[Lepanto]

So, graphics. How much does a campaign's graphical quality affect your FSO experience? Do you think that the community's asset standards should keep rising, and that new campaigns should strive to have full-HTL modpacks? Or are you willing to tolerate some graphical weakness if the campaign offers something else that interests you?

If your opinion is mixed (i.e. you find some graphical features more important than others, or something), then check multiple answers.

[The E]

For me, consistency beats shininess. A mod that has a coherent sense of style (by using assets that fit together well, either because they were part of a fleetpack, or because the modellers were working with the same style language) will certainly be a more pleasurable experience for me than one that has assets that vary wildly in style and detail.

That being said, I am a sucker for shiny graphics. Post-processing effects can enhance the visual flair of a mod rather drastically, and I would love to see more people using them.

[Axem]

I wouldn't worry too much about graphical fidelity for mods. I mean, yes, you want your mod to look pretty and draw people in, but to me, to really hook them gameplay is paramount. Eyecandy can be upgraded easily later with a model upgrade or another prettier ship, but gameplay is harder to upgrade once its done since so much of the mod depends on it.

So lower quality models wouldn't bother me too much. Maybe the only thing that might bother me is if the quality isn't really inconsistent. A Pheonix Rising right next to a GTD Cube O' Doom might be a little weird. But still I wouldn't worry too much about it as long as you're happy with it. Wings of Dawn used ships made by Spoon as he was learning to model ships and texture. The Antagonist used a ship bigchunk made by himself and the rest of the assets were all community ships with varying levels of quality.

[General Battuta]

Axem's opinion is Objectively Correct.

[Fury]

Good mission designers use high-quality assets to build mission atmosphere. Mission designer is able to invoke a certain response from player to higher quality visuals that would not necessarily be possible with lower-quality visuals. In other words, higher-quality assets don't need to be just eye-candy, they can be built to be functional, perhaps even essential part of a mission.

Case in point, simple mediavps upgrade can achieve much higher emotional response from player when presented with higher-quality visuals:
http://i.imgur.com/FLy2BsE.jpg
http://blueplanet.fsmods.net/E/pics/screen0011.png

And something built from ground-up to be pretty and functional.
http://imageshack.us/a/img821/3300/p8t.png
http://blueplanet.hard-light.net/city1.jpg

And then something little different, yet cool.
http://youtu.be/AwIGhoM-6kE
http://youtu.be/OdYxVKucA1Y

I hate to admit it, but I have yet to play WiH 2, but from what I've seen, the mission do use higher-quality assets to make them work and invoke appropriate response from player. In the future this kind of mission designing will only increase.

So bottom line, I don't care for higher-quality assets just for the sake of them being higher-quality. But when they improve atmosphere of the mission or are even essential part of how the mission works, hell yes. And this was an addendum to what Axem said.

[Mpez]

I prefer when a campaign has a consistent quality of assets. Seeing an old, blocky, tile-mapped ship next to some HTL shiny goodness is somewhat immersion-breaking for me. On the other hand, WoD's ships are blocky, but that doesn't prevent the campaign from being fantastic, and the general quality of ships is consistent and you can see that there is a consistent aesthetic applied (consistent is starting to be my favourite adjective). So, overall - I would love to see more goodies from the HLP wizards, but it's not the most important thing - aesthetic and mission design would be more important.

I also think that one of the most important things that a campaign must have for me is some new shiny little gimmick that was not implemented previously (controlling a cruiser, interactive dialogues, being horror-themed, non-linearity, awesome cockpits, great cutscenes, good use of post-processing filters, making FS a sidescroller, atmospheric missions, awesome new anis). That or the fact that it's made by one of the HLP fred gods.

EDIT: seeing the posts that popped up while I was writing this one, it would seem that WoD is the perfect example of gameplay>graphical goodness.

EDIT2: AdmiralRalwood: whoops

[AdmiralRalwood]

WiD

War in Dawn, the BP/WoD mashup you've all been waiting for!

[An4ximandros]

Grapheex ar everthin' bad Grphx = bad campgn ok?

-

I personally believe that Graphics fall under two spheres: Consistency and Stylization.
As long as all the art assets don't differ in quality too much I can get behind it. Tiling-Violations are cosmic crimes on my eyes unless done excellently.
And then there is style; having cartoon-ish/Simplistic (Texture-wise) ships like DimEc's mixed with WiH's ships becomes too jarring a difference in style to reconcile.

-

Gameplay is a domain of it's own. It needs to be in perfect harmony with the graphics and audio.
Example of bad audio: Tenebra using the Star Trek Elite Forces 2 shotgun secondary fire sound (I think.) It does not mix with the rest of the audio for the rest of the fighter guns.

[Kobrar44]

I don't go back to ugly campaigns. Only those that are pleasant to watch on the second go. On the initial it doesn't matter all that much.

[Deepstar]

Graphics are totally unimportant for me

I still play old mods like The Babylon Project 2.0 for campaigns that are incompatible with R3 or Inferno: R1, because there are some very interesting campaigns based on Inf R1 out there.

And they have all retail-looking models and graphics.

[Dragon]

I think that while they're not the most important part of a campaign, they're important nonetheless. Pretty visuals enhance immersion and done well, they can really help. A good story can carry a game with both poor gameplay and graphics, but a campaign maker should strive to excel all 3 qualities. There's no shortage of great models, effects and sounds available, no reason not to use them.

[General Battuta]

Where are these good sounds!? WHERE

[Lepanto]

Personally, I'm not a graphics person. Though I certainly like the cool graphical enhancements and assets which this community has produced, I value gameplay and other stuff much more. If it came between kewl graphics or new gameplay features, I'd take the gameplay features every time. I like INFR1, sorta BECAUSE of its cheesy old-school tilemap graphics.

In fact, I've been thinking about doing a deliberately-cheesy old-school-ish campaign, with horribly-outdated ships that nobody but newbs or maybe Axem would ever think of using in anything ever nowadays.

I'd been asking about sheer asset quality, but keeping a coherent visual style was definitely a point worth mentioning. Asset consistency does make it harder to assemble a modpack out of loose ships and other effects, though.

[General Battuta]

I think there is a development takeaway here. Anything that keeps you from FREDding is an active evil. I have watched campaign after campaign totter and fail and the reason is always the same: they are not building missions, they are doing other things. Sometimes the other things are necessary, but more than anything else, FREDding is the necessity.

Whatever it takes to produce quality missions, that must come first.

[Darius]

Graphics hold most of their impact on initial impressions. After that I find I'm concentrating mostly on gameplay elements and HUD/icon prompting more than environmental visuals, and this is where the gameplay need to be solid to hold my attention. This really goes for any game, not just FSO.

So you could say "Looks open the door, gameplay seals the deal."

[Mongoose]

Like several other people, I generally think overall visual style and consistency are more important than raw visual quality, and leave more of a lasting impression.  You can see that with a lot of the earliest fully-3D games out there: many of them have aged horribly due to the style they went for, but then you get something like Ocarina of Time which, while technically ancient, is still completely-playable.  And at the end of the day, it's always the enjoyability of the gameplay that will win out.  I would still be perfectly willing to fire up retail FS now in order to play something that might require it, and while I'd spend a bit of time lol'ing at the ancient graphics, if the playability was there I'd get caught up in it again with no problem.

That being said, I like my shinies too, so if that's something you're able to add after focusing on the core stuff, go for it.

[Dragon]

Where are these good sounds!? WHERE

Quite a few quality sounds in Steve-O's modpack. Diaspora has a lot of high quality, generic-sounding ones. BP also has plenty, but you probably know that.

[Piemanlives]

While visuals are certainly welcome, Take wings of dawn for example, they may not be the BEST crafted models, however they certainly look great. However the campaign was fun and the story was pretty good, if a bit standard when it comes to anime.

[Phantom Hoover]

Where are these good sounds!? WHERE

Quite a few quality sounds in Steve-O's modpack. Diaspora has a lot of high quality, generic-sounding ones. BP also has plenty, but you probably know that.

The BP team don't seem terribly satisfied with their current sound effects, really.

[General Battuta]

Some of them are really good, some of them demand iteration. The Maul got a lot of work on its SFX and VFX to bring it to a place where it was fun and satisfying to shoot.