Better visual quality armor!

sigh...gw is worldwide and you have no idea how low the life standart in some contries is
like mine..my pc is 5 years old and part for it or compatible with it are long gone of production
if something breaks it'll be a long long time before i can buy a new one because even if i game i still need to eat before gaming
some people are trying hard to obtain something while others just have it easy..

I have a supermarket job on checkouts, basic Job, basic pay. I hardly have it easy, but could save £300 with no problem

Maybe stop drinking booze and you'll be able to save more.

Anyway, your comments again are going off topic. You still have the Low setting option, so you really have nothing valid to say by saying 'But MY PC couldnt run higher details!

There are plenty of games with higher reqs then GW, A DX8 card requirement for the game is really nothing by todays standard.

Also, you can build a PC for Cheaper then what I stated and still play the game. I'll go check how much the Cheapest possible one is.

£180 it costs.

Also, prices in other countries are usually a lot cheaper then in the UK. When we get new parts here, they are pretty much a direct $ to £ change. If A part costs $300 in the US, it will cost £300 in the UK, at least on release.

10x for talking like that to a lady...

Ok, now lets get back on topic please!

Be realistic.

How many people can afford to blow £300 on anything? Unless you dont already own a PC, why would you go out and spend £300 on a whole new one just to play games at a better resolution?

Most people in this world have obligations and other things they need to spend money on that are far more important!

Rent!
University fees!
Paying univeristy loans!
Cars!
Food and drink!
Clothes!
Taxes!
Gas and electricity!
G/fs and b/fs!
RnR!

Unless your a spotty teenager who doesnt have to worry about spending their own money because they live at home, or a student whos parents pay your rent for 3 years or your rich!

Most people have to actually save their money to survive!

Im working full time during my work placement for University, but im putting £500 a way each month. That leaves me around £200-£300 alone, each month to survive on.

And you talk as if £300 is something you can just burn!

Im usually over-drawn by the end of each money due to the cost of bus fairs, money and drink! And yes the occasionally splashing out! I cant even remember the last time I went for a pub-crawl or bought new clothes other then a jacket.

Sorry but that kind "lets just burn our money" really annoys me.

I doubt anyone in here is saying we're unable to buy new flashy computers, or upgrade their existing ones. What people are saying is that there are more important things in life to spend money on.

This is one reason im a supported of consoles. You dont have to worry about upgrading it every 2 months so the latest games can be played. You just buy a game and you know it will work, and to its best ability.

I also seriously doubt anyone would complain at GWs having a face lift and improved graphics either. You would be an idiot to do so. But you have to accept that GWs is a 2 year old game, and you started playing it knowing that!

The graphics are nice, and I love them as they are and mine arent even set to the highest level!I expect they will add some graphical nice bits in GW:EN, like they did when they released factions and improved certain textures.

But at the minute, we have more important issues to worry about like balancing, errors, expansions, the lack of anyone doing HM and so on.

Giving the option of loading high quality characters is not something I see a problem with. Forcing it would blow up my PC (which in effect would blast off my knees) so no thanks.

Freekedoutfish, I don't even know why you are mentioning this, what has this got to do with the topic? You don't need to explain living costs to everyone. It is expensive to live and most people have more important things to spend their money on, I agree with you, but what I don't agree on is this...

Of course it's a 2 year old game but 2 years ago the game had the capability of displaying high detailed textures, Anet just decided not to use it because computers weren't as powerful as they are today. I am not saying it's not possible to run GW at maximum detail with AA+AF 2 years ago because it was but the majority of people didn't have the hardware to run it at the performance Anet expects.

Now things have changed, even a midrange card would be able to handle the textures at high detail because hardware has moved on and I would take a guess that most people have at least a midrange card. I am not asking for a whole new graphics engine to be built to replace the current one... that's crazy, I am just asking for Anet to make available to high end PC owners like myself something that has been around since the start of GW.

Anet teases us, allowing us to see nice looking armor in explorable areas but not in public places. I repeat, my suggestion is to GIVE THE OPTION, my suggestion is NOT to force the graphic change.

I mentioned it because some j*ck-*ss above, was talking about spending £300 on a new PC like it was money to burn, and pretty much saying anyone who cant save up £300 and burn it like paper is stupid in some way.

Anyway!

Anet must have their reasons for having lower quality textures in towns! I dont see why else they would do it. Have you considered asking them?

I suspect (and I know youve said you dont agree with this), that higher quality textures in towns would cause lag or pc performance issues. You'd be asking every piece of texture on everyones armor in town to hold more information.

Regardless of whether you display all that information or have your settings on low, the texture would still contain more information. It wouldnt necessarily effect your PC performance since those textures are stored locally on your harddrive.

But its alot more information for the servers to be sending and recieving.

Whether that made sense or not I dont know, because im not a game programmer or server expert. But Anet must have their reasons! They wouldnt purposely make textures worse inside an outpost just for the hell of it!

It must be performance related, or atleast have a reason!

But to say that just because PC technology has improved in the last 2 years, is no reason for Anet to revamp the visuals in GWs. What about other PC games that are 2 years old or older.

Would you expect the companies who developed them to revamp them visually just to keep in-line with the new, more powerfull PCs?

The only company I can think who has done that is Sierra with HL and HL2!

This is why we have sequals to games. I know your not asking for loads and load of visual changes. Your just asking for armor texture improvements, but if it were possible and they had the time, im sure they would.

The MODs player the game too, and im sure they have far more powerfull PCs then your casual player. I expect alot of them are on Alienware gear, being the rich people they are!

Im sure they would drewl at giving GWs new, flashier textures. But they obviously either cant, have more important things to do, or..... dont see a need for it!

Maybe (and ive said this about 5 times, so sorry) wait until GW:EN to see if they change anything! If we're likely to get any visual improvements, it would be during the release of an expansion.

It would be alot easier for Anet to impliment any visual tweaks while we install GW:EN, then it would be through a downloaded update! I say wait and see!

Im sure your Xbox 360 cost you around £300 and im sure the price premium you pay on your console games is more expensive then a £300 PC lol.

Im not saying everyone has £300 to burn on a PC, but you have a console that you spent that much on, plus you have to pay 33-50% more for the games compared to PC ones.

A £300 pc can last you a good two years. The one I specced definately would, you dont need to upgrade every two months, its every two years.

You obviously have no idea about PC costs or components, yet you claim its more expensive then a 360 or a PC.

lol, grow a brain. Console games usually cost £10-20 more then PC ones, all the time. If you buy 15 console games, which you probably will, that is more money wasted then you would on upgrading a PC.

I will ask them but I already said why I think they have done this in my post.

I am not a programmer or coder either but hear me out. The high resolution textures will be larger in file size than the normal blurred ones but they are already stored on your hard drive and the server would not need to send you the entire bunch of textures for you to view it because it's already stored on your hard drive. A code would be sent telling any user with a higher texture setting to display better looking armor and this would be done like this... (I am improvising here)

model:4
skin: 2
face: 3
height: 5.6
armorhead: 0
armorchest: 12
armorarms: 8
armorlegs: 18
armorfeet: 4
etc etc etc etc THEN there would be a setting like this...

Display high quality armor: (0 for no, 1 for yes) AND THIS WOULD BE THE ONLY ADDITIONAL INFORMATION SENT BY THE SERVER!

Sending a line of code like that would not cause any lag at all on the server, the only lag it may cause is locally on your PC if your PC can't handle it. If it cant handle it, you simply lower the textures back to default...

No I would not expect other companies to revamp their game visually to keep in line with new PC's BUT How many games are like Guildwars? Guildwars is updated almost everyday with tweaks, new features and the odd expansion pack every year. Other games are not like that!

So what are Factions, Nightfall and the up coming Eye of the North if they aren't sequels?

I would put my PC up against an Alienware and with confidence say it would not be so different in terms of power and performance.

So you obviously have never played oblivion? You can modify it to the point where it runs at 10fps on SLI 8800 ultras if you really want to.

Alienware Gear? Dont make me laugh. It is the casual gamers with money to burn that waste their £££ on junk from alienware. PC enthusiasts / people that upgrade regularly / anyone that knows how to use lego will have built their own computers and saved in the region of 30-60% of the cost of buying an alienware.

Also this is an online game with regular updates. Adding a new line of code to allow an option for higher texture settings is not a revamp of the graphics engine as you continually like to believe it is.

Also, the devs having a small chat to ATI/Nvidia to enable driver support for higher AA modes in GW isnt really hard to do either.

And you dont need to be rich to afford a PC. I stopped drinking and got a part time job while at uni. I have never been overdrawn or in any kind of debt other then student fees in my four years there.

Wow I have a reply...

Is anyone shocked by this? or have I emailed the wrong people?

I bought that xbox360 about a year ago, after starting my work placement. Thats how I was able to afford that. I admit I had a spending spree after working full time for the first time. But I started saving money after that point.

The xbox360 I use more for DVDs and HD DVDs, so its going to last me a canny while. I hardly ever buy games anyway, so its not huge loss in terms of money for me. But I can be quaranteed that the game will run and look great without having to worry about upgrading anything in a couple of months.

If I wanted games to look anything near as good what my xbox360 can do, then I would have to spend alot of money. But why? I only use my PC mainly for internet, photoshop and movies. GWs is the only game I play on it.

And no, I dont know much about components costs. I never said I did? But personally I would have to spend more then £300 for a decent PC machine because I wouldnt want to build one!

But I dont need a new PC!

Anyway the bit I was getting at about the £300 was you or who ever it was, saying £300 is nothing. Acting like £300 is money to burn! Not everyone managed to survive University life so easily or controlls their finances so well.

It was the in which the poster (or uself) suggested that anyone unabe to save up £300 is useless or stupid. Thats what I found offensive.

I would probably have a very comfortable life if i wasnt saving the £500 a month! But I choose to do that for my benefit!

I have oblivion on my xbox360 and I cant say im too impressed by it. But Oblivion isnt an online game. Its doesnt have to meet any limitations that might cause lagging issues for online play.

You can pump its graphics up as high as you want, and its purely down to your PC to handle it.

I never said making changes to the graphics of GWs was impossible, or hugely difficult. I said that Anet will have done the graphics that way for a reason and that complaining about the graphics of a 2 year old game is a bit weird in my opinion.

Its like you started playing the game 2 years ago, or picked it up knowing it was old. But then complain when you start playing because it doesnt compare to more recent games!

And im not suggesting you do need to be rich to get a decent PC. Im saying that suggesting £300 is nothing to save up is insulting to those who dont find it so easy to make cash. But not everyone can build PCs so easily or understand about prices or components. Some are limited to buying from dixons, or johnlewis or Dell and have to pay more.

We are not complaining of the graphics, I personally am pleased with the graphics. It's just they have been made at better quality but are forced to display on peoples screen at a much lower quality. This to me is frustrating!. I am not asking for a new graphics engine to be created, I am not asking for Anet to make new textures.. everything I and others are asking for have already been made, it requires very little effort on Anets behalf! You obviously don't care about graphics, so there is no need for you to post in this thread, sorry for sounding rude but this is true...

Here is an example of my paragon in an outpost (left) and explorable area (right). My friend took these pictures with the printscreen button, saved them as high quality JPEG's in Adobe Photoshop and sent them to me. No quality has been lost, they are basically bitmap files but smaller in filesize.



Anet spends ages making beautiful armor, and for what? to have it half the time looking like total rubbish (in comparision to what it should look like) ! I don't care what anyone says, I am bothered by this.

/signed, if someones computer can handle it there should be the option to use it.

then you obviously need to find something else to do... your thinking about something so inconsiquential, it means nothing...

With that attitude, games will never improve in the graphics department. Really, it may be minor to you but for me, it's not so minor. I don't expect you to understand, but just know I like my games to look the best they potentially can at the time they were made. Yes it's a 2 year old game, but it supports higher quality textures that could be enabled with a few lines of code, but this option is not available.

I really would like if every character in the outposts could look like the second one in deadmans post. It would be nice to see high end armors as they are intended, rather then as blurry piles of poo.

As for the whole upgrading or buying a new PC, the reason why I stated it was because I am fed up of people saying 'My PC cant handle better graphics so it shouldnt be allowed'.

If you are that concerned about letting other players use higher quality graphics, then you can feel free to upgrade and stop being so envious. If however you are fine with your low end system, dont whine about other players using higher settings if they wish to be able to do so. It doesnt affect your gameplay in the slightest bit.

Sorry, what attitude?

the game is two years old, we've had graphics updates already and i've been surprised by them too...

how many other games have had the updates that Guild wars has? oh and the reason that the low res graphics are in towns and outposts is not a graphics issue, its a latency/lag issue to the server as all that time your in the town or outpost you are in near constant communication to the server (and no, i don't see why its the case, but it also has something to do with having so many people running around at the same time, compared to the 8/16 people in an instance)

good case in point, my system alwys runs around the 100FPS range when in instances or quiet towns... heavy trafic towns like kamadan or lion's arch, my FPS drops sometimes down to between 20 and 30FPS because it is rendering so many people and you want them to change to high res in the towns? even my 8800GTS dual cored system would have issues with it, so no, i don't think its a good idea

I agree it doesnt take a staggering amount of effort to buy a new graphics card, or increase the memory or even buy a new PC these days. It personally got annoyed at the suggestion that £300 is nothing and like its money to burn.

I also agree it wouldnt cause performance issues on the local side because as you say; you can turn the settings down.

I agree the textures are obviously possible of looking better, as evidenced by the textures in instances.

But this is an online game and I still stand by this believe that improving textures in outposts would have some kind of lag effect. Otherwise why would Anet make such an obvious difference with textures in instances and outposts?

I can only assume they must have 2 sets of textures! Those which exist inside instances and those which exist inside outposts! One being more detailed and one being less! One contains less information and the other more.

Im sure you can where im going with this, concerning the sending and recieving of information for the servers!

There is less information to send and recieve inside an instance with 4-16 players and a few 100 creatures. There is more information to send and recieve inside an outpost with 100s of people and NPCs constantly moving in and out of.

But as I've said before! They must have their reasons!

/Im signed for if it can be done.

/But im not signed because I see it having knock on effects and is stand by the fact its a 2 year old game.

A few posts up I said I asked Guild Wars support why the textures have been lowered in outposts and towns. I got a response asking for screenshots. I sent them the 2 paragon shots I have above. I now got a reply...

I replied asking what areas would the performance suffer in e.g server, client, etc. Let's see what they say...

Nice! First reply I have seen like that from the support team. Lets hope they implement this.

I just got a new reply and it's a dissapointment...

nevermind, at least the previous message sounded positive.

I'm tempted to go with "I told you so", but I wont!

I told you so? dude I knew that there would be a performance issue, I never said there wouldn't be.

I'm kidding, notice the tongue!!

Umm hi, are some of you guys actually suggesting the server sends to your computer all of the textures while the game is running? The graphics are stored client-side, the server does not need to know a thing about your graphics options. All the server has to do is send someone's location and the type of armor he or she is wearing. The client then draws the armor based on your graphics options.

I'm pretty sure it wouldn't cause lag, because the graphics are all handled by the client, not the server. The same thing is still going to be sent to the user from the servers. The servers don't send the textures to the client, the textures are already on the client computer. The server just has to tell the client what the other players armor is, and the client handles the textures. All they have to do is have the client load the higher res texture instead of the low res one.

The reason why they have the other players with low res textures is because when the game came out, most graphics cards wouldn't be able to handle loading high res textures for a ton of characters in the same outpost. Today's graphics cards are more than capable of handling 100+ characters with high res textures.

They should have an option to have high res textures for other characters in outposts. That way people like you with lower end computers can still play the game, but people with high end computers can have higher res graphics.

So to sum it up, /signed for having the option for high res textures on everyone.

I do find it frustrating when I'm looking at a friend's new armor and, to me, it looks 10x worse on my computer than on theirs. /signed.

I'm almost certain it won't cause lag either, I just hope this will be implemented. For those who want it implemented too, rate this thread, and email guild wars support about this too.

[email protected]

Cos of course they probably haven't read this thread already and will just ignore the posts as they'll just gum up the already laggy and slow "support" section

*EDIT*

Besides the fact that you'll only get an automated response saying the "problem" is being looked into and then its not a support issue as NCSoft only really deal with support and bug issues for Guild wars, everything else is dealt with by ANet themselves and a support ticket on it would probably be closed straight away

/signed

I wanna show of my armor in high res

I have to agree that emailing support wont really accomplish anything. This isnt a support issue, its not an error with the game or even a problem.

The system has been purposely designed this way for a reason. Emailing them and asking them to fix it as an error wont do anything.

As Lonesumria says, they will have read this, or atleast know its an issue for alot of players. But because its purposely done, they wont put priority on changing it, unless it compromises gameplay.

I expect even the people at Anet who play the game, would like better graphics. Its just something we will have to wait until GW:EN to see if they make any changes.

It would be too unimportant a change to impliment now. I hope they do it, if they can. But id rather they kept on other things for now, as other things are more important (an example being all the changes they just implimented - 17 june 2007).

I'm sure Anet have read this thread, we can do nothing now but wait, it's very unlikely this will be implemented but if it is, I will be the first person to cheer!

I'm going to bump this thread up and give people who haven't seen this thread before a chance to view it.

/signed

I cant see any reason not to offer highend computers highend graphics

Lol... Once again, all the textures are stored locally (as demonstrated by the fact that everyone is modding the textures now). changing the quality wouldnt be sending any more or any less information.

I thought we already have this option, in the option menu?

maybe people want high end PC so they won't lag and can kill more luxon before luxon kill us/me.

I Reckon apart from just visually looking better, 15k armour should provide a little bonus compared to normal armour, just for that bit of extra effort in obtaining it

What effort....? I'm serious here, what effort?