Maken Tosch
DUST University
Ivy League
5155
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Posted - 2013.11.18 20:17:00 -
[1] - Quote
Nguruthos IX wrote:CCP probably started nerfing it over concerns that they'd start melting some PS3's and now they're in it for the next 3 years with terrible rendering.
Know how I know? No official word = nothing good to say.
Swarm's range nerfed. Sounds fair enough. Except its the same range, outside of which, they would render invisible+silent. Meanwhile non-rendered rail-tanks will still gib DS from 600 meters away.. .
CCP is actually now balancing game-play mechanics around gimped hardware specs for the long term. Is this good? I can't say I think it is.
There will continue to be no comment on the subject, optimization can only go so far and they've reached the limit already.
What we see in 1.7 will likely be the standard till PS4. I only hope they can re-balance the game properly when things start working on PS4 - if Dust is still around by then.
But we're looking at 3 years till that anyhow so what's the point in caring?
The range of the individual swarm rockets are not nerfed. Only their locking range is range is nerfed. But of course, if the rendering issues remains an issue, then the nerf won't make a difference.
Past:
In all honesty, working on limited hardware can be a good thing. Retro games of the past (Mega Man, Mario Bros., Legend of Zelda, etc.) have all suffered the limitations of the hardware they were designed on. This forced every company at the time to spur some creativity in order to make their games stand out and be competitive with the rest of the games in the industry.
One example is that the audio music was extremely simplistic due to the limitations of the audio hardware itself, but clever composers and other music artists figured out how to work that limitation to their advantage. Tell me. What's the first song you can think of when I tell you "Legend of Zelda"? You're probably thinking that four-note melody that comes up every time you open a mysterious chest after spending an hour looking for the key. What about when I say "Mario"? Can you remember the first three notes of the beat? If you're old enough, you probably can. Music artists in the retro gaming era managed to create unique beats that stuck with us for years to come. Limitation spurred creativity.
Another example is the graphics. Retro games were all just 2D pixels and therefore many of the famous characters of today, specifically Link and Mario, were heavily influenced by there origins. Mario didn't get his mustache because he just looked good on paper. The developers for Mario didn't intend him to have a mustache but were forced to because 8-bit rendering didn't make it possible to make Mario's mouth. So the 'stache took it's place. The limited graphics also forced developers to come up with aesthetically-pleasing color palettes due to the 8-bit color limitation of the graphics. This resulted in the color choices that Link, Mario and even Mega Man are known for today.
Present:
Now here we are with advanced hardware so innovative that they are close to matching PCs if they keep up with the pace of progress and as long as Moore's Law holds on. High-fidelity graphics, surround sound stereo, multiplayer gaming, cloud storage, physics processing, etc. But even then there are still limitations.
If CCP can figure out how to make Dust stand out in an old console like the PS3 and make it a great game, then they will be very much prepared to handle the PS4 once Dust is ready to move to the new console.
But let's not forget that back then the PS3 was once considered one of the most advanced pieces of console gaming hardware at the time. The same can be said for the SNES, N64, and Sega Genesis.
CCP, thank you for hotfixing the knives. But please make sure they're at their full potential in 1.7.
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