Graphics Pet Peeve

[EHKOS]

I dislike the entire look and feel of the Gamebryo engine. It feels like everything is going to come undone at the seems. I've been playing Fallout 3 again recently, bleh. The way the world is put together is gross. My biggest pet peeve is texture flickers.

 

[necromanzer52]

I'm not sure if it counts, but it really annoys me when I can't read the text in a game on my t.v. Can't they have an option, like Vanquish, for increasing or bolding the text?

What he said.

This only started to become a problem over the last few years. Not sure why, but everyone seemed to decide to make text in games a lot smaller all of a sudden when the current console generation kicked in.

 

[EvilMaggot]

i dont think it counts as a graphic thing since its about sound.. BUT.. if i get into a game with guns or any kind of weapon that can fire.. and when i fire it its absolutely dull and boring... it will always be dull and boring ... THOUGH when a game does it perfect (Hitman, Battlefield 3) WAUW.. when i fire a rocket launcher the entire roof lifts.. now that is important to me.. good sound effects.. graphics... mjeaah.. gameplay first..

 

[CarlsonAndPeeters]

My biggest pet peeve is when games start before the textures finish loading. Not draw distance issues--that I understand--but when Trials: Evolution loads a level and then starts with a bunch of blocky fuzzy textures that quickly fade in; drives me nuts. Just take three more seconds to load the textures before starting the level, I won't notice.

This is totally not a big deal but it is a pet peeve.

 

[Rose and Thorn]

The beards in the Dragon Age: Origins character creation....it killed me a little. It is so broken, you pretty much can't use beards on humans and dwarves without it looking stupid. It would reset the face if you attached the beard, and didn't allow you to customize the face if you have a beard. Also the face reverts to have the cheeks super sucked in, like the man hasn't eaten in monthes. *Xbox 360 version*

 

[DustyDrB]

Pop-in textures for me. I can deal with muddy, low quality textures, but it is incredibly jarring when people and environments morph before my eyes.

 

[WorriedSandwich]

My biggest pet peeve is that people care about it.

Can you imagine what would happen if games put their giant budget for graphics into gameplay or story or art design. I can see why developers do it -it's easy to show off in flashy trailers-, but I cannot understand why 'we gamers' want it (other than for niche hyper-realistic games like racing sims and such). The thirst for better graphics holds games back so much :<

 

[lacktheknack]

Bad texturing.

If I can see the pixels from ten feet away, YOU'VE DONE IT WRONG. This is the main thing I mod in TES.

 

[shrekfan246]

The graphical pet peeve for me is...CLIPPING! Oh god, how it torments me! Fable 3 wasn't a great game, but the clipping is what made me want to punch a hole through my TV, it is unbearable to look at!

It is the sign of lazy design (lol rhyming) Fallout New Vegas pissed me off with it too, where all the pistols clipped with the Courier Duster...how hard is it to fix clipping?

Well, look at how many fantasy RPGs that have weapons clipping through cloaks, or hell, the swords in Assassin's Creed clipping through the ruffly hips of the Assassin's Garb. I think the best part is when you get an oversize weapon and it ends up clipping through the ground. Nice to know these things aren't actually corporeal, game.

OT: I don't really have anything specific... I suppose when a game is attempting to look all hyper-real or whatever and you get wall textures in which you can literally count the pixels.

 

[lacktheknack]

My biggest pet peeve is that people care about it.

Can you imagine what would happen if games put their giant budget for graphics into gameplay or story or art design. I can see why developers do it -it's easy to show off in flashy trailers-, but I cannot understand why 'we gamers' want it (other than for niche hyper-realistic games like racing sims and such). The thirst for better graphics holds games back so much :<

Imagine what would happen? It's already happened. It's called "The Indie Scene".

Also, you cannot understand why gamers want better graphics, but my graphics whore self cannot understand why we WOULDN'T want it. There's no reason we cannot have both.

 

[7moreDead_v1legacy]

+1 for clipping, really winds me up "Hey this thing I am hoping to kill you with is partially sticking through my elbow, lol."

Also 3rd person models that don't adjust for different things eg hand holds certain weapons like a total spazweasel, but the next one fits nicely...

 

[Steeveeo]

Since it hasn't been stated yet, you can fix most screen tearing with an option most commonly labeled "VSync." It might also be any variation of "Vertical Sync," "Vertical Refresh," or similar. Tearing is caused when the computer renders so fast that the GPU starts rendering another frame on top of an incomplete one, creating a seam. VSync will tell the program to wait until the frame is fully outputted to the screen before starting another. Sure, you won't get 500 FPS in your favorite game anymore, but more like 60 or 120 FPS, but that would also be all your monitor is rendering anyway, so it's worth it to turn that on.

As for my biggest graphical pet peeve? I'd have to say that it would be Z-Biasing, or when two textures occupy the same area and its texels fight for the top, causing jagged flickering between the two.

 

[shrekfan246]

The graphical pet peeve for me is...CLIPPING! Oh god, how it torments me! Fable 3 wasn't a great game, but the clipping is what made me want to punch a hole through my TV, it is unbearable to look at!

It is the sign of lazy design (lol rhyming) Fallout New Vegas pissed me off with it too, where all the pistols clipped with the Courier Duster...how hard is it to fix clipping?

Well, look at how many fantasy RPGs that have weapons clipping through cloaks, or hell, the swords in Assassin's Creed clipping through the ruffly hips of the Assassin's Garb. I think the best part is when you get an oversize weapon and it ends up clipping through the ground. Nice to know these things aren't actually corporeal, game.

Indeed, I would have named more examples, but I would have been there forever.

I hate how it is a relatively easy problem to overlook but it bugs the sh*t out of me!
Look at Ranger Jackson from New Vegas for example:

Spoiler: Spoilered for size

His glasses are clipping into his freaking face and his scarf is clipping with his neck! That is just poor design.

To be fair, I don't think I'd really look to Fallout 3 or New Vegas for good, non-buggy design in games. Though that brings me to another point, actually, which is less about "graphics" and more about "aesthetics" (in the loosest sense):
Goddamn strafing animations. All of Bethesda's games up until Skyrim were terrible for this, and literally did not have a diagonally-running animation at all. None. Same exact animations as running directly forward, but you were gliding left or right as well. Ugh. Floaty reloading animations in first-person shooters are a bit annoying too, though not usually enough to put me off of a game.

On the flip-side though, in what little I've played of Assassin's Creed III so far I have to admit that I absolutely love the attention to detail they're put in the animations. I normally don't really care one way or the other about them, but AC3 has fantastic animation quality.

 

[WorriedSandwich]

My biggest pet peeve is that people care about it.

Can you imagine what would happen if games put their giant budget for graphics into gameplay or story or art design. I can see why developers do it -it's easy to show off in flashy trailers-, but I cannot understand why 'we gamers' want it (other than for niche hyper-realistic games like racing sims and such). The thirst for better graphics holds games back so much :<

Imagine what would happen? It's already happened. It's called "The Indie Scene".

But those are (generally) low budget games. There aren't enough big budget games that really invest into creating fun gameplay, good characters and/or good art design, like Portal 2 or Super Mario Galaxy.

The harsh reality is that they probably don't sell well enough though, since the CoD/Battlefield crowd is content with playing safe, decently fun games (which is good for them, don't get me wrong. I don't despise them as 'casuals' or something).

Also, you cannot understand why gamers want better graphics, but my graphics whore self cannot understand why we WOULDN'T want it. There's no reason we cannot have both.

But there IS a reason we can't have both. Rare exceptions aside, only so much money and time can be spent on a single game (i.e. your name is Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft/Valve/Blizzard).

 

[IamLEAM1983]

My personal peeve looks like it's fading away, lately. I'm glad for that.

I was getting sick of shooters focusing on inhuman tree-neck types who don't so much talk as they grunt and grouse their way through awful pathos designed by a six year-old on a bad fanfic binge. I absolutely freaking loathed the Gears of War series because of that. Real soldiers are not football quarterbacks stuck in a grunge take on SPEHSS MAHREEN armor!

And, yeah. Space Marines too. Fucking hate the Imperium of Man in 40K. It feels indulgent and vapid.

I mostly have it in for any game that's designed by a committee that woefully misfires for what "the cool kids like", and that ends up packing a whole lotta 'tude in a project, and about zero substance.

 

[WorriedSandwich]

I mostly have it in for any game that's designed by a committee that woefully misfires for what "the cool kids like", and that ends up packing a whole lotta 'tude in a project, and about zero substance.

FUSE will be right up your alley then.

 

[lacktheknack]

My biggest pet peeve is that people care about it.

Can you imagine what would happen if games put their giant budget for graphics into gameplay or story or art design. I can see why developers do it -it's easy to show off in flashy trailers-, but I cannot understand why 'we gamers' want it (other than for niche hyper-realistic games like racing sims and such). The thirst for better graphics holds games back so much :<

Imagine what would happen? It's already happened. It's called "The Indie Scene".

But those are (generally) low budget games. There aren't enough big budget games that really invest into creating fun gameplay, good characters and good art design, like Portal 2 or Super Mario Galaxy. The harsh reality is that they probably don't sell well enough though, since the CoD/Battlefield crowd is content with playing safe, decently fun games (which is good for them, don't get me wrong. I don't despise them as 'casuals' or something).

Also, you cannot understand why gamers want better graphics, but my graphics whore self cannot understand why we WOULDN'T want it. There's no reason we cannot have both.

But there IS a reason we can't have both. Rare exceptions aside, only so much money and time can be spent on a single game.

You don't need a ton of money to come up with ideas.

You need marginally more to make coded content (ie. story, gameplay), and you need ONE decent artist to make an excellent artstyle.

The only things that cost ubermoney is realistic graphics and marketing.

That's why AAA games are invariably heavily marketed with excellent graphics.

Let's look at a game like, say, Mirror's Edge. It had a pretty standard story, but nifty gameplay, different artstyle, beautiful graphics and stylish presentation. Guess which of those cost BY FAR the most money?

Do you really think that "moar money" would have more than marginally improved the gameplay of, say, Borderlands? No. That's silly. Sure, they could add more options, but in the end, the whole point of Borderlands is "shoot the things, collect the items" and all the "options" are just dressing. It wouldn't have massively improved the story, either, because the game wasn't about the story, and they needed to seat the game with its audience before really digging into the lore. Also, an artstyle is only as good as its graphics. Imagine Okami with massive clipping issues, disappearing textures, and giant pixels.

For a perfect example, check out Dwarf Fortress. It is supported entirely by donations, and has the best damned gameplay, scope, concept and execution I've seen in a long while. The graphics are non-existent. No amount of money would improve any of it beyond the lack of graphics, except maybe the menu design.

(OK, "no graphics" isn't fair. They make crayon drawings and send them to donors, so I guess that counts.)

The point is, games cost tens of millions of dollars to make nowadays, entirely because of graphics/marketing. To say "We should have games with that size of budget but without good graphics" is really, really wasteful. If anything, you're only going to ludicrously up the marketing budget. In that $40,000,000 game, there's no way they spent more than $6-$7,000,000 on actual game-related stuff, all of which an indie can do just as well for a tenth of the price.

 

[WorriedSandwich]

Snipping all this stuff

You don't need a ton of money to come up with ideas.

You need marginally more to make coded content (ie. story, gameplay), and you need ONE decent artist to make an excellent artstyle.

The only things that cost ubermoney is realistic graphics and marketing.

That's why AAA games are invariably heavily marketed with excellent graphics.

Let's look at a game like, say, Mirror's Edge. It had a pretty standard story, but nifty gameplay, different artstyle, beautiful graphics and stylish presentation. Guess which of those cost BY FAR the most money?

Do you really think that "moar money" would have more than marginally improved the gameplay of, say, Borderlands? No. That's silly. Sure, they could add more options, but in the end, the whole point of Borderlands is "shoot the things, collect the items" and all the "options" are just dressing. It wouldn't have massively improved the story, either, because the game wasn't about the story, and they needed to seat the game with its audience before really digging into the lore. Also, an artstyle is only as good as its graphics. Imagine Okami with massive clipping issues, disappearing textures, and giant pixels.

For a perfect example, check out Dwarf Fortress. It is supported entirely by donations, and has the best damned gameplay, scope, concept and execution I've seen in a long while. The graphics are non-existent. No amount of money would improve any of it beyond the lack of graphics.

(OK, "no graphics" isn't fair. They make crayon drawings and send them to donors, so I guess that counts.)

The point is, games cost tens of millions of dollars to make nowadays, entirely because of graphics/marketing. To say "We should have games with that size of budget but without good graphics) is really, really wasteful. If anything, you're only going to ludicrously up the marketing budget. In that $40,000,000 game, there's no way they spent more than $6-$7,000,000 on actual game-related stuff, all of which an indie can do just as well for a tenth of the price.

As for your example, Borderlands 2 is (to my knowledge, haven't played it) a game that forewent(?) competing on graphics (instead adopting a good artstyle) and spent a relatively large ammount of cash on creating fun, streamlined cooperative gameplay (again, just echoing what I've heard).

On the other hand, we have a game like Skyrim which looks very pretty but has, in my oppinion, terribly boring gameplay. I think it would have really helped if they had spent some time and resources going over the combat and saying 'hey, how can we elevate this above 'pump damage into these enemies that all follow the simple tactic of running at you with swords or claws or standing on the sideline spamming arrows or fireballs'?' Then, they could have focused on the AI or combat mechanics. See also: Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

Basically, what I'm saying is that yes I do believe that pumping the money otherwise reserved from competing on graphics into gameplay/story does make for a significantly better experience. If you see what some games do with level, enemy and combat design, AI, art styles, music, sound design, story and characters, then it dissapointing to play a beautiful but boring game like Skyrim.

But you're right in saying graphics cost way more than the other aspects. My problem is just that games with a limited budget try to compete on graphics when they can spend that money better elsewhere. And that, if they do make that choice, review sites blast them for mediocre graphics and detract about a full point despite how fun the gameplay is, and how much that sacrife was worth it.