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Forums - Gaming Discussion - When did you first notice that grafix had diminishing returns?

For me it was the PS3/360 generation, although it was slight and only just beginning. To be clear, I think those consoles had better graphics than the previous ones and games have continued to look better and better, but that was the generation where I no longer thought it was as much of a huge leap forwards and could still play games from the previous generation and still think they held up graphically.

In fact I still think the 6th gen just about passes, graphically speaking. Not every game, but I can easily play Metroid Prime, Conker Live and Reloaded, Jak 3, MGS 2, FFX, FFXII, GT4, DOA2 Ultimate, Soul Calibur 3, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, Ninja Gaiden Black, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 4, Twilight Princess, Kingdom Hearts II, Okami, Wind Waker, Shadow of the Colossus, Rogue Leader and many more, without thinking they suffer graphically, yet these are almost prehistoric compared to modern systems.

This isn't to say that 7th & 8th gen games don't impress me, they do, and I know they'll continue to get better. I'm currently playing God of War on a 4K screen with HDR and I think it's gorgeous but this is about my perception of diminishing returns. The fact that a game from 2018 blows away a game from 2005 is no surprise, but it just doesn't feel like enough of a jump to me. To put it another way, if I look at The Last of US on PS3 and compare it to GoW 2018 on PS4 Pro, obviously GoW looks much better, but I would say they look comparable and roughly of the same generation. I don't think I could say that quite as easily with gen 6 and gen 7, but I definitely wouldn't say it with gen 5 and gen 6.

So, to me, the returns are diminishing, but I'm not disappointed by it, I know that graphics are getting much better and stuff we had to fake before can be pulled off in better ways (e.g. lighting), I know that resolutions have kept increasing and so much more is going on in a game today. So I'm still excited for how games will get better and better looking.



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Never!! JK. Pretty much when 1080p became the norm. PS3-PS4 eras. Obviously there can be more fidelity within the 1080p scope, which is why I'll be just fine and happy without a 4K TV for when PS5/XBTWO drops.



A warrior keeps death on the mind from the moment of their first breath to the moment of their last.



All of generation 8 seems like diminishing returns. I still play games where I go "wow" at the graphics, but I still can "wow" at PS3 graphics as well. Really the average game of generation 8 looks like the best games of generation 7. It's a nuanced difference.

Every generation before had a very dramatic leap going from the previous generation. I remember being amazed at every step going from generations 2 - 7. But at generation 8, we are many years into it, and the games still only look marginally better than generation 7. Resolution doesn't really seem to matter much anymore. Art direction seems far more important.



For me diminishing returns is beyond how the gfx look.

Throw $1,000,000 at building a super gaming rig and give a developer 100x more budget and you will see how awesome the game will look ONLY on that rig.

For me the point is when publishers started getting greedy through releasing broken game to micro transactions. This tells me that they do not want to spend anymore then they currently do in order to give us a full product because it takes more man power to make it a full product day 1.

This gen is where we crossed that barrier too far and we have all been buying games that will be broken in future as you need uge downloads which no longer will be available to patch the games. Sure the gfx are amazing this gen and ray tracing will make it even more amazing, but at what cost to the consumer in terms of cutting things out that foce you to download later?



 

 

NES to SNES. Wasn't nearly as meaningful as Atari to NES.



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fatslob-:O said:
curl-6 said:

When I look at something like Metro Exodus maxed out and raytraced on PC, now THAT looks like a proper generational leap over PS3/360 to the extent of prior leaps, in my eyes anyway.

Pretty much just about anything will look good when ray traced. I guess you'll soon get that proper generational leap over PS3/360 with next generation consoles on the horizon featuring hardware accelerated ray tracing and as an added bonus a back catalog of current generation titles too ... 

IMO, the sticking point of current generation was physically based rendering and volumetric lighting ... 

Yeah PBR was a nice step up, probably the biggest differentiating factor between gen 7 and 8 for me.

linkink said:
curl-6 said:

And I stand by that. To me Metro Exodus maxed out and raytraced is the only game I have seen to date that looks as far ahead of the 7th gen's best as prior generational leaps like PS2 to PS3. Again, not from a point of view of actual computing power but due to the effect of diminishing perceptual returns.

PS2 to PS3 was of course a bigger jump, But you also have to remember, you were much younger,  as you get older people tend to be much harder to impress, or be blown away. The graphics advancements are clearly generational when comparing most ps3 game to ps4, of course i can respect your opinion if you don't think the advancements in graphics are generational leap. aside from maybe uncharted 3 every ps3 game looks like a turd compared to ps4, especially open world games.

It's not that there isn't a leap, there is, not only clearly in terms of the rendering techniques and computing power involved but also PS4 games do look much nicer than PS3 games. It's just that in terms of subjective perception, if I were to put the gap between PS2 and PS3 (Or PS1 to PS2, N64 to Gamecube, etc) at a 10, PS3 to PS4 feels more like a 6 to me.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 03 May 2019

The_Liquid_Laser said:
All of generation 8 seems like diminishing returns. I still play games where I go "wow" at the graphics, but I still can "wow" at PS3 graphics as well. Really the average game of generation 8 looks like the best games of generation 7. It's a nuanced difference.

Every generation before had a very dramatic leap going from the previous generation. I remember being amazed at every step going from generations 2 - 7. But at generation 8, we are many years into it, and the games still only look marginally better than generation 7. Resolution doesn't really seem to matter much anymore. Art direction seems far more important.

This generation had a pretty dramatic leap. Your average open world game on ps4  looks miles better then the best PS3 game. Games like the order AND GOW looked like CGI when the trailers were shown, most people didn't believe PS4 would be able to run it. Honestly seem like you just don't wanna be impressed, which is understandable graphics are good enough at this point. 



mZuzek said:
linkink said:

This generation had a pretty dramatic leap. Your average open world game on ps4  looks miles better then the best PS3 game. Games like the order AND GOW looked like CGI most people didn't believe PS4 would be able to run it. Honestly seem like you just don't wanna be impressed. 

But is the leap as noticeable as previous gens? I think that's the point, here (well, maybe not Liquid_Laser's point, anyway). Open world games do look a lot better on PS4 than on PS3, but by comparison, open world games were barely even possible on PS2, with only a few ones to have actually been successful at it (GTA and Shadow of the Colossus come to mind, the first one having horrible graphics and the second one having horrible framerate despite being extremely minimalistic). In technical terms, the gap between consoles might not be necessarily diminishing, but the result we see on screen sure is, which isn't to say modern day AAA games aren't visually impressive.

The jump from ps1 to ps2 was much bigger then ps2 to ps3. When 360 came out you had people saying the jump wasn't big enough, it doesn't look much better then then xbox/gamecube/ps2 best games, obviously There was none of that with ps1 to ps2, it was compared to dreamcast, and later blew dreamcast away with MGS2, and GT3. So diminishing returns have already started long before this Gen, but of course on a smaller scale.That being said I'm only arguing with people that say it looks to close to gen 7. Come on now most people have already accepted graphics have come a long way since 2013.

Last edited by linkink - on 05 May 2019

linkink said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:
All of generation 8 seems like diminishing returns. I still play games where I go "wow" at the graphics, but I still can "wow" at PS3 graphics as well. Really the average game of generation 8 looks like the best games of generation 7. It's a nuanced difference.

Every generation before had a very dramatic leap going from the previous generation. I remember being amazed at every step going from generations 2 - 7. But at generation 8, we are many years into it, and the games still only look marginally better than generation 7. Resolution doesn't really seem to matter much anymore. Art direction seems far more important.

This generation had a pretty dramatic leap. Your average open world game on ps4  looks miles better then the best PS3 game. Games like the order AND GOW looked like CGI when the trailers were shown, most people didn't believe PS4 would be able to run it. Honestly seem like you just don't wanna be impressed, which is understandable graphics are good enough at this point. 

I've looked at screens and gameplay footage for GOW.  It looks nice, but I'm not particularly impressed.  PS4 games just don't have the same "Wow" factor that previous gens had.  Not even the ones that came out last year.

Admittedly, I used a composite cable on my PS2, so when I switched to HDMI and an HD TV with my PS3, then the difference looked huge.



I appreciate graphics but it was never a hill; I chose to die on regarding gaming so I haven't really paid attention to the best graphics. But unique artery;es continue to amaze me to this day like breath of the wild. I'd take those over super realistic games any day



Just a guy who doesn't want to be bored. Also