Do you think SWTOR could use a texture update?

[Ruchalus]

With the 7.4 stream we saw some great additions to how material can be displayed with the Specularity options. Though this can make the differences of old content from 2011 versus 2023 content a lot more stark. Honestly I think a lot of the older textures, maybe content from before KOTFE and KOTET, could use texture upgrades. Granted since EA still funds this game, they may not be likely to do so, as what do they get out of it aside from having to pay people money for updating the game that doesn't involve the Cartel Market? It would certainly be a large effort but with the current dev team, the work would need to be outsourced.

Do you all think SWTOR could use a texture update?

Edited October 20, 2023 by Ruchalus

[Tantala]

There are a lot of things I would rather see done first.  Cosmetic changes should really take second place to fixing genuine bugs

[Whykara]

A texture update across the board is absolutely necessary. SWTOR's visual cohesion has been suffering for years, making it impossible to combine most pre 2016 sets with newer ones. Improving textures would also make them money, because old cartel market sets could sell again with better textures. No one is buying those old sets for real money atm.

[Lord_Malganus]

Absolutely, Yes!

[para_cosm]

I would honestly even prefer everything reverted to how it looked in 1.0 more than the current version of the game.

Has anyone paid attention to the more recent aesthetic and UI updates we've gotten? *cough cough 7.0 MS PAINT CLASS SYMBOLS,  looking at you*

1.0 had decent textures for gear and all gear looked at least like it belonged in the same game engine. You could mix and match sets no problem (once they added Unify. who remembers before?) The new textures for CM armors look almost too sharp and grainy sometimes, especially in conjunction with older textures.

1.0 had beautiful and streamlined ability animations (channeled Ravage/Flamethrower/Master Strike) which have been replaced by much less aesthetically pleasing instant ones. We also had the more immersive translucent ground target reticle instead of an ugly solid green one, the real Star Wars font for system text unlike the drab Helvetica clone we have now, etc.

The more people ask for modernizations (which are great and I would want them too if they could be consistent and universal), the more we get inconsistencies between the new and old assets in the game that really detract from the overall immersion and experience IMO.

[Lord_Malganus]

4 hours ago, Ruchalus said:

with the current dev team, the work would need to be outsourced.

 

All things should be.

[Gericke]

Of course it could.

Just because it could does not mean it should as that would involve several man years of work and not add anything new to the game except making it look more pretty.

 

[xordevoreaux]

It's in the process. Search the forums for "voss"

[Whykara]

1 hour ago, Gericke said:

Just because it could does not mean it should as that would involve several man years of work and not add anything new to the game except making it look more pretty.

It absolutely does not. AI upscaling has streamlined the process tremendously, it can't be overstated how much time you save nowadays. Of course there still have to be manual adjustments here and there and of course quality assurance, but we're talking about weeks, maybe months, depending on how accessible the textures are, not years. 

[Jazulfi]

It sort of depends on what you mean by an 'update'? If you're talking about older armour sets, then yes, but personally, in terms of the world I absolutely love the design and aesthetic. I would hate to lose the unique beautiful chunky stylised feel. However, an upgrade giving the world a clarity boost, allowing us to rachet up the anti-aliasing etc, then definitely!!

But no 'fizzy' textures please!! I would be very very sad indeed if the problems on Voss ended up in the wider world. I'm not being melodramatic when I say the game would be unplayable for me. The graphics issues I experience on Voss genuinely give me horrible nausea, and I'd be heartbroken if that happened everywhere. But I'm crossing my fingers for a solution to that prob.

So short answer, yes please, but with caveats.

 

[sharpenedstick]

I don't know how much effort/dev resources it would take, and there are many other items I'd put ahead in priority. I'm not against it, but if (and I really have no sense of the required effort) it involves giving up efforts to rescale the decoration x/y axis, make a new gsf or space mission map, new content, etc then I don't think it's worth it.

This game is old. Accepting that is part of the deal of playing it.

[ThanderSnB]

I think it's already planned, just not all at once. They did Voss as part of 7.3. Ord Mantell low level area will probably be done as part of 7.4, when they add the high level zone to it. Most likely a few story updates each year will take place on lower level planets in a new zone. They will use the opportunity to redo the textures for the whole planet. That's what they did with Voss. I expect they will continue that.

I'm not sure about the armor sets. That will probably have to be done separately. They can update the armor sets from the story for each planet as they go, but cartel market sets would have to be done separately. Because those are premium sets, they probably wouldn't just replace those textures. They would release new updated armor sets and charge cartel coins for these new sets. They did this with the Reforged Weapon set. Also daily area or reputation sets might have to be done separately.

Just be aware that the new textures on Voss aren't exactly the same as the original ones. They didn't just upscale them, manually or with AI. They were remade from scratch. This made everything look a little different on the planet. Lots of people complained about this after 7.3. I noticed the new dirt texture is much lighter than the old one, so it looks funny in some areas compared to before. Also, some people have trouble with the new ground textures mixing with the grass models due to an optical illusion (lines intersecting at certain angles).

Edited October 20, 2023 by ThanderSnB