Guild Wars 2

Since a part of this BWE is to evaluate what’s good and bad about the components that go into these raid encounters, it seems relevant to resurrect this poor, dead, heavily beaten horse:

Particle effects. Guardian flames, engi grenade blasts, the new alacrity flame…all very cool, aesthetically awesome things. But when it become difficult or even impossible to see the boss animations through them, the experience turns from challenging to frustrating very quickly.

This has been a frequent, longstanding complaint in this game, and with the push for more challenging PvE encounters through raids, the need for a solution is only going to intensify.

I hope that the devs have something in mind to address this as more challenging raid encounters are introduced. Something as simple as an opacity slider would do wonders for improving the combat experience.

I dream of the day I can reliably see the bosses I am suppose to dodge.

ugh yes, please put a leash/limit/or option on these effects!

I think pretty much everything we can apply on a boss already has an icon in the status bar. Just let us turn off those effects if we want.
Also wtb an option to make small bosses (looking at you, Asuras) larger, though that’s an entirely different thing

This. I hate when I’m fighting mossman and I can’t even see what direction he is facing there is so many effects.

This has been an enormous issue since the game’s release, especially since the entire essence of the ‘dynamic, action-packed combat’ is to watch your opponent and respond to their telegraphed attacks. Over the years I’ve just gotten used to it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it can be nearly impossible to see what the monster(s) you’re fighting are doing.

Personally I think implementing overhead castbars would be a viable solution, but ArenaNet has, multiple times, stated that they refuse to implement those since it goes against the ‘you have to watch out for the attacks you can’t see =))))’ philosophy.

Bukkebruse.2810:

This has been an enormous issue since the game’s release, especially since the entire essence of the ‘dynamic, action-packed combat’ is to watch your opponent and respond to their telegraphed attacks. Over the years I’ve just gotten used to it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it can be nearly impossible to see what the monster(s) you’re fighting are doing.

Personally I think implementing overhead castbars would be a viable solution, but ArenaNet has, multiple times, stated that they refuse to implement those since it goes against the ‘you have to watch out for the attacks you can’t see =))))’ philosophy.

Castbars rly are taking to much focus from the battlefield, so to react on what you see should be the way to go. But you need to be able to see. (no effect blizard and clear animations (also at wvw/pvp))

While this is definitely an issue, one of the best ways the raid designers can combat it is by making the bosses larger so their tells are more obvious. I’ll include this feedback in my report.

SuinegTsol.1729:

Castbars rly are taking to much focus from the battlefield, so to react on what you see should be the way to go. But you need to be able to see. (no effect blizard and clear animations (also at wvw/pvp))

It could just be something exclusive to raid bosses and/or certain bosses in dungeons/fractals. I don’t think cast bars would have a good impact on large scale WvW fights and I personally never felt that they were necessary in regular PvP, even before they added the standardised player models.

The particle clusterkitten on bosses is by far the thing that has been annoying me the most ever since I started playing this game. An option to turn off particle effects selectively would be an absolutely fantastic QoL feature and make me happy beyond measure!

Rising Dusk.2408:

While this is definitely an issue, one of the best ways the raid designers can combat it is by making the bosses larger so their tells are more obvious. I’ll include this feedback in my report.

+1

Excellent point. I honestly believe this is a large reason for why Lupi is as popular as he is. Sure, he’s got multiple phases and a healthy amount of pressure, too, but he’s one of the few bosses where every killshot has an unmistakable, unobscureable telegraph.

I’d sure love to see a solution (like a setting to lessen/disable them) that would also apply to all of the old content too, though!

Rising Dusk.2408:

While this is definitely an issue, one of the best ways the raid designers can combat it is by making the bosses larger so their tells are more obvious. I’ll include this feedback in my report.

Increasing the size of monsters hardly does anything as you can see in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFAS7jPwPKk#t=1m40s

Don’t forget that a lot of targetted abilities scale with the size of the target, so making bosses too big might prove counter-productive. I’m sure everyone’s anyone that’s seen various abilities like the ranger warhorn, guardian sceptre immobilise, downed ele’s immobilise on enormous bosses such as Lupicus will know what I mean.

Looking back I remember wanting cast bars implemented (As I even mentioned earlier in this thread) but after having tried out the raids myself I’d rather have an option to turn off particle effects entirely. This would probably also be beneficial to the players that play the game on decade-old toasters and microwaves.

One of my other games put in highlighted outlines that would shine in front of any particle effect. So you’d still have this field of explosions and fire, but in it you’d see a clearly distinguishable green or blue or whatever outline that was making some motion so you knew how to react.

I thought that worked well, you can’t just make everything Lupi size, it makes sense to have some bosses like say Mai Trin the same size as us.

Jerus.4350:

One of my other games put in highlighted outlines that would shine in front of any particle effect. So you’d still have this field of explosions and fire, but in it you’d see a clearly distinguishable green or blue or whatever outline that was making some motion so you knew how to react.

I thought that worked well, you can’t just make everything Lupi size, it makes sense to have some bosses like say Mai Trin the same size as us.

This even exists in the game to some extend. If you enable post-processing in the graphics options and move your cursor over a character it’ll show that character model’s outline. I believe allied characters have a cyan coloured outline and enemies a red one. It’d probably be fairly easy to change something so that all models’ outlines would be visible, but it still doesn’t solve the issue with ground effects being swallowed by various skill effects.

the main problem i ran into during the raid itself was not the size of the boss but the color of the particles being used….

Try avoiding the teleport attack with a gravity field ontop of it….Virtually impossible. Wells on boss AoE’s that share the same color scheme is the problem.

Giving me the ability to alter transparency of allied effects would be the ideal solution, along side a transparency slider for boss circles. So I can adjust the circles to the point where i can see them but also know what field/ effect my allies are tossing about.

All of the above said, what did we received?
A norn sized, translucent opponents.
No comment.

The day they let us turn off the blue flames that Guardians use….