Difference of Graphics Discussion

I just found that pic and I really find the graphics of Line age 2 awesome, in some kinds the grade of details is alot higher, then in GW.

imo, the Character, Armor and Weapon Design in LA2 looks alot more epic, then in GW, but LA2 is older than Guild Wars, but both games are produced by NCSoft.

Imo this gives me somehow to think, especially about GW2 for future.
I hope really the graphics of GW2 will be better withthe new engine, that they surpass the graphics of LA2.

Hmm, just look at this picture of LA2

http://www.gameogre.com/lineage2c.jpg

Isn't this an very nice picture of a Paladin ? I would really love, the class design of the warrios in GW would look such cool.
So more I compare the Designings of thsoe both games, so more i really think, that the Designs of GW looks compared to LA2 somewhat of boring or ugly, that I could cry that LA2 doesn't work like GW

Look only at the SHIELD, how insanly detailed it is and what do we have ?

THIS




they get epic looking weapons like this



and we in GW ?, we must be happy with such boring crap like this:

http://www.ackadia.com/guildwars/ima...d-grognars.jpg
http://www.guildwarsevolution.com/pi...hadowblade.jpg
http://www.guildwarsevolution.com/pi...ord/spatha.jpg
.... endless list

the only somethign epic weapons that exist yet in the game imo are the celestial and zodiac weapons, but thoses are naturally not "epic" enough for the Hall of Monuments XD

When I look at this Enemy here
http://vnmedia.ign.com/l2vault.ign.c...reatures-1.jpg

The whole Design looks more fearsome, than anythign else in GW i've seen yet

that is cool character design:


Would only the warriors in GW look such awesome and not like fat 2m bull dog bodyguards .. like a fusion of an man and a big furniture piece XD

You want look like an awesome, fearsome Dark Knight ? In LA2 no problem


in GW is somethign like this impossible, because imo GW's game design sux compared to LA2

here again an example, how detailed this game is versus GW


This is an awesome fiery fireblade:


NOT THAT !!


this there is only a bad joke, even compared to the much better looking fiery dragon sword

, which is again compared to the design and the graphics of the older LA2 a heavy bad joke, there does even the Axe look much better
http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/7608/screen1sj6.png

look only at the water...

ever seen such high grade of detail in GW waters ?

Again an awsome warrior, that shows really cruel, how childish versus that the warriors of GW are designed

Not to meantion the weapon design, that looks really epic and cool

The game has even FMV Sequences...


i hope really that they will find into the game too at GW2 ...sequenzes are ever, regardless if mmo or offline the absolute most interestign parts of the whole genre !!, where the graphic engine really heats up and shows all ,what it can...

ever seen such a high grade of details in towns of GW ?


No ?, thats because only your character gets shown at best possible pixels, everythign else around is pixeld like hell !! ( i want not to say it again, but when i look at this picture, every noob can see this awesome character design...)


I wish there would be such a nice heaven to look at, in GW
http://korineko.free.fr/L2/trio_infernal.jpg

awesome weapon design again ...
http://next.videogame.it/forum/img/s...gini.shot4.jpg

that makes me really cry T.T


again, absolute godly character design ...




THAT are really epic weapons that let a character look mighty !!!
http://www.xmaestro.com/storage/200706242200_12_20.jpg

they have evenl animals at a realistic scale, there, a wolf that really looks like a wolf and not like a huge monster wolf of GW
http://image.space.rakuten.co.jp/lg0...5cezik5zj.jpeg
http://gw.onlinewelten.com/images/PetGuide/Wolf.gif << GW
==========

Now I will end this, Im now really interested in your opininos, your thoughts about this.
What do you think about the graphics of older games by NCSoft, ie. LA2 compared to GW, what do you think in general about the low detail factor in GW ? What would you love to see in GW2 ?.

Describe your dream graphics for GW2 for example ^^

I got shocked, as i saw, how much better Lineage 2 looks, then GW very often and how much better the Designings are in LA2, not so boring like in GW, more epic... there the characters really look like "mighty" heroes or even villains (the dark knight picture above)

this gave me all really to think about Guild Wars 2 and how i personally expect GW1 to be improved in kind of graphics.
But enough said, now I want hear your stuff ^^

NCSoft is the publisher of both Lineage and GuildWars, but those two games do not share the same teams. And IMO, the landscapes and environments in GW blow anything in Lineage out of the water.

It's already been stated that the visual quality of GW2 is going to be much higher than the current game.

GW is cartoonish. Have you seen Asura concept art compared to what they are now? I am a bit disappointed about some of the things we have, but it's more realistic. Also... GW doesn't have monthly payments... does LA2? [I really don't know the answer to this.]

EDIT: Both wolves look like crap.

Well that "awesome warrior" is actually a monster. Although L2 is a beautiful game (character model wise) only if you play it will you understand its graphical limits. But yeah, I'm not much of a fan of "anime" style armors, I like more of a realistic look for armor. If I were to find a great midway point for my dream graphics for GW2...

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/822/822535/imgs_2.html Aion Tower of Eternity

Lineage 2 has a very heavy anime feel to it, hence the big, heavy, jagged weapons and "pretty" armors. Guild Wars tends to lean more on a realistic feel of it all.

This would be different if LA2 wasn't a terrible game, though.

One's free and one's not. You make the connection.

@ The last picture in first post

Poor thing, she can barely fit into her string shirt

if now with or without monthly fee should not be now the factor of deciding, which game is better in kind of graphics and design imo.

Ya, i've seen the concepts about the Asuras and how they look now in the end (but that doesn't even show us, how they will look finally in GW2)

Sure, both games have different develper teams, GW has Anet, LA2 an other team of an other firm. But in the end both teams surely worked with similar kinds of graphic engines. It isn't so, that there are like millions of different graphic engines out there and LA2 is the older game of both, there you can naturally somehow expect, that Anet could work with better, more latest engines, than the developoers of LA2 could, as they have worked on developing LA2.
I doesn't say, that LA2 does look in general overall better, than GW...
Both games have their parts, where sometimes side a looks better, and sometimes side B looks better in similar things, thats normal, unlike you try to compare GW with WoW rofl, there the result is from the start on clear, that GW looks in all things better XD lol

I know, that GW2 will naturally get some kind of "face lifting", i say only for me personally, that this kind of character design, weapon design and so on and naturally the higher grade of detail are things, thta make LA2 look better in my opinion, than GW and that those things are factors, i would like to get improved in GW2 ^^

hmm, further, want hear more opinions/thoughts ^^

PS: have to go sleep, look tomorrow again in here XD

All i know is that i dont have lag, and i imagine that with greater details of graphics that that will come, heck even with less details in other games i get constant lag and disconect.

While the characters look awsome and the weapons in L2 compared to GW the background looked just the same. I know nothing of L2 other than what you show, and t does look better detailed but again i wouldnt want to sacrifice good connection for better graphics.


Also i have seen a lot of concept art for GW and it looks just as awesome. this obviously gets tonned down in transference to the game as the engine doesnt cope with the details.

With GW2 hopefully the engine will cope with much more, but also i hope i can successfully play the game

Also to note: It doesn't look like the models in LA2 have any sort of shading to them. What I mean by that is it doesn't look like they have any shine or gleam to the armors or weapons. Hard to tell with screenshots, though, I'll check some vids.

My understanding of the situation is that GW was developed to be playable on as many rigs as possible - the game can play one DX8.

Trust me when I say that Lineage 2 looks great on a high end rig, better than great even, and is next to completely unplayable on a dialup connection - been there tried that. Also the movement (character) in L2 is nowhere near as smooth as the animation of characters in GW.

Yes, L2 looks shiny in high res pics however there is 1) a different style of art, and 2) some other "quality" issues that plague it.

Ick, it looks to sugary for me.
That and looks like... Zelda type cell animation and I find thats crud.

I'm rather sure Lineage 2 has spec maps, but it's indeed hard to relay with flat stills.

As to L2 and GW2 sharing engines, they are using different ones. And the difference in graphics doesn't come from the engines necessarily, but rather from art direction and style choices. L2 is heavy on decorative and ornate elements, evident all over their armor designs. GW is "cleaner" and less cluttered.

However, I could put up some Ritualist designs and screenshots, and they look just as good, if not better, than some of that L2 stuff :]

I don't know what people are going on about. Lineage is ONE word. It's referred to as L2, not LA2.

As for the graphics, L2 has always been the most visually stunning MMO on the market. Not much can really be said about the gameplay though.

The graphics of Guild Wars while quite pretty on release, are obviously becoming dated. It still looks pretty, but in comparison to a lot of the newer games coming out, it's showing its age. Unfortunately with EotN, ArenaNet decided to go with more a cartoony (WoW-ish if I may be as bold to say) look than the realistic one they had persisted over the previous 3 chapters. I do hope this isn't carried over to GW2.

Also, as stated before, NCSoft published Guild Wars while ArenaNet actually designed and created it. Lineage was designed, created and published by NCSoft.

Guild Wars used an engine Arenanet developed on their own. Lineage 2 used the Unreal Engine 2.0.

To me, GW is focused much more on realism then other fantasy games, such as l2. Weapons are more....mundane, armor is more practial (not protective, see: ele female) then massive spikes jutting from everywhere, and everything has less of a dramatic flair.

Personally, I like the massive blades, unrealistic armor, and other non-real items.

You are wrong. lol j/k

Well, graphics will be better in GW2. The graphics shown above are impressive in their own way, but I think ANet can do better.

Armor and weapons, I prefer realism. I like armor that looks like efficient armor; that looks like it protects the character, but I hate spikes and other florid embellishments.

Look, the GW PvP system (as originally conceived) required different design choices.

In GW, there were multiple HA maps where the designers were attempting to provide lag-free PvP on maps with up to 40-48 players (original HoH and Burial Mounds respectively). And I have to hand it to them - in the early days of GW, play was remarkably lag-free.

By contrast, L2 is designed as more of a traditional MMORPG; the upshot is that it's optimized for graphical performance at the cost of requiring better hardware/internet connection to get decent performance. This is a function of business model - it's assumed that if you're willing to pay $15/mo for the game, you've got a solid rig and connection already, and that you upgrade the rig regularly.

One makes different design choices depending on the model; code is optimized differently! The GW design team has subsequently made a significant number of decisions which have redirected the objective from lag-free, huge-number-of-players play towards better graphics for a variety of reasons. One is the reason you point out - that better graphics yield competitive advantage. Naturally, the GW team can't improve the graphics as efficiently as they could if they'd created a graphics-centered engine such as that of L2 due to the underlying design decisions. It's to be expected that the graphics of a game like GW will fall behind those of a game like L2 over time as a result.

IMO, chasing better graphics at the cost of performance was misguided on the part of the GW dev team. However, I can't see their marketing figures. All I can tell you is that doing so contributed to the demise of advanced PvP, and that in the effort to be all things to all people, the dev team sacrificed some of the elements that made GW unique and truly great IMO.

First of all, MMO's don't succeed on graphics only.
Second of all, some of the OP's images from L2 are displaying things that some never will get. Plus the OP doesn't even seem to know the game.

Calling Demonic set for godly.. its a noob set, stats wise you would prefer to use the green Karmian set instead.

The Gladiators (it is not a Dark Avanger and neither a Shilien Templar) private server duals are highly enchanted, I guess around +12.
If you know the calculation formular used to break weapons with enchants, you will know that only the most adena owning player would even dare to try this.
Again those dual don't exist on retail.

The Dark Elf with that big 2 hander (Demonic Sword Zariche) is in bad troubles.
Once you get it your a server wide PvP target, even with a nice little dot on the global map and an announcement yelled out about it.
That is not a sword you can own, its an quest item that can drop everywhere.
I had it once on my Spellhowler, I think I lived for max 10 minutes.

Same goes for hero weapons, you actually don't own them for ever.

Second of all, the OP could:
1. have found detailed GW skins, since he wants to compare
2. and them taken with higher resolution/rendering options and external app to screen capture.

GW has lot of detail in outposts and it has such water (at least I do, forcing my Nvidia to provide more details)
We got nice armor and weapon skins to.
You should see the Tormented Shield rendered with absolute max in game, the light animation is a sight for itself.
Plus that the explorable areas look far better in GW then they do in L2.

L2's engine is a mix of U2 and their own, to make it work for its purpose.
Another thing that was a huge a problem with L2 (I don't know if it is fixed), was a memory leak in the game client engine.

Anyway L2 is a nice looking game, but it doesn't look better or worse then GW.

And no, lag has nothing to do with the client graphics, that is something your computer handles internal.
Lag comes from:
- Badly optimized database and calls to the database.
- If someone messed a code up in the server files so that it loops.
- If you got a real slow connection.

As for requirements for L2, you don't need the newest high end pc to run it, but you will prefer to have more then 56k.


PS. I find it a rude trieng to down the GW graphics like this on a GW fansite forum.
If you think you can do better, go and apply to a game company and proof it.
That is at least the minimum you should do before slapping something like this in the face of the artists and designers.

Yes to the high resolution and level of detail of L2 armor.

But a definitive no to their anime style. I know some of you love it, but I am an older player and find this exaggerated style with oversized swords and boobs annoying.

GW has a good mixture of european looks and anime influences. Not too extreme, which is nice.

Does not mean they could not make use of a better engine (GW2) or make some better weapon skins, agreed.

GW2 should offer more options and choices for high-end hardware, not just limit the design to average systems.

Shiny, but the anime style doesn't do it for me really.

I recently upgraded to a quad core with an Nvidia 8800 370meg card and having played various MMOs including WoW, Archlord & RF Online I can say that Guild Wars knocks all three of those into a cocked hat for environment graphics. It did even when I had my old card but now.... wow. EoTN's terrain is just gorgeous, no contest IMO.

I guess it's a case of priorities but I'd far rather be wandering a beautiful landscape than dragging a sword the length of my own body which I couldn't possibly lift and have my female characters look like they actually have room for their internal organs.

As long as GW2 at least matches the current GW standard of graphics, I don't care what other fancy-looking games are out there.

Too many games rely on fancy graphics as their main selling point. That's why Microsoft and Sony focused on specs, graphics/processing power etc for their latest consoles - so we could play "new" versions of the *yawn* same old games and franchises on them... just with fancier graphics. Nintendo is trouncing them both with the Wii - because instead of joining the graphics arms race, they added something NEW and FUN to the GAMEPLAY. I think there's a lesson to be learned there - graphics quality isn't so important after all.

Anyway - even if they aren't the most jaw-dropping, GW graphics are still great and atmospheric... the gameplay is great... and it works on low spec PC's. Better graphics would be cool, but not if it's at the expense of gameplay, development time, and supporting people who don't have the latest and greatest PC technology, or internet connection.

Gameplay first, graphics second!

And whoever thinks GW graphics are cartoonish, it's not that bad... take a look at WoW - now THAT's cartoonish, childishly so, straight out of Disney...

OP, run L2 on your PC, and take some screenshots. Compare that to the hi-res pic and see what you think.

Going overboard for next-gen graphics would probably have been a little silly for a game that is aimed at people who don't want to pay subscription fees. I suspect many of us are also not willing to overhaul our PC's each year - I know I'm not.

Do we really want a GW that requires multiple cores, 2 gigs of ram (minimum) and premium video card, no older than 6 months? Then find the game takes 5 minutes to load each map, with pre-rendering and what not?

That's the nightmare direction of PC games, AFAIC. They never even turn out to be worth the investment - with all the time/money going into eye-candy, you end up with a vapid, pale imitation of something you were playing last year.

Multicore is the future, why should it not be widely supported by 2009? 2GB of RAM is so cheap, you could kill people with it right now. Do you think the competetion sleeps? GW2 HAS to go beyond the current graphical capabilities of GW1.

It's not like GW2 would require you to have the latest hardware to be decently playable. They definitely know that GWs rather low requirements are an attractive "feature".. It just might offer more options for those who have more.

If you run a P4 with 1GB Ram in 2009, you should overthink if you're really a gamer, even when it's casual.

Of course I'm not saying that GW2 shouldn't go beyond GW1 - I mean't that I think ANet got GW1 completely right, in terms of the hardware demands it makes (or rather, *doesn't* make), and I hope GW2 doesn't end up going completely the other way.

It may seem odd, but I think one of the reasons I still play GW is because it fires up so damn quickly. All other games I play suffer from tedious loading times. It's also nice that I can run it on any of my systems and not just the most powerful.

I'd say multicore is already on us really. I bought a chip yesterday (for my second machine) and the online store I bought it from had core 2 duo chips from 1.8 to 2.13 for £60 - £100. That's peanuts compared to what they were six months ago. Most new machines already ship with core 2 duo as a base standard.

Offtopic - I'm disappointed that GW has no multicore support already. I have to reset the affinity in the task manager if I want to guarantee I don't crash while playing, every time I fire it up. Annoying really, I buy a bunch of components that make the game look beautiful and it crashes because of it.

I want that 2 handed sword (second pictures there) !!! Why can't we have 2H-swords.....

I think that most of the graphics look better than the GW graphics. It would be cool to have more skins and better looking armor, but they will focus on gw2(making money) than on an older game (We have your money already).

Maybe the so-so graphics in gw1 will make the graphics of gw2 look that much more awsome(eye candy) that they will sell more copies of the game. Who knows they think...

Quote:

Originally Posted by kazjun One's free and one's not. You make the connection.

We're sorry, but your call has been disconnected.

^ oh that look nice, Faer. How is it when compare to this? Gotta give it a try, I think.

It's, uh...

Well... Pretty crappy, I guess, if you are a hardcore GW fan. It's lots like L2, except with a better party system, and various other features that are pretty nifty for a free game to have. Still pretty grindy, but hey, what MMO isn't?

L2 looks great on screenshots, but their animations are pathetic.

The run cycles are awful, theres no weight to their step. Their attacks are all about particle effects and flashy showboating.

I much prefer the nitty gritty hack and slash animations of Guild Wars. My personal favorite is the Dervish and Assasin attack animation sets. Beautiful and elegant and realistic (well...in comparison).

I fail to see how L2 is at all 'anime' style.

Nail on the head there, as usual.

I'd say if anything the game Guild Wars 2 needs to compete with in terms of environments and gritty realism will be Age of Conan. It's closer in style at least, and what's been shown so far is impressive but I haven't seen much of the characters or their animations.

WoW is looking tired graphically, but it's animations are very fluid although there's a fair amount of showboating and unecessarily large weaponry in that as well.

Soul Calibur? Devil May Cry?

The proportions of the face, body and style of the posture and hair falls into the realm of "realistic" anime style.

Guild Wars faces do not fall into "anime style", although they do use the long torso proportion (measure the length of your character's neck, its not realistic at all)

Click this link, and tell me you don't see anything 'anime' about it. I've watched my friend play it for a while, it's definitely anime-style.

Now, not that I have a problem with anime, in fact, I watch many different ones on a regular basis, I just prefer my RPG to be a little more realistic-looking. The realistic art of GW was one of the major factors that pulled me to it. Of course, the lack of any real sense of role play is kind of a drag, and one of the things I hope is enhanced in GW2.

i've played both L2 and GW. GW, while lacking the flashy graphics of L2, is a much more refined game than L2.

as many have already said, L2 is a very primitive game beneath the flashy graphics. the animations are very poor and repetitive. the landscape is essentially one dimensional with changes in elevation only. it functions on click to move, but lacking pretty much all pathing. combat is very clumsy, because it lacks a real targetting system.

essentially, L2 is a game to look pretty in, while GW is a game that can be played.

I think Guild Wars can easily look much more amazing with a better lighting system, and normal mapping (as optional, high end features), maybe some displacement baking in the terrain to smooth it out (by that i mean make it more rough).