lol sorry about that, mods arent around to lock my other thread.  But i do agree with you and what you say XD

IMO balance is required between graphics and gameplay. But "pc only" games always talk about graphics and it "seems" they are happy with mediocre gameplay with great graphics (I am ps3 & pc gamer). So I think it depends on gamers.

You say that but by far the most popular games on PC have simple graphics that can be run on a wide veriaty of machines from outdated notebooks all the way up. Hell most of the big games on PC come from the indie scene these days. Minecraft has sold more than all the crysis games put together for example. The graphics enthusiest community on PC is a tiny niche. Hell I see more Sony fanboys talking up the graphics of their exclusives than I see PC gamers, most PC gamers are talking about very gameplay driven experiances from Minecraft to Leagu of Legends to Kerbal Space Program.

The PC graphics whore, is more of a bad stereotype than a reality.

You need to meet my dormmate who is a PC gamer. Just say consoles have great graphics and watch him snap you like a Slim Jim.

@zarx - Yah. For me main focus is gameplay and good story. But many of my pc only friends seem to talk about graphics all the time. Yet they play games that are not a looker but awesome in gameplay. I used to play games with them (league of legends). They are always complaining. Example, the last of us could be better in my gtx 680 at 1080p etc. I dont get their double standards. Maybe all of my pc only gamer buddies are graphic whore.


@S.T.A.G.E. - I know quite a few like this. Every console exclusive I show them they play with great interest. But before leaving they say imagine god of war 3 in pc. They annoyed me in past. But now it doesnt concern me. Because to me they are hypocrite gamer.

Seems like a fair complaint, games like Last of Us rely very heavily on visual presentation for immersion into the game world. It would be a better experiance on more powerful hardware capable of delivering the game at a higher reslolution and framerate which would remove many visual flaws that can break visual immesion. Seeing things like bad aliasing and judder is annoying when you know that you have hardware capable of removing those flaws.

I would always prefer a game look it's best, it adds to the experiance. That doesn't make me a hypocrate because I also enjoy games with simple or even bad visuals.

@S.T.A.G.E. Technically he is right current consoles do have lacking technical graphics, and the sacrifices many developers make to achive the visuals they do (poor framerate, image quality, limited scope or veriaty, pop-in etc) detract from the experiance. Not that I would personally let it stop me from playing a great game, but I fully see where he is coming from.

Good point.  We all have different opinions and outlooks so i think tjis is the only explanation.

They sell because they are good. Final Fantasy sells millions, even more than say, Mass Effect. The reason they sell is not because of the "Anime artstyle", they sell because they have entertaining gameplay and in some cases a very interesting story. 

Regarding your question, if you take generic soldiers and cram them into a Final Fantasy it wouldn't make much sense right? You have to care for the characters and for that you need to be able, at least, to distinguish them from the others xD. So I ask another question then, what happened if we put Anime characters in Halo and make them fight with swords in a first person fashion? It wouldn't work! As it wouldn't work if you put generic soliders in a JRPG and make them fight with an AK-47 xD.

Graphics and Gameplay don't go together that much but if you can have both of them, why not?

I think the primary thing about games should be their atmosphere and art style.
Both of these things could make or break a game.

When a game has poor atmosphere (the environment, the feeling of the world around you) it can become boring quickly. And it doesn't need extremely precise 8 billion polygon models to do this. (Sarcasm, obviously.) Some Pokemon games have achieved this, and they are basically 2D Sprite models. But, because of the environment and the way everything flows, it works, and it works well.

Art style is also very important for a game, much more so than graphics, at times. If your character's look boring, and your representation of the world looks boring, you'll end up with a pile of boring.

Overall, I would say the points made above are more important than graphics. (Although graphics are still important. I don't want to play a game that looks like it was on the PS1.) Gameplay, however, is a core aspect of the game and can not be messed up. If that's messed up, your hole game goes down the toilet.

I don't understand "gameplay vs. graphics". They are both elements of a game and developers can pay as much attention to one, or both, as they like.

I think people do forget that "graphics" drive gameplay, though. We can only have awesome FPS games because of graphics improvements, not to mention three dimensional games like Mario Galaxy.

It's just not something I worry about and, frankly, I don't understand why people get in such a huff about it one way or another. I can appreciate a game with realistic graphics, like a Killzone, or great artstyle, like Valkyria Chronicles, or one that takes a minimalist approach, like Thomas Was Alone. There is nothing that says I have to like one kind or the other.