Graphics options

[ArtofWar]

Im not sure if anyone mentioned this yet, but is there a way to reverse the SOE graphics options streamlining?
I remember during Beta and maybe first year, the graphics had more to it, water reflections, diff grass options etc. Not sure if any of this was left in (I'd imagine it was, as sony seemed more likely to turn off something, than code to remove it) Also faces and character creation options, I know we have helms and they had to remove "bones" to implement, but I miss being able to make a truly unique character.

Looking back, its really nuts how much was removed or altered to fit a different vision of the game

[Mortuarius]

You are right, It was around GU4 I believe when they removed the water reflections and lowered the poly count on the character models. I really don't know if it would be possible to get those old models and options back as SOE themselves said they were unable to do it as they didnt have the old models saved. Before the sunset notice, one of the devs mentioned trying to see how we could get the water reflections back... I think it would take an artist and possibly even require client changes to get this stuff back so I just dont see it happening.

Then again, someone did say they could finally give the animal races their tails so who knows.

The reason these things were removed was to try and make the game run better on most systems. It wasnt to change the vision of the game. So many people complained of performance problems back then even having maxed out PCs of the time. So SOE lowered the poly count on the character models and removed the water refelctions. Grass density is still in though. This biggest thing that changed was the character models. Now that I think about it, i think there was a change made to the sky/cloud renderings too but I am not 100% sure about that.

[ArtofWar]

Aye, I know performance was bogged to be sure , and the characters needed tweaking, but at the same time, they went abit much to try and work the helms in, we lost a ton of facial customization for the "Bone" removal to accommodate them.
As for sky, I don't remember them changing anything to do with the volumetric clouds, I know they talked about removing the Dynamic storm clouds you could see, but that was nixed (thank god). Weather was tweaked (No more snow in Khal) but I think that was it. I am happy they got rain working before sunset at least.

Aye hopefully we can figure it out, Vanguard is/was beautiful but to know we had more at one point just gets me

[ArtofWar]

also the Vision comment was more a take on the game as a whole (Equipment XP, Mekalia, Grind, Golden path, Travel) as opposed to the graphics per say, Lol SOE is making me crotchety

[Ily]

Water should be a real easy fix, it is just a texture and a shader, still IMHO low on the totem pole for things to be done.

[verdicaysen]

Might be something we can look at down the road once we have a mostly working build with a majority of the content.