If I had to guess, I would say that the conversation went something like this:
Boss: "Right, so the game's out and we're getting reports about terrible framerates and poor performance. What do we do?"
Dev: "Well, the game's not optimized or really even finished because you pushed it out the door for fiscal reasons."
Boss: "Irrelevant. Game's borked, how do we fix it? We need GPU's to stop melting down."
Dev: "I mean, easiest fix is drop graphical fidelity until we get it optimized, I guess."
Boss: "Make it so."
As someone who lived through the Beigification of the Galaxy, I'm not hoping for a quick fix. By the way, OP, well done and nicely laid out. It's not something that I've noticed in game, but you clearly have and have documented it well. Bang on.
This is the kind of stunt that's pretty common on the gaming industry and should be regulated. In my opinion, as much as lootboxes.
EDIT: @hunvagy, this should be in the bingo card as well. It was the first thing I thought it would show up in the replies when I first read @Erei's post.
This is the kind of stunt that's pretty common on the gaming industry and should be regulated. In my opinion, as much as lootboxes.
EDIT: @hunvagy, this should be in the bingo card as well. It was the first thing I thought it would show up in the replies when I first read @Erei's post.
I've been meaning to do this thread for a while, and multiple time decided not to. Since I worked quite a bit on it, and it's a subject that is especially of importance to me, I'm going to make it.
So, we were shown some footage during pre alpha, and a version of planet generation in alpha which is very downgraded compared to today. I bought the DLC because of those footage, sometimes labelled "ingame footage" and I feel misled. Now, I don't think it was with malicious intent. I think it was a desperate move to gain more FPS. But the result is the same for the end user (that's us).
Also, and this is important, it's is NOT about how ugly Odyssey is or is not. And I fully acknowledge that a few, very rare planets actually are relatively similar to the trailer, up to a point. More on that later when it become relevant.
Disclaimer, since I know it's certainly going to run hot : to prove my point I'm going to compare 2 planets in details, in relatively similar places. Note that all screenshots were taken on high/ultra, and to look similar to the trailers, NOT to cherry pick an "ugly" location. Since the places will be noted, anybody who disagree can go there and take a picture.
First, I used ED own trailers, and the screenshots out of them.
For some discussion. The planets shown in this trailer (at least the one we know the name) were compared upon Odyssey release.
And also :
for the first planet.
So, let's start with Villae C4, shown in the heist trailer. The settlement they use doesn't exist today (probably another random generation), so I went to another one on the planet.
The downgrade is already obvious. From an amazing looking mountainous and snow/ice planet to, huh, melted ice ? The details aren't there, it's blurry, smooth. The elevation isn't there either.
I think it's objectively worse. Nobody with any sense of aesthetic can say it look better. And it's certainly not as high in graphical fidelity.
Now, this is interesting because sometimes the game actually work in a relatively similar ways :
While still a downgrade, it's still much, much better than the average Odyssey planet. And much, much closer to the footage. So what happened ? Why is this the oddity, but not the norm ?
Planetside : Do note, I couldn't find a settlement inside a crater/valley like in the trailer, but the one I had was at the edge of a crater. So I'd say it's "good enough".
Now, this is EXTREMELY common all throughout Odyssey. A very smooth, without noise hillside. Compared to the amazing looking hills from the trailer, with much more noise and realism.
Once again, the downgrade is quite obvious. Once again, it's not about "is it good", but how downgraded it look.
There is another downgrade that start to be visible now, but will be more obvious later on : no more volumetric atmospheric. Yup, the trailers all had GORGEOUS volumetric atmo, and it was replaced with a cheap shader. In short for those who don't understand, the sky used to be full of cloudy and foggy stuff, and it was downgraded into a simple "blue" (or whatever colour the atmo use) painted sky.
Now, you say "well, it's development footage", right ?
Well it gets even more sad. This is from Alpha, mere weeks before release, from players themselves when we had the original planet generation (as shown in the trailer), at least half working.
I present you pegasi sector db-n be-1 1.
Now, this planet is relatively interesting. See, it's a frozen planet. At least it was in alpha. And the new engine supposedly can do that. Well, let's check.
(source for the alpha screenshots : )
now View attachment 252681
also, note the snow/ice dust accumulation at some places, due to wind and stuff :
The differences are STUNNING.
-No more gorgeous volumetric effect (the cold mist). As I mentioned earlier.
-No more ice on rock/gravel texture
-no more snow accumulation
-very bland texture
-Poor rock scattering
It gets even worse (I know....). See the black mark ? I assume to represent the effect when a rock is dragged by ice on the ground ? Well, it's low resolution textures. No actual ground deformation or anything.
I have no idea what this weird "dotted texture" effect is supposed to show. But the original is better with it's ice accumulating on hill slopes. But also a much bigger view distance for the mountains.
Low orbit :
Obvious downgrade, again. The bottom of the picture is very blurry, that's low resolution textures. Note that I'm on high/ultra when I took the screenshot.
Then you have the "dotted" texture ?
We are nowhere close to the snow capped mountains and very detailed landscape from Alpha.
But it gets worse. Oh yes.
Orbit :
I mean, WTH ? One one hand we have a frozen planet with 2 visible "biomes" the icy mountains and the regular land around. With lots of details all around.
On the other, we have a blurry painting made in low rez with poor details. This is NOT befitting any decent games from 2010 and above.
As a side note, this was a glitch I had on that planet :
See how the terrain is tiled, centered around an invisible point somewhere near where the "info" holographic panel is ? That's quite bad. And I didn't search for it, I saw it when I took the screenshot posted for low atmo. This is near where I landed and took the screenshots.
As you can see, the trailers were misleading. Most notably, the volumetric atmosphere was replaced quickly before release. This is a fact, the "ingame footage" label was a misleading. Not a lie, I guess, because it was an ingame footage at the time.
Since volumetric is more FPS hungry, we can assume this was done to mitigate the terrible optimization. And in fact, I assume the entire downgrade was a sacrifice to the optimization Gods, with no real result.
Also, the downgrade happened very late in development, since it was still looking like that during alpha. At some point they rushed to downgrade with no regard to the consequences.
And it led to issues on its own. See the first screenshot ? The nice mountain view from low orbit/high atmo ? There is a repetitive tilling bug, but the terrain is so highly detailed with so much noise, you can't see it without searching for it. Now that we have a blurry mess with no details, it's a lot more obvious and led to topic you may be familiar with.
Also, for the same reason, stuff like this crater :
Which you probably have noticed A LOT since Odyssey release, was made a lot more obvious to spot. Apparently it was already in Horizon, but the planet had enough noise to hide it most of the time, and make it less obvious.
So, just the day after the announcement planetary tech/texture/lighting with the upcoming Update 6 (that might be deployed in like, 2 days from now?) you come up with this thread, over an issue that has been clearly acknowledge from frontier weeks ago and apparently they are in the process of addressing it.
It seems like several layers have been turned off. I haven't seen smoke or sparks in my cockpit for months. If I had to guess, I'd say once they reach what they consider to be a fully optimized code, they'll get switched back on.
I disagree, sort of. I don't think it was the downgrade that was misleading. They were right up front with "PRE-ALPHA FOOTAGE". The entire intent of that label is that it's subject to change, and not necessarily for the better.
What was misleading was when people were expressing concern about the visuals in the Alpha test that FDev's response was that the Alpha wasn't the latest. Letting people believe that the release was going to be so much better, and let them think that meant the release was going to be closer to the pre-alpha footage. I believe this was done in bad faith. I believe that at that point they knew they had to downgrade visuals in the release due to performance issues.
I'm entirely not on the outrage train, but the way FDev handled that reminds me a lot of when my kids were toddlers and would lie. It's not a clever deception if being caught in it is unavoidable. Adults doing this is WEIRD. You do know that tomorrow is coming whether you want it to or not, right? You have noticed this pattern?
Isn't the loading screen still using Pre-Alpha footage? To me it's a reminder every time you load (or reload as is too often necessary) that the game still isn't what it could should be. At this point I'm not even sure it's definitely malicious, but at best it looks like they are grossly unaware of how incompetent they are presenting themselves to be anymore. Not ruling out malice though.
It seems like several layers have been turned off. I haven't seen smoke or sparks in my cockpit for months. If I had to guess, I'd say once they reach what they consider to be a fully optimized code, they'll get switched back on.
yup, soooo many things emergency turned off, just to make it remotely playable, most of the bugs and issues current users are having are things that were dealt with back in Alpha, but because the Alpha forum was removed, we cannot PROVE any of this stuff... slightly annoying
Isn't the loading screen still using Pre-Alpha footage? To me it's a reminder every time you load (or reload as is too often necessary) that the game still isn't what it could should be. At this point I'm not even sure it's definitely malicious, but at best it looks like they are grossly unaware of how incompetent they are presenting themselves to be anymore. Not ruling out malice though.
I mean, marketing in general could do with a lot more regulation. But I don't know what you want here, should companies not be allowed to show footage of games that aren't done? Let's throw in "pre-order" while we're at it. Not joking: I'm completely on board with all of this. I do wonder what a change like that would look like. Would fewer games get made because funding becomes harder to secure when you have no way to drum up excitement for a title that you aren't allowed to show anyone (either due to strict prohibition, or out of abject fear because if what you deliver looks different from your prototype you get wacked by strict regulation)? Does this end up correcting industry practices, or does it just squash smaller studios and ensure the most ambitious titles all have names like "EA" or "ACTIVISION" stamped on 'em?
I'll compare those planets again when Update 6 is released. Since I'm on vacation, the internet is kinda poor, so it might take a day or 2 after release. But I plan on doing so.
I'll compare those planets again when Update 6 is released. Since I'm on vacation, the internet is kinda poor, so it might take a day or 2 after release. But I plan on doing so.
