Devs: A Video Game Is Not A Movie (Eye Candy Update)
Klinn
Lost in a cave Join Date: 2016-03-09 Member: 214022Members
Lost in a cave Join Date: 2016-03-09 Member: 214022Members
Please repeat after me -- a video game is *not* a movie!
The "eye candy" in the latest update is a waste of development time and resources. So many games make the mistake of thinking all these special effects make things more cinematic but ignore the fact that the experience of playing a game is completely different from sitting back and watching a movie. It's a matter of active involvement versus being passive.
Let's take a common problem, applying a DOF effect.
A first-person game such as Subnautica is supposed to replicate our experience in a real world (an alien one, granted). When we're in a real world and our gaze shifts from something close by to something in the distance, our eyes automatically change focus so what we're viewing is always sharp. But now that you've added DOF, I may be looking at a nearby chunk of rock which is nice and sharp, hear a noise and look up to see a large critter swimming in my direction, but its all blurry. That's not how it works in real life, and as a result the player's experience is compromised. The world you've spent so much time creating now feels fake.
Some games need to do this because their distant LOD is so low-resolution, or kicks in so close to the player, that they use DOF to disguise how bad their world is. Subnautica was not one of those worlds. Before DOF was added, the view was nice and crisp, at least on the PC. Don't know if it looked different on consoles.
Adding DOF to Subnautica is a step backwards. Thanks goodness we can turn it off.
Same for the other "eye candy" -- chromatic aberrations, blurring, dirt on one's mask, etc, these are all things that we normally filter out when looking around the world. Movies use some of these things for specific dramatic effects, but again -- you're *not* making a movie! That's not the experience you're trying to replicate.
Thank you for including check boxes to get rid of all these distractions, but my point is you have spent valuable time and resources to create something completely unneeded.
[/rant]
The "eye candy" in the latest update is a waste of development time and resources. So many games make the mistake of thinking all these special effects make things more cinematic but ignore the fact that the experience of playing a game is completely different from sitting back and watching a movie. It's a matter of active involvement versus being passive.
Let's take a common problem, applying a DOF effect.
A first-person game such as Subnautica is supposed to replicate our experience in a real world (an alien one, granted). When we're in a real world and our gaze shifts from something close by to something in the distance, our eyes automatically change focus so what we're viewing is always sharp. But now that you've added DOF, I may be looking at a nearby chunk of rock which is nice and sharp, hear a noise and look up to see a large critter swimming in my direction, but its all blurry. That's not how it works in real life, and as a result the player's experience is compromised. The world you've spent so much time creating now feels fake.
Some games need to do this because their distant LOD is so low-resolution, or kicks in so close to the player, that they use DOF to disguise how bad their world is. Subnautica was not one of those worlds. Before DOF was added, the view was nice and crisp, at least on the PC. Don't know if it looked different on consoles.
Adding DOF to Subnautica is a step backwards. Thanks goodness we can turn it off.
Same for the other "eye candy" -- chromatic aberrations, blurring, dirt on one's mask, etc, these are all things that we normally filter out when looking around the world. Movies use some of these things for specific dramatic effects, but again -- you're *not* making a movie! That's not the experience you're trying to replicate.
Thank you for including check boxes to get rid of all these distractions, but my point is you have spent valuable time and resources to create something completely unneeded.
[/rant]
Comments
Hopefully this was more a case of "hey, our graphics guys don't have much to do, here's a few relatively easy to implement things they can work on while the rest of our team finishes up the game" than actually diverting development resources away from more critical areas like game balance and bugfixing/polish.
DoF can greatly increase immersion, if applied properly (they are still tuning it up).
No it isn't. This is just the game PoV, has nothing to do (at first) with realism.
Underwater your vision starts blurring way earlier than on air due to increased light scattering.
But hey, thanks for sharing.
I always turn them off at the first possible opportunity. Very disappointed the devs wasted time on this when the game looked just perfect already! The visual language of Subnautica did not need anything doing to it. It was already just right.
Dont fix what aint broken!
I personally don't love every graphics option available, but that doesn't mean that they're all terrible. I like bloom, color grading, and lens artifacts a lot, and I think that they add to the game's aesthetic by just making things look a bit nicer.
And of course, all of these settings are completely optional, so what's there to complain about?
The eyecandy options are entirely optional, they aren't forced at anyone, and you can't generalize saying that they are a waste of time and effort just because you personally don't like/won't use them. There are people out there who bought the game just like you and who will enjoy these features.
To use myself as an example, I am very grateful for the option to turn off bloom via game interface rather than console. I am happy to have DOF because - for me - it enhances the underwater atmosphere. I can set the intensity of AO as well, or completely turn it off, which makes a world of difference visually and I enjoy the possibility of choice there. I also do like CA in games and usually add it through ReShade if it isn't a built-in feature.
So please, don't assume that everyone out there is exactly like you and try not to criticize other people's preferences if they happen to not allign with yours. For you it may be a waste of development time, and that's unfortunate, but for others all of the new features may just as well be something they've been waiting for a long time.
Same here! I also turned these off immediately!
I hope next update will bring some new biome/Creatures/story content
Not the point, please read my post more closely. If you don't want to read the whole thing, at least look at the very last tl;dr line which says "my point is..."
Yes, I wondered if that was the devs' intent and I played for several hours keeping that in mind. Thing is, they were already able to design a biome to give that impression.
Specifically, I always thought the Kelp Forests gave a great feeling of murky, cloudy water with more limited visibility. It made the contrast to the Safe Shallows more dramatic, since that's more like diving in the Caribbean with crystal clear waters and bright colors.
By applying a heavy DOF filter over top of everything, the devs have reduced their ability to communicate the differences between biomes.
My choice of the word "waste" may have been too heavy-handed, but what I meant was that game development involves setting priorities and channeling time & resources towards them. Maybe there are some people who have been eagerly looking forward to these features, but I think *everybody* would have benefited from, for example, time spent on bug fixes and reducing pop-in instead.
As SnailsAttack suggested, perhaps not too much time was needed to add the eye candy compared to the effort needed for other fixes. Unfortunately only the devs know the answer to that question. All I can do is suggest that releasing an update with the theme of "eye candy" tends to indicate that their priorities, at least in part, may have shifted to a direction which is less beneficial to the game as a whole.
All just IMHO of course.
Nothing is left content wise other than the rocket's sequences and content the rest is polish performance and bug fixes and according to the update note more than 250 bugs were fixed whether its true or not they're doing an excellent job at making the game ready for release
It's just bug fixes are kind of hard to go over in a video highlight reel.
And yes, your choice of the word "waste" was too heavy-handed. Never, ever, tell anyone that their work is a waste of time, no matter how much you disagree with it. Many things are easy to critique in hindsight, but we should never be rude or disdain someone else's work.
It might look simple or nearly useless to us, but it is hard to appraise how much work it actually demanded from others.
This is a noble cause, but it never works outside of screenshots, because rapid focusing and unfocusing is unneeded since we already do that with our eyes when we play. As mentioned, if everything but the thing I currently look at with my crosshair is blurry, I can not look somewhere else and refocus without moving my mouse.
As an example, I was playing a Zombie Game the other day, where I was sneaking through gras, my eyes were on the Zombie, but my crosshair was on the tip of the grass. Which part was blurry? The Zombie of course. It makes no sense.
Also Subnautica is a game of constant amazement from the world. There is always stuff to find and things to look at and explore. Do not hide it with making the whole thing blurry.
I can only see this as a good and immersive thing in the light of VR (probably, haven't tried it) and if you are really into screenshots and cinematics.
As others have said the title is probably eye candy because that's the only visual thing the update provides, everything else is a bunch of bug fixes.
This was not a waste of time and is pretty awesome, thank you for the update.
This is such a great game and knowing that They have a firm plan to continue to add to it for some time to come, makes me very glad that I was able to get in on it from pretty much the start.
This is one of a fews game that I have purchased, that I will never be sorry for doing so.