Are graphics really that bad?

stomron · July 2013

I read some of the reviews, like here, and there are some major complaints that graphics are poor and that visual customization of your character is bad, and for most of the time your character will look the same.

Is it really that bad, to what would you compare the graphics, obviously Vindictus, despite being 3 years old has much better armor and character visuals but what about everything else?

stomron · July 2013

Also what engine is this, will there be ultra settings later on like some games add?

vitalityprime · July 2013

Coming from Champions Online...Neverwinter's character customization is terrible.

pizzamurai · July 2013

That review is peetty spot on about most everything... except the graphics. The graphics are good. Not bad, not amazing, but good. The game is indeed extremely linear like he described, and the green armor progression from 1-59 is pretty underwhelming indeed ( though there are blue armors that do not follow the exact same design style).

Character customization is far and above games like... say... wow or rift. Plenty of slidersto muck with. That said, it is not amazing either.

The game is free, so download it and see for yourself. And max out the graphics, because if you are on the lowest settings... obviously things will not be very pretty.

stomron · July 2013

vitalityprime wrote: »

Coming from Champions Online...Neverwinter's character customization is terrible.

Well, no one can ever top the customization of DC Universe Online, but it's more of the problem of existing range looking better.

toughguylol · July 2013

graphics are not bad

if you're referring to gear appearances, yes its absolutely terrible. you look exactly the same from 1 to 60, and everyone wears the same thing at 60 except people who bought one of 3 fashion items in the zen shop

moerevolver · July 2013

The game supports DirectX 11 which is still in beta, not sure if they're going to take advantage of it though.

bioshrike · July 2013

stomron wrote: »

Well, no one can ever top the customization of DC Universe Online, but it's more of the problem of existing range looking better.

City of Heroes, (when it was still running), and Champions both have DCUO beat, hands down.

Regardless, NW has nice graphics... the environments are extremely well done. The lack of different armor looks from 1-59, as others have pointed out, is negligible - basically imagine tacking on an extra plate or bit of cloth here or there every 10 levels or so.

One important thing to note is that there is a good selection of facial options, and you can choose to not show your headwear, so you can see your character's face.

silvergryph · July 2013

The graphics are quite good. I consider them to be pretty high end for MMOs. However, the Cryptic Engine is horrible at detecting your best settings for your computer. You have to go into the advanced settings and play around with everything manually.

As far as visual character customization goes, it is getting better. For example, player crafted dyes are in now and Weaponcrafting looks like it will be all about making different weapon skins. What we really need is a way to preview equipment on the AH because there are a lot of really good skins out there that are not very well known.

stomron · July 2013

moerevolver wrote: »

The game supports DirectX 11 which is still in beta, not sure if they're going to take advantage of it though.

That's what I'm talking about, I knew there was something missing!
Just like Crytek did for Crysis 2 later on.

zjesminz · July 2013

In other games, characters wear plastic haft-pieced armors while in NW people wear military steel armors which you can see the mechanics of the armors. So, please re-consider if you say that NW has bad graphics. Also in other games, the characters look like insects, those insect design must have come from the programmers, not the artists.

This is me in NW.

ambisinisterr · July 2013

The Graphics are really quite good, but they are stylized.

This isn't Skyrim Graphics but that's on purpose. The textures are rather high resolution but they are not photo-realistic.
Skyrim feels real. Tangible. Muddy and dirty. When you're in a slum you feel like you are in a slumb. In neverwinter there's certainly themes but overall it has a much cleaner feeling. I can relate it to magical.

It may be different. It may not fit your preferences but that doesn't make the graphics bad. In fact when you zoom in on most objects you will see the cloth and leather textures but it's stylized rather than phot real.
You would have to see for yourself. It's free to download and play anyway.

However I do want to point out you by no means look the same from level 1-60. The armor is almost piecemailish so at level one you look fairly basic but as your character progresses the armor becomes more and more intricate. However this is a fairly steady process so by the time a person reaches level 60 with a character it seems like the gear never changed in appearance.
Simply by starting another character people should be able to see just how vast of a difference the gear has between levels. Gear between different characters though...well...that's coming.

chrono0812 · July 2013

ambisinisterr wrote: »

The Graphics are really quite good, but they are stylized.

This isn't Skyrim Graphics but that's on purpose. The textures are rather high resolution but they are not photo-realistic.
Skyrim feels real. Tangible. Muddy and dirty. When you're in a slum you feel like you are in a slumb. In neverwinter there's certainly themes but overall it has a much cleaner feeling. I can relate it to magical.

It may be different. It may not fit your preferences but that doesn't make the graphics bad. In fact when you zoom in on most objects you will see the cloth and leather textures but it's stylized rather than phot real.
You would have to see for yourself. It's free to download and play anyway.

However I do want to point out you by no means look the same from level 1-60. The armor is almost piecemailish so at level one you look fairly basic but as your character progresses the armor becomes more and more intricate. However this is a fairly steady process so by the time a person reaches level 60 with a character it seems like the gear never changed in appearance.
Simply by starting another character people should be able to see just how vast of a difference the gear has between levels. Gear between different characters though...well...that's coming.

Also take into consideration what% of the player base has a computer able to handle better graphics. One of the big selling points for World of Warcraft was that it was able to be played on Computers from the 1800's...........I kid, I kid, No seriously though more like from 1995 and onward.

Just from checking out the different M.m.o's on the market right now, Cryptic has done a nice job with their character models/customization.

chrono0812 · July 2013

ambisinisterr wrote: »

The Graphics are really quite good, but they are stylized.

This isn't Skyrim Graphics but that's on purpose. The textures are rather high resolution but they are not photo-realistic.
Skyrim feels real. Tangible. Muddy and dirty. When you're in a slum you feel like you are in a slumb. In neverwinter there's certainly themes but overall it has a much cleaner feeling. I can relate it to magical.

It may be different. It may not fit your preferences but that doesn't make the graphics bad. In fact when you zoom in on most objects you will see the cloth and leather textures but it's stylized rather than phot real.
You would have to see for yourself. It's free to download and play anyway.

However I do want to point out you by no means look the same from level 1-60. The armor is almost piecemailish so at level one you look fairly basic but as your character progresses the armor becomes more and more intricate. However this is a fairly steady process so by the time a person reaches level 60 with a character it seems like the gear never changed in appearance.
Simply by starting another character people should be able to see just how vast of a difference the gear has between levels. Gear between different characters though...well...that's coming.

I definitely do Not agree with you on how gear looks from levels 1-59. At 60 I don't much care because their is just only so many different sets to choose form to look different. That's why I can't wait for Cryptic to put together different outfits to buy on the zen store.

zellex · July 2013

You can look different if you buy dye from the zen shop they have some nice bright colors you can dye primary, secondary, and highlights all on one piece. You can craft dye too... but well... they don't allow you to dye primary, secondary or highlights... and they are all ruddy barely noticeable colors...um yeah... but you can still use them to look sortta different.... I guess.

zjesminz · July 2013

chrono0812 wrote: »

Also take into consideration what% of the player base has a computer able to handle better graphics. One of the big selling points for World of Warcraft was that it was able to be played on Computers from the 1800's...........I kid, I kid, No seriously though more like from 1995 and onward.

Just from checking out the different M.m.o's on the market right now, Cryptic has done a nice job with their character models/customization.

I have some trick. When I take the photo, I set the highest graphic display and when I play, I set it at 25% which the armors still look beautiful while the environment is not rendered too much so the game is very fast. Here is the photo in 25% graphic mode (I took the shadow on the ground off so it would be lower than 25%).

chrono0812 · July 2013

zellex wrote: »

You can look different if you buy dye from the zen shop they have some nice bright colors you can dye primary, secondary, and highlights all on one piece. You can craft dye too... but well... they don't allow you to dye primary, secondary or highlights... and they are all ruddy barely noticeable colors...um yeah... but you can still use them to look sortta different.... I guess.

Yeah, I've been meaning to mess around with the different dyes in game.

chrono0812 · July 2013

zjesminz wrote: »

I have some trick. When I take the photo, I set the highest graphic display and when I play, I set it at 25% which the armors still look beautiful while the environment is not rendered too much so the game is very fast. Here is the photo in 25% graphic mode (I took the shadow on the ground off so it would be lower than 25%).

The images in your pictures do look good, and I do agree that the Character models/customization Cryptic uses is better then other games on the market. I am however patently waiting for new cloths to buy off the zen store.

nullwolf1 · July 2013

chrono0812 wrote: »

Yeah, I've been meaning to mess around with the different dyes in game.

Don't forget totally changing the appearance of your weapons / armor...
Find an armor model you like and use that as the appearance.
Or, running around battling in your Fashion clothes.

zjesminz · July 2013

Here is my wish armor.

stomron · July 2013

ambisinisterr wrote: »

The Graphics are really quite good, but they are stylized.

I actually agree with this, I think our perception has been warped by the colorful mismatched over the top incoherent armor from other games.

tang56 · July 2013

If I want to play with the extra pretties I put the res to 100%(2560 x 1600 in my case) and use an ENB series extra. Looks delicious.

Fullsize

By the time you get to L60 you should have enough spare AD to get hold of dyes and stuff to customise your end-game gear anyway (via AH, AD-Zen or celestial packs).
Little point in customising gear your sell off after another hour of questing, although it'd be nice.

If people have been following the fury of the feywild dev blog, it does seem like Cryptic are widening the range of armor designs with the expansion(yay!).

bioshrike · July 2013

I think part of the problem is that a lot of video game reviews don't take the genre into enough consideration. An MMO really can't have the kind of detail that a 3rd or 1st person shooter/rpg will have, (due to the number of characters it has to handle at any given time). Similarly, you won't that kind of detail in an RTS, and the art direction usually requires that units be easily recognizable, since you're playing from a more overhead perspective.

As others have pointed out, the limited variety of armor for the 1-59 game, and lack of easy access to dyes, are detriments to allowing players to feel more unique.

taltamir · July 2013

chrono0812 wrote: »

Also take into consideration what% of the player base has a computer able to handle better graphics. One of the big selling points for World of Warcraft was that it was able to be played on Computers from the 1800's...........I kid, I kid, No seriously though more like from 1995 and onward.

Just from checking out the different M.m.o's on the market right now, Cryptic has done a nice job with their character models/customization.

I am playing at max everything using a second hand HD6950 I bought for 150$ over a year ago.

Also the graphics are good.

lostmarbleshere · July 2013

I think the graphics is fine pretty good. Thats one thing i dont have anything to bad to say about this game.

eviledick · July 2013

The graphics are fair enough, but the default settings are terrible, when I first played anyone more than 10 feet from my character looked like a stick man. After a bit of fiddling you can improve it a lot more than the defaults without killing your frame rate.

tang56 · July 2013

taltamir wrote: »

I am playing at max everything using a second hand HD6950 I bought for 150$ over a year ago.

Also the graphics are good.

A 6950 is probably still far more powerful than what the majority uses. I imagine people are using laptops with GT540's or desktops with a HD5770 or GT550 etc... I expect the number of people with high end rigs is quite low. Neverwinter probably isn't too demanding in any case, although I don't feel like swapping out cards to check.

nullwolf1 · July 2013

tang56 wrote: »

A 6950 is probably still far more powerful than what the majority uses. I imagine people are using laptops with GT540's or desktops with a HD5770 or GT550 etc... I expect the number of people with high end rigs is quite low. Neverwinter probably isn't too demanding in any case, although I don't feel like swapping out cards to check.

9500 GTS here... Makes me cry when I play next to my girlfriend with her 550ti.

magsondare · July 2013

Level 5 Control Wizard --

Mid-30's Control Wizard --

Mid-50's Control Wizard --

Level 60 Control Wizard --

Definite progression, but still fairly subtle and it's all "blue" so it's harder to tell the difference.

magsondare · July 2013

And FWIW --

Mid 30's Devoted Cleric:

Level 40 DC:

Fairly dramatic appearance upgrade there I thought.

arachonian · July 2013

pizzamurai wrote: »

That review is peetty spot on about most everything... except the graphics. The graphics are good. Not bad, not amazing, but good. The game is indeed extremely linear like he described, and the green armor progression from 1-59 is pretty underwhelming indeed ( though there are blue armors that do not follow the exact same design style).

Character customization is far and above games like... say... wow or rift. Plenty of slidersto muck with. That said, it is not amazing either.

The game is free, so download it and see for yourself. And max out the graphics, because if you are on the lowest settings... obviously things will not be very pretty.

Graphics are average in this game. I'm not sure which game engine they are using but the art work is horrid it looks like something rushed out to the market from elementary school of computer art. The resemblance of different armor sets is purely laziness on Cryptic part.

Last but not least, to compare the so called "character customization" in this game to Rift just show that you have never played Rift. A few sliders will not compare to multiple pre-defined customization on top of slider options in Rift. Basically there is no comparison there period.

Are graphics really that bad?

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