I don't mind either way if we get a graphics upgrade or not, however i do know a lot of people out there that would join CoH if it wasn't for the fact the graphics are somewhat dated these days, so if it brings a whole new crop of people then i am most certainly up for it.
Me hopes he was refering to animations and graphics.
Zone-graphics or missions graphics are shown being not that super important, your character and his powers are the only things you are looking at for about 99% of the time. Although the builds might need a update here and there 
Me think, better graphics on the powers. More bling bling, more lightshows and ugly granite style 
(Even guildwars, when they released eotn, such outdated engine got me jaw-dropped for about 10 minutes the first time i walked out on the fresh snow of the mountains - so it is possible).
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It always boggles my mind when people whine about CoX's graphics, which are actually quite good. Especially compared to The Other Game where all the elves and gnomes and such look like their models were designed back when the first Unreal Tournament came out. I tried The Other Game again for a short while just recently to see if I feel like playing it again, and the graphics just felt clunky and poor compared to CoX.
In turn, I never really understand why people complain about WoW's graphics. They're perfectly alright, though I do agree that they are rather clunky.
CoX's graphics are fairly amazing and I do, honestly, think half the time that people should quit comparing the game to some uber-graphics-sucking monster thing they found on their Playstation 3 or whatever.
Oh sure, it'd be nice if they could upgrade the graphics, but it also probably won't be nice to lose all the players who can't afford to upgrade their graphics cards either.
One of the reasons that WoW is so popular: it runs adequately on a four year old machine with a graphics card that should have been replaced two years ago and no memory.
So, do people want more players, or better graphics? Make your minds up, children. 
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To people who say CoH looks dated, I say "You think?"
Now, if COH looked like Neverwinters Nights, -then- I'd say it'd qualify as looking dated.
I hoping at the very least the factions all get a Rikti style make over with new textures and what not.
They could also jazz up the city zones make them seem a little more alive.
With all due respect, I didn't complain. Personally I hate "The Other Game's" graphics, you know, the one with the recent "Angry dead persons revenge" add-on. I came away from that with a bad taste in my mouth and the urgent need to wash it away with some immediate villainy!
What can we look forward to? Does anyone actually know what the engine is capable of? FFM? You know lots of numbers
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I don't think any one knows what its capable of its not like the unreal engine which has been taken to bits and put together more times than is probably health. City of heroes/Villains is the only game to date that's been released that uses it AFK.
Tho I'm sure i read some where that CO was going to be using a modified version of the same engine modified how i have no idea but if that is the case there's a good chance that anything CO can do can be done in CoH its just mater of knowing how.
Well. we do know that it can handle PhysX... Even though its often greyed out. it needs to e repaired.
It would also be nice if it would be possible to get DirectX 10 in... Maybe involve real time shadows and wether effects.
Higher details on the toons would be nice too.
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Would direct X 10 not require them to make the entire game be vista compatable?
NCSoft do have the licenses to the Unreal engine, but while it might be a pipe-dream, I doubt that they'd be able to port the server mechanics given its custom structure. Then again, they're pulling in more staff all the time (30+ dev's now) so maybe we'll see something really spectacular.
Liz, I absolutely agree with the PhysX fix. As it's older sibling is already supported. I wonder how much time it will take to fix the game to pick up the NVIDIA drivers instead? Of course, if there's any dev's hovering around, some hints might be nice
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What can we look forward to? Does anyone actually know what the engine is capable of? FFM? You know lots of numbers
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Facts? No... But from video's of pre-release beta's we CAN make some inferences...
One of the videos showed seamless transitioning from within a hospital to the outside. As in, no black screen.. The door opened and you could SEE the outside, and you just ran out to it. A small touch, but an important one.
Another video showed far more sophisticated targetting, allowing you to target points of the body, rather than just the entire body. This could allow some interesting gameplay, and was, IIRC, removed due to impracticality.
Yet another video showed types of powers we have yet to really see, one was rope slinging IIRC. We've always been told the game engine can't handle that, yet it WAS initially intended.
Anyway... Graphically, I don't really see WHAT can be improved as far as the city zones are concerned. Concrete is concrete and a lot of US cities are made of the stuff. What WOULD be nice though, is improved models. Especially players, but also NPC's and vehicles. Current models really are fairly low poly-count affairs and their skeletons SUCK, as does the bounding box restrictions. We also need faces that have at least SOME animation to them. even if it's just blinking eyes, and expressions that alter according to emotes being used.
The biggest change they could make, though, is in making the city come to life. We need more ambient "noise" as it were. Gridlocked traffic in some areas, lots of cabs, buses, patrolling police cars. Realistic response to threats such as fires, raves or monster attacks. Currently, the city just seems dead, and that doesn't help the immersion. We could also do with made of the things all cities have, but we're lacking. Fire stations, usable restaurants or bars, theaters, cinemas, sports arena's for your weekly football/baseball game! Schools, animals, WEATHER, and a more realistic day/night cycle.
Can the current game engine handle all that? Well, again I have no numbers, but I think it can certainly at the very least handle SOME of that without impacting performance unduly. Certainly, pedestrians don't need the level of detail as NPC's you interact with do, so savings can be made there.
EDIT: Double text weirdness...
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Would direct X 10 not require them to make the entire game be vista compatable?
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The current game engine is OpenGL based. Moving it to DX10 would require a complete rewrite of it.
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At the moment, I think the game looks great on full settings. I would also welcome a graphical update with such excitement!
i think they need to do small changes, like add some of the stuff FFM described.
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One of the videos showed seamless transitioning from within a hospital to the outside. As in, no black screen.. The door opened and you could SEE the outside, and you just ran out to it. A small touch, but an important one.
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Small things like this would add to the game alot IMO.
QR:
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Another video showed far more sophisticated targetting, allowing you to target points of the body, rather than just the entire body. This could allow some interesting gameplay, and was, IIRC, removed due to impracticality.
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Putting this in...
I'd be gone that would totally change how the game is played.
And I know you weren't suggesting it, just... 
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The biggest change they could make, though, is in making the city come to life. We need more ambient "noise" as it were. Gridlocked traffic in some areas, lots of cabs, buses, patrolling police cars. Realistic response to threats such as fires, raves or monster attacks. Currently, the city just seems dead, and that doesn't help the immersion. We could also do with made of the things all cities have, but we're lacking. Fire stations, usable restaurants or bars, theaters, cinemas, sports arena's for your weekly football/baseball game! Schools, animals, WEATHER, and a more realistic day/night cycle.
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^ This.
Ive said before that I dont think its the graphics themselves (character models, buildings textures etc.) that make people think the game is bland, its the lifelessness of the city and the fact that cityscapes dont have the wow factor (excuse the pun) that fantasy games do.
What the game needs is more things happening, more NPCs moving around, maybe weather as an option, people sitting on the grass in the parks having picnics, (non-interactive) busses with people getting on and off them, police cars driving around, nightclubs that look like nightclubs, supergroup bases that are alive rather than storage and transport areas.
Its easy to play a fantasy game and gasp at the vista, but with a city most of us see one of them every day and the game has to live up to those expectations. Moving hair and cool looking characters will add to the look of the game but not in a massive way. Faultline and the night in that CoV zone with all the neon those are the places people love. Fighting on oil rigs, getting the feeling that the game is responding to you in missions (armour that comes to life etc.), those are the things that will, in my opinion, get people excited.
We all know that graphics dont make a game, they just add to it. Game play is king, and the game play isnt far off. A few tweaks with the graphics that make people feel like they are in real city would be enough, nothing major. If youre in the UK compare Birmingham to Milton Keynes. No offense to anyone, but the latter is like playing in Paragon (okay, its actually worse ) there is no soul. Birmingham on the other hand lives, breathes and mugs you. Pizza compared to Florence is another example (or was a few years ago, Im not sure if its changed now). Auckland to Christchurch. Im trying to avoid capital cities, but hopefully you all get the idea.
For me little things such as Longbow patrols and police having shoot-outs with criminals were great additions. Im not suggesting grid lock in Atlas, but where are the people on bikes, the skateboarders, the taxi ranks, the street vendors. It wont make people catch their breath like a vast Dwarven mine does, but it will make people feel like theyre in a more real world, rather than taking part in 28 Day Later or Day of The Triffids.
(Sorry for going on. )
I think they're more likely to upgrade the textures first, as that wouldn't be so drastic as remodeling stuff, although I'd like remodeled player avatars, with smaller hands with separate fingers, animated facial features like blinking and smiling, more realistic bust shapes, flexible waists so we could turn at the waist rather than slide in a circle like we do right now - stuff like that.
As for making the city more alive, I'd like to see more zone events involving signature AVs as well as the generic AVs from the Safeguard missions, raiding banks/offices/other facilites.
And the cops would show up too, as well as a crowd of onlookers for those classic superhero entrances - a building surrounded by cops and their cars, a crowd of people gathered, and you fly/swing/drop/jump in with a "what seems to be the problem, officer?" 
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Weather, animals and buses would be nice. Also, some children now and then wouldn't hurt (I know this last one is very, very hard to happen due to it being the intarwebz...)
It feels so lifeless as is...
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Rather curious about this but how many people would prefer that the dev's forgo an issue for an entire graphics overhaul? or even a new paid expansion?
I think one of the the biggest things would be player models, they've basically used up all the points where they can anchor costume pieces on a player model now.
It's one reason we've not gotten backpacks.
I think that as the environment is really just a background, and it's the avatars we're focused on, including the enmy ones, then upgrading just the avatars would still make the environment seem like it was upgraded too.
@Golden Girl
City of Heroes comics and artwork
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I think one of the the biggest things would be player models, they've basically used up all the points where they can anchor costume pieces on a player model now.
It's one reason we've not gotten backpacks.
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umm couldnt they be anchored to the place we get wings? as a back detail that would exclude aforementioned wing placement?
If memory serves there was some screenies of a backpack item on one of the beta screenies for a recent issue, I cant recall which one but I do recall the costume items were displayed on a Villain in Mercy Island near Kalinda?
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I think one of the the biggest things would be player models, they've basically used up all the points where they can anchor costume pieces on a player model now.
It's one reason we've not gotten backpacks.
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umm couldnt they be anchored to the place we get wings? as a back detail that would exclude aforementioned wing placement?
If memory serves there was some screenies of a backpack item on one of the beta screenies for a recent issue, I cant recall which one but I do recall the costume items were displayed on a Villain in Mercy Island near Kalinda?
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VEATs have back packs, why can they not work like that? Add them as an option like wings/capes. Having a back pack would exclude the other back options etc
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I think one of the the biggest things would be player models, they've basically used up all the points where they can anchor costume pieces on a player model now.
It's one reason we've not gotten backpacks.
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umm couldnt they be anchored to the place we get wings? as a back detail that would exclude aforementioned wing placement?
If memory serves there was some screenies of a backpack item on one of the beta screenies for a recent issue, I cant recall which one but I do recall the costume items were displayed on a Villain in Mercy Island near Kalinda?
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VEATs have back packs, why can they not work like that? Add them as an option like wings/capes. Having a back pack would exclude the other back options etc
[/ QUOTE ]You say that as if the Crab backpacks are not in fact bugged and are working as intended, heh.
So... Posi's said that we could have a graphics upgrade to give us the extra prettiness needed to combat the new kids on the block CO and DCUO.
At the moment it's been stated that we're not really seeing the full potential of the engine. That's good, but just what is the engine capable of? Any ideas? Were the original trailers done with the engine running full-on? I'd like to see:
1. Maintain the current sliders that make the game "usable" for lower level graphics cards, as some won't be able to get the latest greatest.
2. Update to let us use the NVIDIA version of physx
What graphical loveliness can we expect to see from NCSoft in 2009? Ideas are welcome. And yes, I know, the graphics don't make the game. But the potential newbies will automatically go for the nicest looking ones.
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