A Discussion on GW2's Graphics

[Tainted Outcome.7481]

One recurring complaint that I've noticed when reading through the forum threads is that GW2's graphics are outdated. Some have suggested improving certain graphical aspects of the game, while others have suggested a complete graphics overhaul. Personally, I think Guild Wars 2 is one of the most beautiful mmorpgs on the market. Is it on the level of Black Desert Online graphically? No, but few games in the genre are. That said, I will say that the disparity in graphical quality between vanilla zones and expansion content (especially POF) is noticeable.

My questions for fellow forum posters are the following:1) In its current state, would upgrading the game's graphics be an appropriate use of developer time and resources?2) What sorts of graphical improvements, if any, would you like to see implemented into GW2?

[Mister Asdasd.6194]

Graphics are fine as they are, not everyone has a super pc to play at 60fps during WvW blobs and Istan on max settings, upgrading grappics will cause a lot of people will low end pcs to not be able to play anymore, also im way too busy enjoying the game than zooming in on foliage and grass and complain about it.

[Sylvari.2953]

I still remember video games from the 80s when characters were a couple of pixels so GW2 is beautiful to me, I don't want anything better than what we have now. I'm old and easy to please. :P

[maddoctor.2738]

GW2 graphics depend heavily on the zone. As you said, expansion areas are of much higher graphic quality than the base game, and even in the base game there are zones that are really beautiful (in terms of graphic quality) like Cursed Shore and Malchor's Leap. Those have some amazing vistas (beautiful scenery, not the things you interact with, although they can be both at the same time) On the other hand, there are zones, like Brisban Wildlands which is probably the most bland zone in the entire game.Skill of the elite specs are more flashy and pretty looking than core skills as well.

As for your questions:1) GW2 is a game that wants you to revisit old zones, so although adding something more than what Path of Fire (and Season 4) wouldn't be necessary, upgrading the old zones to use the new look and feel could be a good thing. However, GW2 is a handcrafted game, so in order to upgrade the old zones, they'd need to revisit them all one by one, which might be a huge process taking too much developer time and resources. My best answer would be: graphic settings that are "global" on newer zones, like lighting, bloom and post process effects could be applied to the core game zones because those would take the least amount of resources (and it's something players have been doing with things like SweetFX for years)

2) There are a few things. First of all, hair styles in the core game had some kind movement, when appropriate of course. Yet those added later on do not move at all, they are stiff. Although their overall quality is arguably better, this luck of physics on newer hairstyles, especially for example ponytails, is really puzzling to me.Second, that specular light that comes out of nowhere when you set shader quality to high is really buffling. It's supposed to highlight the armor and "bring out" details, but is really distracting. Unfortunately, there is no setting to disable it alone, other than reducing shader quality which will lower other graphic settings too.

[aspirine.5839]

Well now that you mentioned Istan, that map is not very impressive looking. It is quite ugly even but it runs terrible, like it is a state of the art map. No expert here but it is almost that this map is over the limits of what the game can normally support.

[Norseman.4280]

I think it's very nice as is. It looks fantastic and performs well. It's not even on my list of things that ought to get time invested in it at this point.

[Lexi.1398]

I would only support a change to the graphics engine such that it utilises multiple cores better- this gives a pretty much playerbase wide improvement to fps for the same "processing power" as it were.

Otherwise, no. I have an average spec laptop and i already only hit 15 fps on some expansion maps (cough sandswept cough) with near lowest graphics settings.

That said, im only aware of a small fraction of work that goes into such a graphics overhaul and i know it's HUGE work, and for such a big project, i'm not sure i'd want other content (even if that content is only mount skins) stopped for it...maybe when the new maps push my fps to 10 eh. : P

[wrathmagik.3518]

@aspirine.5839 said:Well now that you mentioned Istan, that map is not very impressive looking. It is quite ugly even but it runs terrible, like it is a state of the art map. No expert here but it is almost that this map is over the limits of what the game can normally support.

I agree. When your doing Pala especially, the game feels like its dying and gasping for air trying not to crash. I think maybe the creators just went a little to crazy with all the polygons and details and it almost killed the engine.

[wrathmagik.3518]

I think GW2 is beautiful as it is. No need for upgrades as far as i'm concerned.

[Blocki.4931]

The game is fine as is. Sure, its age is showing, but it still holds up pretty well. PoF was a wallpaper machine, where every screenshot you take can make a nice background.

And as somebody who doesn't suffer 5 FPS during intensive metas in Istan or WvW raids I can't complain on that front either. Using base models and lowering the model quality does the trick.

[ZeftheWicked.3076]

It's the fps that needs love and attention, less so visuals. Some zones are well optimised and i get nice smooth 60 fps with some settings set to max, others turned down a notch or two.

But some are 30fps for no appparent reason, mostly newer zones. That and huge fps drops in blobs (despite having character model limit set to "low") require addressing.

[Dreamreaver.4908]

1) Nope.2) Non-glowing, radiation-infused skin (Human and Norn)

[Yannir.4132]

These kids, complaining about graphics... Back in my day, characters were a blob of pixels, and I was still happy enough to play. I still do. I never understood why people bought Pokemon Fire Red over the regular red... (and I'm under 30...)

[Mister Asdasd.6194]

@Yannir.4132 said:These kids, complaining about graphics... Back in my day, characters were a blob of pixels, and I was still happy enough to play. I still do. I never understood why people bought Pokemon Fire Red over the regular red... (and I'm under 30...)

Back in my days Fallout was a top down turn based rts/rpg with pixelated 2d sprites, and it is still better than the newer ones that came out from Fallout 3 and after

[notebene.3190]

I think the game looks great, too. I get nervous when people start wanting to change character models.

[Scar.1793]

An update to player characters’ textures wouldn’t be too much imo.

[Trise.2865]

Okay, first... When you say "graphics", what, specifically, are you wanting to improve? (Some are far easier than others...)

Graphics: number of polygons on screen or in an objectAesthetic: overall artistic design and presentationTextures: static images which form the outer design of an objectResolution: number of pixels on screen or in a textureAnimations: how objects move and collideSkybox: the general environment textures, including far-away objects outside render distanceRender: the perspective distance and speed at which your hardware displays objects and environmentsGraphics Processing: detection and optimization of available hardware to improve render speeds and animation...

[Einsof.1457]

I can't believe these type s of posts. The graphics and art design in guild wars 2 is miles and miles beyond what any other game in the genre can produce. WoW and FFXIV textures are about 50x worse than guild wars 2. After playing other MMOs and moving to GW2 6 months ago, I am amazed almost every few minutes of how beautiful the game is. I don't think it's fair to complain about graphics in gw2.

[Ephemiel.5694]

@Einsof.1457 said:I can't believe these type s of posts. The graphics and art design in guild wars 2 is miles and miles beyond what any other game in the genre can produce. WoW and FFXIV textures are about 50x worse than guild wars 2. After playing other MMOs and moving to GW2 6 months ago, I am amazed almost every few minutes of how beautiful the game is. I don't think it's fair to complain about graphics in gw2.

I don't know what are you on that you really think WoW and FFXIV have worse graphics and art design. Really, GW2 having better graphics and art designs than WoW, FFXIV, ESO, Tera and especially BDO?

[Nuka Cola.8520]

Outdated visuals and the archaic engine is simply unable to handle the game anymore. If there is no gw3 in the next two plus years, Anet should upgrade their engine so large scale battles don't run at 15fps on a 1080ti.

[Chyanne Waters.8719]

I have watched videos of WoW Tera BDO and a few other games. WoW now runs with directx 11. It made the game a bit sharper, but the graphics are still cartoon like. It also made people without the ability of Direct X 11 to upgrade their computers. Tera has good graphics, but the characters look really plastic to me. Character skin should have a subtle glow to it not a shine. Black Desert has excellent and beautiful character design graphics one of the best I have seen, but that does not look like it translates well into gameplay. I see no difference in-between game play from GW2 and BDO .

The thing is the better the graphics wanted the fewer the pc's a game will run on. Yes newer computers are awesome, but so many people in a map will slow any game down. Running low graphic settings because that is what is recommended by the game is stupid. Play with the settings see what you can do to improve the graphics some. Changing the Character Model limit to a lower setting helps a lot you can use that to make names only for other characters far away and increase the visuals for everything closer to you. There is no need to run everything on ultra especially if you have a budget gaming computer. But the graphics can look awesome either way.

[zealex.9410]

A way to make ppl complain less (although i dont see much reason to complain) would be to go with a se2/se1 lw format.

Dont give us 5 or 6 new maps with lw instead maybe give us 1 or 2 new maps and change existing maps.

[zealex.9410]

@Ephemiel.5694 said:

@Einsof.1457 said:I can't believe these type s of posts. The graphics and art design in guild wars 2 is miles and miles beyond what any other game in the genre can produce. WoW and FFXIV textures are about 50x worse than guild wars 2. After playing other MMOs and moving to GW2 6 months ago, I am amazed almost every few minutes of how beautiful the game is. I don't think it's fair to complain about graphics in gw2.

I don't know what are you on that you really think WoW and FFXIV have worse graphics and art design. Really, GW2 having better graphics and art designs than WoW, FFXIV, ESO, Tera and especially BDO?

Art design is subjective but gw2 has better graphics than wow.

[otto.5684]

I think that GW2 has good graphics. Though I think improving graphics is always a plus, especially as the game ages. I think we are due for an upgrade.

[Zedek.8932]

@Mister Asdasd.6194 said:Graphics are fine as they are, not everyone has a super pc to play at 60fps during WvW blobs and Istan on max settings, upgrading grappics will cause a lot of people will low end pcs to not be able to play anymore, also im way too busy enjoying the game than zooming in on foliage and grass and complain about it.

The problem with your statement is that GW2's engine is so bad, it is THE reason why it is running bad on older PCs as well as on new rigs.If you, for example, think of GTAV and its ability to look absolutely great on a GTX660 or how well FFXIV runs on my rig, while GW2 suffers due to bad programming, your argument is kind of flawed.

The graphics themselves are nice, but if you - again - think of FFXIV, they are not so good, and every bit of eye-candy is ressource-hungry. FF14 retrofitted a lot of things or came with right from the start (e.g. soaked clothes right up to the point you were in actual water, e.g. just up to your waistline) or the shadows on Gridania's paths (forest area) that are caused by the flora (the trees) then I am always a bit annoyed that when I turn on shadows here, it starts to eat ressources like crazy or when I want to turn on water reflections on my Ryzen7 1700X/GTX1080 PC, I can't do that without getting FPS rollercoaster. GW2 is the only game which is hindered by its engine so much it's not even funny.

On a side-note, I also hate the light is ALWAYS coming from top right, no matter what you do; character lighting is flawed, too.

Excelsior.