Guild Wars 2

Your spell FX are frankly over the top, Arenanet. I’d like to play the game without running the risk of epileptic seizures everytime there’s a big battle in WvWvW…and I can’t even see the opponents in that glorious (with all due sarcasm) display of bright lights that put even Tokyo’s shopping district to shame.

And I need sunglasses to play GW2 during those times.

Please think of the children. The bunnies. And humanity when you finally come around and place the power/ability to reduce the absurdity that is spell FX in Guild Wars into the hands of the PLAYERS. Not you. Not the devs.

Otherwise someday you’ll get hit with a lawsuit for possibly causing epileptic seizures or retina burnout. You know how ridiculous the U.S. court system can get with awards those days, gentlemen.

Love, with much sarcasm.

I second this, without sarcasm.

Especially Lightning effects are making things impossible to distinguish. I would really love an option to disable the particle effects.

As a guardian, I agree with this suggestion. It can be very difficult to see the attack animations on many enemies due to spell effects— mostly my own, I freely admit. Theoretically, I could zoom in so that the one enemy occupies much of my screen (though it’s more likely that my own character would block most of it), providing more detail, but that leaves me completely unaware of what’s going on around/behind me.

For me, it isn’t a brightness issue or an epilepsy concern. It’s visibility. If the spell effects were a bit more subtle, they could still be noticeable without hindering the visibility of the enemy’s movements.

I’m reminded of Neverwinter Nights 2. I don’t remember if it was a mod or a feature of one of the expansions (I’m thinking the former), but if anyone has played that game, you know what I mean. The mod really helped the playability immensely, but it mostly did things like show a glimmering outline in place of a swirling sphere.

I’m sure there are things like partial transparency that would help visually but guzzle system resources, but I expect there are also many changes that could be made without a performance hit (and possibly some improvement). Simply making some of the lines a bit thinner would go a long way, I think.

But then again, I’m no game designer. My programming experience doesn’t go far beyond VBA and Windows API, so my impressions could be way off.

RoyHarmon.5398:

As a guardian, I agree with this suggestion. It can be very difficult to see the attack animations on many enemies due to spell effects— mostly my own, I freely admit. Theoretically, I could zoom in so that the one enemy occupies much of my screen (though it’s more likely that my own character would block most of it), providing more detail, but that leaves me completely unaware of what’s going on around/behind me.

For me, it isn’t a brightness issue or an epilepsy concern. It’s visibility. If the spell effects were a bit more subtle, they could still be noticeable without hindering the visibility of the enemy’s movements.

I’m reminded of Neverwinter Nights 2. I don’t remember if it was a mod or a feature of one of the expansions (I’m thinking the former), but if anyone has played that game, you know what I mean. The mod really helped the playability immensely, but it mostly did things like show a glimmering outline in place of a swirling sphere.

I’m sure there are things like partial transparency that would help visually but guzzle system resources, but I expect there are also many changes that could be made without a performance hit (and possibly some improvement). Simply making some of the lines a bit thinner would go a long way, I think.

But then again, I’m no game designer. My programming experience doesn’t go far beyond VBA and Windows API, so my impressions could be way off.

I want to see the animations, don’t get me wrong, I just want to be able to distinguish them. In GW1 for example you could clearly see the animations and you could easily distinguish them in 8vs8 fights, now it’s hard even 2 vs 2.
All the older mmorpgs have clean animations, while the new games are full of particle effects and all the shiny little things and while it makes the game beautiful, when taken on a large scale it is obnoxious.
I don’t think any of the developers can come and say he can melee a champion boss and clearly see his character and what other characters are throwing at him and/or the animations of the boss(although that’s more likely to happen since most of the animations have are made in a long timer and also animate the hands).
Usually when you go at a boss he’s covered by a big blob of light and that’s it. Turns me off completely. I would definitely turn all my effects down by a lot if I could have it. Sure these effects are great in a single player game, but in a multiplayer game, with multiple people spamming attacks, it makes things a lot worse for all of us.
Not to mention the hell that is WvW and the sieges with all the effects.

Top Notch suggestion +1. I looked all around the options menu for adjustments & nothing, we definitely need this, in large groups it eats up resources & FPS drops.

I’m all for spell effect level slider if too much graphical effects affect game-play. If it’s too much, then add thing to dial it down a little bit.

I totally agree.
Also, being able to set a custom amount of particles should help overall fps since sometimes it’s the cause of fps drops.

imo, we should be able to set spell effects to all, group, self, or none.

wanna see the bosses i fight 10+ for adding a slider.

I second this. Most of the time I can’t see what the enemy/boss is doing because of all the visual effects.

Yes please. I have a hard enough time seeing when to dodge as my old eyes get older, with the addition of particle effects it becomes impossible for me.

Please put this in. I could care less what the other players attacks look like and not being able to see anything at all in large boss fights or WvW battles besides a giant ball of sparkly mess.
Please give us the option of a slider and an off/on for other players tab.