Guild Wars 2

Grass and trees still look abysmal and everything else still looks amazing.

Please tell me there’s a way to disable foliage now, either through the config, driver control panel, or otherwise.

…You don’t like how the grass and trees look, so you think the world will look better without them at all?

-blink, blink-

Well, to each their own, I suppose. I’ve never heard of a way to turn them off.

My own personal graphics review right here:

My ele… is so attractive.

Check all the other MMO’s on the market, GW2 still slays them graphically. Not a single one doesn’t look like a sloppy f2p k-mmo. Even the newest subbed ones, it’s sad but true.

I’d say if anet needs to fix one thing graphically, it would be the motion blur, and FOV. Pretty archaic by modern standards, tons of new games are nailing it, I think it’s time anet caught up in that realm, it’s been the same since release and I leave it disabled since it’s ugly — though I love graphics options and hate having to disable them for making it uglier.

@Brutality, that’s not quite true. I can think of at least one P2P MMO out there with incredible graphics… But GW2 certainly does have great graphics as well.

I think FF14 looks way better than gw2. Overall, I think Archeage looks better as well. AA has beautiful trees/grass and water. Kinda hard to compare, but Eve Online is absolutely stunning as well. GW2 has a great art style, the graphics themselves aren’t too impressive.
OT: I don’t understand wanting to disable the foliage. Yeah, it’s not the best, but disabling it completely would make the game look like kitten.

Fernling.1729:

I think FF14 looks way better than gw2. Overall, I think Archeage looks better as well. AA has beautiful trees/grass and water. Kinda hard to compare, but Eve Online is absolutely stunning as well. GW2 has a great art style, the graphics themselves aren’t too impressive.

I have played AA too, and think that it has the better graphics engine (water/beach athmosphere looks really good) but that GW2 has the better graphics/art style.

I fear that a revamp of the GW2 graphics quality needs to replace the actual, quite outdated, graphics engine with a newer/better one and that will not happen because that is a really big task.

Greetings.

Trees looked abysmal on release as well, they always looked rather bad. I always thought wtf, did they took them straight from GW1? Yes, difference is quiet striking, the game itself is rather good looking and quality of art is above average across the board, except for the foliage, hnc what’s the deal there, the only idea i have is, as i mentioned above, it came straight from GW1.

I agree. The biggest problems whenever I try making good-looking screenshots is the ground. It looks ugly and pixelated compared to everything else. I hope they will fix it someday, even though that’s not one of their top issues right now.

I find the graphics in gw2 outstanding, great job of the artists. However a tone down on aoe visuals spamming would be nice so players dont lose their mouse cursors during battles lol.

FFXIV has the best graphics out there out of any MMORPG. It’s not even debatable imo… they use far higher quality textures and it’s optimized far better. I can go on there and maintain a steady 25-30 FPS on highest settings with my awful NVIDIA GT 540 whereas on GW2 I’m only able to get around 15 on highest settings, 25 on medium-ish settings with shaders off.

Archeage also uses superior textures than GW2’s and overall the characters are a lot more realistic looking (they even have private parts on the characters lmao), but to be honest I don’t think I have ever seen characters on any MMO as cute as GW2’s human females.

Aside from human females though, XIV and AA’s characters blow GW2’s non-human female ones out of the freakin’ water.

But yeah, AA also has an enormous world and it isn’t loaded area by area either. It’s actually optimized incredibly well to boot.

P.S. – I tried FFXIV and while I was truly impressed by the sheer beauty of it, I had no motivation to really play longer than like 2 hours tops because in the back of my mind, I knew that I had only 2 weeks to play the game (free trial) before never again. Seemed pointless.

Anyways, here’s a few pictures I found of it:
http://goo.gl/n9NMwz
http://goo.gl/hGkodO
http://goo.gl/xLmsOC
http://goo.gl/5lL9Ah
http://goo.gl/saNsES
http://goo.gl/TjPCSa

Also not saying GW2’s graphics aren’t great, because they certainly are.

I’m mostly referring to the staggering aliasing problem. The only suitable anti-aliasing for the poorly modeled foliage is forced through the graphics card, which takes a heavy performance toll.

Any advice?

(Please don’t recommend SweetFX or SMAA injector, they hardly make a difference)

Please. No motion blur. No bloom. No vignette. No camera lenses. No depth-of-field.

I like immersive environment. Perhaps only bloom exists in my eyes, but bloom in the games is overused, or is used wrong because it overburns and blurs the image.

Motion blur just makes the image blurred in fast action. Vignette lessens the visibility.

Check the last image in the above post by Purple Miku: freaking camera lens there. Immersive means looking through human eyes, not through multi-multi lens camera.

Human eye has depth-of-field but that is not how the eyes are used. Even if dof has an autofocus. Immersive means the focus follows where I look at, did I move the player view or not.

Screenshotting is different matter, of course. Lotsa options to the options panel.

I went through 200,000 elder scrolls and fallout3 related screenshots, and I’m really tired to sunset screenshots with excessive sunshine glows. Everything looks nice both in the overglow and in the dark. I appreciate clarity and definition, and terrain and model quality :-)

Mea.5491:

I like the graphics but there’s way too much clipping (armor & weapons)…

Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis.

Oh and the night time is too bright.

Aside from that, it looks fine.

If night time is too dark, then players start asking shorter night times. (Oblivion.)

If you want to see bad foliage, play Skyrim out of the box. Guild Wars 2 is above and beyond in comparison.

Overall, GW2 is in a good place, thankfully to its strong, consistent aesthetic. If I could improve anything, it’d be these:

-higher res textures with improved normals (pretty much everywhere, some areas look like they were built back when GW1 was still in its prime)
-higher poly models on older weapons and minor environmental objects. There’s a number of earlier art resources that look awkward next to more recent ones like the BLTC skins due to model quality differences.
-Address armor clipping issues. Not all of them can be fixed, but some can, especially when it comes to BLTC sets.

If Anet addresses those, they’ll have no real contest from newer games imo.

medohgeuh.4650:

Overall, GW2 is in a good place, thankfully to its strong, consistent aesthetic. If I could improve anything, it’d be these:

-higher res textures with improved normals (pretty much everywhere, some areas look like they were built back when GW1 was still in its prime)
-higher poly models on older weapons and minor environmental objects.

Not before they make a 64-Bit Client, else they would shoot themself in the foot
because there are now already people who crash because they need more than
3,5 GB of Memory with everything maxed in big zergs.

Some weapons are very old looking. Really bad.

I would also improve the system so that different weapons would have their own visual effects and sounds when used. No more the same mesmer beam, but many variations.

Is archage really that good?

Archeage graphics are pretty good imo, cryengine has awesome lighting and water effects. The textures can be buggy and low res in certain areas but overall it is a very pretty game.
I still prefer guild wars 2 graphics though since it seems that the devs paid more attention to the environment and I use a really nice SweetFX preset.

kins.3294:

Is archage really that good?

That game really seems to be such a mess of scamming, griefing, bots and recently even more and more hacks .. its not even funny anymore.

Just take a look at their forums.

However .. i wish we could get so much sliders in our character creator than what they have there

StickAndMove.6419:

Grass and trees still look abysmal and everything else still looks amazing.

Please tell me there’s a way to disable foliage now, either through the config, driver control panel, or otherwise.

lol awesome graphics review there.Btw you never played archeage i guess ? Take a look at their randomly placed trees in open areas and you might want to reconsider that statement.Ive taken my breaks from gw2 to try out diff mmo’s,i keep coming back.Gw2 still has the best to offer imo,and there isnt any mmo around that can beat the atmospheric look and the graphics of gw2,besides FF perhaps.

Brutality.9631:

Check all the other MMO’s on the market, GW2 still slays them graphically. Not a single one doesn’t look like a sloppy f2p k-mmo. Even the newest subbed ones, it’s sad but true.

I’d say if anet needs to fix one thing graphically, it would be the motion blur, and FOV. Pretty archaic by modern standards, tons of new games are nailing it, I think it’s time anet caught up in that realm, it’s been the same since release and I leave it disabled since it’s ugly — though I love graphics options and hate having to disable them for making it uglier.

FF14 looks gorgeous and kicks the kitten of every MMO on the market, the hell are you talking about?

kins.3294:

Is archage really that good?

The foundation is good, amazing even. Housing, gliders, farms, completely player ran jury system, player ran everything really, naval warfare………

But the land combat is meh, and Trion can’t run it worth a kitten. Infested by bots, hackers, scammers, oh and Trion can’t even get the payment systems working for a lot of players for about a month now.

Purple Miku.7032:

FFXIV has the best graphics out there out of any MMORPG. It’s not even debatable imo…
<snip>
Anyways, here’s a few pictures I found of it:
http://goo.gl/n9NMwz

What’s this? A character showing their legs from the backside? Is that legal? After seeing so many trenchcoats, rear capes and long skirts in GW2, I was under the impression that the ESRB must have banned them from games rated T.

Kalendraf.9521:

Purple Miku.7032:

FFXIV has the best graphics out there out of any MMORPG. It’s not even debatable imo…
<snip>
Anyways, here’s a few pictures I found of it:
http://goo.gl/n9NMwz

What’s this? A character showing their legs from the backside? Is that legal? After seeing so many trenchcoats, rear capes and long skirts in GW2, I was under the impression that the ESRB must have banned them from games rated T.

FF14 armor is actually very nice……..and very, very fair with skimpy when the armor does go skimpy.

Skimpy Example:

http://cdn4.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FFXIV_Equality_005-670x376.jpg?eaa32f

http://cdn3.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FFXIV_Equality_010-670x376.jpg?eaa32f

http://cdn3.dualshockers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/FFXIV_Equality_004-670x376.jpg?eaa32f

Source: http://www.dualshockers.com/2013/09/14/final-fantasy-xivs-gear-design-is-a-shining-example-of-gender-equality-in-games/

GW2 needs better shading, bump mapping, skin texture, better material textures and by odin’s beard so much more.
just look at the ground textures, it’s stretched so much you can see the pixels and i have everything on max.
there are even areas where the texture is stretched so much on one side that all i see are stripes….that’s suppose to be rock……riiiight…

they have done some good work on certain areas but i am deeply shamed, as an environmental artist it makes my hand itch beyond believe.
there are so many details ignored, landmarks looking so basic, effects are so cheap it is really difficult to describe how much they can improve.

ps. archage is crap, i tried it but it’s just a generic game with the pre-F2P rift class system, not worth your time.