19 replies to this topic

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

So I was looking back over some old MWO videos from about 3 years ago and remembering the old times and I wonder why PGI absolutely destroyed the beautiful particle effects they had. LRMs back in the day looked so perfect and the spiraling with artemis was the best. Even SRMs had certain spread patterns that made them look pretty great. I remember that when you shot an enemy early on you'd see holes in the armor and internals, now the paint just chips away. Atlases had glowing eyes, and shading looked great, and muzzle flashes and impact effects were much fuller, and forest colony had a tunnel... and I just want it back .

Why did PGI nerf graphics? They could have just had the low setting actually mean something more, what we have now could have been medium setting, and what we had back then would be ultra.

I know the official reason for removing it was that old computers couldn't run it well, but that's why I ask why didn't they just leave high quality alone and add a lower quality low mode. I've always loved particle effects and worked on hundreds of them myself and I absolutely loved the art that was the quality put into the old ones, it is sad new players will not experience them.

[Kasumi Sumika]

Achieve with CryEngine.™

CryEngine usually can have good graphic but the optimization is not good. Hence maybe why they degrading the graphic for more stable performance and more people will be playing with more broader system specs.

[Champion of Khorne Lord of Blood]

Kasumi Sumika, on 08 February 2017 - 09:02 AM, said:

Achieve with CryEngine.™

CryEngine usually can have good graphic but the optimization is not good. Hence maybe why they degrading the graphic for more stable performance and more people will be playing with more broader system specs.

They've catered too heavily to people who can't handle lowering their graphics in options though by entirely removing the option to turn your graphics up to as high as it once was though. They should allow those who have high performance computers to experience higher quality at the cost of performance if they choose to.

[Coolant]

i don't notice any difference cause I never had particle effects higher that Low...some of us don't have super high-end systems (but wish I did).

[cazidin]

Dakota1000, on 08 February 2017 - 09:12 AM, said:

They've catered too heavily to people who can't handle lowering their graphics in options though by entirely removing the option to turn your graphics up to as high as it once was though. They should allow those who have high performance computers to experience higher quality at the cost of performance if they choose to.

It's... almost like Crytek was an expensive mistake.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

now we have 12 vs 12 and Dropships ..in the Time we have many Problems with effects...HPG and the smoke-freezes ...each effect have bad effects of the server Performance ..its not a clientbased Game like BF or CoD

Edited by Old MW4 Ranger, 08 February 2017 - 09:33 AM.

[Mudhutwarrior]

All for having the game look really good but there is that crowd that degrades for advantage which forces a lot of people to think they have to play that way too. I for one am not going to blame PGI for that and with my graphics cranked I think its close to what it once was. its a minor issue to me.

[FireStoat]

The game is more heavily reliant on single-core processing power than anything else. Many, many players use gaming computers with AMD multi-core processors or i5 Intel processors that were created on a budget, and then add a good graphic card to the mix. This works very well on other games, but this simply isn't one of them.

[B0oN]

Is it possible to give players the choice to select between one of two "shaderpacks" ("oldskool look" vs. "newschool streamlined look") to give both options to the players ?

[Vxheous]

Coolant, on 08 February 2017 - 09:28 AM, said:

i don't notice any difference cause I never had particle effects higher that Low...some of us don't have super high-end systems (but wish I did).

I have a high-end system and I still leave particles on low. MWO in cryengine is horribly optimized, and particles slow any system to a crawl.

[Averen]

The old shaders were IIRC a bit hacky, and they switched them for a more dynamic system that looked worse. Similar the old SRM/LRM just didn't play right with gameplay and hit detection.

Of course often because of MWO's technical issues (performance is still bad), but I'll rather take some fps and less lag over graphics.

----

One thing that really bothers me is 12v12. It's less fun than 8v8, less room for individual play, leading to more zerging, and was an ugly kick to the games performance.

I miss 8v8, PGI plox add mode :/

[Ex Atlas Overlord]

FireStoat, on 08 February 2017 - 11:09 AM, said:

The game is more heavily reliant on single-core processing power than anything else. Many, many players use gaming computers with AMD multi-core processors or i5 Intel processors that were created on a budget, and then add a good graphic card to the mix. This works very well on other games, but this simply isn't one of them.

If this were true, my CPU would max out even one of it's cores.....and it doesn't even come close.

[Sgt Ironballs]

Missing the big obvious - it took more PGI resources to custom model damage effects. They made thereservations cost/mech release much better for them by skipping to damage decals. It also costs money optimize the game, and they can't charge for that, see also broken IK and the delay there.

[TELEFORCE]

The upgrade that made the biggest impact on MWO's performance was going from an AMD Phenom II 965 overclocked to 3.7 GHz to an Intel i5-6600k at its stock 3.5 GHz. That CPU swap had the greatest effect on performance.

The second biggest upgrade I made was from a factory-overclocked MSI GTX 260 to a factory-overclocked MSI GTX 760.

These two components combined allow me to run high settings and keep my frame rates above 70 FPS.

But of course the game can use a lot more optimization.

Edited by TELEFORCE, 09 February 2017 - 03:55 AM.

[Tristan Winter]

Let's go over the list:

• Better damage textures than we have today.
  
• Better looking missile animations / paths
  
• Better looking heat vision. (It was OP, but it could have been balanced by adjusting values at different ranges, etc)
  
• Better particle effects (can't testify here, I was on a potato computer back in the day)
  
• Inverse kinematics. Still not in the game.
  
• Some maps were arguably much better looking.
  
• HUD was far less cluttered and garish
  
• Minimap was arguably both prettier and had better readability
  
• Atlas glowing eyes (which are still used in promos sometimes, because they look so cool)

Anything else?

Old MW4 Ranger, on 08 February 2017 - 09:32 AM, said:

now we have 12 vs 12 and Dropships ..in the Time we have many Problems with effects...HPG and the smoke-freezes ...each effect have bad effects of the server Performance ..its not a clientbased Game like BF or CoD

Yet another argument to have 8v8

[Black Ivan]

CPU and GPU impact can be quite big. Other problem is that PGI can not or will not optimize the Cry Engine

[LordNothing]

Kasumi Sumika, on 08 February 2017 - 09:02 AM, said:

Achieve with CryEngine.™

CryEngine usually can have good graphic but the optimization is not good. Hence maybe why they degrading the graphic for more stable performance and more people will be playing with more broader system specs.

optimization level: antique. it may have been optimized for the core 2 quad i was running when crysis came out. but it most certainly is not optimized for my 4790k or my gtx750ti or any of the newer api versions aside from some slapped together compatibility layers that dont quite work all the way.

[Mystere]

Old MW4 Ranger, on 08 February 2017 - 09:32 AM, said:

now we have 12 vs 12 and Dropships ..in the Time we have many Problems with effects...HPG and the smoke-freezes ...each effect have bad effects of the server Performance ..its not a clientbased Game like BF or CoD

Huh? Visually rendering the environment a client function and not a server one. The server just has to logically model it.

[Rhialto]

If only PGI had worked at improving graphices over the years... it really begin to look aged now.

Wish they had put same energy and work in updating graphics as they did with new skills tree.

I still enjoy playing it at highest settings and of course in 3D.

[Anjian]

This game has some of the worst textures I have seen on a game this decade.

Unanimously, the worst rendering of foilage, especially in the emerald map in FW. This is augmented by the horrible, horrible color pallet especially the greens.

The worst depiction of snow ever, in the Boreal map used in FW. It looks me like latex paint spilled over hills made of paper mache. On the other hand, the way they depicted snow and winter on Polar and the reworked Frozen city are far superior. So I guess they made up for the incompetence in Boreal with the excellent work on Polar and Frozen II.

Edited by Anjian, 09 February 2017 - 08:19 PM.