I know they spent like.... 500x more on their game than GW's budget. But they didn't have the awesoMIKEitude that GW's art team has. So GW can pull it off for cheap, right?
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That was a rhetorical question, but thanks for the real answer :P
It does really put things into perspective, though, seeing what *can* be done on one level, and seeing what is totally fine and effective on another.
The GW world has its issues and still has lots of room to grow within its own technological limitations; but it's still easy to get "lost in a forest" without having all the shiny graphics of $500 MILLION game.
I honestly can't help but wonder what Destiny has to offer beyond just being another first-person shooter with AMAZING graphics. Its called "Destiny;" but can it really allow the player to determine their own destiny the way PFO can?
Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe we liken it to a TT game. You can play an RPG with flat cardboard counters to represent the players' characters and mobs. It's better - or at least more appreciated - to use figurines. Say we put effort into it and spend an average of 3 hours to paint each figurine. If we were to spend 30 hours per figurine, would the game be 10 times as good? I'd say that art is good, and some amount of art is really required. But art can only can do so much.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe we liken it to a TT game. You can play an RPG with flat cardboard counters to represent the players' characters and mobs. It's better - or at least more appreciated - to use figurines.
Sidetrack Warning
Have you seen these? Paizo has elevated their cardboard counters above anything that came before. (Beyond any I'd seen, anyway.) In my group, the players have their painted metal minis, but as GM, I can present a far greater variety of NPCs and beasties as pawns than I could afford (or carry) in metal form.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...above anything that came before.
I'm not sure; I still miss Cardboard Heroes...no plastic involved.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We had to get up half an hour before we went to bed and lick the map board clean with our tongues before having our initials carved into the ends of our fingers with a rusty knife so that we could leave a stamp in blood where our characters were....
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Goblin Squad Member
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... Ryan has indicated that graphics will start basic and improve over time to AAA quality levels.
Just wait a bit and the relevant quote will magically appear... :)
There are so many variables that go into the "graphics" of an MMO it's very hard to discuss one element of them without discussing the impact on others.
As with all things in Pathfinder Online, our objective is to implement the "minimum viable" level of a feature, then decide over time how and when to iterate it.
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We had to get up half an hour before we went to bed and lick the map board clean with our tongues before having our initials carved into the ends of our fingers with a rusty knife so that we could leave a stamp in blood where our characters were....
lol And here I have my own custom minis for all my favorite characters, replete with a large wolf than can be set on either a full 2x2 base or a "squeezing" 1x2 base :)
I'm not critiquing the quality of the graphics any. I am actually lauding the fact that this game offers so much more than a $500 million visual-porn-feast of a game. Or at least that was my intention, if not well communicated.
Anyways, part of what I think we loose with all our high-end SFX is the ability to fill in the gaps with our own imagination, and in that make a thing far greater than whatever appearances might make it seem.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon,
That is a good quote, but not the one I was thinking about. The quote started in a thread that was dismissive, insulting, doom and gloom about the "crappy" graphics, became a long running multipage joke, and I am pretty sure Kobold Cleaver did something "creative" there. :)
Let me finish the errand I am on, and I will hunt it down.... :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon,
That is a good quote, but not the one I was thinking about. The quote started in a thread that was dismissive, insulting, doom and gloom about the "crappy" graphics, became a long running multipage joke, and I am pretty sure Kobold Cleaver did something "creative" there. :)
Seriously guys, the visuals are crap is almost surely the thread you're thinking of, but there's no succinct statement from Ryan about iterating over graphics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon,
That is a good quote, but not the one I was thinking about. The quote started in a thread that was dismissive, insulting, doom and gloom about the "crappy" graphics, became a long running multipage joke, and I am pretty sure Kobold Cleaver did something "creative" there. :)
Let me finish the errand I am on, and I will hunt it down.... :)
I should note that necromancing that particular thread is likely to get you onto several "lists" as a few people have been very adamant about letting it die.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...And now, to give you a little insight what it's like to be inside a writer's brain, I will be obsessed for a few weeks, or months, with needing to write a zombie short story called "Necromancing the Stone."
Once you finish it, for the love of God, just stop and walk away. Don't go back to that well; there's almost certainly only enough material for one decent production...
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Goblin Squad Member
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...above anything that came before.I'm not sure; I still miss Cardboard Heroes...no plastic involved.
I remember those. If they can find some originals, SJG should scan them and sell them as a pdf.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...And now, to give you a little insight what it's like to be inside a writer's brain, I will be obsessed for a few weeks, or months, with needing to write a zombie short story called "Necromancing the Stone."Once you finish it, for the love of God, just stop and walk away. Don't go back to that well; there's almost certainly only enough material for one decent production...
I think the world absolutely needs a "Jewel of the Defile(r)"...
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Goblin Squad Member
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You know when I look at PFO and compare the art to big budget titles the main difference I see is the grass. If we could just have skyrim grass I think PFO would look a gazillion times better. After that id look at water and then metalics. P.S. the grass in the tech demo was better then the weird tufts of cartoon grass we have ingame now take a look and compare http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PBfkdjJqIyQ/UwZIRde_SfI/AAAAAAAA3dg/PffeRY4fZfY/s 1600/Pathfinder+Online+l.png
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon
1- Yes that is the correct thread, thanks for finding it for me.
2- There was no dev quote there pertinent to the subject matter, I remembered incorrectly.
3- The last post by Guurzak is valuable, and I hope the thread doesn't
get necro-ed. I apologize to all if it does.
4- Cal B, technically Nihimon necro-ed the offending thread, but it was at my request. So do we BOTH get the Heinous flag? :)
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*Read Guurzak's last comment from a certain dead thread*
Now I feel guilty! I'm creating a new thread.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe we liken it to a TT game. You can play an RPG with flat cardboard counters to represent the players' characters and mobs. It's better - or at least more appreciated - to use figurines. Say we put effort into it and spend an average of 3 hours to paint each figurine. If we were to spend 30 hours per figurine, would the game be 10 times as good? I'd say that art is good, and some amount of art is really required. But art can only can do so much.
Who stops at painted figurines? 3D dungeons is the way to go. This is when the game truly starts to shine.
Yes, yes I'm also Thod - owner of Thod's Bazaar - sole European Dwarvenforge Distributor.
Just had to add this here as advertisement if we discuss how to improve the TT experience Destiniy style.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Everyone has different priorities, and a love for high-end graphics is certainly a reasonable position. For my part, though, I couldn't care less about the graphics and would have no problem with them pretty close to the bottom of the development priority list.
...And now, to give you a little insight what it's like to be inside a writer's brain, I will be obsessed for a few weeks, or months, with needing to write a zombie short story called "Necromancing the Stone."
If you write a follow up called "Jewel of the Necromancer"...well, there will be some words.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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To the original post:
Take the number of people in the art division that made Destiny.
Multiply by the number of years they worked on Destiny so far.
Divide by the number of people doing art for PFO.
That will give you the number of years since PFO started development until the graphics in PFO are equivalent to the current graphics in Destiny. This equation requires you to take the integrand of artists over time when the art departments change size, but that can be accomplished through approximations left as an exercise to the reader.
Note that with the expected size of art teams, PFO will never catch up to Destiny.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Who stops at painted figurines? 3D dungeons is the way to go. This is when the game truly starts to shine.
Yes, yes I'm also Thod - owner of Thod's Bazaar - sole European Dwarvenforge Distributor.
Just had to add this here as advertisement if we discuss how to improve the TT experience Destiniy style.
I really like the pdf terrain and buildings, like Dave Graffam Models, Lord Zsezse Works, World Works Games, etc., produce. Some of them need to be altered a bit to make battlemat-sized buildings, but they're pretty cool. The Maiden of the High Seas even got a plug in Book 2 of Skull & Shackles.
Anyway, enough product plugs from me.
(Seriously, though, if you haven't seen it, take a look at the Maiden. It took some work to put it together, but it's an awesome prop.)
Edit: Dwarven Forge's stuff looks pretty amazing, but as a state employee, I'm afraid it's a little ways above my price range.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And the graph paper was soggy from all that snow.When I started in TT, our characters were nothing more than their initials to indicate where they were on a piece of graph paper that we hand-mapped as we explored.
You people are all soft!
... and you were lucky. We had to make do with rocks for characters and draw our maps with charcoal on old newspapers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... and you were lucky. We had to make do with rocks for characters and draw our maps with charcoal on old newspapers.And the graph paper was soggy from all that snow.When I started in TT, our characters were nothing more than their initials to indicate where they were on a piece of graph paper that we hand-mapped as we explored.
You people are all soft!
Luxury!
One of the guys in my gaming group climbed down from the tree and went looking for a cave. We never saw him again.hmmph trolls
Yeah, he really should have tried harder at distracting them until the sunrise.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Right.
I had to get up at 4am a half an hour before I went to sleep and grind my own lead with my TEETH to draw on a piece of moldy deerskin floating down river. And I was THANKFUL for that.
you were allowed to stay up until 4.30 AM?!
ps: no need to use your teeth, if you bang two flints together just right you can get a universal tool that's good for nearly anything.
I miss the old days when we had to carve our own dice from mammoth tusks. "1d4 with of damage" really meant something if you had the right throwing technique.
...and you try and tell the young people of today that...they won't believe you.
so true, so true.
nor do the older ones, actually.
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*Subtly communicates with you*
PEOPLE! LET THIS THREAD DIE! Its title is *terrible* and never should be allowed to see the light of the top of the forum threads ever ever again! Now be good, responsible citizens of the River Kingdoms and move your tails- er, tales of.... whatever over to the new thread:
"Destiny: $500 million and it STILL can't touch the depth of play GW will achieve with PFO"
Please.