Why aren't people making very many HD maps?

[dsiracusan]

Might be the wrong spot, sorry new to the forum here. Just generally wondering why people aren't making very many HD maps, I occasionally find myself watching custom campaigns and have noticed most of them if not literally all use the SD mode of the game.

 

[Uncle]

Buggy, ugly, bad for visual clarity, bad performance, everyone has SD graphics but not everyone has HD, etc...

HD can be nice for an RPG or any game where a small number of units are on the screen at once. It also works nicely if you want to zoom in the camera since the HD models have nice details that you miss from afar.

 

[Chaosium]

Making custom models is infinitely easier to do in SD mode too, so the amount of custom resources will always be high for SD

 

[Gnuoy]

I second everything Uncle posted.

I was open to HD graphics, despite all the bugs that came along with them, if players preferred that. However ever since HD graphics started crashing the game, in I think patch 1.34-1.36, I just force disabled them. Since disabling HD graphics, I realized that the public lobbies of my maps fill up much faster. This might be a coincidence or - correct me if I'm wrong: if you have mixed (SD and HD allowed) then it restricts it to only Reforged owners, while only SD allows Frozen Throne and Reforged owners.

EDIT: Some recent culture in gaming puts heavy emphasis on graphics. I think that's coming from corporate developers though. Most players seem to be ok with moderate graphics as long as the game is fun. A good example of what I'm talking about is the whole Elden Ring drama where it seemed other developeres were horrified by supposedly substandard graphics while many players reviewed the game positively. WC3 is over 20 years old so I don't think a lot of players are coming here for cutting edge graphics. I'll stop here before I get into a angry Blizzard/Reforged-hate rant lol.

 

[Uncle]

A recent popular game is BattleBit Remastered which is a good example of what gamers want. It's Battlefield but with Roblox graphics, and it proves that people are willing to get over the crappy graphics (subjective take) if the gameplay is more entertaining. I mean just look at Nintendo, their hardware has been behind a generation if not more since the Wii and their games have always looked dated as a result. How do they do so well? It's simple, people enjoy playing their games.

I hope AAA companies continue to choose graphics > gameplay as it pushes their player base towards indie devs (the average joe) who know what really matters. Then that indie dev's game blows up allowing them to expand their company and take the crown as the "new" Blizzard Entertainment until enough years go by that the original devs have left and the company is a shell of it's former self, thus turning into the very thing it once stood against.

 

[Gnuoy]

I'm kinda veering even further off topic here
but I think exponentially better hardware will be needed to bring about the "new Blizzard". Think great titles created from the transition from 2D to 3D. I think this next junction is AR and we're still in the Atari days of AR as far as price and popularity. See Apple's $3k AR flop. If these were $400, maybe they could usher in the next wave of great games.

 

[Barade]

• Big file size is bad for multiplayer maps.
• Poor performance: Some players will lag out during loading time in multiplayer which is really annoying.
• I prefer the original look although I am open for improved versions of the classic models.

I think it is best used in single player campaigns.

 

[emperor_d3st]

Some of us are also still stuck in 1.26 and the JNGP World Editor, because the unmodded editor is missing so much vital functionality.

 

[Gnuoy]

Why are you "stuck" in 1.26? I'm genuinely curious why this is so common.