Hot take: Graphics/art style is going in a bad direction

I may be the only one who feels like this and that's ok.

I get that phase 1 & 2 are not testing for graphics/art direction (or they may well be done), but I really think the "hyper realism" is a bad move and a slippery slope.

I play on every graphic setting at cinematic except for shadow quality. I think the game overall looks super washed out and hazy above medium. It also gets to certain points where it's impossible to see anything depending on the lighting (whether just dark af or screen haze.

I think if there was a slider option for contrast given to meus and an option to turn off sun flare that would be a huge leap in graphics customization for us.

Would love to know how others feel and if I'm just overly nit picky

High-Cinematic shadow

Med shadow

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Comments

CROW3

Fair. The ‘washed out’ look is the single reason I couldn’t play Rift or continue EQ2, and the vivd grading of WoW, Wildstar, and T&L forgive some of the other sins baked into those games.

I think it would be interesting to A/B test the same game build with the more “realistic” colors above and a more “unrealistic” vivid color grading. My hypothesis is that 70% of players would prefer the more vivid build.

Chicago

I agree, hopefully the graphics are placeholder, I think hyper realism just straight up destroys the fantasy vibe

bloodprophet

I like it.
Never cared for WoW's art style. Wildstar's art style fit the overall over the top ness of the game.

Caeryl

It's strange that shadow quality going up makes distant objects lose resolution. My thought is it must be a bug, because surely higher settings should equate to better resolution.

Azherae

I've learned over years that it slightly affects me too, in fact even having too realistic lighting can affect my 'feel' of some games in ways I mildly(?) dislike.

I had a really telling experience recently, since I don't normally play a lot of HDR games, my main PS5 monitor got set to SDR sometime back and I didn't notice.

This made TL totally washed out and super weird and it was affecting muh actual immersion. Abstractor tendencies can only save one so much (basically it took a long time before I actually asked someone else about their experience of it, and I probably could have kept playing like that, but I def noticed).

I still avoid Grayclaw Forest subconsciously because of being reminded of this effect.

That said, it's also a reminder that their HDR color grading might not be finished, or stuff like that. I thought this thread was gonna be more about character models and such again, but if it's lighting, it's maybe related.

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