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why do most people only care about graphics when it comes to next gen ?

samoilaaa

Member
Every time when a new generation comes everyone measures how big of a jump it is only by graphics , nobody cares about the mechanics , level design , complexity and interactivity of the world/npcs , AI , better/more realistic destructible environments
As long as its more beautiful than the previous gen its doesnt matter that underneath its the same game the we played last gen , i think that this gen we got the biggest ( if im not mistaken ) upgrade ever when it comes to cpu and storage , even if we remain at the same graphics as last gen ( which we wont ) the cpu and the storage will allow to create worlds and game mechanics like never before as long the the developers want to do it and not make the same crap

lets look at ratchet and clank ( i didnt play the game so i dont know if its good or not ) , so many stuff happening on the screen most of the time , i saw a scene with a cyberpunk city it looked amazing , and this is just a small game at early gen , imagine a game developed in 5-6 years

and this video explains how the level design helps so much with immersion and storytelling

 
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MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
Every time when a new generation comes everyone measures how big of a jump it is only by graphics , nobody cares about the mechanics , level design , complexity and interactivity of the world/npcs , AI
As long as its more beautiful than the previous gen its doesnt matter that underneath its the same game the we played last gen , i think that this gen we got the biggest ( if im not mistaken ) upgrade ever when it comes to cpu and storage , even if we remain at the same graphics as last gen ( which we wont ) the cpu and the storage will allow to create worlds and game mechanics like never before as long the the developers want to do it and not make the same crap

lets look at ratchet and clank ( i didnt play the game so i dont know if its good or not ) , so many stuff happening on the screen most of the time , i saw a scene with a cyberpunk city it looked amazing

and this video explains how the level design helps so much with immersion and storytelling



Because you can achieve great level design with 1990's technology?
 

Topher

Gold Member
Great game design doesn't typically require a new generation of hardware. Next gen graphics do.

Either way....

Compromise Shrug GIF
 
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Boss Mog

Member
The graphics boost we got this gen is great but the most exciting things for me are the SSD that loads games in a couple of seconds ("fast travel" in games is now actually fast) and the fact that most games have a 60fps option. Those two factors are really making me love this gen.

EDIT: And the haptics on the Dualsense, I love that as well.
 
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samoilaaa

Member
Because you can achieve great level design with 1990's technology?
i agree , and one example is deus ex a 2001 ( i think ) game , but still much better world interactivity can be achieved with today's technology , its all about what developers want , look at witcher 3 how much the npc crowd had to be lowered on ps4 because of the cpu , in novigrad market you hear all the noises from the npcs but not the actual npcs
 

bender

What time is it?
Great game design doesn't typically require a new generation of hardware. Next gen graphics do.

Either way....

Compromise Shrug GIF

Creating cutting edge visuals is just too expensive for most studios and publishers to stray too far from tried-and-true, safe game designs. There are exceptions of course like Death Stranding, but AAA gaming is just way too risk averse to be interesting. That's not to say that those games are bad and certain genres benefit from not straying too far for established standards, but I wouldn't call those games particularly interesting either.
 
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SeraphJan

Member
Because I believe you could come up with some of the most innovative game design with only GameCube hardware. Just look at Super Mario Galaxy 2, are you really going to tell me modern game overall have better design mechanic wise?

And beside, the aesthetic of sensation is one of the most important stimulation for human, which also applies to video game. There is no shame for liking better visuals.

Back when I was a teen, Looking at Super Mario Allstar on SNES, I was blown away by the graphic compare to the NES version. So why should it be any different now?
 
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SeraphJan

Member
Because I believe you could come up with some of the most innovative game design with only GameCube hardware. Just look at Super Mario Galaxy 2, are you really going to tell me modern game overall have better design mechanic wise?

And beside, the aesthetic of sensation is one of the most important stimulation for human, which also applies to video game. There is no shame for liking better visuals.

Back when I was a teen, Looking at Super Mario Allstar on SNES, I was blown away by the graphic compare to the NES version. So why should it be any different now?
Technically Galaxy 2 is a Wii game, but Wii's hardware spec is not much of a difference compared to GameCube.
 
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samoilaaa

Member
Because I believe you could come up with some of the most innovative game design with only GameCube hardware. Just look at Super Mario Galaxy 2, are you really going to tell me modern game overall have better design mechanic wise?

And beside, the aesthetic of sensation is one of the most important stimulation for human, which also applies to video game. There is no shame for liking better visuals.

Back when I was a teen, Looking at Super Mario Allstar on SNES, I was blown away by the graphic compare to the NES version. So why should it be any different now?
like i said to a post above there are alot of games with good game design in late 90's early 00's but im also talking about world interactivity , npc crowd behaviour , destructible enviornments , and combine all of that with today's graphics and you need alot of resources
 

SeraphJan

Member
like i said to a post above there are alot of games with good game design in late 90's early 00's but im also talking about world interactivity , npc crowd behaviour , destructible enviornments , and combine all of that with today's graphics and you need alot of resources
Look no further than great Indie games, some of these game could work on a 15 years old PC

Also games like BotW that works on a mobile hardware could already achieve what you've mentioned as well
 
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MidGenRefresh

*Refreshes biennially
i agree , and one example is deus ex a 2001 ( i think ) game , but still much better world interactivity can be achieved with today's technology , its all about what developers want

Exactly. So great level design and world interactivity is nothing new. Weird West is coming out this month and it shapes to be both of these things.

Most people don't care about these kind of things. A static but beautiful world will be more interesting to them than something like Weird West offers.
 

samoilaaa

Member
Look no further than great Indie games, some of these game could work on a 15 years old PC
show me an indi game that is great in these 3 areas , world interactivity , npc crowd behaviour , level design
in just level design ? sure , there are alof of indi games that are amazing in that area , and most of them are 2D or 2.5D , but an indi game doesnt have the money to make a game with all those goodies
even in most AAA open world games you have npcs walking around like zombies , because it actualy cost alot of resources to make all the npcs do their own thing
when marketing a game they keep telling you that the npcs have day activities and night activities and that even the weather can influence their behaviour , but the game releases and surprise there are all zombies
 
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SeraphJan

Member
show me an indi game that is great in these 3 areas , world interactivity , npc crowd behaviour , level design
in just level design ? sure , there are alof of indi games that are amazing in that area , and most of them are 2D or 2.5D , but an indi game doesnt have the money to make a game with all those goodies
Outer Wild, Subnautica, Terraria, Starbound

Maybe not crowd behaviour, but at least in terms of interactivity these game are top notch, and they don't requirement next gen hardware
 

Flabagast

Member
Gamers are talking and praising about Elden Ring much more than Horizon 2, despite it having lesser graphics.

Hence I disagree with your point OP.
 

RafterXL

Member
You guys keep saying you can do great game design on old ass hardware, but we keep getting the same shit generation after generation. HFW just came out and is the best looking game out there, yet still plays like every other open world game from last gen. 90% of the compliments about that game are about how it looks, because we all know that doesn't do anything new gameplay wise and basically chases the same open world trends we've been seeing for the last decade. There is a reason why the game is superior to the first in every single technical aspect and still wasn't any better recieved, it's just a prettier version of what we've seen a hundred times.

I love great graphics as much as the next person, but we've reached a point where it's far easier to make a pretty game than it is to make a great game. I'll take great games over pretty games any day of the week. I'd love both but that rarely happens and certainly hasn't happened this gen.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
Gamers are talking and praising about Elden Ring much more than Horizon 2, despite it having lesser graphics.

Hence I disagree with your point OP.
Elden Ring is multi platform, so there's more people who can play it compared to horizon 2.
I have both games and I disagree. There is just as much praise for HFW than Elden Ring. And rightly so.
A quick look on SonyGAF shows you're wrong.

And rightly so.
 

Spaceman292

Banned
Every time when a new generation comes everyone measures how big of a jump it is only by graphics , nobody cares about the mechanics , level design , complexity and interactivity of the world/npcs , AI
Did you miss the fact that Elden Ring is being called the best game ever made?
 

samoilaaa

Member
Elden Ring is multi platform, so there's more people who can play it compared to horizon 2.

A quick look on SonyGAF shows you're wrong.

And rightly so.
to be honest i think that more people play horizon than elden ring even if you can play it only on playstation because of popularity and type of game , dark souls series sold toghether 27 million copies and horizon sold 20 million on just one platform
 

ZywyPL

Banned
Because that's the easiest thing to spot, just a single picture can show a tremendous difference, whereas it's hard/impossible to show advancements in stuff like animations, sound, AI, physics etc.

Sure you gonna read every now and then about Battlefield Bad Company's sound and destruction, or FEAR's AI, but that's something you have to experience yourself to know what people are talking about. But when it comes to graphics, everyone can see the difference by looking at the same screen.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Because a great number of people interested in video games simply refuse to even try a game if it doesn’t look a certain way.

You must have seen how many self-professed “core gamers” liberally talk about “indie shit” and will call anything with cutting-edge graphics a great game even if the gameplay is very limited and/or nothing new. I mean, not a few people who’ve been laughing at the praise BOTW got for the last 5 years are now calling Elden Ring the best game ever, even if Zelda has design and gameplay elements that From Software didn’t even consider implementing even when all they had to do was copy the formula.
 
There's almost no game that can't be realized on the PS4 with just lesser visuals, except niche cases like Rift Apart. And if you want something like a fully destructible world, the larger problem is in combining it with mission based game design more so than hardware capabilities.
 

Kokoro2020

Member
I don't. For me, graphics has always been second to gameplay/fun and always will be. That said, graphics are still very important. They just aren't the only important thing for a game.

Its safe to assume that really only a very tiny minority of people put graphics over everything else, including gameplay/fun. Those who do just kind of stick out like a sore thumb, so it may seem like there's more of those people than there actually are.
 
Because a lot of the discussion around games on boards like this happens before release, and the graphics are the easiest part you can judge a game by until it comes out. Also makes for great platform war fodder, since compared to other aspects of a game, graphics are closely associated with the power of the hardware rather than the skill of the developers in the minds of many people.
 

JimmyRustler

Gold Member
It easier to see good graphics and say "this was not possible on last gen hardware" than see new gameplay and say "this was not possible on last gen hardware".
 

Guilty_AI

Member
Graphics is the easiest thing to sell a game on. Its also spurred on by tech craze and dick measuring contests by platform warriors.
 
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samoilaaa

Member
And you think HFW didn’t receive 0 for stupid stuff?
ofc , idiots are everywhere , when i watch reviews on metacritic i never look at the 0's and 10's because no game is good enough or bad enough to get those scores , even a 9 is unrealistic , but thats just me , maybe im to harsh on games

in my book both forbidden west and elden ring are a 7 , i would add a 0.5 to elden ring because i like the combat
 

Roxkis_ii

Member
I mostly thought of next gen gaming as a graphics bump until I got a PS5. The Dualsense controller is really the star of the show. The amount of detail in the feedback is incredible.

Playing dirt 5, and feeling the dirt under your tires, the weight of the brakes, the feel of the gas pedal, and the rumble of cars around you. It's truly next level.

I've been playing mostly cyberpunk and Horizon forbidden west lately, but I felt like driving some cars in Gta online. The two thing that jumped out were the loading times, and how hollow the game felt without the next gen rumble. It's enough to make me not even want to play Ps4 games. I can't enjoy driving without the trigger resistances anymore.
 
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Altares13th

Member
Nextgen is not about having a next generation of developers, it's about hardware benefits only.
About everything that you could imagine level design wise can be done using old technology. What the new hardware brings to the table is mostly unlocking visual possibilities that were not possible to do before: RT for example. Those can be used for gameplay purposes too, actually this is Nintendo's speciality.
I can promise you that the Nintendo console that will be able to do hardware RT will probably have a Mario/Zelda game which will make use of the feature extensively (mirrors of mirrors..etc).
I'm personally much more hyped about accurate physics because I know that RT hardware could be used to accelerate that to a whole other level instead of visuals (it's called inline RT). Meaning proper cloth with self collisions..etc. CGI quality.
As for level design, this generation is the 1st which will be able to address it a little bit thanks to the SSDs.
Don't expect revolutionary gameplay though, this is up to developers only.
 
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samoilaaa

Member
Nextgen is not about having a next generation of developers, it's about hardware benefits only.
About everything that you could imagine level design wise can be done using old technology. What the new hardware brings to the table is mostly unlocking visual possibilities that were not possible to do before: RT for example. Those can be used for gameplay purposes too, actually this is Nintendo's speciality.
I can promise you that the Nintendo console that will be able to do hardware RT will probably have a Mario/Zelda game which will make use of the feature extensively (mirrors of mirrors..etc).
I'm personally much more hyped about accurate physics because I know that RT hardware could be used to accelerate that to a whole other level instead of visuals (it's called inline RT). Meaning proper cloth with self collisions..etc. CGI quality.
As for level design, this generation is the 1st which will be able to address it a little bit thanks to the SSDs.
Don't expect revolutionary gameplay though, this is up to developers only.
again with the old technology , did u even read my post or other comments ? i didnt talk only about the level design , alot of other things cant be achieved with the old technology
 
Uh. Cause it's in the name and I'm paying money for it?

Dafuq. I love gameplay centric games as much as the next obsessed person is, but I do expect NEXT GEN graphics in a NEXT GEN console.

Do I think every game needs to live up to it? Absolutely not. Third party games would die because of it.

But I do expect a notable jump, no matter what, if you're selling me on it as a next gen console and asking good money for it.
 
Great AI is probably not the good word, just AI that's fun to play against and not broken! Games from 20years ago already had that, on 500mhz CPUs with barely any RAM or GPU.

Physics would be great, environment reactivity could definitely be heightened, again many old games did it better than today's games in general (outside of games that are borderline tech demos).

However, too much destructible objects in a game can make it less fun because the levels and encounters need to be made around a minimal level of structure to make sense... However, chairs, tables, windows, decortive objects, pots, cups, plates, etc. Should never be bullet proof and bolted to the surface they happen to be on.
 

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
to be honest i think that more people play horizon than elden ring even if you can play it only on playstation because of popularity and type of game , dark souls series sold toghether 27 million copies and horizon sold 20 million on just one platform
I don't know. I don't know the sales between elden ring and horizon 2.

PlayStation users seems to primarily like exclusives over other games, so I don't doubt that it could sell better.

But elden ring is still both on pc, ps and Xbox.
Err GIF


* Have a quick look at Metacritic user scores to see why
I don't really give a fuck about metacritic.
And neither would you if it somehow didn't fit to your agenda.

In here we hate metacritic if it's against our agenda or love it if it backs our opinions up.

On Gaf there's more threads about Elden Ring than Horizon 2, and Gaf is mainly PlayStation players so I'd rather use that than some garbage metacritic where fanboys gives something 10 and haters gives it minus 10.
 
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