Is there something odd about the graphics?

[Purrrfect]

Lol I was trying to figure out wtf a random set of gray lines had to do with this.

[brozy]

I think i've figured it out, theres no nipples!!!
Seriously though i have noticed odd things here and there but describing it is like trying to describe a colour to a blind man

[Berabouman]

Can't have nipples in a non-Korean MMO, it's like against the law or something.

I think that whether you think the graphics are good, bad or in-between, we can only improve from here. Also, like another poster mentioned I agree that they reduced the texturing so that more PCs could run the game well.

[Sobie]

I'm with everyone else; the graphics are beautiful but there are a couple of "off" things along the way for me. The field of view is certainly something I noticed but I always attributed that to being used to draw distance on 11. The other thing that I find interesting is when I am moving, I find it difficult to separate objects on the screen from one another (foreground, background, distant objects etc). I just figured it's because I am getting old but a friend made a similar comment to me about the screen bleeding together. This is at max graphics on PC.

Also, Uncanny Valley.

[Niiro]

They desperately need to add more UI customization options, solid background/transparency sliders, colors, darkening around UI elements.

Reading the chat log is a crapshoot if the text color or shade doesn't jive with the terrain behind it just right.

In virtually every dark area I can't make out a damn thing and the UI just makes it worse because it's always bright and in your face.

[Elcura]

As a 3D artist I always admired the texture-work in XI. Amazing what they did with such small textures.

Agreed, I think it attributed to the gritty feel people have mentioned. I always thought XI looked dirty but amazing, and when you see the textures for what they are you can see a lot of effort went into them.

The breathing issue is to do with rigging really. For realistic breathing you need more bones or a blend-shape. Both of these will increase the computational costs involved per character on screen. I always thought the breathing in XI was well done - Just clever animation of the back and collar-bones is usually enough to get the feel of breathing across. Not perfect for close-ups but decent enough.

I think the issue is that they were hand-animating everything (or most things) rather than motion capturing them. They do the same thing as in XI, a simple follow-through animation that can easily be looped, something clean that you can animate on top on without breaking the breathing loop while adding extra motion. The problem is, for the most part people tend to hold their breath for actions and regulate their breathing so unless they focus on it then it never really is as consistent as it is in-game.

However, it is cheap, fast and relatively easy to do so I'm not surprised it's the choice they went with. More time and money gives better animations, and I think this team is perfectly capable of doing something amazing if given the time. But you can see they didn't, as the game lacks a lot of visual and some mechanical polish.

Edit: Teeth are a conundrum. Like for 90% of the time you're never going to see them, so they're usually relegated to being a bent low-poly plane with virtually no UV space at all. However getting the size or placement wrong really makes an otherwise perfect character nose-dive into the uncanny valley.

Yup, teeth tend to be really high quality for no reason at all or low quality because they're fucking teeth. However, like breathing, a certain amount of exposure happens when people talk or make expressions or open their mouths and it's fairly easy to notice when people speak or you're looking at someone's face as a whole.

[blowfin]

Discovered zooming last night, apart from being amazed that I could actually zoom out to a reasonable point (I've been playing too much DOTA recently) it does give some more tangibility to the world. Not sure about the uncanny valley, one of the things I've been amazed about is how much this game just "feels" like XI in terms of immersion.