Re:Unreal Engine 5 enters Early Access
by parentheses on Sunday June 06, 2021 @11:16AM
(#27413751)
Never saw the responses. I agree with you that the mechanics come first. Game feel is so important. Graphics don’t need to be amazing for good game feel.
I'm with you there. I (not a game dev) imagine that balance is hard to find, particularly when choosing the right moment to release. I remember playing "Age of Conan" (the mmo) when it was released and in my opinion while the graphics were good, the game-play was hilariously out of balance (or buggy). My younger self found exploiting the lopsided game-play very enjoyable, but ultimately didn't stick around for too long. If the balance was reversed (more polished game mechanics, less polished art) my friends and I probably would have made it a staple.
But to each their own! It's nice to see the variety available from movie-like experiences to pixel art with all ranges of game mechanics.
I think I’m in the minority, but I really care very little about the art and feel; I’m die-hard about the mechanics of the game. I hear people ranting and raving about the “cinematic quality of the game art” and I find myself thinking, “I mean, that’s nice, but there are all of these glaring issues with weapon balance and map design, the net code favors laggy players, the time-to-kill is so low that network rather than skill dominates the outcome of almost every confrontation, and the server randomly disconnects people...”. I play a lot of first person shooters, and I rarely care whether the “skin” of the game is futuristic, present day, WWII era, etc as long as the mechanics are right.