Guild Wars 2

Biggest problem I have with events and dungeons right now is visibility. For starters many dungeons are filled with color, effects, and other things that may slow down a person’s game. I’ve got a high end rig and even my computer loses about 15 FPS when I go in to the battle for ascalon fractal.
In the grawl fractal the redness of EVERYTHING makes it really hard to make out. Human eyes are not designed to distinguish detail in red light, there is very little contrast. Blue and green on the other hand we can see contrast much better. So in that area I frequently do not see aoe rings, or miss other visual queues. Some times target the wrong enemy.
Then the biggest problem, and the reason for this post. All player and enemy based particle effects, while pretty, are occluding usability. Many bosses require timing and watching to know when to dodge. But frequently, say if I’m with an elementalist or other particle spam happy class I cannot even SEE the boss.

Dredge fractal miniboss is a great example. He can one shot you with his aoe line attack, you can only avoid it if you see him lift his mace. I have frequently died to it because my friend’s particle effects and number of enemeies were so dense I couldn’t even see the boss.

Increasing the opacity of many of these effects would go a long way toward helping, shrinking down many of them would also help. Give them a maximum scale. On my ranger, my summoned hawks (warhorn 4) scale with the size of the mob.. some times they get absurdly large and can make it hard to see.

The last thing that really should be looked at. Again many monsters have visual cues suggesting when they are going to do something. Then they also have flinching animations. These flinching animations I frequently mistake for the visual cue. Again the dredge miniboss is a great example, he flails backwards when hit, some times repeatedly, a few times a second. This animation isn’t that different from raising his mace so unless I’m paying really close attention, I might not notice. Perhaps make the flinching animations less dramatic.

I agree fully. Playing a Thief means making sure I do not get hit, we are squishy ((Even with my modest tank)) and not seeing an animation within the slap-happy particle effects is the difference between me dodging and my team crowding around me to pick me up.

I assume certain effects look amazing on paper but they also need to be tested. I’ve begun to cringe recently seeing clone-pop mesmers in my pug runs as I know the purple and pink butterflies will blot out my vision. =D

WereDragon.6083:

I assume certain effects look amazing on paper but they also need to be tested. I’ve begun to cringe recently seeing clone-pop mesmers in my pug runs as I know the purple and pink butterflies will blot out my vision. =D

This is what you get for constantly asking them to nerf Mesmers – now the only really viable mesmer build is shatter spec… so enjoy your purple butterflies you’ll be seeing a lot more of them in future

I’d really like it if you could buy effect modifications for your spells from the BLTC. A blue frost mesmer would be awesome :p mesmer clones breaking in to shards of ice. Or green flame mesmer.
but yeah… they really need to do something to make other mesmer choices more viable.

I’m a noob, but I’m going to second the OP. I just ran AC for the first time, and in the final boss fight I got one-shot multiple times because of difficulty discerning where the AOE was. I have my graphics turned down, and when the aoe line comes up behind me off camera, I don’t know I’m about to get nuked. Even when it is there, it is faint and hard to make out with all of the spells going off. I don’t know if it’s because my gfx settings are down or I’m not attentive as other players. I really wish I could adjust the aoe circle’s intensity, width, or even fill the aoe with a cross hatch.