty and more masculine, ingame.

Why on earth, for example, did they they make the female noses horizontal at the end, rather than slightly upturned, as most female noses are?

You simply can't make a straight bridged nose with an upturned tip and forget making an upturned nose, in general, as you will end up with weird angles and still won't have an upturned tip.

Also, there is a limit to how short you can make the nose (only just short enough, once ingame) and if you try to make it slightly wider, so it looks less long and to go with the wider face, the entire nose widens, not just the top and bottom of it (which is more typical for a woman).

Some of this may be due to limitations, but some of it definitely seem to have been due to deliberate design decisions, which I find rather odd, frankly.

Female chars don't have to be super-feminine, at all, but not allowing people to make them look feminine, if they want to (and especially if they looked reasonably so in char creation), is weird.

nafensoriel · January 2020

Octopuss wrote: »

Oh I did read it was noticeably more work to implement than Dx11.
Are you also saying it's even more difficult to implement on existing product? That would make sense I guess.
No idea if Vulkan is any different from this point of view, but ESO might benefit from either. Since nothing new happened since 2016 though, I presume it's safe to say it's not going to happen ever.
All I know my addons add like 20 seconds to any loading, so having more CPU power available could definitely be beneficial.

Think about it like a highway system. One way you have a really efficient but outdated system and the other you have an empty field. Is it easier to build on the empty field or to try to line up all the onramps/offramps with existing roads?

Vulkan is arguably worse because it's done nothing on the back end. It's all open which means you have to make everything from scratch. You can do really cool things with it but if you don't have talent on your team it's going to suck.

Try reshade out though being able to add post-processing actually does improve things for most people!

Octopuss · January 2020

If they at least fixed crap like this...

But no, not even that.

Amphithoe · January 2020

A lot of the vanilla assets could really use some love to bring them in-line with later DLC's quality level.

On another note, I've been gone from the game in around six months, and I've noticed that the draw distance seems a lot worse like static objects fade in and out in very short distances, Is it just me having rose coloured glasses about the graphics, or is it a part of the performance updates?

Dirtybyrd · January 2020

I agree totally it is time for the game to be upgraded in more ways than one! Lets get after them on it

ArchMikem · January 2020

snoozy wrote: »

agree.
pc shouldn't be held back just bc consoles can't cope with the graphics.
rework is badly needed in some areas.

PC ISN'T held back because of Consoles. Even on Xbox One X my game version is severely dumbed down compared to PC's max settings AND we don't even get graphics settings to mess with. We play what we're given. PC players on the other hands are given much, much more.