Point in time that you would have been fine if graphic technology had stopped.

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high quality sprites in 2D like in Arcade Machines was the peak of 2D and i loved it. SF3 Third Strike, Dungeons and Dragons, Metal Slug. etc...

But i do love 3D now. I just hope to be alive to see reality graphic that crosses uncanny valley and you can no longer tell the difference is it real or not.
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Once we reach reality graphics there, the only way to improve game will be gameplay, right now its not because some games go full graphics and no gameplay or vice versa, there are exceptions and thats Rockstar North Red Dead Redemption 2 where they push graphics hard and gameplay aswell.
 
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There have been several points in time where I was like "Wow! Game graphics will never get better than this!" (and I was always wrong.).. But at what point would you have been fine if all graphics technology and progression just came to a halt? (You'd still have all the same games you have today, they'd just have a graphic quality from your chosen time period.)

For me it would have been around 2004, Half Life 2, GTA San Andreas, Vampire the Masquerade. If gaming graphics remained the same from that point forward and I had no knowledge of what came after, I would have been completely fine and dandy.

For me it would be flowing blood and fearly monsters in Witcher 3, as well as no repeating faces, no view from behind on my hero, and no shiny paragraphs showing me where a monster is attacking. All more like camouflage.
There war a time ruining my feeling for a game. This was when the comic style in warcraft appeared.

Maybe somebody from CDProjektRed is reading this here?
Please make the hud less shiny (maybe the problem is only with PS?).
Change the standard angle from which I am looking on Gerald to a lower one near above head high.
Don't show in such an ugly red where a monster is attacking, let it be more covered.
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There have been several points in time where I was like "Wow! Game graphics will never get better than this!" (and I was always wrong.).. But at what point would you have been fine if all graphics technology and progression just came to a halt? (You'd still have all the same games you have today, they'd just have a graphic quality from your chosen time period.)

For me it would have been around 2004, Half Life 2, GTA San Andreas, Vampire the Masquerade. If gaming graphics remained the same from that point forward and I had no knowledge of what came after, I would have been completely fine and dandy.

And not to much from the side, more from behind.
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Thats very good, thank you very much.

PLEASE LET ME WORK FOR YOU
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Is it really changed, or only partly?

My cat was hunting for the birds flying around in Witcher 3.
So the grafic seems to be not to bad at all.
 
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2004 at Half Life 2.

The point and importance of high end graphics is way overemphasized in games today, while the point gameplay is undermined (as the collateral damage of going too much on the visuals).

It is kinda perverse, to be honest, that all the new processing power and technology goes towards shit like raytracing and polycount and tesselation and whatnot, but gameplay is getting simpler and simpler and more and more homogenized even between ”supposedly” different genres.

I have to ask, why are people completely missing the point here? Dwarf Fortress comes to mind as one of those games that actually pushes gameplay over graphics, all these other AAA games people keep claiming "does both" don't. There are no AAA games that put gameplay above graphics period.

In dwarf fortress style, what you get is stuff akin to you pulling a gun out on one NPC and that NPC has an actual life, actual friends and does things in this world. That gun pull ripples through the society simulation and actions get made based on it. We're not talking about fully scripted events, but more akin to triggerable if the right circumstances begin to happen.

The idea should be that the game has loads of content the player will never see or never realize is about the player. Less of an in your face and gamey as hell and more about depth, detail, impact. The result would be that every play through will have different things happening and you, as a player, might learn ways to reach certain thresholds but it won't be a switch... you cannot just go pointing guns in people's faces and get the content you want, in fact if you point at the wrong people's faces something else might happen entirely.

Enough of binary sliders, we HAVE the technology for a deeper risk simulation than "you screwed me so -10 points or you didn't so +10 points" or worse "You have 20 cool so you win". I mean, Neural Networks aren't a fantasy anymore, making a world that is brimming with life can be done... but your graphics card would need to be used for massive AI calculations instead of pushing out pretty pictures.

Considering how powerful computers are, that we spend all that power on graphics that really only look marginally better than the last gen (and so forth) seems rather insane.
 
I mean it all depends on style of game right?

My personal favorite would be gamecube graphics though. If I had to take a console to space with me xD idk lol, good question!!!
 
I have to ask, why are people completely missing the point here?

Mostly because there is no one "point". Gaming isn't about an absolute goal, achieved by fulfilling universal elements that will affect all players equally.

People prefer games for the same reasons that they prefer a certain type of food. It either fulfills their desires, or it doesn't. And the preferences that people share are going to be as different as DNA. Literally.


I have to ask, why are people completely missing the point here? Dwarf Fortress comes to mind as one of those games that actually pushes gameplay over graphics, all these other AAA games people keep claiming "does both" don't. There are no AAA games that put gameplay above graphics period.

In dwarf fortress style, what you get is stuff akin to you pulling a gun out on one NPC and that NPC has an actual life, actual friends and does things in this world. That gun pull ripples through the society simulation and actions get made based on it. We're not talking about fully scripted events, but more akin to triggerable if the right circumstances begin to happen.

The idea should be that the game has loads of content the player will never see or never realize is about the player. Less of an in your face and gamey as hell and more about depth, detail, impact. The result would be that every play through will have different things happening and you, as a player, might learn ways to reach certain thresholds but it won't be a switch... you cannot just go pointing guns in people's faces and get the content you want, in fact if you point at the wrong people's faces something else might happen entirely.

Enough of binary sliders, we HAVE the technology for a deeper risk simulation than "you screwed me so -10 points or you didn't so +10 points" or worse "You have 20 cool so you win". I mean, Neural Networks aren't a fantasy anymore, making a world that is brimming with life can be done... but your graphics card would need to be used for massive AI calculations instead of pushing out pretty pictures.

Considering how powerful computers are, that we spend all that power on graphics that really only look marginally better than the last gen (and so forth) seems rather insane.

But here, I think you raise a great point with Dwarf Fortress in terms of RPG design. I call it "emergent gameplay". It's less about telling a story, and more about letting players craft their own story. Lots of games do this very well -- Mount and Blade, Minecraft, The Sims, survival games like Rust or SCUM, older games like Daggerfall or The Magic Candle, and virtually any roguelike ever made.

But lots of other players find those types of games structure-less or pointless. No motivation to keep them going. They prefer linear games with clear goals and a narrative that drives the gameplay forward.

Other players just want something simple that they can enjoy that doesn't make them learn a slew of different input commands and constantly navigate menus and sheets of data.

No studio's approach is ever going to be 100% appealing to all markets, and even attempting it is futile. Sure -- a given game may appeal to a majority of gamers, but that will still leave millions of gamers who absolutely hate it.


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I think the technology aspect is a consideration that mostly deals with developers focusing on things like visuals or complex code that add things into a game...that just aren't needed. Not that certain games don't benefit from those things, but what is great for one project may add static to another. (Like remasters. Most are pretty cool! But I have to say that I actively dislike the Halo and Fable remasters especially. They increased the graphical fidelity of the game in exchange for the games' souls and identities.)

It's just the oldest aspect of fine art: less is more. If I can achieve the effect I want with one brush stroke, then that is true art. If I add another brush stroke, I obscure the magic and perfection of what I just achieved.
 
Part of me wants to say PS1 era graphics.

PS2 is when development cost started to get crazy and it's no longer possible for a small team of 5-6 developers to create a AAA game. Diversity in types of games started to drop around that time as budgets got bigger, risk adversity increased, the days of publishers willing to take a chance on some startup studio ended.
 
Not until we have virtual reality and everyone looks real. I'm not fine with antiquated graphics. Sorry.

It's not that I can't play an old 8 bit game and still have fun. I can. Some of my favorite games were old 8, 16 and 32 bit games. I just feel way more immersed when the graphics in open world games actually look realistic.

The main problem with games now isn't that graphics have forced companies to work harder and longer. It's that they hooked everyone on DLC, micro-transactions, and live services. We NEVER get a complete game at launch anymore. We get a beta, wait for bug fixes, and then after we buy all DLC we finally get a complete game. And instead of a $60 pricetag for a full game, most marketing companies actually shoot for at least double that.

I wouldn't want a point in time where graphics improvements stopped. I'd want to go back to a point in time where gamers started falling for the DLC and micro-transactions scams and slap them all in the face for bringing us where we are today. Gamers never learned their lesson. You either boycott companies who practice predatory practices, or it just continues to get worse.

I'm not insinuating CDPR is like this btw. Out of most major AAA game developers these days, they are probably one of the most generous. Yes, Cyberpunk launched unfinished, but at least we don't have to buy the patches (and yes... I've actually seen companies make gamers buy patches).
 
I was very happy with dreamcast level graphics and was actually not happy when they got "better" I didnt even like sports games but loved the aesthetic of them on the system.
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The PS2 era. The 3D was good enough, the 2D was perfected and making games wasn't hideously expensive.
you know Its funny the dreamcast I think was more powerful graphically wasn't it? it lost big time to ps2
 
you know Its funny the dreamcast I think was more powerful graphically wasn't it? it lost big time to ps2
It had certain advantages, and certain drawbacks as well. Not having a DVD drive basically buried it though. But I meant the sixth generation as a whole. PS2, Xbox, GameCube. That era.
 
The PS2 era. The 3D was good enough, the 2D was perfected and making games wasn't hideously expensive.
Actually by the PS2 era game development was already hideously expensive.

That's why Naughty Dog sold out to Sony. Their founders felt with the size of budgets being where they were, it was too risky to go solo.

The situation at Naughty Dog was becoming untenable as development moved from PlayStation to PlayStation 2, largely because the studio was growing, the money necessary to make games was increasing, and the pressure on the two founders of the studio was mounting. It was at this time that they considered, for the first time, selling the company.

“Around [the time CTR came out], we went to Tokyo. We were sitting there with [Game Informer’s] Andy McNamara, Andy Reiner… and Kelly Flock. Kelly used to run SCEA, basically. We were really drunk in the Lexington Queen at maybe four or five in the morning. Maybe six in the morning. I remember it being light when we came out.”

The five men were drinking overpriced Jack and Cokes, talking about the state of the industry, Sony’s and PlayStation’s future, and, inevitably, what would come of Naughty Dog.

“Kelly looked at me and Andy and said, ‘so when are you guys selling the company?’” Rubin recalls. “And I said, ‘why would we sell the company?’ We were on top of the world, right? He said, ‘because you made the number one game. There’s no where to go but down from here.’”

“That kind of hit me with the alcohol,” Rubin continued. “And maybe it was the fact that CTR was killing me. But there was actually kind of a point here. You sell things at their high, right? That didn’t necessarily mean we won’t be able to do more, but things were getting harder. Games were getting a lot more expensive… It got to the point where you couldn’t afford to fund your own game as a developer.”

Moving from PlayStation to PlayStation 2 hit Rubin and Gavin like a ton of bricks. They were accustomed to funding their own projects, going all the way back to the 1980s, but it just wasn’t possible anymore. Jak & Daxter required $14 million to make – a fairly paltry sum by today’s standards – but that doesn’t take into account that Gavin and Rubin each put $2.25 million into its development, accounting for about a third of Jak’s overall cost.

“It was very clear that it was getting out of hand. So we couldn’t fund games ourselves,” Rubin admitted. “We were going to become more reliant on publishers. Once you become reliant on publishers, being independent becomes less cool.”

Rubin threw out the names of still-successful independent developers like Epic and Valve, but “There are very few independent developers that are really killing it in the way that Andy and I were killing it in the Crash days.” Cash cows like Candy Crush and Clash of Clans, he opines, were simply not possible back then.

“You were either on console or PC, and all those games were going to be $15 million and up. So we saw that coming. We knew we were going to be close to the publisher. We had an incredible relationship with Sony…” Rubin said. “Sony always let us chart our own course, always let us make the games we wanted to make, and they paid us really well as a company.”

- https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/10/04/rising-to-greatness-the-history-of-naughty-dog

It had certain advantages, and certain drawbacks as well. Not having a DVD drive basically buried it though. But I meant the sixth generation as a whole. PS2, Xbox, GameCube. That era.

DVD or no DVD, the PS2 (coming off the meteoric success of the PS1) just had so much hype behind it that it more or less crushed everything that generation. The Dreamcast tried to beat it to market ... it didn't work.
 
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