Why are the graphics/Armour textures so bad?Same with the customization and hair quality.

Sarariel

At first I excused it as I presumed they dumbed the textures down for  the console players, but, then I realised that FFXIV is also released on both consoles and PC and the graphics are perfect on that game.

 

I just feel like the textures could be so much better..Armour looks tattoo'd on, hair is static and ugly.

And with customization..Jittery and non descriptive sliders? with barely any noticible changes.

 

is there any reason for it other than Dev laziness?

reeereee

Couldn't afford decent character customization.  They spent all their budget on celebrity voice actors and hundreds of hours of stale uninspired solo questing.

bcbully

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB2sEEk7Zss

Here's the customization trailer. Personally I believe it's one of the better CCs on the market. I was able to make exactly what I wanted. Plus you have a selection of voices too. Idk what more did you want?

rodingo

I speculate that the reason the armor looks painted on is because it basically is.  This is necessary to keep the polycount of the character models low.  The reason to keep the polycounts low on the models is so that massive PVP fights and raids would run smoother.  All of those polygon faces on a character model tend add up quickly and put a strain on CPUs during render time.  So the best approach is to make clever use of the texture maps (skins) along with normal or bit mapping to give that extra illusion of depth.  They probably have a ratio of 10-15 different texture maps per modeled torso piece, arms, legs, helmets, etc.  I'm not going to lie and say their armor sets are awesome.  I can't stand the floating hip pads.  However, as someone who works with 3d models and computer animation I can understand the reasoning on why it is and I don't hold that against ZOS.  It's a smart move along with using megaservers.

TheGoblinKing

Actually I believe a read a post from the dev's about this once, and they said they made the armor and other textures flat to keep the polygon count low because they were afraid it would make the FPS terrible in pvp, and thus thats why it looks the way it does.

 

Don't shoot the messenger lol

MikePaladin

Originally posted by rodingo
I speculate that the reason the armor looks painted on is because it basically is.  This is necessary to keep the polycount of the character models low.  The reason to keep the polycounts low on the models is so that massive PVP fights and raids would run smoother.  All of those polygon faces on a character model tend add up quickly and put a strain on CPUs during render time.  So the best approach is to make clever use of the texture maps (skins) along with normal or bit mapping to give that extra illusion of depth.  They probably have a ratio of 10-15 different texture maps per modeled torso piece, arms, legs, helmets, etc.  I'm not going to lie and say their armor sets are awesome.  I can't stand the floating hip pads.  However, as someone who works with 3d models and computer animation I can understand the reasoning on why it is and I don't hold that against ZOS.  It's a smart move along with using megaservers.

This ! By the way there is a way to make npc items ultra always  you need to play with one file ......but it was for the purpose explained above

cochs

Not dev laziness.  My guess is that rvr influenced a lot of these decisions.   ESO has relatively low poly counts and a limited number of textures that are also lightweight.   This makes it easy for them to load in lots of characters in a short time period.  GW2 for instance handled this poorly for the longest time, and you would not be able to see a large group for up to several seconds after they came into visual range,  because loading all of the models took so long.

It's one of those areas where you have to make trade offs and there really isn't an easy fix.