Like, yeah… the lighting sure looks cool… But honestly who cares? All it did was make the game run like crap and is that really what were going to be noticing during normal gameplay? Like are we going to be in shock and awe at all the lighting during a horde in high int shock trooper? Like are we going to gawk at every little maggot that flies out of an enemy when we hit them?
This stuff is cool. But outside of corpo screenshots and stuff… Do players really care?
Sometimes.
No players don’t care about muh realistically rendered weather pattern informed calculated volumetric clouds.
Yes players think the maggots you smack out of poxwalkers are cool. Also theyre just 2D assets so Its low cost.
Computing has gotten cheap so people are doing stupid things with “realism” when getting the “impression” across using a hack was always good enough and remains good enough.
The Marketing Department and the Technophiles. There is a portion of video game players who will always desire a game solely based on it pushing boundaries. But more importantly… the Marketing Department wants Glamorshots. Why? Because, unless you get some rare (measured against the total playerbase) opportunity to play the game hands on on some convention, all you have is Videos and Screenshots to market your game with.
The more awesome the game looks, the more people will be enticed to buy it at release. And that is where you make most of the money initially. After the initial push you still will have these pretty pictures for people that will impulse buy during a sale and everyone that does not read or watch reviews or depends on word of mouth.
I don’t… but the existence and success of titles like Boltgun does speak volumes about how the general player base feels about it. Despite Boltgun being a modern shooter that employs 2.5D graphics, it sold somewhere between 100k and 200k on Steam. So yeah… people care.
I personally think “Gameplay is all” but… you know… i have long accepted to be in the minority.
Despite Boltgun being a modern shooter that employs 2.5D graphics, it sold somewhere between 100k and 200k on Steam. So yeah… people care.
I dont think so. Games like Undertale and other pixel visual games are still extremely popular. Warhammer is also rather niche. With other pixelated games like Duke Nukem still receiving a ton of mod support despite its glaring age. Or even like Starfew Valley, Terraria, or in a more recent example, Tears of the Kingdom. These arnt super visually appealing games but are still immensely popular because of its gameplay. At the end of the day people dont actually care about graphics as much as people like to think they do.
I care, i have a 4090 and 4k monitor so i can play my games at max settings. Darktide is beautiful to look at. It really does make a difference when you are in an intense fight and everything looks super crisp
ngl this argument, is bs
i’ve just picked up Red dead redemtion 2, incredibly beautiful game, and guess what? it runs butter smooth.
i don’t all that much about development but i know that it matters who worked on those systems, some games look like s#it and run like s#it, and then you get stuff that not only runs smooth but is also contender for best looking.
Is it wrong to assume that a game that overloads itself with intricate lighting and fog effects will have more performance issues than those that dont?
Darktide is beautiful to look at.
I wish it was beautiful to play.
It really does make a difference when you are in an intense fight and everything looks super crisp
Wow, so youre telling me that youre not actually focusing on the fight and just looking at al the lighting effects? Whats it like being land locked to Difficulty 1?
Yeah, i dont actually play the game. I just look at the visuals.
Sometimes I just like to walk around and marvel at the graphical spectacle of metal pipes.
“ooh look, this one has some gunk on it!”
And who doesn’t love it when he turns a corner and is met with a lovely concrete wall. Beautiful shades of grey, accentuated with shades of brown.
Steel beams, steel pipes, steel doors, steel grates, steel walkways, truly we are blessed with visual variety on a scale only the new age of technology could’ve brought us.
“OMG IS THAT SAND?!?”
To be fair, Emprah said nothing offensive to go full aggro on him. You asked if anyone likes the poorly optimalized but hi-end graphics, you got your answer. Good for him! Fatshark won’t back down from this chosen path. In the meantime, I’m just happy that I can play the game with minimal settings smoothly.
All those are different Genre and Warhammer hasn’t been Niche since the first Dawn of War was a massive success and “Space Marine” cemented it. Total War Warhammer are the best selling Total War games. And that is another great example. Warhammer 40k Armageddon is an amazing Strategy game, a spiritual successort to Warhammer Epic4000 Final Liberation, and still people barely touched it.
You’d think people go bananas for a strategy game in which you can even command Titans, but the graphics are a turn off for many people.
Receiving support doesn’t say anything about popularity.
And Stardew Valley and Terraria are aimed at a different demographic. Terraria got largely popular because it was cheap and still receives updates for free. Same reason Minecraft is and was super popular, because the games are aimed at a demographic that doesn’t care yet…
Stardew Valley is also aimed at a different demographic. It is aiming for the Animal Crossing Demographic of casual players where a cutsy artstyle is more important than anything else.
You could also mention Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, again different Demographics of Player. Strategy players who will happily eshew graphical fidelity for more processing power for more immersive sim experience under the hood.
But there is a reason i chose Boltgun for my argument. Boltgun has very good reviews, it is a modern style shooter with 2.5D graphics (although some call it a boomer shooter, which i can only assume to mean they have no idea what boomers are or ever played an actual classic shooter at any point in time), with good word of mouth, tied into the “Space Marine” game for which we’ll receive a massively hyped Sequel this year and of course… Warhammer 40k.
Yet despite all of that it sold 1/10th of Darktide.
Numbers don’t lie.
Stardew Valley, Terraria, even Dwarf Fortress do not reach the number of sales of the latest Battlefield or CoD.
Look, i am on your side. I too think graphics don’t matter to much. I actually think a timeless artstyle is better than photorealism that is outdated in 5-10 years, but the numbers simply ain’t suggesting that this is a majority opinion.
I was playing with visual settings and at some point accidentally moved from a high default to middle with xess.
I got an extra 30 fps, but it looked poopypants. I couldn’t pick out any details in the dark spaces apart from PowerPoint grey box outlines. Couldn’t see enemies without green eyes.
Luckily I could reapply the geforce experience defaults. Turns out they’re spot on for me. 2070 super at 1440p and high delivers 60+ fps.
Wasn’t it just! Til that 100+ townsfolk horde rush you and you bring out a flamer and lightning staff at which point it crashes. Oh no, wait, their engine doesn’t have to handle that does it? Guess that’s why it’s butter.
Nice sunset though on that last mountain.
@IshanDeston is right.
L-take from you OP regarding this specific issue. Ever since Casuals Gamers and Big Investors were let into Gaming, it has become very focussed on visual presentation, both in Animation and Processing Effects.
Games with bad visuals get trashed a lot, there is even Gamers now who will not be able to look past the visual representation if they don’t like it, regardless of core gameplay.
So yes, these things obviously do matter. Now more than ever before.
The poor Performance in Darktide is definitely down to two things mostly:
Whereas other games with big masses of enemies such as Dynasty Warriors have only a few active actors at any point (most fighters are inactive and wait to be attacked), Darktide has the AI director spawning hundreds of units in at once. And then each of these individual actors is doing something on their own. It’s all coded in LUA on top of a very old Engine.
I think that’s the main contributor here.
Lack of optimization (such as hardly any usage of culling) doesn’t help, either.
Yes, I love the visuals. I also pay attention to them all the time when playing and actually take time to appretiate them from time to time.
Gotta love the flamer or purge staff on the power out missions 
I run everything on max @3440x1440 with HDR on OLED monitor just for the visuals. I think its awsome! 
The visuals have to fit the game and expectations, so Boltgun is a perfect example, the visuals are important in a different way. Players expected that game to deliver a 90s shooter theme, that was important to the audience, no one expected or wanted Doom Eternal visuals there. If I am playing the next Witcher or TES then I want the game to immerse me in those worlds as much as possible and that means realistic lighting, textures, volumetric fog, weather effects, realistic scale etc.
Here is a good example of a Skyrim city redone in Unreal 5, when I compare this to the one in the actual game, I would find this more immersive and realistic, and what I would expect in the next iterations of Witcher and TES.
You literally just agreed with me on everything i said while thinking you were disagreeing.
L take from you
This reads like a fed post.
