Does it go without saying that gameplay should be emphasized over graphics? I prefer gameplay, and in many cases I wonder if the two are linked more than people realize.
Some great games with simplistic graphics are taking off and showing us first hand the value found in great design. Everyone’s favorite example is Minecraft, but there are others. I would play a MMORPG with Minecraft graphics any day if the gameplay was good enough. I would even play an RPG. I just discovered Cube World. I don’t know much about it other than the fact that I think one guy is working on it and keeps followers updated frequently on his blog. Check it out.
It looks like a fully realized RPG with levels, stats, gear upgrades, monsters to go out and hunt, combat moves, destructible environments, pets, HOUSING, different playable races, and highly customizable gear. I think there might even be multiplayer. This post isn’t about Cube World (although you should go check it out, like right now) as much as it is the fact that I can play a game made with large voxels and have it not matter because the game is immersive, and what I’m doing in the game is not being hampered by the graphics. Even more, I’m set free by the simplicity of graphics.
I recently returned to Ultima Online. My first thought was “good heavens, look how far we’ve come.” Then I found example after example of ways we’ve regressed until the realization set in that UO accomplished 15 years ago things players are constantly saying could never happen in a modern game — and the sad part is that these people don’t realize it’s actually been done before. When you take away the technological barriers, and leave a little something to the imagination, it’s surprising how much more can be done.
P.S. I watched every video I could find of Cube World and I’m reading through every entry the dev made on his blog. Really neat stuff. I’ll keep an eye on it and let you all know if I find out any more details.
I started out playing games on the internet with no graphics at all like Legends of Future Past and Gemstone so my vote goes for gameplay. It would be nice if we could have both though.
Some things that I loved in those games were the unique events that GMs/mods held for players, knowing that your character could actually have an impact on the game world, knowing that there were still secrets and puzzles that nobody had solved yet and of course the tight-knit community.
Although I am probably coming across as someone who lives in the past, I seriously don’t. I am hopeful that great gaming will come back and from time to time I am pleasantly surprised. Thank goodness indy games are starting to have a real following because I think that is where most of the innovation is going to come from.
Funny I was just think the exact thing today after reading a comment about someone complaining about dated graphics. There is no doubt about it, I would play the hell out of a game that had graphics from 10 years ago, but had excellent game play, as opposed to games like SWTOR that are predictable and have frame rates that drop to under 1/second in open world PvP.
“thinking”
Yeah, sorry but I expect both for $60.
-shrug-But I expect my toaster to toast bread as well.
You can want both, but do you have no priority?
I want my toast hot And golden brown. The priority come after those 2 things 🙂
Totally agree, Keen. I’ve also been thinking these days that demanding “amazing graphics” and voice acting in everything we play really ends up limiting the amount of interaction and depth we can have in games. It just ends up taking too much time and money.
I’ve been trying to overcome the learning curve in Dwarf Fortress these days (still failing!), but it’s an incredible game. Graphics so “bad” that many people might not even immediately recognize it’s a game, but the richness or interaction and depth are simply incredible. The scope is way beyond what “AAA” games put out.
I think these days it is more then fair to expect and prioritize both graphics and gameplay at the same level. Neither has to be mind blowing but both have to be acceptable. But I think this topic is less about consumer priorities and more about DEV priorities. It seems a lot of DEV teams are prioritizing visual graphics and audio over basic gameplay principles. SWTOR is the best example that is still fresh in our minds. Hundreds of million spent on voice acting and art development and yet we are left with a game that was riddled with gameplay issues after launch and is still just a basic theme park MMO.
We agree that devs in MMOs prioritize graphics/voice over gameplay. Why? Why does my gameplay have to suffer? Why are my games repetitively simple? Why have graphics and sound gotten exponetially better while game mechanics and systems gotten expotenially worse? Identify the cause so you can get someone onto the solution because these MMOs that I should like have been sucking for a long time. I convinced myself to lower my standards and expectations for SWtOR at least a year before release so I would find it fun. I failed and have already cancelled my sub because it’s obvious the devs designing the PvP haven’t actually done any PvP.
I’d like to say that I prefer gameplay over graphics, but it simply isn’t true. I still consider Baldur’s Gate 2 and Morrowind to be the twin peaks of the RPG genre, but I’m fairly certain that I wouldn’t be able to play either of them today, after having seen Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Oblivion, and Skyrim.
So I guess I’d have to say that what I =want= is a game with the gameplay of Morrowind and the graphics of Oblivion or Skyrim; or, conversely, a game with the gameplay of Baldur’s Gate 2 and the graphics of Dragon Age (or at least Neverwinter Nights 2).
The sad fact is, the state of the art in graphics has improved, while the state of the art in gameplay has … eroded … for lack of a better word. Even Bioware has finally succumbed, producing junk like Dragon Age 2.
Even the best graphics can’t save bad gameplay past teaser trailers. I would prefer to have both but as a lot of modern games have shown you can’t have your cake and eat it too. As far as gameplay though a lot of games just through a bunch of extra junk that make for a convoluted game. I spend a good deal of time playing Minecraft with my daughter and the graphics don’t bother me and we have a blast.
Good graphics are nice but if when all a game amounts to is a terribad game with great graphics they should have just made a CGI movie and kept out the game portion.
I definitely prefer gameplay over graphics, hello Minecraft. That said I expect modern games to not have horrible graphics. I think the reason why I accept it in Minecraft is because the incredible versatility of the gameplay. And people have actually done some very nice texture artwork at higher resolutions to make it prettier.
I was interested in Cube World until I noticed that the creator didn’t plan to make the world destructible by the player. What exactly is the point of creating a giant voxel based world if you can’t actually destroy and create. Without that to me it just comes across as a rather generic RPG with horribly bad graphics in a day and age where it would take very little to do better.
If a minecraft MMO is of interest, have you by any chance checked out wurm online?
oh my god, almost ashamed to admit this but that looks awesome lol! let me explain the ashamed part, usually I say minecraft looks crap and pointless…but this, this looks soooooo good, I had no idea you could actually make games out of it!
I really don’t care how bad the graphics are so long as it has good game play and / or story!
Can this actually be played now? I really want to play it!
I’d actually pay for this over something like FFXIII-2 and that just makes me giggle lol
Here’s to old games! I, too, started back on BBSes and Legend of the Red Dragon. I recently started on the UO freeshard Pandora, and found myself also thinking “gee, why don’t we have X anymore?” or “Why don’t they put Y in games?”. Developers should look backwards as well as forwards. Here’s hoping for the end of WoW clones.
Gameplay over graphics………YUP I still play Asherons Call from time to time because the gameplay is far superior to any MMO I have ever played. I can not wait for the Feb update and the introduction of the melee combat update with Dual Wield and other QoL improvements.
One has to be careful not to lump all graphics into “good” or “bad”. A game with low fidelity graphics can be beautiful and evocative, and a game with complex 3D graphics can be hamstrung by insufficient budget or artistic talent.
Devs need to spend time during the early stages of development and determine what their graphical resources can accomplish. Games like Cube World and Minecraft feel very comfortable in their graphical skins; work goes into the graphics, they clearly look nice, with good color design and so forth, but most importantly it never feels like they’re overreaching. Whereas many games (even bigger budget ones) strive for more graphical fidelity, bells, and whistles than they can properly follow through on – Wurm Online is a perfect example of this for me. It just looks unintentionally crude, whereas if it were more stylized I would overlook the low budget.
Also think of how much more interesting NPC and monster behavior could be if you didn’t need to worry about making dozens of realistic animations for every model in the game. Or how easily a dynamic simulated world could be realized with sprites. I would love to play an MMO with a basic sprite-based world/interface, coupled to the complex AI behavior of something like Dwarf Fortress. And I’m confident you’d get enough other people to offset the modest cost of developing such a game…
Graphics are integral part of a game. Bad/poor graphics are a major game breaker for me.
I also tried to return to UO a couple of years ago (2009 I think). I just can’t get immersed into the 2D and half graphics with fixed camera, where you never see the sky. It doesn’t feel like a world anymore when you have experienced a full 3D game world.
Give me all the UO gameplay with WoW graphics (or better) and I’ll subscribe without thinking twice. I use WoW graphics as base because despite being kinda “low resolution” and “cartoonish”, the art team of Blizzard managed to do amazing things in the game.
Same goes for Minecraft and co… while the gameplay might be good, I just can’t get immersed in such games. Trust me, I tried.
I just hope the revamp of Dawntide ( http://www.dawntide.net ) will be good, because that game had the base to provide a UO like experience in full 3D. The team are actually doing major reworks on the Engine and other things. That’s the kind of game I’d like to see finished. But some game with crappy 2.5D graphics like UO (or Diablo III)… no thanks. Some supposedly fantastic game with utterly crappy graphics like Minecraft? I tried, it doesn’t work for me. The games I enjoy are a full package, and graphics are part of it just like gameplay or even sound.
Regarding graphics – many, game developers and players alike, confuse “good graphics” with “flip ON every switch the hardware manual lists”. Many (most?) asian mmos have this look’n’feel, Aion being very typical of it. Specular lightning, shadow lightning, spookular biking you name it, its there, and more often than not, on top of a world geo(metry/graphy) that sucks and textures that are … er… garbage.
As an aside, we’ve regressed since UO, not digressed *wink*