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Spider-Man 2 Controversy: Gamers Are Stupid and Don't Know Sh*t About Development

Aenima

Member
FxDFBGRWAAEQuJK
When reality needs a better graphic card.
 

Golgo 13

The Man With The Golden Dong
I think Zelda TOTK is doing to gaming what Trump did to politics - turning everyone on all sides into raving fucking lunatics.

GAF has been very strange place in the last few weeks, way stranger than usual.
 
I think Zelda TOTK is doing to gaming what Trump did to politics - turning everyone on all sides into raving fucking lunatics.

GAF has been very strange place in the last few weeks, way stranger than usual.

Just please leave politics out of it man…and honestly it’s just been a regular Neogaf response to anything; weird takes, sarcasm/comedy, gifs etc. That’s the charm…it’s not an echo chamber.
 
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Arsic

Gold Member
Here’s a simple and non stupid way to think of this:

Sequels tend to look marginally better than their predecessor in gaming. Often this is even more apparent if going from one console to the next. Easy examples would be Gears of War1-3 compared to 4&5.

This game doesn’t look like a leap going from ps4 to ps5. It’s been in development for many years by a trusted studio that already brought a great visual spectacle with another one of its franchises, ratchet and clank.

So when people say things like “this game doesn’t look that good” it’s because they should in fact expect more from a game of this type. One of its major draws is visuals. Currently what’s been shown is good by anyone’s standards but it could be much better and it should be much better.

Also, gamers keep getting burned by developers and publishers. IE RedFall , forspoken , Gollum, and many more.

We have our guard up. You can’t keep shoveling shit.
 

Stooky

Member
Just a message from your neighborhood friendly dev.......One day you guys understand not to fully judge a games graphics by the trailers released atleast three months before the game comes out. Here is why. So much changes during production ie, lighting, color grading, optimization. Most of the trailers seen is a production target to hit. It can be gameplay its still a target until is released . Cg trailers are super expensive, they are used when you dot have much to show but want to build some hype, you guys complain about it. Some devs show what that have at that moment as is, that can include bad frame rate, visual bugs etc, you guys complain about it. Some times the game is game is running good, a game play trailer is shown then during optimization near the end of production a dev might say hey if remove a few reflective puddles we can get an higher FPS. You guys complain. My point is the game is constantly in flux until it released (sometimes after release). Devs are just trying to show you an early approximation of what to expect. Some times they overshoot, hopefully not by much, but it happens. Its hard to tell at the beginning of development where you will be the end.your looking at 3+ year dev cycle. So much changes it effects everything in the game. And really every product that comes out does the same thing. Every ad you see is the best approximation of the product you are going to get. They all over shoot, it's all best case scenario. It varies, a McDonald's Big mac doesn't look the same as the ads ie your cg trailers. Your iPhone for the most part works as shown, ie your gameplay trailers from reputable devs. Im not saying not to complain, that seemed to fix some Halo issues. I'm sure in-house they knew that when the trailer was released, which goes back to my earlier point. Some things i see you guys complain about are just what happens in production. In some cases Its like getting mad that my bun only has 4 sesame seeds and the ad shows 5.
 
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Honestly... I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I just don't understand any of the "it looks worse than the last game" talk... I just don't see it. Someone found the area where Miles shoots off into the sky and had the last game side by side... and immediately I could tell that the environment was upgraded. There are ppl in the windows, the buildings have a lot more polys, the city looks great. IDK man I think the disappointment of the showcase is clouding some ppl's judgment. The game looks good... did it melt my face? I can't really make that call until I have it at home on my monitor.

I think there's even a thing going around online that Spider-Man 2 will only be 30fps or something and ppl are buying it... cause like someone checked the info on a video file that was uploaded.
 
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Arsic

Gold Member
Just a message from your neighborhood friendly dev.......One day you guys understand not to fully judge a games graphics by the trailers released atleast three months before the game comes out. Here is why. So much changes during production ie, lighting, color grading, optimization. Most of the trailers seen is a production target to hit. It can be gameplay its still a target until is released . Cg trailers are super expensive, they are used when you dot have much to show but want to build some hype, you guys complain about it. Some devs show what that have at that moment as is, that can include bad frame rate, visual bugs etc, you guys complain about it. Some times the game is game is running good, a game play trailer is shown then during optimization near the end of production a dev might say hey if remove a few reflective puddles we can get an higher FPS. You guys complain. My point is the game is constantly in flux until it released (sometimes after release). Devs are just trying to show you an early approximation of what to expect. Some times they overshoot, hopefully not by much, but it happens. Its hard to tell at the beginning of development where you will be the end.your looking at 3+ year dev cycle. So much changes it effects everything in the game. And really every product that comes out does the same thing. Every ad you see is the best approximation of the product you are going to get. They all over shoot, it's all best case scenario. It varies, a McDonald's Big mac doesn't look the same as the ads ie your cg trailers. Your iPhone for the most part works as shown, ie your gameplay trailers from reputable devs. Im not saying not to complain, that seemed to fix some Halo issues. I'm sure in-house they knew that when the trailer was released, which goes back to my earlier point. Some things i see you guys complain about are just what happens in production. In some cases Its like getting mad that my bun only has 4 sesame seeds and that add shows 5.
From the way you wrote this I can tell you worked on Gollum.
 
Just a message from your neighborhood friendly dev.......One day you guys understand not to fully judge a games graphics by the trailers released atleast three months before the game comes out. Here is why. So much changes during production ie, lighting, color grading, optimization. Most of the trailers seen is a production target to hit. It can be gameplay its still a target until is released . Cg trailers are super expensive, they are used when you dot have much to show but want to build some hype, you guys complain about it. Some devs show what that have at that moment as is, that can include bad frame rate, visual bugs etc, you guys complain about it. Some times the game is game is running good, a game play trailer is shown then during optimization near the end of production a dev might say hey if remove a few reflective puddles we can get an higher FPS. You guys complain. My point is the game is constantly in flux until it released (sometimes after release). Devs are just trying to show you an early approximation of what to expect. Some times they overshoot, hopefully not by much, but it happens. Its hard to tell at the beginning of development where you will be the end.your looking at 3+ year dev cycle. So much changes it effects everything in the game. And really every product that comes out does the same thing. Every ad you see is the best approximation of the product you are going to get. They all over shoot, it's all best case scenario. It varies, a McDonald's Big mac doesn't look the same as the ads ie your cg trailers. Your iPhone for the most part works as shown, ie your gameplay trailers from reputable devs. Im not saying not to complain, that seemed to fix some Halo issues. I'm sure in-house they knew that when the trailer was released, which goes back to my earlier point. Some things i see you guys complain about are just what happens in production. In some cases Its like getting mad that my bun only has 4 sesame seeds and the ad shows 5.

So basically what we are seeing here is a target for Insomniac.

And final game might not look as good as showcase demo?

That's insane.
 

Stooky

Member
So basically what we are seeing here is a target for Insomniac.

And final game might not look as good as showcase demo?

That's insane.
the closer it is to release the less it changes. Majority of the time what you see is what you get. Doing the math on it for a late 2023 release date, game going gold, then add 2 months max for disc and package manufacturing, shipping I think the game tecnically is locked in its look, this is what it will be. Also in Insomniacs case in terms of history, past sideman games and quality I expect the game to look exactly like what they have shown. Lighting changes, color grading maybe . probably a few puddles moved around. If anything it might get a little better through optimizing but no huge changes. I might eat crow on this but being an exclusive PS5 developed game i'm expecting a holy shit moment.
 
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SABRE220

Member
the closer it is to release the less it changes. Majority of the time what you see is what you get. Doing the math on it for a late 2023 release date, game going gold, then add 2 months max for disc and package manufacturing, shipping I think the game tecnically is locked in its look, this is what it will be. Also in Insomniacs case in terms of history, past sideman games and quality I expect the game to look exactly like what they have shown. Lighting changes, color grading maybe . probably a few puddles moved around. If anything it might get a little better through optimizing but no huge changes. I might eat crow on this but being an exclusive PS5 developed game i'm expecting a holy shit moment.
So then that would mean it would be a very significant downgrade from the release trailer in terms of fidelity no? The devs had the mature engine, and developed a ps5 exclusive in ratchet, already developed miles morales on ps5 so were very well acquainted with the hardware and its limits. This is no removal of a few puddles, the original reveal trailer looks like the difference between a remastered and an actual current release, it comes across as blatantly dishonest and the way they kept hyping the fidelity post-release trailer they fed these expectations, and now when they failed to meet said expectations the gamers are suddenly the bad guys.

It isn't even just the downgrade, the more concerning thing is that the sheer amount of visual jank that was present in the trailer was shocking, extremely low res explosions, missing lighting, low poly assets, low res/missing textures etc were littered throughout the trailer while the prior comes were visually extremely polished.

Can you really say complaining is unreasonable in these circumstances?

Btw I appreciate you providing your perspective as a dev.
 
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sinnergy

Member
They should just have not shown it in this state .. than there was no discussion. But to be honest , it looks pretty rough . I have a pretty good understanding how game development works.

What they could have done is , make a slice production ready and show that …
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
So then that would mean it would be a very significant downgrade from the release trailer in terms of fidelity no? The devs had the mature engine, and developed a ps5 exclusive in ratchet, already developed miles morales on ps5 so were very well acquainted with the hardware and its limits. This is no removal of a few puddles, the original reveal trailer looks like the difference between a remastered and an actual current release, it comes across as blatantly dishonest and the way they kept hyping the fidelity post-release trailer they fed these expectations, and now when they failed to meet said expectations the gamers are suddenly the bad guys.

It isn't even just the downgrade, the more concerning thing is that the sheer amount of visual jank that was present in the trailer was shocking, extremely low res explosions, missing lighting, low poly assets, low res/missing textures etc were littered throughout the trailer while the prior comes were visually extremely polished.

Can you really say complaining is unreasonable in these circumstances?

Btw I appreciate you providing your perspective as a dev.
I think this is punishing for them providing performance mode (60 FPS footage) with people missing on a lot of things (ray traced reflections pushed farther and affecting large bodies of water now, coupled with longer draw distance too, etc…) and hyper focusing on some blemishes. Considering how much is polished in the last few months before release and their pedigree/history as a studio, yes there is some biased negativity (the “concern”, the “shocking issues”, the “angry disappointment”, the post history, etc…) that should have yielded to some benefit of the doubt.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
the closer it is to release the less it changes. Majority of the time what you see is what you get. Doing the math on it for a late 2023 release date, game going gold, then add 2 months max for disc and package manufacturing, shipping I think the game tecnically is locked in its look, this is what it will be. Also in Insomniacs case in terms of history, past sideman games and quality I expect the game to look exactly like what they have shown. Lighting changes, color grading maybe . probably a few puddles moved around. If anything it might get a little better through optimizing but no huge changes. I might eat crow on this but being an exclusive PS5 developed game i'm expecting a holy shit moment.
I would not take the 2 months of going gold to heart anymore, the amount of games with critical day one patches rises by the minute.

I expect it to get a bit better than the demo, but it is possible the demo area might be one of the scenarios that is still to receive its final coat of paint (water splashes, water texture and deformation, possibly not too expensive to cover them up better so that people will not notice it as much). It is also possible that it is going to be something the expected the gameplay scenario to wow people and not to notice some details that are generally not part of much of the game and so not something they focused a lot of time on… we shall see.
 

John Wick

Member
If the game is fun and playable the graphics are good enough for me. The game isn't even finished yet the gaf experts have already delivered their verdicts. Playability always trumps graphic whores.
 

MiguelItUp

Member
I don't think anyone is stupid, people had opinions about a game still in development. Will it look better by launch? Surely, but I don't expect it to look vastly different.
 
I will respond with this only same developer original spiderman 2017 showcase vs 2018 final build, some minor improvements and some downgrades
That's, what will happen with spider man 2

Yeah according to you and a lot off people here whe gonna have "puddlegate" all over again, whe know how that went.....😉
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
I would not take the 2 months of going gold to heart anymore, the amount of games with critical day one patches rises by the minute.

I expect it to get a bit better than the demo, but it is possible the demo area might be one of the scenarios that is still to receive its final coat of paint (water splashes, water texture and deformation, possibly not too expensive to cover them up better so that people will not notice it as much). It is also possible that it is going to be something the expected the gameplay scenario to wow people and not to notice some details that are generally not part of much of the game and so not something they focused a lot of time on… we shall see.
Demos are also up to 3-4 months of older (most stable) builds than the time shown as well, on average. Since the current builds are having optimization passes and are gutted (not locked down) for a stable showing at the moment.
 
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Barakov

Member
We are stupid, so I will use few words and rely on pictures instead from Insomniac Games' GDC 2020 Conference discussing Ratchet & Clank Development process. I won't risk underestimating how high our level of ignorance can reach, so I will hold your hand in directing your attention to the dates listed on the bottom corner of each picture. Link below for the smart one's among us who wish to learn more.


Nyjy0F8.jpg


UZ8FqKP.jpg


HesTuoA.jpg
If people didn't like what they see, they have the right to complain about it. End of.

The onus is on devs is to deliever the end product that is polished and playable. If they don't want criticism, pump out a trailer instead of footage that is from a work in progress. No one is denying games are hard to make but when you put footage from an unfinished game there's bound to be some comments from people who don't like what's on display. Especially with the new price tag for games.
 

Nocturno999

Member
The gaslighting has been out of control since the PS Showcase.

From "Xbox's ded lul" to "Gamers don't know what they want".
 
Watching the meltdowns from Sony fans after the showcase I now understand better just how infuriated the graphics wenches must be that a game without top of the range visuals could receive universal acclaim from consumers and critics alike- TOTK...it challenges their belief system for what constitutes "good" or "acceptable"..

It's like an atheist taking apart a religious practice or belief and making fun of it....not pleasant for them at all. Hence the meltdowns.

But what's the end game? Do these folk realise that there are serious diminishing returns to visual fidelity? At some point people are not going to buy games with great gameplay if the Digital Foundry analysis shows any framerate drops or a poor implementation of ray tracing...that's the path these folk are on...ever higher standards and ever less space for imperfections.
This would be relevant if good looking games stopped releasing. The truth is there are still impressive looking games coming out, path traced Cyberpunk just released and stole the crown for the best looking game period. Not every game needs advanced technology though Horizon FW looks great despite no RT. Spiderman 2 beats neither and that's fine but considering this is the modern PS5 showcase game I can see why people are disappointed.
 
Here’s a simple and non stupid way to think of this:

Sequels tend to look marginally better than their predecessor in gaming. Often this is even more apparent if going from one console to the next. Easy examples would be Gears of War1-3 compared to 4&5.

This game doesn’t look like a leap going from ps4 to ps5. It’s been in development for many years by a trusted studio that already brought a great visual spectacle with another one of its franchises, ratchet and clank.

So when people say things like “this game doesn’t look that good” it’s because they should in fact expect more from a game of this type. One of its major draws is visuals. Currently what’s been shown is good by anyone’s standards but it could be much better and it should be much better.

Also, gamers keep getting burned by developers and publishers. IE RedFall , forspoken , Gollum, and many more.

We have our guard up. You can’t keep shoveling shit.
And then there's the TLOU to TLOU2 leap in graphics and tech..
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
This is kinda the problem with remastering your game and releasing it on the pc BEFORE the sequel comes out on the next gen system.. it completely kills the impact a sequel could have graphically.
The problem is also people dream of 60 FPS and make noise, dream of 4K and make noise, dream of RT and make noise, you show them an improvement to your PS5 remastered tech on PS5 and then layer on top an even denser city and longer draw distance and people are disappointed (especially because they demanded things without knowing the costs). RT is also expanded (despite people missing it while watching the initial lower quality stream).

Still the game will likely end up being a decent step up over Spider-man Remastered/Miles Morales anyways and it is a bit unfair for the sequel not to be judged against the PS4 games and also not to take into account how heavy pushing framerate and resolution and RT is (and there is still polish time for the game before it actually launches). If they optimised the game for 60 FPS as a target (so you leave some headroom there) and try to ensure you also keep resolution and RT quality high you will get a different result than optimising for 30/40 FPS and then cutting back in effects, resolution, NPC’s, RT, etc… with chances of frame rate drops. We will see what the 40 Hz balanced mode will bring.

TLoU Remaster PS4 to TLoU Part II was a massive leap indeed, but it was a bigger studio with external help focusing pretty much on nothing but that (and finishing Uncharted 4) for many years. Insomniac has a lot of parallel projects and it seems like they tend to iterate a bit faster than ND so that should be taken into account too.
 

Three

Member
Just watched the trailer again in 4K, game looks fucking great, and it looks like it plays fucking great. This community is weird.
I think it looks great too but I think it's based on some internal individual expectations of this being a next gen only game and comments from marvel about it approaching animated CGI. I bet it would still be one of the best looking games but there was some raised unrealistic expectations for some.
 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Killzone 2 was phenomenal, what you on about?
Killzone 2 was god awful...its was shite...

Killzone 3 though....now we're getting somewhere!

If spider man 2 was ann9unced as cross gen, none of us would be complaining.

The issue is that initial trailer said captured on a ps5 and looks nines better...pun not intended....and also, we expected to start seeing the magical jump,we were told about from cerny and playstation fans with what the ps5 can do! O see some, slightly better than ps4 graphics and performance is kinda gutting...no one can deny that.

Will the game be awesome, I bet it will be, will we all forget and enjoy it? Ya damn right...I hope...but man. Sony gonna have to deliver some crazy shit...if ghosts 2 looks a but better than got or I dunno....basically this gen is looking to be more of a turd than last gens upgrade and that was panned for having mobile cpus etc. Just a shame really.
 
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mdkirby

Member
I don’t know why people are lauding spider man 2 for expectations of it having phenomenal graphics. It’s a highly stylised game, and it looks great. As always there seriously needs to be a better way of hosting these showcases, 1080p (if you’re lucky) compressed streams that turn to absolute mush in high motion do absolutely zero favours for detailed fast moving 4k games, I watched a day late, using YouTube via the PlayStation, and it was still mush with no 4k version. They are all pre recorded anyhow, sony should just upload full high quality versions directly to a PlayStation player and advertise it on their Home Screen.

That aside, most people view “how close to real is it” as being the benchmark for visuals. So anything stylised or cartoony isn’t gonna cut it. I’m not sure there’s any currently announced first party games that will tick that box, unless u count death stranding 2. I’ll ignore last of us factions as it’s multiplayer.

For graphics benchmarks this year imo it’ll be between hellblade 2 and death stranding 2
 
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