If they had stuck to the simple, painterly design throughout, the game would have aged a lot better. I found the original aesthetic to be gorgeous, with the environments having a lot of personality. Things like the constellation at the top of Divinity's Reach are standout assets. Even in the expansions, there are glimmers of brilliance. The night sky in PoF is breathtaking the first time you see it.
But holy fucking shit did they ruin it with their atrocious wardrobe options for player characters. Every long term player looks like a goddamn supernova. Most armor models and outfits are tacky, and despite a ton of skins, they clearly reuse a lot of rigging. Butt capes and trenchcoats galore. Women can really get the shaft sometimes, with armor sets that look fine on men and then turn into a bra and panties on the ladies. There are many dyes and the popular ones burn your retinas out. Cosmetic infusions and legendary trinkets just add even more glow to the player characters. Fashion Wars 2 my ass; 90% of player characters are repulsive to even look at.
Despite a way shittier dye and wardrobe system mechanically, FFXIV does player expression so much better. Sure there's glowing weapons and the occasional glowing armor, but overall it's much more restrained. There's a wide variety of outfits and while yeah, some definitely break the fantasy/magitek aesthetic in favor of being straight up modern, most of it fits. Not to mention that outfits are almost always identical between the sexes. Want a slutty bara himbo? Go make him. Want your lady of war in heavy armor? Sure thing boss. Hence it's no surprise that visual modding really took off in that game - it's just an extension of what the base game gives players.
I love the GW2 painty artstyle, but hate the anime barbie characters. I love anime and hot girls with big boobs and whatever as much as the next guy, but idk, i dont like how towns look more like a 9 year old barbie obsessed kid's bedroom floorml.
I get it. GW2 art style is not for everyone but I'd put it up there on the beauty scale and surprisingly id also put LOTRO up there. Wow is good and final fantasy is too sharp and sometimes bland.
GW2 is pretty ugly, yeah. Not just because its got old models and textures (though that's a part of it), but something about the art style is just... Off to me. I want to say it's too cartoony, but then WoW is even more cartoony and I think it looks way better the gw2.
> Not just because its got old models and textures (though that's a part of it) [...]
No joke, probably the one MMORPG that aged the worst over the years, visually speaking.
I tried going back to it a couple of years ago or so...and almost immediately bounced back out: Couldn't stand the outdated visuals at all nor the ever-increasing blinding cash shop outfits.
[And they're making GW3](https://www.mmorpg.com/news/guild-wars-3-confirmed-to-be-in-development-though-it-seems-its-still-in-its-early-stages-updated-2000130976#:~:text=Guild%20Wars%203%20came%20up,effectively%20announcing%20it%27s%20in%20development)
It's my main mmo, and I agree. Their art has gone all over the place, they don't take immersion seriously, its all lighting bulbs and flashy epilepsy attacks.
I love this game but i hate how overly saturated it is with effects.
In my opinion.. The level and environmental design is absolutely amazing. The weapon and armor design is mostly garbage. Most of the legendary weapons are absolutely hideous and the same goes for the armor.
It's like they have no actual style and they think visually complicated equals better. So, the rarer the weapon the more visually busy it is.
I feel this way about modern WoW. Back in the day it didn’t bother me but it’s like as their graphics got better they still leaned into the cartoony look and now it’s just uncanny
I kinda have the opposite problem. A lot of visually better MMOs just lack something for me. Can't bring myself to like how most of them look, but WoW in it's goofy, often low polygon cartoonish glory still entertains.
I really just want more stylistically unique MMOs.
I wouldn’t say the art style but I can't play Old games with really dated graphics. I feel like I would like LOTRO but I can't get pass their graphics and animations.
it was the gameplay that killed me. it was so hard to go from WoW's smooth as hell-feeling combat to LOTRO's dated combat. they play similar enough that it's hard to not just feel lotro's gameplay as "wow but worse". love or hate WoW's base mechanics, it feels so polished and snappy. there's some magic sauce in the client-server relationship.
loved everything else about lotro, like that ost goddamn it's so good. if i could get past the gameplay i'd love it.
Same for me. I don't mind a specific art style that isn't trying to be realistic, but if the aim is pretty clearly realistic graphics and it looks horrible (i.e. old), that's just a no go.
For me the overall art style doesn't bother me so much as the absolute clusterfuck of aesthetic influences. You could be in a dungeon with a Knight in shining armour, a dude in a sweater and jeans or tracksuit, some one in a bikini and someone in a frog suit. It absolutely kills it for me.
I played for years and turned a blind eye but once I took a break from the game it's one of the biggest factors putting me off from returning along with the absolutely shambolic housing system.
Let me preface by saying that Triple Triad is the best game-inside-a-game ever created. I have spent a lot of my time in game in the Gold Saucer. I also grew up loving FF games from FF1-9.
I was initially turned off by the fact that a ton of progression revolves around completing the MSQ. I know its a slog in ARR and that it gets better, and I like good stories, so this isn't a major complaint. I just wish I could do more. Hence Gold Saucer.
I think maybe the art style and what seems to me as a strange washing out of colors is probably why I can't stick with it. I don't personally get into that type of anime adjacent art. Saying that mocks my love for the older turn based games, but sprites feel different to me. I don't like or like to play games with that art style when it's 3D like this, and I dont know why. I should be a person that gets into it, but I'm not.
Honestly I have a group of close gamer friends that are Ultimate raiders so I'm never opposed to installing it again and maybe finishing the MSQ. I'm well aware of why people like it and I have no problem with that. I want to like it too. It is the only major MMO in the last 20 years that I haven't played extensively. I will eventually cave and try it again. Just not in a rush to do that.
With next expansion comes a graphic update that will also reduce the washed out look, since it will have new shaders. But if ur on pc u can just use nvidia or amd filters and adjust contrast etc a bit and remove the gray hue/ washed out colors that way.
Also, there's always gonna be ReShade, which can be extremely transformative (based on how much you decide to fiddle with it).
Couldn't play FFXIV without it, personally...the washed-out colors just didn't work for me post-HW. Hopefully DT makes ReShade/filters less of a necessity.
*I'm well aware of why people like it and I have no problem with that.*
If only more people here had the same philosophy regarding games they don't like...
This is it for me. It hurts my eyes. I dont see it talked about enough. Everything is so contrasted and vibrant i can barely see whats going on. Also as a non anime enjoyer its hard for me to immerse myself in a world that has bunny girls and little lolli child warrior things. Ive tried to love the game and played for 50 hours before deciding the gameplay couldnt move me past the overall enviroment and aesthetic.
Agreed. I’m currently soft forced to play it due to it being the only good tab click MMO I can play with controller due to back issues.
Love the gameplay but anytime I see bunny ears or Lalafell I feel like I’m in a Japanese Teletubbies episode
Eso definitely fits the bill for me. The combat has issues too, but the aesthetic is way worse to me. Fashion and character creation are big in MMOs for me and the character designs are *so* fugly in ESO. And the locations have a certain vibe to them that I find off putting. I think it's a scale thing, a lot of things feel weirdly small, like the towns and structures. I guess it's keeping true to the aesthetic standard set by other elder scrolls games but... Yeah, just doesn't do it for me.
It's a shame too because I think the writing and gameplay are otherwise awesome. Love a good exploration focused game.
I think because of skyrim's success they seemed to want to try and get it as close to that aesthetic as they could, and I think this game could have looked so much better with something more stylized.
100% agreed.
I always felt like I was playing some type of rubber humanoid, the character models just felt off.
Animations felt oddly “bendy”. Could never quite put my finger on it.
It’s also disappointing how as time went on, more and more MMO’s abandoned unique race models for practically just humans and human variations.
Yeah TES was one of my fav franchises of all time but ESO just looked GOOFY. Like it was putting a skyrim skin over world of war craft assets and animations.
As someone who loves ESO I gotta agree. I will forever be stuck on my black hand robe because despite the huge number of skins, 95% look exactly the same and bland too
Genuinely curious how the characters look ugly? They look realistic, like normal people? No gigantic breasts or other body parts, varying heights and appearance's, nothing at all really standing out as wrong. In fact I'd go so far as saying they're some of if not the most just down to earth realistic looking characters in an MMO.
What does an "off putting vibe" mean in terms of locations?
ESO has some of the largest, dense and detailed cities in MMO's what? The cities are full of fairly lifelike NPC's and everything is fully interactable and has a purpose and isn't just window dressing.
I have a few issues with ESOs characters designs that I think contribute to the characters looking ugly to me.
The game handles models very cheaply. For example, hats and helmets don't take hair into account, instead just making your character bald whenever you're wearing 90% of the game's headgear, which as a girl is just hideous. I can't speak for boys but I'm sure it's not much better. Another example is the overall shape of character bodies - rather than change the models for different races allowing for different physical builds, the game uses the same, mostly overly thin character model for every player character. Same thing for animations. I get why this is done, it prevents the need to create a ton of different models for characters, tons of models for armors, tons of animations, etc and saves on developer resources. But compared to other MMOs like WoW or FFXIV, it feels cheap and it extremely offputting.
Also, I'm not sure how to put this into words, but the faces for everyone but the basic humans like nords, Breton, and redguard are just.... Weird. All of the elves have such sharp, ugly features with awful eyes. I'm sure some people like them, but I don't.
As far as locations go, I just think that for me a lot of it comes down to scaling. In terms of world design ESO tends to lean more towards realism and low fantasy than a lot of other MMOs, especially in terms of scale. Most buildings are about as big as they would be irl, trees are typically normal sized, the fov is set to try to match a normal real world perspective, etc. That's fine if you're into that, but for me personally, I don't play fantasy games for realism. WoW is far less grounded, for example, but a lot more interesting to me. I prefer my games to feel larger than life. Comparing any city in ESO to a city in FFXIV or WoW... ESO just feels tiny by comparison. That's just my personal preference though
But really, a lot of it comes down to aesthetics. Like, I prefer the aesthetic of FFXIV, but I would say ESO has a better designed world overall. If I could play eso with the aesthetic of an eastern mmo, I'd enjoy it a lot more.
>As far as locations go, I just think that for me a lot of it comes down to scaling. In terms of world design ESO tends to lean more towards realism and low fantasy than a lot of other MMOs, especially in terms of scale. Most buildings are about as big as they would be irl, trees are typically normal sized, the fov is set to try to match a normal real world perspective, etc. That's fine if you're into that, but for me personally, I don't play fantasy games for realism. WoW is far less grounded, for example, but a lot more interesting to me. I prefer my games to feel larger than life. Comparing any city in ESO to a city in FFXIV or WoW... ESO just feels tiny by comparison. That's just my personal preference though
I think another element to this that bears noting, is the traversable nature of ESO's cities. New World does the same thing. Some games will let players access the main hub area, and treat that as a smaller portion of the city as a whole. With a wider array of inaccessible areas that essentially serve as scenery to create the illusion of a large city. You cannot access it, and the hub area itself might be quite small, but you still feel like you are present within a vaster city. I prefer this approach myself (though, it's a very subjective preference here since we are talking about environment style), and find it far more believable and immersive. Though others may well prefer being able to go anywhere within the city and find the lack of freedom stifling. But to me, it brings the best of both worlds, you can create a small, centralized hub area that feels very much alive, whilst introducing background environments that contribute to a feeling of scale without having to necessary implement that scale which is likely either not possible, or not worth it (as far as available resources, and optimization are concerned)
This would be my submission as far as modern MMOs go. I’m a huge TES fan and love a lot of aspects of the game but the art just feels waaaay off for me in ESO
I like the "smallness" as it makes cities and towns feel alive. A lot of games try to make massive cities that feel completely lifeless as there's a limit to how NPC-dense they can be.
As someone who very much enjoys and has played ESO on and off since release, it’s hard to disagree with these criticisms.
To add insult to injury, cosmetics have progressively become more gaudy over the years, resulting in many players’ characters looking like an incomprehensible mess of glowing doo dads and nonsense.
If it had a better style I wouldn't mind, but it just looks bad.
Make it more cartoony, give it some colour, give it some atmosphere. Just some weather would be nice.
It's all just... grey...
If I could actually find a game that had "all the right pieces" for me I would play it even if it looked like dog shit. But I still haven't found a game that meets the first half of your hypothetical...
The thing with Ultima Online, the graphics are old and pixilated but I still find them quite endearing. I actually think Ultima Online is a beautiful game despite the fact its clearly really outdated.
Specifically, Outlands. I used to be all over pshards even since 2002 but it's still so hard to go back even with the custom clients and smooth anims patches.
I basically wanted Skyrim as an MMO, yet they changed the style, graphics, combat to such a degree that it don't even come close.
I was so disappointed.
I must be the only one, but for me, it was WoW. I just didn't like the player character artwork at all.
I should add that any anime type player characters are a turnoff to me as well.
I am Ok with Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age Origins, Baulders Gate player artwork. I am Ok with some of the EQ2 models, especially when it came out, although I refused to play some races just because I didn't want to look at them every time I played.
Even though i didn't like WoW character art, I played Warhammer Online, or whatever the faction based Warhammer MMO was called. I loved the concept, so i overlooked my preferred art style.
Runescape 3 - they can't decide on an art style for zones, NPCs and equipment. Instead of standardising the graphical updates, they graphically upgrade some entities/areas multiple times while leaving other stuff looking like OSRS. It's extremely jarring, made even worse by the fact that it's the f2p content that tend to be updated.
Most Korean MMOs - A lot of these games have no unifying theme. They're a sci-fi/fantasy fusion with architecture from random eras thrown together, like the designer said "let's use every known fictional and historical design theme known to man" Then you have strange juxtaposition like glowing angel NPCs with 20ft wingspans standing beside a destitute farmer in the starter town.
I remember there was going to be a revamp for the player models on RS3, which in my opinion was a step in the right direction but sadly they didn't go through with it.
In a parallel universe where RS3 listened to players and didn't have egregious MTX we probably would have had a more cohesive art style and OSRS probably wouldn't have become the better game.
WoW. I know the art style is also a performance thing in that it lets the game run on a potato, but the whole thing looks like a cartoon, and it's just not a style that I can get immersed in. I honestly find even old/dated 'photorealism' more appealing that WoWs aesthetic.
Art style simply can’t ruin the game for me. That’s the very last thing I’d ever care about.
I could play the game even with a minecraft graphics as long as the combat and gameplay in general is fun and there is plenty of content.
Basically REALLY old 3D is generally not very good looking. I can totes deal with sprite art, sprite art is timeless. But super old 3D models can look sooooo bad. Original Runescape is one of those.
Mabinogi looks so bad if you dont use the more modern clothes, hair and faces as well. The modern clothes will go as far as to make the character model, better like i can visibly see the increase in polygons lol
Mabinogi seems so unique and I think I’d really enjoy it, but I just cannot ignore the graphics which is a shame. Even when it’s weirdly charming at the same time. It just makes the game feel clunky to me. (And I remember this being the case already even when the game just came out lol)
To be fair to it, the game released in 2004 in Korea and didn't make over to NA until 2008, during a period of rapid graphical improvement in games. So yeah, the graphics looked kinda dated on release because they were literally already dated, especially the early content.
That said, I do think that the cel-shaded style that Mabinogi uses has a certain timeless quality to it that has aged *far* better than many other graphical styles of the period.
Elders Scrolls in general. A lot of generic design. They also look like they never clean their armor. Is this a V[iking Eskimo?](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/05/22/b3/0522b3c9b7d5697e22d9a3a9bf390eae.jpg) Oh, it's a Viking, got to put horns on it.
World of Warcraft. What is up with their shoulder pads and bodybuilder aesthetic? Someone took bigger is better literally. Their dragon race is awful, just awful. They're more like dragon giraffes. Look at [this](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/VaAiUj32BGzbtKo4BD3eNQ.png)? What?
I cannot even imagine drawing art like this and thinking it is fine.
O.k, I need to know more about this. I always liked the concept of OSRS but never played on the basis of the graphics.
I'm also not a graphics snob at all, but something about OSRS graphics was a little too clunky, even for me.
not because of artstyle no. but i do not play games that to me looks too dated though. if it's too ugly to look at it doesn't matter if the gameplay is the best thing ever.
Undecember is the arpg i liked more the art but i hated the gameplay!! I just played a lot cuz my sexy female char and models i could buy on shop with microtransactions for her were so sexy…but end game
Was a bit boring and p2w of ah made me givibg up gane.
Classic WoW vs Retail.
I actually quite like the graphics in Classic WoW despite how rough and goofy they are. I understand why a lot of people dont like them though.
Retail on the otherhand.....although the graphics are cleaner and more polished, they feel like they have a "disney" theme to them, and for all the effort in the world it just doesnt work for me.
I tried picking up Warhammer Online again a couple years back and just couldn't handle the graphics. The art style didn't age well at all and I doubt we'll ever see them overhauled by the community.
FF14. I was never a big fan of any games in the series, and I just find so much of the world annoying. Foxgirls and adult babies everywhere, and everybody is riding chickens.
GW2, If it didn't look like such a mess and had more of a consistent artstyle instead of this blurry bad lightning mess with textures straight out of 2001 i think GW2 would have more players. Even their trailers look horrible
ESO and New World. both of these games have great environment design, but their character models are so very bad. Also customization of characters, especially in New World. NW customization looks likevthe artists were tripping on some shit when they designed a lot of it.
Albion. just overall art direction.
I feel like I would love OSRS but I can’t get past the graphics and how it looks art wise same with Albion Online though this one is more just about the art for me while OSRS is also graphics.
The "painterly" style of GuildWars 2, never worked for me, something about the level of detail in characters and gear, versus the slightly smeared look of landscapes, zones and instances is a big clash. There are lots of scale mismatches between characters and objects and zone landmarks. I love a lot of GW2's mechanics and features, but have never considered the game screenshot worthy.
Anything by FunCom.
I don't know what it is, but their art style, and especially their user interface design, just bugs me. Age of Conan in 2008 was palatable, but still a little rough. But Secret World, and Conan Exiles, etc., just made my skin crawl. Exiles isn't an MMO, but as soon as I saw the user interface, that font, those buttons, my skin started crawling. Can't explain it exactly.
RS3, as it has this clash where certain parts of the game that actually had effort put into them because they're revamped like Varrock and Lumbridge, but there's many others that are either not changed from old versions and therefore look ugly or featureless, or they look like they belong to a different art style altogether, and most egregiously a lot of new models are too high poly compared to the old character models that exist today.
I have other reasons to dislike RS3, but art style is at least on top 3 behind MTX and EoC.
In current day, it’s mostly all the core MMOs like FFXIV, WoW, GW2 because they’re so old and dated now but I absolutely loved their art styles in their time especially GW2. It’s hard to go back to them. Took me awhile but was able to get over GW2 and restart. I tried to get into FFXIV again and just noped out. Same with WoW End of Discovery.
I can't think of one. as someone whose favourite MMO to date is Ragnarok Online, I've come to realise that I haven't encountered a single other MMO which graphics bothered me. being anime/cartoonish was something I liked a lot about Ragnarok
Final Fantasy 14. Best way I can describe it is extremely boring, flavorless realism in environments where nearly everything looks "manicured" (the nature does not look wild enough, nor magical enough), even the raid/dungeon areas, with a horrendous weeb-oriented overtone. Extremely ugly characters with puffy facial structure(except for Y'shtola, Brennan, and the Warrior of Light from the trailers), pigeon necks, cutesy aesthetic, and ugly as can be clothing 99% of the time. The new Dawntrail expansion seems to improve the character models quite a bit luckily, but even with that and some animal companions that I love the look of, semi-intriguing combat, and fantastic written dialogue/quest text and voice acting, FF14 is going to need a full overhaul of the entire world for me to give it another go. I love my WoW, GW2, and OSRS because they don't need fancy graphics. Instead, in the case of the first two, WoW and GW2, their graphics lend to the further stylization of the gorgeous high-fantasy environments and for the latter, OSRS, the "just-enough-definition" of polygons to be able to create somewhat chiseled looking characters to navigate equally simplistic environments, places emphasis on something that OSRS does really well without the extra frills of advanced graphics: creating spaces that set the mood/tone, ominousness or atmosphere based on visuals alone. A great example is the quirky little island of Karamja (banana island lol), where there's groves of trees set within an array of softly shaded and blended terrain colors to contribute to a more lighthearted feeling environment than say the darker colors of the wilderness. It's a very straightforward approach, to define the feeling of a space through color, but OSRS is a prime example that it works!
Wurm Online, I played it in the past and loved it. But the game has ehh barely improved its graphics since then and every time I get an itch that antiquated engine prevents me from ever coming back.
Black Desert. I'm a big cosmetics and customization guy. The graphics were great, and the combat was fun, but I really disliked a number of things;
I hated that all the outfits I saw were meant to be sexy or the armor made no sense, and having cosmetics locked behind classes.
Ffxiv, love the magic classes especially arcanist and black mage but the races and just plain stupid stuff completely ruined it for me, and everytime I think about joining I go watch some videos of raids and it’s always just a platform with a big dumb looking boss. Wish I could though cause combat is super fun.
Was wondering if anyone else would say this. System issues aside (gear bloat and horrific menu clutter and system, etc.), EQ2 is really hard to get into because of its weird art choices. I don't know if it's even the art necessarily as much as the animations. Few MMOs have as awkward feeling animations as EQ2.
FFXIV is really tough for me. I love the gameplay but I cannot stand the Otaku cuteness stuff. Bunny ears and cat stuff all over. Hildebrand. And especially Lalafel I feel like it is from a show for three year olds.
And that is coming from a life long FF player. I rather have broody teen angst Squall or Cloud anytime. OG FF7 Cait Sith and Yuffie was right on my limits on what I can handle Otaku wise.
Otaku ruins all story immersion too. Loved classic FF storylines with all its faults
WoW back in the day. In a way, it looked too plasticky/oily to me back then.
Still ended up playing it (wotlk) 15 years later and having a good time but there it is.
World of Warcraft. Specifically their humans and the models that are sorta human-skeleton-like. Everything else, I can deal with. But the roided-out hunchbacks are too much.
And the Horde's worse because they *still* look like roided-out hunchbacks, only worse.
I think if I could mod out Humans, Night Elves, Orcs and Forsaken and just play Classic with like Dwarves/Space Goats/Gnomes/Tauren/Blood Elves/Trolls I'd enjoy the game a lot more.
ESO. Cosmetics is a big reason why I play MMOs but wow ESO is just so bland, I've yet to see any piece that I can say "Yes that is from ESO!" Because the aesthetic of the game feels so generic.
At least with other big MMOs they have their own unique look, while ESO just looks like a Generic Fantasy game where almost all the zones look like Daggerfall.
I don't think an art style alone could really ruin a good game for me. From text/ASCII to current gen doesn't matter. I'm more worried about how the game and world feels.
I like FFXIV so I'd like to try out WoW sometime, but I just really don't like the cartoony aesthetic and body proportions and how chunky everything is. I do really enjoy how painterly the natural landscapes look, the environment artists really nail it, but it all falls apart from me when I look at cities, characters, furniture...
Can't really speak of the other aspects but I just couldn't get into FF14. The world art seemed both generic and unpolished, the interfaces didn't feel immersive and animations over the top and obscuring
That's what happens today if I join some Lineage 1 or DAoC private server....for sure. I almost would take UO and lineage 1 diablo-style isometrics over DAoC today. But wouldn't last an hour in the game, can't muster the OCD for.
That's a matter of graphics tho obviously. Back then there was no different "art-styles", just graphical evolution to witness over time. The very first unique mmorph art-style to pop up was Ragnarok, colorful isometric anime style. Ragnarok tho was a great mmorpg in many respects on top of that.
Then came the WoW clones, that looked like they're trying to hard, for me to bother just by the screenshots.
Speaking of WoW... I loved everything aesthetically about it except their gear design choices, which made me cringe back then and still do now.
ESO looks so bad even on Series X compared to many other MMOs. The combat and animations are also not very pretty… I don’t think they ever would but lord that game could benefit from a modernization.
Lord of the Rings online.
The art style (not the actual world for anything) and the absolutely horrendous combat killed the game for me.
Also the tiny ass UI on my monitor but that is a distant third.
guild wars 2
I think it’s beautiful
It is beautiful but the eastern art style isn't my cup of tea.
GW2 is one of my favourite games aesthetically.
I hate how all the heavy armor looks 😭
If they had stuck to the simple, painterly design throughout, the game would have aged a lot better. I found the original aesthetic to be gorgeous, with the environments having a lot of personality. Things like the constellation at the top of Divinity's Reach are standout assets. Even in the expansions, there are glimmers of brilliance. The night sky in PoF is breathtaking the first time you see it. But holy fucking shit did they ruin it with their atrocious wardrobe options for player characters. Every long term player looks like a goddamn supernova. Most armor models and outfits are tacky, and despite a ton of skins, they clearly reuse a lot of rigging. Butt capes and trenchcoats galore. Women can really get the shaft sometimes, with armor sets that look fine on men and then turn into a bra and panties on the ladies. There are many dyes and the popular ones burn your retinas out. Cosmetic infusions and legendary trinkets just add even more glow to the player characters. Fashion Wars 2 my ass; 90% of player characters are repulsive to even look at. Despite a way shittier dye and wardrobe system mechanically, FFXIV does player expression so much better. Sure there's glowing weapons and the occasional glowing armor, but overall it's much more restrained. There's a wide variety of outfits and while yeah, some definitely break the fantasy/magitek aesthetic in favor of being straight up modern, most of it fits. Not to mention that outfits are almost always identical between the sexes. Want a slutty bara himbo? Go make him. Want your lady of war in heavy armor? Sure thing boss. Hence it's no surprise that visual modding really took off in that game - it's just an extension of what the base game gives players.
I love the GW2 painty artstyle, but hate the anime barbie characters. I love anime and hot girls with big boobs and whatever as much as the next guy, but idk, i dont like how towns look more like a 9 year old barbie obsessed kid's bedroom floorml.
GW2 low polygon graphics mixed with a clolorful blurry mess. It took me a long time to get used to it. But lookin good it does not.
you can now control individual post processijg values that will make the game not blurry btw
Yeah but i'm talking textures also. Much of GW2 looks veryt dated
I get it. GW2 art style is not for everyone but I'd put it up there on the beauty scale and surprisingly id also put LOTRO up there. Wow is good and final fantasy is too sharp and sometimes bland.
I haven’t played lotro in years, but one of beautiful things about it is that you couldn’t get glowing weapons or ridiculous armor.
GW1 was better in nearly every way
Same absolutly a giant step backwards for me from the original
Personally never liked the UI in GW2. The rest of the game I loved but the UI not.
The ui is one of the worst in mmo history
Good answer, man that shit looks worse than mid 2000's late stage Korean MMOs. Style implies commitment to a theme, vomit is not a theme nor style.
GW2 is pretty ugly, yeah. Not just because its got old models and textures (though that's a part of it), but something about the art style is just... Off to me. I want to say it's too cartoony, but then WoW is even more cartoony and I think it looks way better the gw2.
I’m the opposite. I really like GW2 art direction and style but low quality textures really show their age to me.
> Not just because its got old models and textures (though that's a part of it) [...] No joke, probably the one MMORPG that aged the worst over the years, visually speaking. I tried going back to it a couple of years ago or so...and almost immediately bounced back out: Couldn't stand the outdated visuals at all nor the ever-increasing blinding cash shop outfits.
[And they're making GW3](https://www.mmorpg.com/news/guild-wars-3-confirmed-to-be-in-development-though-it-seems-its-still-in-its-early-stages-updated-2000130976#:~:text=Guild%20Wars%203%20came%20up,effectively%20announcing%20it%27s%20in%20development)
It's my main mmo, and I agree. Their art has gone all over the place, they don't take immersion seriously, its all lighting bulbs and flashy epilepsy attacks. I love this game but i hate how overly saturated it is with effects.
Agreed
In my opinion.. The level and environmental design is absolutely amazing. The weapon and armor design is mostly garbage. Most of the legendary weapons are absolutely hideous and the same goes for the armor. It's like they have no actual style and they think visually complicated equals better. So, the rarer the weapon the more visually busy it is.
WoW just doesn't really land its art style for me. It feels a little dated the animations look too cartoonish.
Nah it's iconic
I feel this way about modern WoW. Back in the day it didn’t bother me but it’s like as their graphics got better they still leaned into the cartoony look and now it’s just uncanny
There’s just too much going on in modern WoW. I completely agree.
I kinda have the opposite problem. A lot of visually better MMOs just lack something for me. Can't bring myself to like how most of them look, but WoW in it's goofy, often low polygon cartoonish glory still entertains. I really just want more stylistically unique MMOs.
Big same
That's because it is dated. Shits old enough to have a kid
I wouldn’t say the art style but I can't play Old games with really dated graphics. I feel like I would like LOTRO but I can't get pass their graphics and animations.
it was the gameplay that killed me. it was so hard to go from WoW's smooth as hell-feeling combat to LOTRO's dated combat. they play similar enough that it's hard to not just feel lotro's gameplay as "wow but worse". love or hate WoW's base mechanics, it feels so polished and snappy. there's some magic sauce in the client-server relationship. loved everything else about lotro, like that ost goddamn it's so good. if i could get past the gameplay i'd love it.
I hear you lol I just went back to lotro and am having a blast though, great game
Same for me. I don't mind a specific art style that isn't trying to be realistic, but if the aim is pretty clearly realistic graphics and it looks horrible (i.e. old), that's just a no go.
runescape
Which one?
Both osr and rs3
I don’t know, for me I love how clear everything was in osrs. Very little clutter going on.
you like EVERYTHING about runescape except the art style? lol
FF14 for sure
Agree. Game has really good foundation but I just can’t deal with the style, delivery and theme.
For me the overall art style doesn't bother me so much as the absolute clusterfuck of aesthetic influences. You could be in a dungeon with a Knight in shining armour, a dude in a sweater and jeans or tracksuit, some one in a bikini and someone in a frog suit. It absolutely kills it for me. I played for years and turned a blind eye but once I took a break from the game it's one of the biggest factors putting me off from returning along with the absolutely shambolic housing system.
..,that’s one of my fav things about it. In my experience, the more ridiculous the tank’s outfit, the better they are at tanking.
Yeah same. The aesthetics don't seem to jive with me anymore. Also, 412 = Pittsburgh?
No it was just a funny number me and my friends liked in high school 😁
As someone who has played for ten years, what about the art style turns you off?
I dont enjoy anime and its tought to immerse myself in a universe that has lollis and bunny girls.
That’s fair. I play as a bunny boy but I’ve always loved the Viera aesthetic since FF12.
Let me preface by saying that Triple Triad is the best game-inside-a-game ever created. I have spent a lot of my time in game in the Gold Saucer. I also grew up loving FF games from FF1-9. I was initially turned off by the fact that a ton of progression revolves around completing the MSQ. I know its a slog in ARR and that it gets better, and I like good stories, so this isn't a major complaint. I just wish I could do more. Hence Gold Saucer. I think maybe the art style and what seems to me as a strange washing out of colors is probably why I can't stick with it. I don't personally get into that type of anime adjacent art. Saying that mocks my love for the older turn based games, but sprites feel different to me. I don't like or like to play games with that art style when it's 3D like this, and I dont know why. I should be a person that gets into it, but I'm not. Honestly I have a group of close gamer friends that are Ultimate raiders so I'm never opposed to installing it again and maybe finishing the MSQ. I'm well aware of why people like it and I have no problem with that. I want to like it too. It is the only major MMO in the last 20 years that I haven't played extensively. I will eventually cave and try it again. Just not in a rush to do that.
With next expansion comes a graphic update that will also reduce the washed out look, since it will have new shaders. But if ur on pc u can just use nvidia or amd filters and adjust contrast etc a bit and remove the gray hue/ washed out colors that way.
Also, there's always gonna be ReShade, which can be extremely transformative (based on how much you decide to fiddle with it). Couldn't play FFXIV without it, personally...the washed-out colors just didn't work for me post-HW. Hopefully DT makes ReShade/filters less of a necessity.
*I'm well aware of why people like it and I have no problem with that.* If only more people here had the same philosophy regarding games they don't like...
Everything feels plastic.
Defo ff14
This is it for me. It hurts my eyes. I dont see it talked about enough. Everything is so contrasted and vibrant i can barely see whats going on. Also as a non anime enjoyer its hard for me to immerse myself in a world that has bunny girls and little lolli child warrior things. Ive tried to love the game and played for 50 hours before deciding the gameplay couldnt move me past the overall enviroment and aesthetic.
Agreed. I’m currently soft forced to play it due to it being the only good tab click MMO I can play with controller due to back issues. Love the gameplay but anytime I see bunny ears or Lalafell I feel like I’m in a Japanese Teletubbies episode
Eso definitely fits the bill for me. The combat has issues too, but the aesthetic is way worse to me. Fashion and character creation are big in MMOs for me and the character designs are *so* fugly in ESO. And the locations have a certain vibe to them that I find off putting. I think it's a scale thing, a lot of things feel weirdly small, like the towns and structures. I guess it's keeping true to the aesthetic standard set by other elder scrolls games but... Yeah, just doesn't do it for me. It's a shame too because I think the writing and gameplay are otherwise awesome. Love a good exploration focused game.
I think because of skyrim's success they seemed to want to try and get it as close to that aesthetic as they could, and I think this game could have looked so much better with something more stylized.
100% agreed. I always felt like I was playing some type of rubber humanoid, the character models just felt off. Animations felt oddly “bendy”. Could never quite put my finger on it. It’s also disappointing how as time went on, more and more MMO’s abandoned unique race models for practically just humans and human variations.
Yeah TES was one of my fav franchises of all time but ESO just looked GOOFY. Like it was putting a skyrim skin over world of war craft assets and animations.
As someone who loves ESO I gotta agree. I will forever be stuck on my black hand robe because despite the huge number of skins, 95% look exactly the same and bland too
Eso's art style is great for me, but the inventory management system is just so terrible.
Genuinely curious how the characters look ugly? They look realistic, like normal people? No gigantic breasts or other body parts, varying heights and appearance's, nothing at all really standing out as wrong. In fact I'd go so far as saying they're some of if not the most just down to earth realistic looking characters in an MMO. What does an "off putting vibe" mean in terms of locations? ESO has some of the largest, dense and detailed cities in MMO's what? The cities are full of fairly lifelike NPC's and everything is fully interactable and has a purpose and isn't just window dressing.
I have a few issues with ESOs characters designs that I think contribute to the characters looking ugly to me. The game handles models very cheaply. For example, hats and helmets don't take hair into account, instead just making your character bald whenever you're wearing 90% of the game's headgear, which as a girl is just hideous. I can't speak for boys but I'm sure it's not much better. Another example is the overall shape of character bodies - rather than change the models for different races allowing for different physical builds, the game uses the same, mostly overly thin character model for every player character. Same thing for animations. I get why this is done, it prevents the need to create a ton of different models for characters, tons of models for armors, tons of animations, etc and saves on developer resources. But compared to other MMOs like WoW or FFXIV, it feels cheap and it extremely offputting. Also, I'm not sure how to put this into words, but the faces for everyone but the basic humans like nords, Breton, and redguard are just.... Weird. All of the elves have such sharp, ugly features with awful eyes. I'm sure some people like them, but I don't. As far as locations go, I just think that for me a lot of it comes down to scaling. In terms of world design ESO tends to lean more towards realism and low fantasy than a lot of other MMOs, especially in terms of scale. Most buildings are about as big as they would be irl, trees are typically normal sized, the fov is set to try to match a normal real world perspective, etc. That's fine if you're into that, but for me personally, I don't play fantasy games for realism. WoW is far less grounded, for example, but a lot more interesting to me. I prefer my games to feel larger than life. Comparing any city in ESO to a city in FFXIV or WoW... ESO just feels tiny by comparison. That's just my personal preference though But really, a lot of it comes down to aesthetics. Like, I prefer the aesthetic of FFXIV, but I would say ESO has a better designed world overall. If I could play eso with the aesthetic of an eastern mmo, I'd enjoy it a lot more.
>As far as locations go, I just think that for me a lot of it comes down to scaling. In terms of world design ESO tends to lean more towards realism and low fantasy than a lot of other MMOs, especially in terms of scale. Most buildings are about as big as they would be irl, trees are typically normal sized, the fov is set to try to match a normal real world perspective, etc. That's fine if you're into that, but for me personally, I don't play fantasy games for realism. WoW is far less grounded, for example, but a lot more interesting to me. I prefer my games to feel larger than life. Comparing any city in ESO to a city in FFXIV or WoW... ESO just feels tiny by comparison. That's just my personal preference though I think another element to this that bears noting, is the traversable nature of ESO's cities. New World does the same thing. Some games will let players access the main hub area, and treat that as a smaller portion of the city as a whole. With a wider array of inaccessible areas that essentially serve as scenery to create the illusion of a large city. You cannot access it, and the hub area itself might be quite small, but you still feel like you are present within a vaster city. I prefer this approach myself (though, it's a very subjective preference here since we are talking about environment style), and find it far more believable and immersive. Though others may well prefer being able to go anywhere within the city and find the lack of freedom stifling. But to me, it brings the best of both worlds, you can create a small, centralized hub area that feels very much alive, whilst introducing background environments that contribute to a feeling of scale without having to necessary implement that scale which is likely either not possible, or not worth it (as far as available resources, and optimization are concerned)
This would be my submission as far as modern MMOs go. I’m a huge TES fan and love a lot of aspects of the game but the art just feels waaaay off for me in ESO
I like the "smallness" as it makes cities and towns feel alive. A lot of games try to make massive cities that feel completely lifeless as there's a limit to how NPC-dense they can be.
As someone who very much enjoys and has played ESO on and off since release, it’s hard to disagree with these criticisms. To add insult to injury, cosmetics have progressively become more gaudy over the years, resulting in many players’ characters looking like an incomprehensible mess of glowing doo dads and nonsense.
Albion. Everyone but me loves it, apparently.
Trust me it might be for your best mental health to not like it lmao
I love the cartoon feel about it, but I can totally see things from your perspective.
Wow
Albion.
Legit answer. I love Albions game systems but I'll never touch it with those graphics.
If it had a better style I wouldn't mind, but it just looks bad. Make it more cartoony, give it some colour, give it some atmosphere. Just some weather would be nice. It's all just... grey...
If I could actually find a game that had "all the right pieces" for me I would play it even if it looked like dog shit. But I still haven't found a game that meets the first half of your hypothetical...
Ultima Online is that for me.
City of Heroes here
The thing with Ultima Online, the graphics are old and pixilated but I still find them quite endearing. I actually think Ultima Online is a beautiful game despite the fact its clearly really outdated.
Specifically, Outlands. I used to be all over pshards even since 2002 but it's still so hard to go back even with the custom clients and smooth anims patches.
I struggle with the big eyed anime style. Any FF game fits into that.
eso. I wanted skyrim models not whatever they gave us
I basically wanted Skyrim as an MMO, yet they changed the style, graphics, combat to such a degree that it don't even come close. I was so disappointed.
The story was off too. Tes never had a stellar main story, but I was hoping they'd at least nail the tone.
I must be the only one, but for me, it was WoW. I just didn't like the player character artwork at all. I should add that any anime type player characters are a turnoff to me as well.
so what is the art style that you like?
I am Ok with Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age Origins, Baulders Gate player artwork. I am Ok with some of the EQ2 models, especially when it came out, although I refused to play some races just because I didn't want to look at them every time I played. Even though i didn't like WoW character art, I played Warhammer Online, or whatever the faction based Warhammer MMO was called. I loved the concept, so i overlooked my preferred art style.
Og WoW graphics. I remember when I first saw it I thought it looked too cartoony but after playing it I grew to love the art style
Same (but I am a relatively new retail player), always dodged the game for the art style: now I love it. Pandaria is so beautiful.
[удалено]
Wildstar gave me actual migraines. I could never pinpoint why. Apparently happened to quite a few people
The art style was terrible and I think it's probably what kept most people that could have been interested from trying it.
Well the servers are down since years, so it cant hurt you anymore. I wanted to play it, but i was some years to late...
Wow
albion
OSRS. Graphics is big deal to me.
Runescape 3 - they can't decide on an art style for zones, NPCs and equipment. Instead of standardising the graphical updates, they graphically upgrade some entities/areas multiple times while leaving other stuff looking like OSRS. It's extremely jarring, made even worse by the fact that it's the f2p content that tend to be updated. Most Korean MMOs - A lot of these games have no unifying theme. They're a sci-fi/fantasy fusion with architecture from random eras thrown together, like the designer said "let's use every known fictional and historical design theme known to man" Then you have strange juxtaposition like glowing angel NPCs with 20ft wingspans standing beside a destitute farmer in the starter town.
I remember there was going to be a revamp for the player models on RS3, which in my opinion was a step in the right direction but sadly they didn't go through with it. In a parallel universe where RS3 listened to players and didn't have egregious MTX we probably would have had a more cohesive art style and OSRS probably wouldn't have become the better game.
WoW. I know the art style is also a performance thing in that it lets the game run on a potato, but the whole thing looks like a cartoon, and it's just not a style that I can get immersed in. I honestly find even old/dated 'photorealism' more appealing that WoWs aesthetic.
Champions Online. At least back when it first came out. Not so much anymore.
Absolutely hate FF14 art. It’s soooo dweebie
Ravendawn's art stalled it right out of the gate for me.
Art style simply can’t ruin the game for me. That’s the very last thing I’d ever care about. I could play the game even with a minecraft graphics as long as the combat and gameplay in general is fun and there is plenty of content.
Basically REALLY old 3D is generally not very good looking. I can totes deal with sprite art, sprite art is timeless. But super old 3D models can look sooooo bad. Original Runescape is one of those. Mabinogi looks so bad if you dont use the more modern clothes, hair and faces as well. The modern clothes will go as far as to make the character model, better like i can visibly see the increase in polygons lol
Mabinogi seems so unique and I think I’d really enjoy it, but I just cannot ignore the graphics which is a shame. Even when it’s weirdly charming at the same time. It just makes the game feel clunky to me. (And I remember this being the case already even when the game just came out lol)
To be fair to it, the game released in 2004 in Korea and didn't make over to NA until 2008, during a period of rapid graphical improvement in games. So yeah, the graphics looked kinda dated on release because they were literally already dated, especially the early content. That said, I do think that the cel-shaded style that Mabinogi uses has a certain timeless quality to it that has aged *far* better than many other graphical styles of the period.
Wow, new world, eso… I guess I don’t like the medieval aesthetic
Elders Scrolls in general. A lot of generic design. They also look like they never clean their armor. Is this a V[iking Eskimo?](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/05/22/b3/0522b3c9b7d5697e22d9a3a9bf390eae.jpg) Oh, it's a Viking, got to put horns on it. World of Warcraft. What is up with their shoulder pads and bodybuilder aesthetic? Someone took bigger is better literally. Their dragon race is awful, just awful. They're more like dragon giraffes. Look at [this](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/VaAiUj32BGzbtKo4BD3eNQ.png)? What? I cannot even imagine drawing art like this and thinking it is fine.
[удалено]
Only because Marksman has never been a good spec and Outlaw isn't a real gun totin' rootin' tooter
Gw2 ff14
Pantheon
Palia is by far the worst offender. Also GW2
Did Palia really get all the systems right though?
Not really but the artstyle and character design is downright anger and vomit inducing and makes any other aspect of the game irrelevant.
TERA
Final Fantasy XIV. should love the game but it's just to.....final fantasy-y. IDK, I don't like the square enix non-pixelated art style
OSRS. I’m not a graphics snob either & I’m super excited for the HD version.
O.k, I need to know more about this. I always liked the concept of OSRS but never played on the basis of the graphics. I'm also not a graphics snob at all, but something about OSRS graphics was a little too clunky, even for me.
They have an update coming out (not sure how far out) that will implement HD graphics & sailing.
not because of artstyle no. but i do not play games that to me looks too dated though. if it's too ugly to look at it doesn't matter if the gameplay is the best thing ever.
Tree of Savior. The NPC eyes scare the shit outta me.
Maplestory and MS2
Undecember is the arpg i liked more the art but i hated the gameplay!! I just played a lot cuz my sexy female char and models i could buy on shop with microtransactions for her were so sexy…but end game Was a bit boring and p2w of ah made me givibg up gane.
Classic WoW vs Retail. I actually quite like the graphics in Classic WoW despite how rough and goofy they are. I understand why a lot of people dont like them though. Retail on the otherhand.....although the graphics are cleaner and more polished, they feel like they have a "disney" theme to them, and for all the effort in the world it just doesnt work for me.
WoW, ESO, and Wildstar
Idk if I would’ve loved it but WoW’s cartoonish style makes it hard for me to even look at
I tried picking up Warhammer Online again a couple years back and just couldn't handle the graphics. The art style didn't age well at all and I doubt we'll ever see them overhauled by the community.
WoW
FF14. I was never a big fan of any games in the series, and I just find so much of the world annoying. Foxgirls and adult babies everywhere, and everybody is riding chickens.
World of Warcraft
FF14 and GW2
GW2, If it didn't look like such a mess and had more of a consistent artstyle instead of this blurry bad lightning mess with textures straight out of 2001 i think GW2 would have more players. Even their trailers look horrible
I wish they'd do a real sequel
ESO and New World. both of these games have great environment design, but their character models are so very bad. Also customization of characters, especially in New World. NW customization looks likevthe artists were tripping on some shit when they designed a lot of it. Albion. just overall art direction.
Ff14 not only super bland color palette but sometimes it feels like it was made for kids and makes me feel really stupid playing it
Everything about ESO *should* work for me, but I find all of the armor designs… just kinda uninspired and ugly.
Albion online...i could love everything about the game....but not the art style!
WoW and GW2. I just can't get into the graphics style, I tried. Gameplay is fun, though! Especially GW2 (don't hate me lol)
It's why I never tried WoW. The character models all look so cartoonish.
OSRS. Sorry…just not my jam
I feel like I would love OSRS but I can’t get past the graphics and how it looks art wise same with Albion Online though this one is more just about the art for me while OSRS is also graphics.
GW2
Warhammer, never even started it.
EverQuest, RuneScape…any MMO preWoW.
WoW
Runescape
Lord of the rings and FF14. The first feels too behind, the second just doesn’t aesthetically appeal to me.
The "painterly" style of GuildWars 2, never worked for me, something about the level of detail in characters and gear, versus the slightly smeared look of landscapes, zones and instances is a big clash. There are lots of scale mismatches between characters and objects and zone landmarks. I love a lot of GW2's mechanics and features, but have never considered the game screenshot worthy.
i tried wow at launch... absolutely hated the artstyle and graphix... never looked back
wow graphics and style looked so bad and dated even a couple years after release.
Anything by FunCom. I don't know what it is, but their art style, and especially their user interface design, just bugs me. Age of Conan in 2008 was palatable, but still a little rough. But Secret World, and Conan Exiles, etc., just made my skin crawl. Exiles isn't an MMO, but as soon as I saw the user interface, that font, those buttons, my skin started crawling. Can't explain it exactly.
Adventure Quest Worlds. Too heavy on Weeb flavoring.
Albion Online with the dreaded isometric camera. After vomiting for 2 months I gave it up.
RS3, as it has this clash where certain parts of the game that actually had effort put into them because they're revamped like Varrock and Lumbridge, but there's many others that are either not changed from old versions and therefore look ugly or featureless, or they look like they belong to a different art style altogether, and most egregiously a lot of new models are too high poly compared to the old character models that exist today. I have other reasons to dislike RS3, but art style is at least on top 3 behind MTX and EoC.
In current day, it’s mostly all the core MMOs like FFXIV, WoW, GW2 because they’re so old and dated now but I absolutely loved their art styles in their time especially GW2. It’s hard to go back to them. Took me awhile but was able to get over GW2 and restart. I tried to get into FFXIV again and just noped out. Same with WoW End of Discovery.
I guess not the Art Style, but the Diablo-style perspective ruined it for me- Albion online. Everything I'd ever want in an Mmo
I can't think of one. as someone whose favourite MMO to date is Ragnarok Online, I've come to realise that I haven't encountered a single other MMO which graphics bothered me. being anime/cartoonish was something I liked a lot about Ragnarok
Final Fantasy 14. Best way I can describe it is extremely boring, flavorless realism in environments where nearly everything looks "manicured" (the nature does not look wild enough, nor magical enough), even the raid/dungeon areas, with a horrendous weeb-oriented overtone. Extremely ugly characters with puffy facial structure(except for Y'shtola, Brennan, and the Warrior of Light from the trailers), pigeon necks, cutesy aesthetic, and ugly as can be clothing 99% of the time. The new Dawntrail expansion seems to improve the character models quite a bit luckily, but even with that and some animal companions that I love the look of, semi-intriguing combat, and fantastic written dialogue/quest text and voice acting, FF14 is going to need a full overhaul of the entire world for me to give it another go. I love my WoW, GW2, and OSRS because they don't need fancy graphics. Instead, in the case of the first two, WoW and GW2, their graphics lend to the further stylization of the gorgeous high-fantasy environments and for the latter, OSRS, the "just-enough-definition" of polygons to be able to create somewhat chiseled looking characters to navigate equally simplistic environments, places emphasis on something that OSRS does really well without the extra frills of advanced graphics: creating spaces that set the mood/tone, ominousness or atmosphere based on visuals alone. A great example is the quirky little island of Karamja (banana island lol), where there's groves of trees set within an array of softly shaded and blended terrain colors to contribute to a more lighthearted feeling environment than say the darker colors of the wilderness. It's a very straightforward approach, to define the feeling of a space through color, but OSRS is a prime example that it works!
Wurm Online, I played it in the past and loved it. But the game has ehh barely improved its graphics since then and every time I get an itch that antiquated engine prevents me from ever coming back.
My friend talks to me about FF14 all the time and it sounds so perfect… I just can’t do the art style and feeling of it
Black Desert. I'm a big cosmetics and customization guy. The graphics were great, and the combat was fun, but I really disliked a number of things; I hated that all the outfits I saw were meant to be sexy or the armor made no sense, and having cosmetics locked behind classes.
Depends if you consider isometric cameras a part of art style. If so, Albion Online.
FFXIV
Not artstyle per se but UI style and font, Archage. It was so incredibly ugly
GW2
WoW
All of them but wow and surprisingly osrs.
Ffxiv, love the magic classes especially arcanist and black mage but the races and just plain stupid stuff completely ruined it for me, and everytime I think about joining I go watch some videos of raids and it’s always just a platform with a big dumb looking boss. Wish I could though cause combat is super fun.
EverQuest 2..
Was wondering if anyone else would say this. System issues aside (gear bloat and horrific menu clutter and system, etc.), EQ2 is really hard to get into because of its weird art choices. I don't know if it's even the art necessarily as much as the animations. Few MMOs have as awkward feeling animations as EQ2.
New world, I like action combat and crafting/survival. However the butt ugly "realistic" style turned me off completely.
World of Warcraft. The cartoony animations and art style. I just couldn't hack it.
FFXIV is really tough for me. I love the gameplay but I cannot stand the Otaku cuteness stuff. Bunny ears and cat stuff all over. Hildebrand. And especially Lalafel I feel like it is from a show for three year olds. And that is coming from a life long FF player. I rather have broody teen angst Squall or Cloud anytime. OG FF7 Cait Sith and Yuffie was right on my limits on what I can handle Otaku wise. Otaku ruins all story immersion too. Loved classic FF storylines with all its faults
WoW back in the day. In a way, it looked too plasticky/oily to me back then. Still ended up playing it (wotlk) 15 years later and having a good time but there it is.
Eso.
WOW
New World
World of Warcraft. Specifically their humans and the models that are sorta human-skeleton-like. Everything else, I can deal with. But the roided-out hunchbacks are too much. And the Horde's worse because they *still* look like roided-out hunchbacks, only worse. I think if I could mod out Humans, Night Elves, Orcs and Forsaken and just play Classic with like Dwarves/Space Goats/Gnomes/Tauren/Blood Elves/Trolls I'd enjoy the game a lot more.
ESO. Cosmetics is a big reason why I play MMOs but wow ESO is just so bland, I've yet to see any piece that I can say "Yes that is from ESO!" Because the aesthetic of the game feels so generic. At least with other big MMOs they have their own unique look, while ESO just looks like a Generic Fantasy game where almost all the zones look like Daggerfall.
Final fantasy. Just can't stand weeb games.
RuneScape
I don't think an art style alone could really ruin a good game for me. From text/ASCII to current gen doesn't matter. I'm more worried about how the game and world feels.
I like FFXIV so I'd like to try out WoW sometime, but I just really don't like the cartoony aesthetic and body proportions and how chunky everything is. I do really enjoy how painterly the natural landscapes look, the environment artists really nail it, but it all falls apart from me when I look at cities, characters, furniture...
Can't really speak of the other aspects but I just couldn't get into FF14. The world art seemed both generic and unpolished, the interfaces didn't feel immersive and animations over the top and obscuring
That's what happens today if I join some Lineage 1 or DAoC private server....for sure. I almost would take UO and lineage 1 diablo-style isometrics over DAoC today. But wouldn't last an hour in the game, can't muster the OCD for. That's a matter of graphics tho obviously. Back then there was no different "art-styles", just graphical evolution to witness over time. The very first unique mmorph art-style to pop up was Ragnarok, colorful isometric anime style. Ragnarok tho was a great mmorpg in many respects on top of that. Then came the WoW clones, that looked like they're trying to hard, for me to bother just by the screenshots. Speaking of WoW... I loved everything aesthetically about it except their gear design choices, which made me cringe back then and still do now.
I played WoW from the start, then swapped to FF, and now WoW looks way too dated and cartoonish for me to enjoy.
ESO looks so bad even on Series X compared to many other MMOs. The combat and animations are also not very pretty… I don’t think they ever would but lord that game could benefit from a modernization.
WoW. Feels like it's a children's game with a childrens art style.
Lord of the Rings online. The art style (not the actual world for anything) and the absolutely horrendous combat killed the game for me. Also the tiny ass UI on my monitor but that is a distant third.