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[48086]

It looks worse than Battlefield One and 5....which were the best multiplayer graphics and tech in the industry. It's a great example of lowered standards and quality.

Ahh that's a great point. I forgot about Battlefield One. That game was amazing. Not sure I've ever looked up gameplay for 5 with maxed out visuals.

 

[Sethbacca]

This old game shouldn’t visually look better than these games at all.

You're confusing graphics with art direction here.

 

[Roxkis_ii]

Maybe due to multiplayer games being more fouced on proformance over graphical splendor.

 

[Alexios]

Eh, it happened some times, especially when they were tech demos for commercial engines like idtech & unreal, but it was hardly the norm and it's very disingenuous to pad the list with primarily single player titles that had tacked on multiplayer modes using campaign assets (however popular kids may have made them). CS was never about graphics/tech from its inception, it was a freaking fan made Half-Life mod, itself ugly and outdated as a single player game even at release and famous for reasons beyond the visual tech and the maps of 2 are beautiful/source 2 is a really cool engine

TF2 was the og groundbreaking pioneer on stylized visuals of top quality, art wise and in the rendering tech behind it, get real/make sense with your Valve bashing in an otherwise unrelated topic.​

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

They also weren't cynically aimed at the lowest level of borderline braindead players, mining addictive behavior with idiotic micro-transactions, propped up by tweens who shouldn't be online in the first place, using the fortnite gift cards they get from their equally braindead aunt for a birthday to get a dumb Marvel skin, etc

You'll never convince me that anything in gaming history -- even the worst mobile games, Farmville, Atari collapse -- has ever been as bad for gaming and human brains as everything that Fortnite and its season-based clones have brought us.

 

[Generic]

They also weren't cynically aimed at the lowest level of borderline braindead players, mining addictive behavior with idiotic micro-transactions, propped up by tweens who shouldn't be online in the first place, using the fortnite gift cards they get from their equally braindead aunt for a birthday to get a dumb Marvel skin, etc

You'll never convince me that anything in gaming history -- even the worst mobile games, Farmville, Atari collapse -- has ever been as bad for gaming and human brains as everything that Fortnite and its season-based clones have brought us.

And yet Fortnite is one if the best games in the industry.

 

[64bitmodels]

Today, almost every multiplayer title has that same shitty visual style of painting on meshes -

TF is this supposed to mean?

also, we have Helldivers 2. Really pretty game

 

[Trogdor1123]

He’s 100% right

This is my all time favorite video game issue. I can still remember the feel of the pages as they were on such high quality paper.

 

[Lumpyoatmeal]

You're confusing graphics with art direction here.

Gears of War 3 is a better looking game than titles like Counter Strike 2 and Valorant. The only title using this visual style that clearly technically shows more advance technology than Gears of War 3 is Fortnite; This game Fortnite actually supports ray tracing showing you that you can still scale your game across different hardware meanwhile you got posters in here trying to defend Valve that CS2 has to run on everything, that's not an excuse.

 

[Sethbacca]

Gears of War 3 is a better looking game than titles like Counter Strike 2 and Valorant. The only title using this visual style that clearly technically shows more advance technology than Gears of War 3 is Fortnite; This game Fortnite actually supports ray tracing showing you that you can still scale your game across different hardware meanwhile you got posters in here trying to defend Valve that CS2 has to run on everything, that's not an excuse.

Fortnite in particular uses lower poly models and cartoony textures for most of its objects as far as I know because it's going for a cartoony vs a realistic style. The headroom freed up by not going for a realistic art style leaves room for the use of ray tracing and other higher end features. You can't get away with reduced polys when you're going for visual realism. This results in your CPU/GPU budget being allocated to geometry and texturing and such. I mean, I'm no game dev or anything, but I'm pretty sure that this tradeoff has been the case in gaming for the last couple decades and it's still true today.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

And yet Fortnite is one if the best games in the industry.

 

[Lumpyoatmeal]

Fortnite in particular uses lower poly models and cartoony textures for most of its objects as far as I know because it's going for a cartoony vs a realistic style. The headroom freed up by not going for a realistic art style leaves room for the use of ray tracing and other higher end features. You can't get away with reduced polys when you're going for visual realism. This results in your CPU/GPU budget being allocated to geometry and texturing and such. I mean, I'm no game dev or anything, but I'm pretty sure that this tradeoff has been the case in gaming for the last couple decades and it's still true today.

Sethbacca, I’m not going back in there to relearn all the console commands and equivalents for the Unreal Engine so I can sum tris the scenes and pull up the tris for all of Fortnite assets. Had this been 15-20 years ago when I use to make content and mods that would of enticed me maybe to do those comparisons my brother.

 

[Sethbacca]

Sethbacca, I’m not going back in there to relearn all the console commands and equivalents for the Unreal Engine so I can sum tris the scenes and pull up the tris for all of Fortnite assets. Had this been 15-20 years ago when I use to make content and mods that would of enticed me maybe to do those comparisons my brother.

I'm not saying fortnite has less polys and tris than a game 20 years old, i'm comparing it to it's contemporaries here. All I'm saying is you can't look at Fortnite having some advanced rendering features and extrapolate that all other modern games have no excuse based on that. Fortnite as compared to its modern peers is less complex. I think I misunderstood your original point if i'm being honest now that I'm re-reading it so I'm not really sure where I'm going with any of this at this point.

 

[Lumpyoatmeal]

All I'm saying is you can't look at Fortnite having some advanced rendering features and extrapolate that all other modern games have no excuse based on that. Fortnite as compared to its modern peers is less complex.

Here's Fortnite running on a RTX 4090 at maxed settings

And this is Counter Strike 2 at maxed settings

..Sethbacca, that PC is literally not even bothered with CS2, "Why did you summon me here?" is what a high end PC is going to tell you.

 

[Sethbacca]

..Sethbacca, that PC is literally not even bothered with CS2, "Why did you summon me here?" is what a high end PC is going to tell you.

Counter Strike players have been literally playing mostly the same game and maps for most of the last 2 decades. On a competitive level they only care about FPS, they're not at all interested in the game looking amazing. You could implement every graphical nicety in that game that you want, but most of these guys are going to turn that stuff off. You gotta know your audience on this one.

 

[ozz ex machina]

..Sethbacca, that PC is literally not even bothered with CS2, "Why did you summon me here?" is what a high end PC is going to tell you.

This is hilarious because if you see the 1% and 0.1% numbers that is completely unnacceptable for high level cs. Lots of people are very upset with the frametimes and performance in CS2 still. Obviously compared to the sloppy games everyone else plays it seems fine but it is noticable for good players in CS.

 

[Lumpyoatmeal]

Counter Strike players have been literally playing mostly the same game and maps for most of the last 2 decades. On a competitive level they only care about FPS, they're not at all interested in the game looking amazing. You could implement every graphical nicety in that game that you want, but most of these guys are going to turn that stuff off. You gotta know your audience on this one.

I will not be surprised that the real reason why there's so much headroom is because Source 2 is really that underwhelming in features. Listen I'm one of the biggest Valve fans there is, but I have to be honest they look washed up as a developer these days, it sucks.

 

[Sethbacca]

I will not be surprised that the real reason why there's so much headroom is because Source 2 is really that underwhelming in features. Listen I'm one of the biggest Valve fans there is, but I have to be honest they look washed up as a developer these days, it sucks.

On that we agree. They’re more a platform than a studio at this point.

 

[Stamps1646]

This is why I do not use drugs.

 

[SmokedMeat]

I remember playing multiplayer games like UT, original Battlefield’s and even console titles like Gears of War 3 and being blown away at the visuals.

Today, almost every multiplayer title has that same shitty visual style of painting on meshes -

This is Counter-Strike 2 (For OGs I’m not even kidding); Valve is probably the worst developer out of the bunch that uses this shitty style in their games post Portal 2.

Valorant

Dota 2

And the lists goes on of muliplayer titles using this style. To me (in my opinion) it comes across as these developers are not even trying at all, just bare minimum efforts, and new gamers let them get away with it because they don’t know any better.

You have to cast a wide net, to take in as many players and as much money as possible. This ain’t about making a AAA multiplayer game that’s forgotten about when the next one comes out in a year.

 

[Wildebeest]

Nobody noticed that LawBreakers even released, but everyone wanted to talk about Radical Heights like they were suddenly the thirstiest person ever for new MP game releases and had to get in on the action.

It is totally true that multiplayer games used to be the go-to games to absolutely melt your gaming PC, and the thing that made people spend silly amounts of money on their kit to get a frame rate advantage, all while running the game on custom below minimum level graphics settings.

As for engines, I guess riot and valve are going for visual readability. Just about everything made with any version of unreal engine looks like dogshit no matter what. Battlefield lost the plot, and I guess Apex doesn't even match the graphic style of Titanfall. Probably one of the best looking active MP games is Hunt Showdown running on cryengine.

 

[tr1p1ex]

don't think multiplayer was the showcase for best graphics.

The 1st BF game actually had worse graphics than games of the time because of the size of maps and large number of players.

rule of thumb: the best graphics are always in racing games and fighting games.

 

[A.Romero]

Even when they are capable of showing better graphics, gamers that aspire to succeed in competitive MP games lower the graphic settings to obtain better performance.

Times have changed, OP. Competitive MP games are not a good reference for graphic performance because their objective is not showing off graphically.

 

[Radical_3d]

I don’t know what is troll bait anymore.

 

[SirKicksalot]

Dude just remake Quake 3 in the Quake 4 engine, it's a slam dunk! - id and Raven before crashing the franchise with no survivors

 

[KXVXII9X]

While I really loved the graphical powerhouses like battlefield 3 back in the day (that was one of my first real mutplayer game as blew me away), I also love the heavily stylized art styles of modern multiplayer games.

I think the issue with a lot of modern multiplayer shooter games is that they feel and play a lot shallower than before. Most seem designed around the monetization and with cosmetics, you rarely have a cohesive design or focused theme.

I think both styles can and should coexist. I think the commenter who talked about needing these games to run on any computer is onto something. I feel like most of these stylized shooters opt in for a heavy style to fit reach the largest target audience instead of making a stylistic choice to serve the gameplay like in Splatoon.

A lot of these multiplayer games feel like they cut corners everywhere they can. Most never feel "complete."

 

[Lethal01]

Good, It's better than them going for realism atleast.

 

[ScHlAuChi]

The new source tech is great and it runs on potatoes.

Soul Reaver - released 1999
Half Life Alyx - released 2020
One of those games and it´s engine still doesnt have level streaming to this date!

 

[manfestival]

I don't know, bf 2042 looks pretty good to me.

While I do think the game looks good in general. Like the other person mentioned. This game does look worse compared to its prior titles

 

[Hero_Select]

While I do think the game looks good in general. Like the other person mentioned. This game does look worse compared to its prior titles

I didn't really like Battlefield 1 but I always thought it looked amazing.

2042 has bigger maps and more players in those maps so it's understandable

 

[Neolombax]

I think back then developers pushed towards hyper-realism. Nowadays, there's a lot of games that use cartoonish/paint like styles. But I think I get where OP is coming from. Games like Unreal Tournament always pushed the envelope in graphics back then, and then you have the Battlefield, GRAW, Rainbow Six, Socom.

 

[JCreasy]

OP lies. They were never the graphical showpiece games.

Yeah I was confused

 

[hououinkyouma00]

I don't know, bf 2042 looks pretty good to me.

At times 2042 looks absolutely ridiculous but overall I think BF1/5 look better.

Some maps in 2042 like Orbital look amazing though.

 

[Kataploom]

Since I can remember, online games have always relied more on stylistic art style since they need to run on as many computers as possible and they needed to look good enough for long enough... There are a few exceptions tho, but most PC online only games do so