The Daily Grind: When have reused graphics bothered you?

Reusing art assets in MMOs isn't done for style but for the continued sanity of the art team. Asking for 50 different variants on a sword design alone is pushing the boundaries of what can be done; asking for 500 different variants will have modeling artists throw their keyboards through a wall. I don't complain about that, but I'm really sad to see that the next latest and greatest armor for Final Fantasy XI's Dragoons is another reskin of the artifact armor, which looks blander and less interesting every time the artists slightly change which parts are purple and which parts are brown.

Of course, for the most part we really do accept the slight reskinning and retexturing of game models as a matter of necessity. But there's always a point at which something makes you narrow your eyes in disappointment, one set of armor or another that you wish the art team had put together as an original graphic instead of yet another reuse of an old texture. So when have re-used art assets bothered you? Was it with a certain type of enemy appearing far too often? Armor or weapons that you seemed to be using for eternity? Or just a popular piece of equipment that everyone wanted reskinned ad infinitum?

Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!

Reader Comments (34)

Compared tot he stuff now, armor sets from WoW. PvE/PvP sets were all the same, with different colours. Wasn't bad then, but looking at all the awesome now, the old stuff just looks... lame.

FFXI re-uses armor models a lot... And worse than that some of the sets are just ugly. The THF AF set looks really bad IMO. =p

Mobs. Oh look! I'm fighting a purple troll now! YEY!

Oh! A grey proto dragon! That looks so cool.

*7 colours later

Hmm...*yawn*

I don't know any MMO where mobs aren't recycled to hell and back.

yeah, this ... whats really annoying is when they don't even scale up the size said recycled mob to express it's more "powerful" nature.

I only accept reused graphics when it's not noticeable. It's common for animators to use short cuts (Like Fred Flintstone only having 3 toes, some characters from other shows only having three fingers and a thumb). It's not noticeable because everything else distracts from that.

Hate to pick on FFXIV all the time, but it's terrain is an example of over used. Nothing really scenic about the landscape. FFXI and FFXIV fall into the trap of using the same monster, just recoloring it or naming it different when they are stronger. And because the game keeps you around this same stuff so long, it reuse becomes stronger and more apparent each time. And yeah..I'd be really pissed if the next armor out was just a recolor. Shows they really care.

ALL MMOs reuse mobs and textures like mad, most of the time it's not noticeable, well cept for the mobs.

Actually! There is one thing that's really annoying. Recycles interiors. I'll point out WoW. All of it's dungeons are all unique, but you know what is a carbon copy all the time save a couple. Caves, every cave is the damn same, there's what? Two types of caves in WoW?

I'm sure other MMOs recycle interiors like mad, but WoWs caves come to mind.

I actually never noticed the landscape in XIV being the same till the news post on it. And even then I'd have look pretty hard in game to notice it.

All games reuse textures and mobs Hardy. Lets go back to my Flintstone example though. Ever notice that the scenery repeats over and over in the back ground when they are riding in the car? You don't really notice though unless you've watched the cartoon enough or are simply bored that you do notice it. But when the enticing things are going on that you like, you don't notice. Unless you have a trained eye and actually look for things like this. Just need a fine balance between reusing and the action going on.

Yes, but we're talking about MMOs not shows from the 80s.

The original spiderman cartoon would be a good example of reusing backgrounds, considering some of them were just some weird abstract compilation of colours. lol

"Caves, every cave is the damn same, there's what? Two types of caves in WoW?"

This. There's the short S-cave, like where A-Me-01 is, and the larger cave that *always* has ogres. I can think of only one cave system that isn't one of those two: the winterfin cavern in BT. I'm sure there's others, but this poster is spot on.

I guess it's nice to know you'll never get lost.

Hellgate London is by far the worst offender of reuing enemy models I have ever seen. I never played it as an "MMO", but the fact that the game has like a 60 some hour single player campaign, and there are about 7 enemy models in the game (not including a few bosses), and that the game is about 90% combat.

After the first 4 missions you have already seen most of the enemies. Enemies scale up and get tougher with you, but they pretty much look the same and act the same. Ugh. Such a shame. Hellgate actually had quite a bit of potential.

I think the only time re-used graphics have annoyed me was hellgate london but not because they re-used content, but rather because they squandered an opportunity. They should have recreated various locations around london but instead gave bland cookie cutter dungeons with no flavor of the world to them at all.

I realize that there's only so much memory to go around so graphic re-use is a fact for at least the time being, but when it flat out kills the very world you're trying to create it's a bad choice.

The reused caves, rock formations and stream/grove combo in ffxiv drive me bonkers. Reused mobs I don't mind, but overused and obvious terrain is boring.

Overused environments drive me crazy too. At least change it up a little bit, or auto-randomize some elements -- but when I'm the /exact same cave/ or the /exact same hallway/ for the fortieth time in a week, it really starts to annoy me.

WoW got really lazy with armor graphics in WotLK...especially with head pieces. There were only a few different models and the only difference between most graphics was a very slight color/tint change.

Granted they still looked better than the clown costumes from TBC...

SWG uses every possible existing piece of art over and over for any "possible" new content even though there are some exceptions. After Mustafar post NGE the art direction went south. Yavin 4 and Endor still hold their own though for textures. No offense to anyone but the card games gets better art attention. This drives me nutts.

Re-Using graphics has ALWAYS bothered me, be it in games or animated shows or other media.

I know, you try to save workload and re-use assets, but as an artistic person myself, you can still do things to make SOME differences on armors...stretch and pull things a bit.

And coloring is a very lazy way of doing it, but I grudgingly accept it. Still, I prefer the ability to keep my color scheme over increased stats of an item. Yes, I will use that item for combat, but afterwards, I'll immediately put on the lesser, but coller looking item, even if it is taking up valuable backpack space, in most cases. IMO, most things should be custom-colorable, even within a limited range.

Reused armor designs are one of my larger complaints about Age of Conan.

Unless you get raid and instance drops, odds are that your armor is going to be a brown leather short skirt dress or a dull cloth dress. Player created armor also all falls into the brown leather dress category, unless you get a raid or instance drop recipe. There is not even much difference between the "light armor" version of the brown leather dress and the "full plate armor" version of the same thing.

In a game whose chief appeal is setting, theme, and atmosphere, they really need to update these designs.

WAR, my WH has looked basically the same since level 10.

There have been a few games that suffer from the GoldenAxe effect, GoldenAxe being the first game I played where this really became obvious to me as a kid. Not to say GoldenAxe is a bad game I still love it to this day. Even tho it isn't an MMO.

Most of the time it doesn't really bother me but when you get into a game where it is just blatant beyond forgiving. Where in which you fight the same mob over and over again, finally to move to a new zone ..... only to fight the same mob which is now (insert slight color and or size variation).

On the plus side that usually seems to happen in cheap import grindfest MMOs and even in those it seems to becoming less prevalent.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 20 Comments

The Daily Grind: When have reused graphics bothered you?

Reader Comments (34)

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 8:12AM timthel0rd said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 8:24AM Pewpdaddy said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 8:25AM hami83 said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 3:08PM Fakeassname said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 8:41AM Tizmah said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 8:49AM hami83 said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 7:48PM drunkenpandaren said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 9:55AM Tizmah said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 11:23AM hami83 said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 12:02PM Caerus said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 9:24AM Higurashi said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 9:52AM Arkanaloth said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 10:13AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 1:54PM mysecretid said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 10:30AM smg77 said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 10:46AM Lateris said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 10:49AM Space Cobra said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 11:10AM Heraclea said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 11:39AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 11:48AM Scuffles said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

The Secret World launch delayed to July 3rd

Featured Stories

The Tattered Notebook: The passing of Ribbitribbitt

The Firing Line: PlanetSide 2's Matt Higby on the MMOFPS revolution

WRUP: Kingdoms of Amalur was pretty cool edition

Engadget

Joystiq

WoW

TUAW