Cross-gen paranoia. (Aka, CoD: Black Ops III is cross-gen.)

Ambient_Malice

New member
Sep 22, 2014
836
0
0
It seems to me a lot of gamers have a very skewed view of their favorite console's hardware capabilities and feel a sense of resentment if developers are able to make a half-decent port of a game to an older platform. It often carries a bitter accusation that the game was somehow "held back" by older hardware, regardless of evidence for or against such an idea.

This paranoia that a developer's "creative vision" will be compromised by the existence of an (often outsourced) port isn't *totally* without merit (executive meddling is a thing), but it assumes too much based on too little evidence. If a game is even vaguely linear, the automatic accusation is those darn older consoles are responsible. It's the console version of PC gamers blaming consoles for everything. It's like being a GC or Xbox fan back in the day and blaming everything you don't like about gaming on "that darn PS2 with its weak hardware holding us baaaack!" Tony Hawk 3 can't possibly be good because it had a PS1/N64 port.

Black Ops 1 was on the Wii. A console weaker than the original Xbox. Yet you didn't see people complaining about "compromised artistic vision" in their droves.
 

Supernova1138

New member
Oct 24, 2011
408
0
0
CoD runs on pretty much the same engine it did eight years ago and is pretty much the same damn game over and over again - small numbers of players playing multiplayer deathmatch on relatively small maps. Like the yearly iteration of sports games that contain roster updates and little else, it's one of the few types of games that can linger on the previous generation for a while. As the series has so little innovation going on in it, being on the 7th generation platforms wouldn't really hold it back, as Infinity Ward/Treyarch/Sledgehammer aren't going to make any significant improvements anyway.
 

baddude1337

Taffer
Jun 9, 2010
1,856
0
0
As said above, it's a type of game that hasn't changed much since the first title. Really, most current gen titles haven't been leaps in gameplay from last gen, but that's another topic.

Running on an old engine that they haven't really updated certainly doesn't make it also being last gen that egregious, although sales of the next gen only COD's couldn't have been very good for them to release for last gen again.
 

LaoJim

New member
Aug 24, 2013
555
0
0
Companies are going to keep releasing previous gen games for as long as the customer base exceeds the cost of porting it. As Call of Duty is the biggest selling franchise out there, its always going be the last one to leave.

baddude1337 said:
Running on an old engine that they haven't really updated certainly doesn't make it also being last gen that egregious, although sales of the next gen only COD's couldn't have been very good for them to release for last gen again.
I'm a little confused by this statement, haven't all the CoDs been released for the 360/PS3, they haven't done an exclusively next gen game yet.

As a side note, I don't really get all the CoD 'Engine hate'. The game might not do things like advanced lighting techniques much, but its always seems to run smoothly and is fast and responsive to play. And the latter day CoDs do look significantly better than the earlier ones (not that there aren't many other design choices you could quibble with).
 

Ambient_Malice

New member
Sep 22, 2014
836
0
0
Supernova1138 said:
CoD runs on pretty much the same engine it did eight years ago
This is a bit of a misconception. The engine changed massively over the years. CoD1's version had very little id tech 3 code in it. Each version since has had significant tech upgrades.

and is pretty much the same damn game over and over again - small numbers of players playing multiplayer deathmatch on relatively small maps.
For the MP, this is true, but also very natural. MP game design doesn't really reward bold experimentation. Shoehorning in features from the campaign, such as Advanced Warfare's exoskeletons, did not go down well with many hardcore MP fans. Three different devs making three very different CoD series while also trying to please the shared MP fanbase by making the MP familiar yet fresh is an insane yearly gamble.

Like the yearly iteration of sports games that contain roster updates and little else, it's one of the few types of games that can linger on the previous generation for a while.
A lot of people want their annual gripping FPS tale of heroism and sacrifice and betrayal conveyed with bleeding edge tech -- or as bleeding edge as current consoles can manage at 60fps. If CoG can't deliver that, Battlefield is waiting in the wings. (Battlefield 4, a game I am quite fond of, was penned by an ex-CoD writer.) The SP fanbase responds well to bold features, so long as they don't suck. (BO2's branching storyline went down well. BO2's Strike Force missions (needed for good endings) that were RTS crossed with MP bots did not go down well.)

As the series has so little innovation going on in it, being on the 7th generation platforms wouldn't really hold it back, as Infinity Ward/Treyarch/Sledgehammer aren't going to make any significant improvements anyway.
Very little of CoD's technological/gameplay advancement goes into the MP. It primarily manifests in the campaigns. For example, the Wii lacked the ram to handle some of Black Ops's scripted story scenes (visiting JFK, for example) so these were replaced with prerendered video. The SP can do crazy stuff like let you fight an army of tanks and helicopters with a horse. Cue horse riding tech. That stuff has no pvp MP application. CoD's increased focus on dramatic acting has no pvp MP application.

The fundamental problem is diminishing returns. You can do a LOT with 512MB of ram when designing a linear first person shooter. Ghosts and Advanced Warfare looked terrible on 360/PS3 compared to the PC/PS4/XBO versions. (Missing visual effects all over the place.) But the 360 could run Crysis 3. It could run Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs. It could run GTA 5. It ran them poorly, but that's beside the point.

LaoJim said:
As a side note, I don't really get all the CoD 'Engine hate'. The game might not do things like advanced lighting techniques much, but its always seems to run smoothly and is fast and responsive to play. And the latter day CoDs do look significantly better than the earlier ones (not that there aren't many other design choices you could quibble with).
Ghosts was a significant technological leap. (For PC/PS4/XBO, at least.) Screenspace reflections, tessellation, Nvidia fur effects for PC, and a massive jump in texture quality. Advanced Warfare added subsurface scattering, a new facial animation system, more consistent texture quality than Ghosts, plus a huge lick of debloating. (No dog fur, mind you.) AW runs insanely well on PC compared to Ghosts.

Both Ghosts and AW are good looking games. They're not Crysis 3/Battlefield 4-grade, but they look good.
 

MysticSlayer

New member
Apr 14, 2013
2,405
0
0
baddude1337 said:
As said above, it's a type of game that hasn't changed much since the first title.
Wait, are you talking about the first Call of Duty game or one of the other "firsts" (e.g. CoD4 or Black Ops)? Because if you really are saying the first as-in the first CoD game (i.e. the one that released in 2003), then you really should play the game before passing it off as just like all the others.

LaoJim said:
As a side note, I don't really get all the CoD 'Engine hate'. The game might not do things like advanced lighting techniques much, but its always seems to run smoothly and is fast and responsive to play. And the latter day CoDs do look significantly better than the earlier ones (not that there aren't many other design choices you could quibble with).
I think it is really just a side-effect of CoD/EA rivalry. Many of EA's most recent military shooters designed to take on CoD (i.e. the Battlefield and MoH games) have all be partially sold on the Frostbite technology behind them, so criticizing CoD for using a comparatively old engine was a convenient way to further emphasise Frostbite. The thing is, CoD's haters extend far beyond the BF community, so it isn't surprising that the engine hate has also spread further, as I'm sure a lot of people will latch on to anything to criticize CoD over n.
 

Ambient_Malice

New member
Sep 22, 2014
836
0
0
MysticSlayer said:
I think it is really just a side-effect of CoD/EA rivalry. Many of EA's most recent military shooters designed to take on CoD (i.e. the Battlefield and MoH games) have all be partially sold on the Frostbite technology behind them, so criticizing CoD for using a comparatively old engine was a convenient way to further emphasise Frostbite.
Engine stuff can be rather weird and tribal. I'm rather partial to CryEngine myself, and I've seen staunch denial that screenshots from games like Crysis 3 and Ryse and Kingdom Come: Deliverance are anything to write home about.

Ubisoft's Far Cry 4 is running a heavily modded fork of CryEngine 1.0, which Ubi got access to when they split with Crytek. You can bet that if Ubi said "This game is running Cryengine", people would immediately blame the game's technical hiccups on CryEngine because "it's the same engine from 2004 just tweaked and stuff". Bethesda tried to distance CREATION from Gamebryo, which didn't work because Creation looks the same, behaves the same, and has more or less the same data structure.

Honestly, I think CoD games resemble their predecessors deliberately, not because of an engine legacy.
 

baddude1337

Taffer
Jun 9, 2010
1,856
0
0
MysticSlayer said:
baddude1337 said:
As said above, it's a type of game that hasn't changed much since the first title.
Wait, are you talking about the first Call of Duty game or one of the other "firsts" (e.g. CoD4 or Black Ops)? Because if you really are saying the first as-in the first CoD game (i.e. the one that released in 2003), then you really should play the game before passing it off as just like all the others.

LaoJim said:
As a side note, I don't really get all the CoD 'Engine hate'. The game might not do things like advanced lighting techniques much, but its always seems to run smoothly and is fast and responsive to play. And the latter day CoDs do look significantly better than the earlier ones (not that there aren't many other design choices you could quibble with).
I think it is really just a side-effect of CoD/EA rivalry. Many of EA's most recent military shooters designed to take on CoD (i.e. the Battlefield and MoH games) have all be partially sold on the Frostbite technology behind them, so criticizing CoD for using a comparatively old engine was a convenient way to further emphasise Frostbite. The thing is, CoD's haters extend far beyond the BF community, so it isn't surprising that the engine hate has also spread further, as I'm sure a lot of people will latch on to anything to criticize CoD over n.
Yes, I am referring to the first first. What other first game on the series would I be referring too? Still have my boxed copy of it somewhere. While there are notable changes, and 1 and 2 were the highlights of the series, the basic twitch gameplay, and engine, hasnt changed. 4 was where the modern formula of perks and ranks and Michael bay explosions, though.
 

MysticSlayer

New member
Apr 14, 2013
2,405
0
0
baddude1337 said:
Yes, I am referring to the first first. What other first game on the series would I be referring too? Still have my boxed copy of it somewhere. While there are notable changes, and 1 and 2 were the highlights of the series, the basic twitch gameplay, and engine, hasnt changed. 4 was where the modern formula of perks and ranks and Michael bay explosions, though.
I've seen plenty of people say "first" when they are really saying CoD4. Also since we are talking about Black Ops III, I figured you could have also been referencing the first BO game, as that makes a little more sense to say that things have barely changed.

But I really wouldn't say CoD has barely changed over the years. Way too many things have changed since the first one: the control scheme, the health system, the movement, the weapons you carry, the class system, player count...everything basically. I guess for me, CoD was always changing plenty of things up until MW2. After MW2, though, it basically started becoming all too similar. Yeah, minor changes could lead to different tactics taking over, but at least for me, MW2 was the last one where there was a rather drastic shift in the way the game played, and most of that may have just been because they changed the PC version so much, not that the game itself changed that much.

Ambient_Malice said:
MysticSlayer said:
I think it is really just a side-effect of CoD/EA rivalry. Many of EA's most recent military shooters designed to take on CoD (i.e. the Battlefield and MoH games) have all be partially sold on the Frostbite technology behind them, so criticizing CoD for using a comparatively old engine was a convenient way to further emphasise Frostbite.
Engine stuff can be rather weird and tribal. I'm rather partial to CryEngine myself, and I've seen staunch denial that screenshots from games like Crysis 3 and Ryse and Kingdom Come: Deliverance are anything to write home about.
Yeah, I've seen some pretty weird stuff. Then again, would we really be the game community if we didn't have those petty squabbles. We already have fights over the best FPS, best console, PC vs. console, and everything else. Might as well throw game engines into the mix.

Honestly, I think CoD games resemble their predecessors deliberately, not because of an engine legacy.
Yeah, I don't think CoD's developers really see a need to update their visuals. It is just an added cost that, ultimately, doesn't mean a whole lot to the players. Many of them like the aesthetics as-is, and it gives the developers more time to focus on offering a smooth, enjoyable gameplay experience, which ironically is what I'm sure a lot of the CoD haters would say is truly important when they aren't looking for ways to bash CoD.
 

DrOswald

New member
Apr 22, 2011
1,443
0
0
As an actual programmer who actually creates software that we actually test against a variety of actual hardware, there is no way you are making a modern video game compatible with last gen without significant compromises and dealing with significant limitations. This is incontestable.

Now, if the game is "held back" or not by those limitation, and especially if the modern tech version is harmed by this, is a different discussion entirely. My guess is a game like Call of Duty is not held back significantly, and the previous gen game would really suffer only in terms of graphics, and the modern gen version is no worse off at all. The basic game mode is not particularly resource intensive, we have had similar games since the Ps2 era.

Also, the Wii was not less powerful than the Xbox.
 

Evonisia

Your sinner, in secret
Jun 24, 2013
3,257
0
0
My only concern for Black Ops III specifically is that Black Ops II was trying to do interesting stuff, but was marred by the 360/PS3's capabilities. Just imagine how nice Green Run could have been if it was made for current gen, and the fog density could have been drawn back. Mob of the Dead suffers from a similar issue, and the limited range of map variety is very troubling (many of them are three corridor maps with intersecting segments, compared to the large but full maps from Black Ops or the full and varied maps from World at War). They will need to hold their design back so the 360/PS3 ports can resemble their superior brothers.

Another issue is FPS. The CoD games need their FPS and having to develop for previous consoles means that either the gameplay (level design, animations, third person/first person model balance) will take a stabbing or the FPS will, and you can't afford to lower it as the fans will notice (even if they don't know much about fps).