Should Main Characters in Guild Wars 2 Receive a Complete Texture and Polygon QA Revamp?

[Rethex.3248]

Dear Guild Wars 2 Community,

As a dedicated player of Guild Wars 2, I've seen our game evolve through various expansions and updates. However, there's a growing concern among many of us regarding the graphical quality of the main characters, especially when compared to the stunning visuals of the newer expansions. I believe that a complete texture and polygon QA revamp for the main characters is essential to maintain the game's visual consistency and appeal. (Similar to what FF14 is doing recently)

I value your opinion on this matter and would love to hear your thoughts. Please take a moment to participate in this poll and share your perspective.

[frazazel.7501]

One problem I foresee is that some players will complain that Anet has changed what their character looks like without their consent. Even if it's an overall upgrade, it will (in some cases) change how a character feels.

[kharmin.7683]

I'd rather Anet spend their resources elsewhere.

[Danikat.8537]

If they did this they also need to provide a free total makeover kit for every character. Yes I'm aware some people have 72 characters, and yes I do mean they should recieve 72 total makeover kits.

Even if it's technically a straight upgrade with no settings changed/added/removed it's very likely it will mess up how some characters look. For example if I have a character who is supposed to have sharp features and then they're "upgraded" to a higher polygon model it's likely to smooth everything out and totally ruin their features. I am not going to pay to fix that oversight and if my characters are messed up and I cannot fix them for free I'll stop playing.

Personally I'd rather they just don't touch them and I think characters look fine as they are, but if it ever does happen the least Anet can do is allow us to fix the inevitable mistakes without being charged for it on top of the hassle of re-working each character.

[Zera.9435]

Graphics are not everything, and the best proof for that is Minecraft. Yes, I realize that there is a great modding community that gives that game some awesome high-res textures, but we are talking base game here. Despite its 16-bit-like graphics, that game is one of the most highly successful franchises of all time.

Gameplay matters a million times more than graphics. I could understand the desire for updated graphics if GW2's graphics were bad, but they're not. Hell, even GW1's graphics were not bad for its time. It would be far more beneficial to the game to provide more QoL updates and improve gameplay issues.

I'd rather people say "GW2 is a great game with great graphics for its time" than "GW2 looks absolutely gorgeous but plays like kitten".

[Infusion.7149]

Plot-twist: You are not the main character. 😆

In all seriousness though, I do not think anyone plays GW2 to just look at their character. Maybe the environment given the presence of the vistas and whatnot.

Edited June 3 by Infusion.7149

[zefaistos.2601]

WoW completely updated the characters models and animations/spell effects over time, and ffxiv in this next expansion is also updating their character shaders, textures and smoothing geometry. If the top mmorpgs on the market are doing it, then obvisouly it has some value.

If they want to attract new players or people that never tried the game because of the graphics or art style, then updating the characters, animations and graphics should be top priority. But gw2 overall due to the horizontal progression and reward structure has a limited approach in the mmorpg genre in general, and that why this game even with very good combat, the best open world content in the genre and a lot of content, generates half the revenue of other games like BDO and ESO, which are not even the top games.

So for gw2 I don't see a lot of value updating the characters for current players, unless they really want to push for a new audience. It makes more sense keeping the game stable and focus the efforts on gw3 to be a more popular game and compete on the top 5 or even top 3.

[Hsanrb.1570]

The bigger problem for such a change would require that every model would then have to see how it impacts every single article of clothing, every weapon, every outfit, how each of these effect their appearance when riding on a mount. How do they work while under water, how do they work while going through each and every status effect. The perfect time to have done this change was also during the overhaul from DX9 to DX11... which people are still complaining about how the game now looks compared to how it used to look. Its why FFXIV only makes these great changes to fit with the evolution from console to console, or why WoW waited for a specific expansion to overhaul the entire engine.

Oh, and about the game longevity? Increasing the system requirements for everyone is not always the greatest way to make a game last forever... you are pushing out users who use lower end rigs out of the ecosystem who played Guild Wars 2 because of older system requirements who made not be able to afford the upgrades needed to make the game playable with newer standards. I think the game looks fine, plays well enough, and the perfect opportunity to make these changes have come and gone. You don't need to compete with other titles in every aspect to stay competitive, you can carve out a niche that attracts people to your title and keep that the best that you can.

[Danikat.8537]

2 hours ago, Zera.9435 said:

Graphics are not everything, and the best proof for that is Minecraft. Yes, I realize that there is a great modding community that gives that game some awesome high-res textures, but we are talking base game here. Despite its 16-bit-like graphics, that game is one of the most highly successful franchises of all time.

Gameplay matters a million times more than graphics. I could understand the desire for updated graphics if GW2's graphics were bad, but they're not. Hell, even GW1's graphics were not bad for its time. It would be far more beneficial to the game to provide more QoL updates and improve gameplay issues.

I'd rather people say "GW2 is a great game with great graphics for its time" than "GW2 looks absolutely gorgeous but plays like kitten".

Minecraft also highlights one of the problems with graphical "upgrades". I was convinced to try a mod pack a few weeks after I started and it ruined my house. All the materials had different patterns and colours so all the effort I'd put in to use different types of wood and stone for colour grading or contrast was gone - it just looked like a jumbled mess. That wasn't the reason I ended up uninstalling it, but it was a relief to have my nice house back when I switched back to the defaults. It did at least act as a warning not to waste my time trying to do anything like that on a shared server, because it'd looked different for each player depending on which mods they were using so it'd be impossible to have a nice style for everyone. Might as well just build from whatever was easy to find and not worry about how it looked.

Also I agree it'd be better to have a game which is fun to play and runs well than one which has newer graphics, it also gives a game a lot more longevity. I've seen a lot of older games go from being praised for their graphics and gameplay to being praised for the gameplay in spite of the graphics (Ocarina of Time for example, and yes there was a time when that was considered great graphics). Whereas games which only had good graphics tend to get forgotten about when they're no longer new.

[Zera.9435]

4 hours ago, zefaistos.2601 said:

WoW completely updated the characters models and animations/spell effects over time, and ffxiv in this next expansion is also updating their character shaders, textures and smoothing geometry. If the top mmorpgs on the market are doing it, then obvisouly it has some value.

If they want to attract new players or people that never tried the game because of the graphics or art style, then updating the characters, animations and graphics should be top priority. But gw2 overall due to the horizontal progression and reward structure has a limited approach in the mmorpg genre in general, and that why this game even with very good combat, the best open world content in the genre and a lot of content, generates half the revenue of other games like BDO and ESO, which are not even the top games.

So for gw2 I don't see a lot of value updating the characters for current players, unless they really want to push for a new audience. It makes more sense keeping the game stable and focus the efforts on gw3 to be a more popular game and compete on the top 5 or even top 3.

To be fair, WoW's original character models were ugly and actually needed a visual update that was feasibly done.  GW2's graphics do not fit that category. The only way GW2's graphics could be updated is with a transition to a completely different game engine, which I don't think ArenaNet is willing or able to do. Also, there is no GW3.

4 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Minecraft also highlights one of the problems with graphical "upgrades". I was convinced to try a mod pack a few weeks after I started and it ruined my house. All the materials had different patterns and colours so all the effort I'd put in to use different types of wood and stone for colour grading or contrast was gone - it just looked like a jumbled mess. That wasn't the reason I ended up uninstalling it, but it was a relief to have my nice house back when I switched back to the defaults. It did at least act as a warning not to waste my time trying to do anything like that on a shared server, because it'd looked different for each player depending on which mods they were using so it'd be impossible to have a nice style for everyone. Might as well just build from whatever was easy to find and not worry about how it looked.

Also I agree it'd be better to have a game which is fun to play and runs well than one which has newer graphics, it also gives a game a lot more longevity. I've seen a lot of older games go from being praised for their graphics and gameplay to being praised for the gameplay in spite of the graphics (Ocarina of Time for example, and yes there was a time when that was considered great graphics). Whereas games which only had good graphics tend to get forgotten about when they're no longer new.

Yeah but to be fair, those types of mods (which by the way are NOT made by the actual game developers) deliberately change the textures of every block to achieve a particular aesthetic. You are not meant to port over your creations, you're meant to create new structures using the new textures. A grass block in one mod can be turned into a concrete block in another.

[Skub.8240]

Save the graphics overhaul for GW3, I'm personally not a big fan of redesigning how a game looks late into its life. WoW's done it before, FFXIV is doing it now - PSO2 did it too. It's always awkward, results in a lot of community grumbling and just kind of feels like a "if it's not broken, don't fix it" problem to me. Especially when, to perhaps be a bit uncharitable, the soto areas kind of run like garbage compared to the rest of the game. I'd rather the whole game not feel like that, or worse.

[Zebulous.2934]

You don't have to convince the developers, you have to convince the shareholders or whoever is funding the game. 

Convince the boardroom and the CEO that the investment is worth the expense.

Would this graphical update cause a shareholder to delay buying their third yacht?  If so, they may dislike the idea.

Edited June 4 by Zebulous.2934

[Arianth Moonlight.6453]

we can't even get new models for the expansions, and you want new models for our characters?

[keramatzmode.1906]

if they want to improve longevity, they need to revamp their game in CPU efficiency.
And to be honest, the current graphics isn't that bad and I personally like it rather than Unreal Engine slops the industry keep putting out nowadays. People still play WoW, people still play Runescape, because the gameplay and the community is what matters. But I do wish the game fix the CPU hogging issue.

Edited June 4 by keramatzmode.1906

[KindredPhoenyx.8976]

*puts my tinfoil hat on.*

Wouldn't it be something if that's the feature of next expac: just a complete graphic overhaul.

Nah, honestly I think the current graphics are holding up just fine despite being a 10+ year old game.

[Gop.8713]

I look at my toons infrequently enough that when I do I think to myself "oh, that's what they look like . . "

[Danikat.8537]

6 hours ago, Zebulous.2934 said:

You don't have to convince the developers, you have to convince the shareholders or whoever is funding the game. 

Convince the boardroom and the CEO that the investment is worth the expense.

Would this graphical update cause a shareholder to delay buying their third yacht?  If so, they may dislike the idea.

ArenaNet doesn't have any shareholders of their own - they're a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft and considering NCSoft have a lot of subsidiary studios and a lot of games it's highly unlikely their shareholders get involved in that level of detail for one game. As far as I know the most they do is approve overall budgets for each studio or game and get updates on the big headline things like new games or expansion packs coming out.

It's a different company but one Nintendo shareholder did try telling them they needed to add more skins for male characters in Splatoon 3 (having bought shares just so he could get into the meeting to do that) and it didn't work - he was thanked for his interest and then they moved onto other matters. It's popular advice online for people to say if you want to tell the company how to spend 'your' money and what to prioritise you need to be a shareholder, not a customer, but apparently it doesn't actually work like that.

NCSoft West will have one or more people who oversee Anet and might have more involvement in specific features, but they'll be part of the company rather than shareholders and therefore concerned with the longevity of the game, even if only as a way of keeping themselves in the job.

[Rethex.3248]

On 6/4/2024 at 7:16 AM, KindredPhoenyx.8976 said:

*puts my tinfoil hat on.*

Wouldn't it be something if that's the feature of next expac: just a complete graphic overhaul.

Nah, honestly I think the current graphics are holding up just fine despite being a 10+ year old game.

We will get Guild Wars 3 before a graphic overhaul... they already explained that the graphic engine is too old, too outdated and too hard to work on to do anything really 'meaningful' , otherwise we would have directx12 or vulkan implemented and DLSS etc etc...

They will do some things here and there but don't expect a massive overhaul of the graphics.

All I wanted is for the to upgrade some parts of the characters, maybe not the face? sure? but the charr fingers are literally kittening triangles , sigh.

[Ashantara.8731]

I rarely zoom in close enough to worry about the quality of the polygons on my character's skin. Low-res issues are a lot more noticeable on armor.

Besides, if they applied character model changes, the current character creator would likely need a complete overhaul. And as others stated before me, I'd rather ANet spend their resources elsewhere.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

In my opinion, ANET NEEDS to pretty-fy the characters.

Humans are visual people. And the current models don't attract new players. If the game wants to survive, it needs new players. So, higher polygon count and better textures better come sooner or later.

Just look at Sylvari hands, or Human&Sylvari feet, or well everything Charr.

Now, I hear the howling 'but my characters must not change' or 'gimmi free makeovers!'. No.

Just make NEW characters high polygon/pretty textures. If someone wants to change over an existing character, they can use a makeover kit. 

Ah, I can hear it already 'but but but those costs money!' If have 10+ chars, you probably sit on a big pile of those. I do and I never bought one. 

 

The problem, shown in this thread is the following: 

Veterans do not want changes, because they are in a comfortable spot. Changes are scary.

But a game can not survive on veteran whales alone. Sure, it can keep the servers running for a while, but it can no keep a company alive big enough to push new content. Also veterans stop playing for a magnitude of reasons all the time. So a game that wants to survive MUST attract new players. 

New players who are used to fancy graphics in character design.

New players who look at GW2 characters and core maps and compare them to much much prettier games - and then do not bother. 

 

So yes, char model updates please. The sooner the better. And core maps updates too. 

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

57 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

I rarely zoom in close enough to worry about the quality of the polygons on my character's skin. Low-res issues are a lot more noticeable on armor.

Besides, if they applied character model changes, the current character creator would likely need a complete overhaul. And as others stated before me, I'd rather ANet spend their resources elsewhere.

elsewhere is nice for you - a vet. But elsewhere will not attract new people.

I was lucky that MY starter zone on MY first character was Caledon. If it had been Plains of Ashford, I would have uninstalled. 

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

On 6/3/2024 at 5:50 PM, kharmin.7683 said:

I'd rather Anet spend their resources elsewhere.

because you hate attracting new players to keep the game alive?

[QueenKeriti.5176]

Calm down, Thomas. 99% certain that's not why most new players quit. Plenty of other issues in the new player experience that are far more jarring than not having UE5 grade textures in the starting zones.

Anet has mentioned looking at old textures in one of their blog posts on some of the new textures compression tech they've been working on in GW2. I would love to see old textures and models (like the low polygon birds where the square grapes in ffxiv have more polygons) updated, but they're hardly the biggest new player issue.

[Ashantara.8731]

1 hour ago, VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig. said:

elsewhere is nice for you - a vet. But elsewhere will not attract new people.

I was lucky that MY starter zone on MY first character was Caledon. If it had been Plains of Ashford, I would have uninstalled. 

And where did I mention map textures? I was exclusively talking about character models, since this thread is about character models.

Edited June 27 by Ashantara.8731

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

27 minutes ago, Ashantara.8731 said:

And where did I mention map textures? I was exclusively talking about character models, since this thread is about character models.

it is part of my original post. In my opinion Anet not only needs to improve character models, but also core Tyria. The new player first impression is very very important.