Hi, I am making a game and I am wondering how many polys should be in a character, I was thinking around 10,000 but i am unsure. There wont be that many enemies, maybe 3 or 4 if that and the game will be multiplayer. I would like a detailed environment as well so i’m unsure how that will effect everything, i plan to use LOD’s for everything so that should help as well but im unsure on the polycount.
I don’t think you should care about the polys, the important is the triangles IMO. And 10k for the playable character (if 3rd person) should be more than enough for the detail. The normal maps should do good tho.
Oh, I meant to say triangles sorry got the two confused. Ok thanks, I was a bit concerned but i think that 10 to 15k tris would be more than suffice.
Yep 15k is more than enough 
Well it depends how much stuff the character is going to have, clothes, accessories etc
Last gen was around 10k, but you can go higher if you want. And it also depends greatly on what your game is–depending on how complex your levels are and how many characters are going to be on screen at once.
I personally would recommend you a tri count of between 10k and 20k -> e.g our char that we will use in our game called has around 16k
Well it all can depend on how much will happening on screen for example if you have like 5 guys running around then you can make like 20k-35k models if your system can handle it, and like I said depends what your level will consist of.
In my opinion the days of counting tris are long gone as the original ideal behind it all had to do more with how much can you fit on to a single CD for the purpose of distribution more than any thing else.
Counting though has be replaced with how well can your assets scale taking into consideration of how much you have to put into the design to make what should be round looks round, no more 12 sided oil drums for example, and then from there let the software optimize the results for you when finer detail is not needed.
As a though the problem of “just” moving polygons (tris) has been long solved and now that UE4 has no limits one can go with insane amounts of detail if they wish and fits with in their design.
Example.
v=IQ_BWblteQU
Where the crunch is though is in fill rates and dynamic lighting so once that is solved, ie true run time ray tracing with zero impact, then optimization as to design could more or less be ignored.