Dejawesp said:
The game still need to be visually stimulating. A game has to switch environment about once every 15 minutes for people to stay "stimulated"
Where did you get that statistic? Every 15 minutes? That is in the realm of opinion and preference.
Heck, many a time when I use to play Lord of the Rings Online, I would be on for a whole 2 hours of gameplay where I was collecting ore and killing some mobs for a couple quests. For those 2 hours, the environment didn't change at all and looked the same for the whole amount of time. Was I stimulated? Yes, and I had lots of fun with that game, if I still had money to play for the premium subscription I would.
For me, graphics have never been on the top of my gaming list.
1.) Gameplay
2.) Story
3.) Mechanics
4.) Genre
5.) Graphics
There are probably more things that could go on the list, and if I had remembered them they would have been placed above graphics.
When one puts graphics as their top priority, in the sense that they won't play a game because of the graphics, that person can miss out on something great.
Example: My brother loved Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. He loved Zelda games. But when Nintendo made Windwaker with cell-shaded graphics, he threw a fit and said he wouldn't play it. Well, I being a person that thought the graphics looked fun, but not being important, I got the game anyway and spend many a day engrossed in the game. My brother never played it, but he miss one of the best, if not the best Zelda game ever.
Video games have always been about interaction, being a part of the entertainment. Graphics are a side point. In my over 20 years of playing games, I have never encountered a game where the graphics made the game less interactive.
proghead said:
bahumat42 said:
because you play mmo's for the other people to play with and not everyone has monster rigs.
If thats not a good enough reason for you, then play crysis instead.
We're talking PC here, and we've had graphics detail settings for years. If your machine can't handle the max setting, turn it down.
I beg to differ. Turning down the detail doesn't always work. I got my PC new, in 2009, it still has the standard non-fancy graphics card that it came with. Take a game like Just Cause which came out in 2007(I know it's not an MMO, but still valid for my point), my computer can't even start it because it says that it isn't powerful enough, that it doesn't have the right things like shaders. Though my computer does handle MMO's like WoW and LotRO at at least half graphic capacity.
The thing is with graphics, once they start getting more and more complicated, sliding the bar down won't work, because at that point the graphics and game just won't work on certain low settings. So basically if MMO's today had the graphics of Just Cause, my computer wouldn't be able to run it, and I bet many others wouldn't be able to either. This would mean that an MMO with the latest geewhiz graphics wouldn't get the subscription base needed to keep the game running, and makers of MMOs realize this. They also know that people that have such low yield graphics cards are people that don't have a gigantic amount of disposable income to upgrade their computers(They can afford a low subscription each month, but not a giant one shot of money on a graphics card, because that would mean they wouldn't be able to play said game for a while, because the wouldn't have the sub-money). I was told that I would have to spend at least a little over 100 dollars to get a graphics card that would at least play Just Cause. Of course I don't have that kind of money.
Well yeah, I could have got the new graphics card if I hadn't had money set aside for Pokemon White and Dragon Age 2 for my 360, but I would rather have those instead of paying over $100 just so I can play one game I mistakenly bought a few months back, and in doing so depleting my money reserves for awhile and not being able to get a game to use with said new graphics card for some time.
But, as I said before way above, graphics aren't everything. And from what I have seen of people's responses in this thread, I feel that a majority of them agree. If there was a game that actually had graphics that made the game look exactly like real life, but I found out the game was shit in gameplay, story, and mechanics. I wouldn't even take a second look; I wouldn't lay the money down.